Tag: science

March of the Poop-guins

Did you see what I did there? Oh my, aren’t I so clever! I’m probably the smartest person in world!

Okay, well, if I’m not, then I’m at least in the running to be smarter than a bunch of scientists from Jolly Ol’ Blighty that used a high-powered satellite to track down the fecal matter of Emperor penguins.

“This is a very exciting development. Now we know exactly where the penguins are, the next step will be to count each colony so we can get a much better picture of population size,” said penguin ecologist Phil Trathan.

Exciting development? More like crappy development, am I right guys? Huh? Huh?!

Science inches closer to jumping the Ewok

Everyone who’s seen Star Wars (any of the good movies, that is) remembers the Death Star-large, gray beach ball ship that used green lasers to blow up a planet. Blew up exactly one whole planet in the movies. More bark than bite, truthfully.

Scientists in California would like to prove that wrong. A new laser was debuted recently, detailing about how it has the power to burn as hot as a star.

“We have invented the world’s largest laser system,” actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said during a dedication ceremony attended by thousands including state and national officials.

Coming from a man who’s sole mission in film is to be more violent and Arnold-ier than anyone else in movies, that’s only fitting. Granted, the press may be saying that real purpose of the laser is to create large amounts of energy, but, c’mon, we all know its true use.

Next step: star powered gravity drives on spaceships. Why? How else are we going to tow our massive laser cannon into space and blow the hell out of a planet?

Science chooses adaptability over reproduction

Hey, dorkface, you know how you got picked on all the time in high school? Oh, don’t worry about me dredging up those repressed memories. Thanks to science, it would now appear that you’re invulnerable!

Sadly, what’s not mentioned in the article is that while having a weird appearance may help you avoid becoming dinner, you’re probably more likely to be found unattractive by the opposite sex. Thank you science for telling us what is obvious to the human population once again.

Booze your way to a healthy heart

We already know that alcohol is good for us, but scientists aren’t convinced yet. Science loves studying booze, primarily because it gives them something to talk about at the bar (“Hey baby, did you know that the damage to your liver isn’t as bad as we thought it was?”), and it’s more fun than curing diseases.

Now, a study at Harvard University, lead by Dr. Kenneth Noisewater Mukamal will see if drinking once a day (by which they mean one drink a day) helps prevent heart disease. Subjects will be given Crystal Light lemonade with grain alcohol, which I had last night, while others will just get the lemonade. First one to heart disease wins.

What are you doing (like I care)?

Twitter is ruining your life. Want to know why? Well, it’s giving you carpal tunnel sydrome.

OK, that’s not the real reason why, thought that one could be entirely possible. The true reason is that it could be making you numb to the world. Who says so? Science, that’s who. According to a new warning from science, the people who live to clone things, the rapid succession of headlines, tweets, RSS feeds probably, could upset your brain’s moral compass.

We here at SeriouslyGuys have created a test for you to see if you are affected. Read the following Tweets/ headlines as fast as you can:

  • Hundreds die in Italian earthquake
  • Pirates try seizing more ships
  • How to please him in bed
  • Man lands plane after pilot dies
  • Dow drops 100 points

Quick! Which one is most likely to have some sort of a connection to Brad and Jen?

Cancer cures put on hold for more research into DUH news

Nothing to see here people. Move right along. Water is still wet. Grass is still green. Balls are still round and men still see women in bikinis as objects. How do we know this?

Because we have a surplus amount of lazy graduate student scientists.

Here’s a way to understand the study: Scarlett Johansson is washing her car in a bikini. Because you’re a dirty pervert, you watch her doing so from her lawn hedge. The purpose of the study is to show the difference between thinking, “Scarlett is washing her car. It must be dirty.” and “Wash that car, Scarlett. Oh yeah! So dirty!”

Basically, they’re saying the first one, you associate a passive activity, and prescribe reason and motivation to why she’s doing something. The second one makes the actions much more directly associated, applies that all motivations are sexual, and involves more dirty words running through your mind.

So, what does this mean? Since science is not actually trying to attempt to solve anything useful, like curing horrible diseases or building me a sweet robot body, henceforth, scientists should only be allowed to study rutabagas. It would be just as productive as what they’re doing now.

Good idea, bad idea: science

Good Idea:

Creating rice that will live both 41 days and 41 nights. Even God might not be able to knock out a new precision bred strain of rice that is highly flood resistant. Feast, and be merry!

Bad Idea:

Creating robots that will end us all. AGAIN. Mad scientists, keep in mind that people don’t want things smaller. No, if anything that this Escalade/Expedition/Navigator/H2 generation has told us, it’s that people want things bigger. Don’t give into their wishes and make larger carnivorous robots. Ones the size of tables are bad enough.

An end to torture?

Well, here we are in the first 24 hours of Barack Obama’s presidency, and what story do we have to present to you? More torture, but this time of American citizens.

In a study to learn how the brain reacts to dieting and food cravings, scientists ordered 23 male and female volunteers, who weren’t even obese, to fast for 17 hours! If you think the food deprivation is the worst part, then put on your outrage galoshes:

“During that period, he and his team interviewed them about their favorite foods and asked them to rank each on a 1-to-10 scale. The researchers then selected one food for each subject, the only requirement being that it scored 7 or above in desirability. When the 17 hours were up, the volunteers were injected with a nuclear tracer, placed in a brain-imaging PET scanner and presented with a food they craved.”

Oh, they’re not done yet:

“‘If you said you liked barbecued ribs, we’d put a big portion of them in front of you,’ says [Dr. Gene-Jack] Wang. ‘We’d warm them in a microwave first so you couldn’t get away from the smell, and we’d give you a cotton ball with a bit of the food on it so you could taste it. Then we’d have one of the nurses describe how the food was made.'”

And did the patients then receive the food? No, they were told to think of something else and were required to keep their eyes open.

So, what did they learn in the name of science? That people have a hard time sticking to diets when tortured with juicy, succulent ribs. Way to let us down, President Obama.

Teen pregnancy up because of (adult) stupidity

First off, this article wins our coveted Headline of the Day: “Teen birth rates up in 26 states.” If you thought Benjamin Button was bad, people are giving birth to nasty, surly teenagers!

But seriously (guys), let’s take a look at this very serious article about a very serious problem:

“The latest data on teen birth rates shows significant increases in 26 states, according to government data out today, which suggests that the rise in teens having babies is geographically broad-based and represents most regions of the USA.”

Wow, that’s really serious. The entire country is knocking up teens? All 26 states?

“The highest teen birth rates are in the South and Southwest; Mississippi is highest with 68.4 per 1,000, followed by New Mexico, with a rate of 64.1 and Texas, with 63.1. The lowest rates are in the Northeast. New Hampshire had the fewest teen births with 18.7 per 1,000. Vermont, with 20.8 per 1,000, and Massachusetts, with 21.3 per 1,000, were also low. Decreases were noted in New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia.”

Nope, just the South. Continue reading Teen pregnancy up because of (adult) stupidity

IM IN UR BRAIN, REPRODUCING ALL UR IMAGEZ

DOODZ, REJOICE, UR STILL ALIVE!!!!11111

Ummm … errr … anyways. Straight to the story: Japanese scientists have figured out how to reconstruct images inside a person’s mind. The process that they used is actually fairly straightforward: They observed the visual cortex, and as they showed images to the person, they observed the change in brain activity in the cortex with an fMRI machine. Then, they compiled the data from 400 different images and the brain processes, and associated those changes with the images they were shown.

Then again, they showed them totally new cards, spelling out “neuron.” And, sure enough, they were able to generate those images from the brain. Wooooooo-OOOOOOOOOOOO-ooooooo.

They’re still working with a fairly simple size–10 pixels by 10 pixels, and only a base of 400 images. Eventually, they’ll have to up the pixel size and image pool in order to get a more complete idea of what people are actually thinking about. Possibilities include using it to look into the minds of artists and designers, as well as treating people with hallucinations and disorders.

Fairly standard stuff if you’re comfortable with people poking around in your brain, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought. This gets into a lot of possible bad concepts, such as the simple theory of thoughtcrime itself. I mean, finding out what image best represents your mind might be pretty cool, but do we really want to find out what image represents the mind of an average man from a country known for salacious vending machines? Ewww.