Category: It Must Be Science!

| Posted in Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto, War on Animals

Cheetah robot new harbinger in a war long thought over

While we’ve told you before about the danger of merging robots and animals together, it’s been quite some time since we needed to do so. Frankly, perhaps we at SeriouslyGuys became complacent and lax in our duty.

That time of relaxation is over.

A Swiss robot designed in the image of a cat, named “cheetah-cub robot” (which shall be called “Cheetor” in order to both gain nerd cred and troll nerds), has been unveiled to the world. While the size of a house cat, it’s able to run as fast an adult moving quickly. Perhaps the initial blueprint was for Cheetor to be a search and rescue type machine, but think of the horror it can inflict:

  • A kamikaze type bomb that can move faster than our slovenly lot can handle.
  • A creature that can quickly trip up supply lines, much less destroy our ACL tendons.
  • Hello? Bladewolf, anyone?

We need to act now. End the madness that is Cheetor. Smelt while you still can.

| Posted in It Must Be Science!

Head injury reveals French secret agent in Tasmania

This is the only speech impediment in the world that reduces the amount of waiter piss in your escargot.
Ms. Rowe suffers from the only speech impediment in the world that actually reduces the amount of waiter piss in your escargot.

Imagine the horror of waking up after an accident to discover that you’re secretly French. That’s the nightmare that a Tasmanian woman has lived for eight years now.

OK, OK, not really. Leanne Rowe was in a car accident where a portion of her brain that controls speech was damaged. The injury and healing created a speech impediment that replaced her Australian accent with what sounds like a French accent, but is just a type of slurring. (This may also explain French accents in French people.)

Her condition is called Foreign Accent Syndrome, which is rare and has affected 62 patients in the past 70 years. In all the cases, not a single one has turned out to be a Bourne Identitied secret agent. But, doctors still advise them to never take a virtual vacation from Rekall. You know, just in case.

| Posted in It Must Be Science!

How to make anyone find you attractive

Science can make anyone sexy.

We’ve been buying and selling that promise for years, but ask any dead person, assuming you’re a medium, it doesn’t work out so well. But now, whether young or old, ugly or not as hot as the person sitting next to you, you can get anyone you want. All you need to do is control their brain.

All you need to do is attach two electrodes to your would-be lover’s scalp, and have then look at you, according to a recent study. Scientists found that people who got a certain amount of electrical current fed to their brain as they looked at pictures of people were more likely to find those people attractive.

No ether required.

| Posted in It Must Be Science!

Spiritual, but without a moral center or sense of community

"By developing the ancient, mystical art of stretching, I will soon Catherine Zeta-Jones my mom ass around lasers in art galleries."
“By co-opting the ancient, mystical art of Indian stretching, I will soon Catherine Zeta-Jones my mom ass around lasers in art galleries.”

If you clutch your purse a little closer when somebody identifies themselves as “spiritual, just not religious,” then good news! You’re not as bigoted as you think.

Sociological research indicates that young people who call themselves “spiritual, but not religious” are more likely to commit property and violent crimes than religious people, and more likely to commit property crimes than atheists and agnostics.

This is no surprise to religious people, from whom spiritual people have stolen their rituals and iconography without, you know, any restraint or sense of purpose behind them. And if you believe in magic objects and energies that benefit you without judgement, then you too might use those forces for evil.

[Via Salon]

| Posted in It Must Be Science!, War on Animals

A bug in the system

The key to winning any war is predicting the enemy’s movements. Soon, we may be able control their movements, thanks to neuroscience.

At the TEDGlobal conference in Scotland, scientists rolled out an experiment that could change the war forever: a real cockroach controlled by a smartphone. With a microchip attached to its back and hooked into its antennae, neuroscientists are able to control a cockroach’s movements via Bluetooth. It’s RoboRoach, by Greg Gage.

Now that we can control insects, we can use them against each other. Also, Father’s Day is just around the corner.

| Posted in It Must Be Science!

Which came first: soccer or brain damage?

"And now I can't do math anymore. But it's OK because I'm a girl and wasn't going to use it anyway."
“And now I can’t do math. But it’s OK because soccer is mostly scoreless and doesn’t involve any large numbers.”

MRI scans of soccer players revealed that those who routinely strike the ball with their heads — called “heading” — show evidence consistent with traumatic brain injuries.

‘We looked at the relationship between heading and changes in the brain and changes in cognitive functions [thinking and memory], and we found that the more heading people do, the more likely we are to find microscopic structural abnormalities in the brain, and they’re more likely to do poorly on cognitive tests, particularly in terms of memory,’ said study author Dr. Michael Lipton, associate director of the Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and medical director of magnetic resonance imaging at Montefiore Medical Center, both in New York City.

One failed cognitive test? Deriving enjoyment from playing and or watching soccer.

Dr. Liptin, however, cannot say for sure if heading directly caused these signs of brain injury, that he has merely observed an association. For all we know, these players could enjoy soccer so much because they were already brain-damaged.

| Posted in Booze News, It Must Be Science!

40 percent of designated drivers drink because you’re intolerable

Alright, guys, house rules apply. We drink first, then we "one potato" to designate who goes to the drunk tank for the group.
Alright, guys, house rules apply. We drink first, then we “one potato” to designate who goes to the drunk tank for the group.

Researchers followed 165 designated drivers home from the bar — for science purposes, mind you — and found that 40 percent consumed some alcohol before driving their friends home. One-fifth (as opposed to a handle) blew a 0.05 percent BAC, which is the percentage where impairment and karaoke begins.

The DDs were, however, still below the legal limit of 0.08 … for now. Because drivers begin to show signs of impairment at 0.05, federal accident investigators have recommended that states lower their drunk driving limits to that level. Over 100 countries have already started this and found a significant reduction in highway fatalities and volume in IHOPs after 10pm.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if more people would (a) watch baseball to learn what “designated” means and (b) keep those puritans from turning the American League into the National League by eliminating the DH rule.

| Posted in Booze News, It Must Be Science!

In space, no one can hear you enunciate

♪ What would you do-oo-oo ... frrr(uh) Klondike Bar? ♫
♪ What would you do-oo-oo … frrr(uh) Klondike Bar? ♫

Neil Armstrong only had one line — one line! — when he exited the Apollo 11 lunar lander on July 20, 1969, and according to the recorded record, NASA should have given it to his first understudy, Buzz Aldrin. (Michael Collins had to sit quietly off-camera, pressing buttons as second understudy and head techie.)

As he stepped onto the moon, he was supposed to say, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” However, all everyone heard is “One small step for man,” a flub that destroyed the script writer’s vision of contrasting the actions of a single person with that of the human collective.

That screenwriter, Gary Mitchell, later hanged himself in the background of the sound stage where they filmed it.

But, now that Armstrong is gone, linguists are finally ready to give him the benefit of the doubt and admit that maybe he didn’t botch his big moon-landing line. They now think that Armstrong merely slurred his speech, blending the “for a” in the way that people from Ohio are wont to do, growling it out as “frrr(uh) man.”

The Guys, however, are ready to believe that Neil Armstrong was just drunk. Did you see his moonwalk?

| Posted in It Must Be Science!

Women: Grosser than you think

With summer just around the corner, you’re probably thinking that cold season is over. If the news last week that there is poop in your pool didn’t convince you, we’ve got more evidence that the world is covered in gross stuff to make you sick.

A recent study found that one out of five purses has more bacteria on it than a toilet seat. Apparently, women are just carrying around petri dishes all day long. The germiest stuff were the face and hand creams, followed by the makeup and lipstick.

So if you want to stay bacteria free this summer, tell your lady to keep her hands to herself, and don’t get anywhere near her face. For once, you know exactly where it’s been.

| Posted in Headline of the Day, It Must Be Science!

Lookin’ like a fool with your poop in the pool

DO: Drop the kids off at the pool. DON'T: "Drop the kids off at the pool."
DO: Drop the kids off at the pool.
DON’T: “Drop the kids off at the pool.”

The CDC investigated 161 pools in and around Atlanta, Ga. and, according to bacterial evidence, somebody squeezed off a dook in over half of them. They found E. coli in 58 percent of all tested pools’ filters, and P. aeroginosa in 59 percent.

The CDC partially blames improper cleaning and maintenance procedures, but also that you — yes, you — are not fooling anybody. We’ve seen you at the bar and know that you go to the bathroom every 30 minutes.

So, what can you do to help prevent the already rising number of pool-illness incidents?

1. Wash that ass. Unwashed perianal regions (that area ranging from your pee parts to your anus, including the taint) contain 0.14 grams of fecal matter on average. So, scrub up with soap before soap before going to the pool — or, for that matter, sitting on shared surfaces or standing upwind from anybody.

2. Stop pooping in the pool. Or peeing. Or farting after eating “complete proteins.” And if you have diarrhea, just imagine there are poop-eating sharks — or shartks — waiting for you.

Thank you for your attention. Hope you have a rad summer.