Tag: The Simpsons

So hip that Maxim did it in 2004

Is it possible to be anti-relevant? Playboy's giving it the old college try.As the print world spirals into oblivion, magazines are trying everything to hold on to their empires. One of the most famous, Playboy, demonstrates just how little relevance they actually hold.

In an attempt to snare younger readers with “hip” imagery, Playboy featured Marge Simpson on their November cover.

You know, from The Simpsons?

That show you may have watched 10 years ago? They’re retro hip now like Saved by the Bell, Limp Bizkit and AIDS, right?

In related news, Playboy has finally embraced the sad cartoon porn market, which is already dominated online.

Love potion number bird

Scientists believe that the hormone oxytocin is responsible for creating intimate bonds between humans … but there’s much more to it than just being Simpson & Son’s tonic, as new studies are showing: finches beware! It’s been reported that researchers at Indiana University have experimented with finches’ levels of mesotocin, the finch version of oxytocin:

When the scientists at IU gave drugs that block mesotocin receptors to zebra finches – which are normally highly social creatures – the birds spent much less time with familiar individuals and more time with unfamiliar individuals. They also preferred to hang out in smaller groups. By contrast, zebra finches given extra mesotocin became more social and spent more time with familiar faces… Intriguingly, the same paper suggests that the distribution of oxytocin receptors in the brain might help to explain why some animals are more social than others. When the researchers compared three flocking finch species with two territorial, aggressive species, they found that the more social species had more mesotocin receptors in a part of the brain called the lateral septum. Blocking these receptors made the birds become less social.

So there you have it: oxytocin – the chemical that will make you act like a jerk, whether or not you like someone. Also, how can you not like testing oxytocin on animals? You know that they’d do the same thing to us if they had opposable thumbs.

In Homer We Trust

From our sister blog HombresSeriamentes.com: Sure, the Euro may be kicking the U.S. dollar’s proverbial ass these days, but at least we can stick our country’s heroes on their coins.

In Spain, a shopkeeper was emptying out a cash register when he found not the image of King Juan Carlos I, but that of Homer Simpson, best down for his love of beer and “los doughnuts.”

Upon hearing the news, the King promptly told Simpson to “shut up.” (HAR! A foreign policy joke! Take THAT, Hugo Chavez!)