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Professor Quippy: The Vatican welcomes our alien brothers

By Mark A. Rayner on May 15, 2008 in Odd Science

Professor Quippy The Vatican is making great contributions to the world of astronomy, not least of which is their plan to incorporate “extraterrestrial brothers” into the Catholic fold.

A bit of history before I pass along the news: The Inquisition condemned Galileo for suggesting the outlandish idea that the Earth orbited the sun (and not vice versa.) Galileo wisely recanted this scientifically sound idea, mostly because he did not like having hot pokers exploring his Black Hole. You’ll be happy to know that the Vatican now accepts the validity of the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun. (In 1992, the Church agreed that he was correct, and the Inquisition was wrong — with the stipulation that the Inquisition acted in good faith, super-heated probes notwithstanding.)

Since this momentous change in policy, a new Pope has taken office. Pope Benedict he has installed Reverend Jose Gabriel Funes as head of the Vatican Observatory and as his scientific advisor. The 45-year-old Jesuit priest is enthusiastic about the possibility of intelligent aliens existing:

Alien Scientologist “Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on Earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can’t put limits on God’s creative freedom,” he said. “Why can’t we speak of a ‘brother extraterrestrial’? It would still be part of creation,” he said.

And when we find these ET brother? Interstellar missionaries of course! What a fabulous chance to increase the membership in the Church. Let’s just hope the aliens aren’t the kind with acid for blood, enjoy hunting humans for sport, or are Scientologists [pictured right]. Oh, and Reverend Funes may want to read The Sparrow before he goes. (Unless he enjoys Uranus play.)

I highly recommend The Sparrow [Wiki], by the way. New Scientist stories: ET poses no problem for Vatican. Vatican admits Galileo was right. The Vatican does have issues with Humor-blogs.com and Alltop.

Living off the fat of the land

By Mark A. Rayner on May 14, 2008 in Odd Science, Parody & Satire

The Atkins Diet -- Dead by Dawn (pic of skull) As you may have noticed, the author has been somewhat obsessed with news about obesity, fat, losing fat, fitting into one’s pants, and so on. There is a reason, but he’s not sharing. Instead, he thought he would share this Reutars story:

Free liposuction supplies cosmetics entrepreneur

Monday May 13, 2008 8:55 AM ET

SANTA BERNARDO, California (Ruetars) — A plastic surgeon is offering a number of free services, including liposuction, to patients in the northern Californian spa town of Santa Bernardo.

“How can we afford it?” asks Dr. Darryl Lipid, owner of Sebaceous Cosmetics. “Volume. Seriously, part of the deal is based on four people agreeing to the have the procedure at the same time. Until we have our new mass suction lipectomy operating theater built it will be a relatively intimate affair.”

When the new building is ready, up to 24 patients will have their excess fat removed at the same time.

Patients also have to agree to undergo liposuction without the benefit of a local anesthetic.

“Yes. We keep the costs down by performing the lipoplasty without sedatives or anesthesia of any kind,” Lipid told Ruetars. “I won’t lie to you — it’s painful, and harrowing, but for those patients who have some pockets of stubborn fat, it is worth it.”

And what becomes of the “stubborn fat”? It gets used in the products that Sebaceous Cosmetics pedals to the rich clientele of Santa Bernardo.

“Yes, it’s true. Much of the tissue is rendered and used in the creation of our Human Touch cosmetics line. Our customers find Human Touch cosmetics superior to any other top-of-the-line cosmetics product.”

A significant portion of the extracted fat is sent to Germany.

“We have an agreement with a Germany company as well. We do not know what they are doing with the excess tissue, but we have a non-competitive agreement with them, so they are not allowed to use them in cosmetics. As far as I know, Human Touch is the only line designed with actual human tissue — a real breakthrough in the business of looking your best!”

The German company is Die Antropophagia GmbH, which sells foam-in-the-can dessert toppings.

They would not grant Ruetars an interview.

Apparently, there is a way that fat people could save American business (Slate). Humor-blogs.com and alltop never speak of themselves in the third person, though he believes that is a mistake. Now, the reader will apply the lotion. Pic from somethingawful via flamke.

Professor Quippy: Scoring Pizza & Bad Stomach Chemicals

By Mark A. Rayner on May 8, 2008 in Odd Science

Professor Quippy Researchers have discovered that you can blame your pudgy middle on bad chemicals.

According to researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, a hormone secreted by the stomach can cause junkie-like behavior when you see food.

Pizza? Score! Chicken wings? Groovy! Chocolate cake? Drop that man!

The guilty culprit is not your lack of willpower, it’s the hormone ghrelin, which is made in your stomach. As you get hungry, ghrelin levels rise and when you’ve eaten, they wane. In the study, volunteers were given a shot of ghrelin and then shown pictures of scrumptious, irresistible food. Their brains lit up just like a junkie’s.

Alain Dagher, a neurologist at McGill, says this is probably an evolutionary mechanism that encouraged our distant ancestors to bulk up on tasty calories whenever they had a chance (which probably wasn’t very often.) Fast forward a few thousand years, to the Era of Addictive Chicken, and this spells an obesity epidemic.

According to the New Scientist: “Several pharmaceutical companies already have their sights set on ghrelin, as drugs that block the hormone may quell hunger and fight obesity.”

The problem? If you turn off the hormone, it may affect other parts of your brain. Like, the segment of your cerebellum that makes you happy. The part that prevents you from falling into a deep, sponge-cake-like depression. And then killing yourself.

So, a danger of suicide, but at least you wouldn’t be fat anymore.

Humor-blogs.com is hopped up on laughter. Alltop too.

SITI — Search for Intelligence on Teh Internet

By Mark A. Rayner on May 7, 2008 in Odd Science, Parody & Satire

In an attempt to help understand why there is so much absolute dreck on the web, I suggest that we establish SITI — the Search for Intelligence on Teh Internet, roughly based on the model of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence).

This is a project that is long overdue, and with any luck, we will have more luck finding intelligence than SETI.

The SETI movement was energized in the 1960s by Dr. Frank Drake, when he came up with an equation to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. Now, I’d like to (modestly) propose we use his equation to estimate the number of intelligent website we may be able to find on the net.

The Drake “equation” states that:

n= the total number of intelligent sites out there
R* is the rate of website formation on the Internet
fp is the fraction of those websites that have weblogs
ne is average number of weblogs which can potentially support coherent thought
fl is the fraction of the above which actually go on to demonstrate coherent thought
fi is the fraction of the above which actually go on to show a sense of humor as well
fc is the fraction of the above which are willing and able to communicate
L is the expected lifetime of such an intelligent website.

Yes, some may argue that looking for coherent thought on a weblog is misguided, but I believe it’s our best shot.

Prove me wrong.

No doubt some boffins will now take this flash of brilliance, and give us a script to help us figure it out in real time. However, let me give you my best guess:

6 million new websites each year
X .5 (% with weblogs)
X .5 (% capable of supporting coherent thought)
X .001 (% demonstrating coherent thought)
X .001 (% showing a sense of humor)
X .6 (willing and able to communicate)
X 3 (lifetime of website, in months)
= 2.7

Hmm. Well, if I assume The Skwib is one of the 2.7, then who are the other 1.7? My guess is that they’ll be found on humor-blogs.com or perhaps alltop. Hey, you can’t argue with this, this is science!

Obligatory link to Wikipedia article on the Drake Equation, if you’d like to know what those things really stand for. Thanks to Garette for the toothy alien.

Professor Quippy: What’s that Lassie? You’re freaking out?

By Mark A. Rayner on April 30, 2008 in Odd Science

Professor Quippy It turns out that the long-distance “Twilight Bark” scene from 101 Dalmatians isn’t so fictional. (You know, the scene when the parents of the puppy-napped pooches, Pongo and Perdita, let all the other dogs in England know their young have been kidnapped by the chain-smoking, highly motivated and mildly deranged Cruella de Vil.)

Research from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (Hungary) shows that dogs can distinguish between other pooches’ barks. According to the New Scientist, the researchers: “measured the heart-rate fluctuations of pet dogs while playing them recordings of dogs barking at strangers and dogs barking to get attention.”

They discovered that dogs can distinguish between the different kinds of barking, and “it might be that they also understand,” says Péter Pongrácz, the lead researcher.

No word yet on if dogs are able to communicate via urine, but I suspect the answer is yes, and they call it pee-mail.

This dog was banned from the study, mostly because he was channeling Bud Abbot:

New Scientist story about this research, and an invention to interpret dog barks. Humor-blogs.com is highly adept at pee-mail.

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