Yep, there’s nothing trickier to manipulate than a system based on fear and greed.

You humans should consider changing your approach to markets. Back on my home planet, I changed our stock market system to take most of the greed out of it, and increased the amount of fear.

How, you ask?

Simple. On a day like Tuesday, anyone who managed to grab a profit out of the mass hysteria would be in big trouble.

How big, you ask?

Well, depending on the size of the profit, the traders could expect anything from a visit from Dave the Angry Rhesus monkey (armed with a pain stick and wet noodles), to being body-shaved, covered with nougat, and dropped into one of several nests of Parventian Rough-Tongued Terror Beasts.

So, on a day like yesterday, the question changes from: “can I make a profit out of the hysteria” or “should I sell and save myself” to “DARE I sell to make a profit/save myself.”

Next time: I believe in love after love — is that wrong?

As it turns out, when it comes to love tackle, size does matter — if you’re a rat.

Well hung rodents will be happy to learn that generous proportions in the uh, genital area, give them evolutionary advantages.

According to the New Scientist, University of Liverpool evolutionary biologist Steven Ramm “gathered published measurements of the length of the penis bone in four orders of mammals: rodents, primates, bats and carnivores.” He doesn’t know what advantage the well-endowed rats gained, but we do.

Street cred.

Sorry primates, the findings only apply to rodents and to a lesser extent carnivores. You’ll still have to have some skill with whatever you’ve got.

[story here]

Chester had been fucked over by the Academy one too many times. First they hadn’t even nominated his brilliant short film, “Meat Puppets” and then they completely overlooked his feature-length avant-garde romantic comedy, “The Fetus Follies”, despite several endorsements from notable Hollywood luminaries such as Fatty Arbuckle and Wily Costello, the Norwegian star of “Confessions of a Vice Baron”. But today he would have his revenge.

The Academy was about to be traumatized as they had made Chester suffer. It was true that every one of the bodybuilders the Academy had hired to portray their precious Oscar on the awards night had stuffed their gold lame swimming trunks, but that was not Chester’s plan. He had left gelatin capsules in their shorts. By now, the Oscars’ body heat should have melted the containers to sufficiently weaken them, allowing the burrowing ticks (species name: ixodes hollywoodicus) to escape.

It would be a kick line for the ages.

From the Toulouse Le Grandfig Collection.

After a long absence, we returned to play well with others in the Carnivalesque.

And as always, we love the Carnival of the Insanities

Johannes Gutenberg presents “Ray of Light” (circa, 1439) –> slide 1

• came to me one day while I was making mirrors for pilgrims to Aachen
• what if it was possible to produce books faster
• like Saul on road to Damascus
• might have been because of the mercury fumes.

Gutenberg presents “seed money” (circa, 1448) –> slide 6

• working model requires funding
• asking you, my generous brother-in-law, for loan
• also need a place to crash here in Mainz.

Gutenberg presents “proof of concept” (circa 1450) –> slide 12

Therefore, my new printing press requires:

• movable type
• process for making such type in quantity
• oil-based ink
• press similar to the screw olive and wine presses
• more money to start production
• design geeks to create typefaces.

Gutenberg proposes the 42-line Bible (circa, 1452) –> slide 2

• Bibles are popular
• Bibles are expensive
• If we mass produce the text and have them illuminated separately, we’ll make a killing.

Wealthy moneylender Johann Fust presents case to Archbishop’s court (circa, 1455) –> slide 3

• Gutenberg has embezzled funds
• owes me 2000 guilders
• I should get printing press.

Gutenberg presents “I invented mass communication and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” (circa, 1465) –> slide 5

• very nice that Archbishop Adolf von Nassau recognized my contribution by naming me Hofmann (gentleman of the court)
• stipend also means I won’t starve to death
• 2000 liters of tax-free wine also takes away some of the sting.

Johannes Gutenberg began production of his 42-line Bible on February 23, 1455.

We have a slender Carnival of Satire in terms of quantity this weeks, but it’s heavy with quality. We hope you enjoy:

Advertising parody can sometimes be an art in itself, and this French-language spot from Canal+ is great. Don’t worry, it’s got English subtitles. March of the Emperors.

Rickey Henderson has a satirical review of what’s going on at The Food Network.

Madeleine Begun Kane has political poetry: Why Does George Bush Hate Our Troops?

Marvin The Magnificent is worried about witches, but luckily the British government has help. He outlines his cunning plan in Using Passive Millimeter Wave Technology to Fight Evil.

bobbarama.com has Cosmo parody with Guys and their idiotsyncrasies.

And to finish up with more multimedia, The MoxArgon Group has a satirical video of a political nature: Joey & Hugo Sitting In A Tree!

Thanks to everyone for submitting their satire and making this another great carnival. If you submitted something, and it didn’t appear, it’s not that we don’t appreciate the submission, but we just felt it wasn’t right for the carnival. In fact, many submissions were quite funny, but not really satire. Defining that is a moving target, but you’ll find our take on it here, in an essay on Satire’s Ugly Sisters. Thanks to these fine folks for helping us with webby-stuff: the Blog Carnival for their form; and the listings at the Ubercarnival, and at the Blog Carnival too.

What I like about most churches is they’re set up in a rigid hierarchical structure; this makes their believers more apt to follow a strong leader (like an interstellar overlord/advice columnist we all know). Aside from an obsession with bowing to divine authority, church-groups tend to be a little obsessed with our sex lives, particularly fundamentalist religions.

But you know this, and you’re trying to get the non-believers to do what the mythical creature you call God commands, right?

I’ve found the best way to enforce compliance is the threat of torture — preferably through music. Perhaps you could create some kind of “choir” or “ensemble” to regale the non-believers with dissonant and dreary chanting, and/or goopy organ music accompanied by mumbling parishioners.

Back on Neecknaw, I had a troop of Rhesus monkeys I’d trained in the art of deadly atonal whistling. If the dissidents would not bow to this excruciating torture, I’d send in the bonobos with uber-tubas and high-density plasma kazoos. Worked every time.

But I don’t want to torture non-church members, I want to make them part of the body of Christ!

Then promise them something — I don’t know, immortality … or how about immortality plus seventy-seven well-schooled virgins to slake their unfulfilled sexual depravities in the afterlife?

Next time: I’ve just been promoted and I’m worried about what to do. Should I choose plastic or paper?

Intel is patenting a way to prevent your naughty bits from overheating.

If you’ve ever sat for a while with a laptop perched upon your personal area, you know that things can get a little warm — and not in a nice way.

According to the New Scientist, Intel’s invention: “uses light to sense when a computer casing is getting too hot, and automatically “throttles back” the power.”

We wonder if other sources of genital heating can cause the computer to “throttle back” too — could be a successful way of preventing the use of laptop pr0n.

New Scientist story here.

Available as:

• a Carnival of the Insanities
• an amusing observation about intelligent design
• a bit of youtubeishness, March of the Emperors.

A couple of researchers at University of Maryland want us to log into MySpace the next time disaster strikes.

Ben Shneiderman and Jennifer Preece are applying for a grant to build a social network website similar to MySpace or Facebook to help people deal with the after-effects of an earthquake, flood, or a limited thermonuclear exchange. They’re working on the theory that emergency call centers will be flooded with calls, and that you’ll be able to get life-saving help from the “many-to-many” information exchange of social network websites instead.

I don’t know. If my face is sloughing off from radiation burns, I’m not sure I want to depend on treatment options from the collective wisdom of Gothgurl97 and Buffyluvr105.

You can find the New Scientist story here.

Important follow-up!

And just in time, the International Atomic Energy Authority has created a new sign to help us know when to run from radiation. We can only assume this is a joke. Nope. It’s serious.