Texting: the new, new gateway

Parents, if you thought your work was over: think again.

We’ve locked down every gateway to teenage sex and drinking, whether that gateway was pot, rock and roll, Satanism, thong underwear, birth control, spanking, video games, prime time television, gay teachers, violent cartoons, Sudafed, aerosol cans, presidential “bee-jays,” cleavage on Sesame Street, soccer games with clear-cut winners, candy cigarettes, red ink, trans fats, method acting, driving with passengers, Catholicism, scrambled pornography, comic books, music videos, the rap music, Bratz dolls, Woodrow Wilson, The Catcher in the Rye and that hairy bush from High School Musical.

We found a new one for you to go after: texting.

Get panicking! Their next text could be the text that makes you a horrible mom or dad.

Time travel challenge accepted!

Two weeks ago, SeriouslyGuys issued a challenge to time travelers in a Take it from Snee Lightning Round:

“I like to imagine Hitler’s final days being in a bunker not (just) because of the Russians, but because a future Web site launches a time traveling contest to see who can kill him the most creatively. To claim the prize, your presubmitted demise must make the newspapers afterwards. Making it look like a suicide doesn’t count.

(Did I just launch this contest back in 2010? Perhaps, if you’re thinking fourth dimensionally!)”

We already have an entry.

Unfortunately, the evidence is from 1923, not 1945, so it’s clearly not an attempt on Hitler’s life with  a rolled-up iPad–

UNLESS! Unless she’s actually trying to kill him before he becomes a nuisance! Quick, check History’s This Day In History! Is there an entry for World War II?

Nevermind. Look, eager young time cadets: if you’re not going to take this seriously, then we’re just going to start railing against time travel again. Now quit star-f@%king, and start star-bludgeoning!

(With special thanks to Mr. Groonk.)

Can you save me now? Good.

It only takes a fraction of a second to spell the difference between life and death when a bullet comes into the equation. High velocity projectiles can travel over a distance in no time and often can’t be stopped by obstacles. Well, most obstacles. Every now and then, you hear of something that manages to save someone by magically stopping the bullet.

Despite what fellow guy Bryan McBournie might tell you, you certainly won’t hear of a Droid phone saving a person like that.

No brain cancer for you!

By now, you have to have heard the rumors of cell phones giving you brain cancer of the biblical proportions. It’s been the greatest proponent for people telling drivers to not use a cell while driving (well, that and the tried and true “You look like a douchebag!”).

Welllllll, scientists just completed a massive, international study of the connection between brain cancer and mobile phone use, and it looks like those people are gonna have to get a new excuse. Maybe.

The new study, called INTERPHONE, is the largest of its type, and was organized by a division of the World Health Organization. Researchers wanted to find out if there was a link between two common types of brain cancer – glioma and meningioma – and mobile phone use. They studied 2,708 people with glioma, 2,409 with meningioma, and 7,658 people in a control group. Their subjects came from 13 different countries.

Unfortunately, results were both inconclusive and kind of weird. Why? It’s hard to conduct a scientific study that’s based in part on self-reported behaviors. Ultimately though, until researchers are able to get better data, it’s impossible to say whether there is a link between mobile phone use and brain cancer.

Some might say that’s not cause for relief, rather, it’s cause for more research. Those people are to be labeled whiners.

Text 4265 to report an ebola outbreak

Softbank and Aoyama Gakuin University know the Japanese. Probably because they are Japanese. They know that the Japanese use their phones for everything: mail, gaming, banking, oh, and sometimes phone calls. They also know what the Japanese may use their phones for: tracking disease.

A group of 1,000 students will be given iPhones (luckiest students ever says this 3G model user), and their attendance will be tracked via GPS. A few months from now, some of these students will be hit with a virtual disease. Given the nature of Japan, a virtual form of swine flu would hilariously ironic. Following this, their movements will be tracked via GPS to determine which children have crossed paths. The families of exposed students will be notified via cell phone messages with instructions on how to get them checked out by doctors.

Softbank throws out this situation: if one person were to spread their disease to three people a day, by the 10th day, 60,000 people would carry the disease. But, in contrast, if that interaction is limited to two people a day, only 1,500 would be carriers of the disease. Knowing who has what would surely go a longer way towards preventing an epidemic than those silly face masks.

You know what knowing also is? Half the battle.

Take it from Snee: Communication’s gone to s#*t

20,000 B.C.

I am alarmed by the cries of my kinsman, Ook, and seek him out. I find him behind a large stone some paces away from our lean-to: a temporary lodging made of sticks, leaves and hides that we use on longer hunting trips.

There Ook is squatting above the ground, making his morning constitutional. I steel myself, expecting to apply suction to a poisonous snake wound or kill a stalking saber tooth cat.

Ook makes a strange sound: “Look.”

I cock my head sideways and scratch my armpit to signal that I do not understand.

Ook makes the same sound again, this time pointing down. “Look.” He then adds more strange utterances: “Look what I make.”

He perceives that I still don’t understand and stands up, pointing down at a semi-swirled pile of feces. “Poop,” he says as he points to it. “I make poop. You see.”

I realize that Ook has started using language and has chosen to demonstrate this by calling me during his “brown time.” Continue reading Take it from Snee: Communication’s gone to s#*t

Moonspeak ZOMG!!!11 TXT U L8R?

Fire off that last mail message real quick, Japanese students. You won’t be able to do that at school anymore.

It seems that Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology doesn’t want students to have their phones at school anymore. They will hand their decision down to schools and school boards as early as this month. Cell phone heads, it looks grim for you.

Forget the kids at school. They can go talk to each other face to face — that’ll be good for them. What’s really important are the Japanese entertainment implications. This will change the face of a good deal of stereotypical life in Japan. How often does a phone call or message at school advance the plot of their stories in entertainment? What’s going to happen to the phone flirting? How else will the tentacle monsters surprise school girls?

What are they going to do now? Are they going to have to go back to the carrier pigeon? Don’t tell me we have to go back to that note-in-a-shoe-locker thing again.

Forethought is the mother of accidental porn

Good idea: Keeping a hold on your phone, especially if you’re grabbing fast food and it has a camera on it. An Arkansas couple ended up as accidental porn-stars after losing a phone at McDonald’s. Now they want to end up as accidental millionaires.

Better idea: Just opt to not eat at McDonald’s.Ever.

The McBournie Minute: Look what I found in your ear

I have spoken once already about the proper use of cell phones, but alas, it seems there is still more work to be done on reforming the world and its manners. Still, you should remember that the minute your cell phone goes off, everyone around you, especially strangers, hate you.

Let’s talk about ear pieces. Yes, we are  all glad you have that thing so you can drive with both hands on the wheel, but that does not give you an excuse to walk around wearing it in your ear all day. Really? You can’t just take it out of your pocket and hold it up to your ear? What happens when we as a society get too lazy to put that ear piece in our ears? I’ll leave that one for science to figure out. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Look what I found in your ear