From: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2013/04/19/ontario-possible-tornado-shelburne.html
An EF0 tornado reportedly hit a small community northwest of Toronto yesterday, causing property damage, loss of power and provoking this pathetic piece of poetry:
(Believe it or not, someone actually took Darryl up on his offer and corrected his text. And here I thought the teachers were no longer on strike…)
In another study for which I clearly missed the casting call, researchers at Indiana University found that “dopamine levels increased in men who consumed such a small amount of beer that the chemical boost could not be explained by the presence of alcohol,” according to CTV News. The study, which tested 49 male subjects using a PET scan to see how much they liked Pierre Trudeau—and also to measure their happiness—found that a mere 15 ml of beer consumed over 15 minutes was enough to spike their dopamine. Pfft, lightweights!
On the other hand, the study found that administering an equal dose of Gatorade had no positive effect. Somewhere, Michael Jordan must be crying into a million-dollar bill. On a generally more depressing note, researchers noted “the dopamine boost was more pronounced in the men who reported a family history of alcohol addiction.” And if a little thimble of booze is all it takes to make an alcoholic happy, imagine how ecstatic they’ll be after 24 beers!
A University of Winnipeg study has found that freshmen who send upwards of 100 text messages a day tend to be “more interested in wealth and image than leading an ethical life.” Hey, that describes me to a T—and I don’t even send 100 text messages a month! … Wait, does Twitter count?
Actually, Twitter appears to be part of the problem, according to a few CBC commenters. Because who puts any thought into a tweet, anyways?
(Truth be told, as a somewhat-late adapter of the technology, I do sometimes find it hard to express myself in 140 characters or less. Then again, I’ve also found this forced condensing has done wonders for my editing skills…)
Although inspectors have yet to find any horsemeat in the seafood aisle, it turns out a whole lotta fish isn’t what you think it is, according to a recent study by the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario. As the CBC reports, “DNA analysis shows 33 per cent of fish sold in grocery stores, restaurants and sushi venues in the U.S. is mislabelled,” following a 2011 study that found an even greater percentage (41 per cent) of Canadian fish suffer a similar identity crisis after being filleted.
As it turns out, it’s most often a case of lesser fish being substituted for more premium products. According to the CBC, “pangasius is often sold as grouper, sole and cod; tilapia as red snapper; and Atlantic farmed salmon as wild or king salmon.” Worst of all, the report found that “84 per cent of white tuna samples were actually escolar, which can cause digestive issues for some people.” Eighty-four per cent!? That’s like playing Russian Roulette with five bullets in the chamber, if by bullets, you mean a fish that’s banned in Italy and Japan, and by chamber, we’re talking about “yellowish-orange drops of oil instead of liquid bowel movements.” Ewww, remind me not to buy tuna at No Frills!
Better stay away from the red snapper, too. As per the CBC, “Only seven of the 120 red snapper samples tested correctly.” That’s a whopping 5.83 per cent, or, in a Rogers-sponsored Toronto Blue Jays reference, even worse than J.P. Arencibia’s batting average at the start of last season. Remember when he was only hitting .058, then he had to go on the Disabled List? Wait, he hadn’t consumed a bad batch of escolar, had he!? That might explain why he kept leaking oil at the plate…
For the record, Arencibia is hitting .348 to start the 2013 season—which is roughly twice the probably of you actually getting tuna at the grocery store, as per the Biodiversity Institute. Aaaand next thing you know, those weren’t actually Miami Marlins we acquired back in January, either, but Bridgeport Bluefish. Maybe that’s why the Jays are 2-4!
CTV News is reporting that “Scientists have finally created an invisibility cloak similar to the one foretold in the Harry Potter franchise and in Philip K. Dick’s ‘A Scanner Darkly,’ though so far it only works on microwave light and is only available in a miniature prototype.” So basically, it’s nothing like the invisibility cloak in Harry Potter or “A Scanner Darkly.” (Talk about a misleading lede!) And while it won’t allow you to sneak into the girls’ change-room (which is probably why Harry Potter invented an invisibility cloak in the first place), the current model can certainly confuse the *beep* out of your microwave.
According to CTV, “the scientists managed to render the object – an 18-centimetre cylindrical rod – effectively invisible by preventing the microwaves from bouncing off the rod as they normally would.” That said, it was still visible to the naked—not to mention partially-undressed—eye. As per CTV, “researchers said the model could potentially work on visible light as well as microwaves.” Right, and the Leafs could potentially win the Cup this year. I’ll believe it when I can’t see it.
Furthermore, the current method, even if applied to visible light, is hardly foolproof. The CTV report also states that “the larger the object the more difficult it will be to render invisible,” which means if you want to use this technology to play hide the sausage, you probably can’t put it on the whole pack. 
If you give a million monkeys a computer, eventually one of them will log on to Wikipedia, steal a bunch of information about plants, and use it in a book. Perhaps that would be the best defense for noted primatologist Jane Goodall, who issued a semi-apology for her “well-researched book” that stole several unattributed passages straight from Wikipedia and other websites. According to the Washington Post, her transgressions “range from phrases to an entire paragraph from Web sites such as Wikipedia and others that focus on astrology, tobacco, beer, nature and organic tea.” Man, I hope there isn’t a passage about Coors Light being the World’s Most Refreshing Beer in there. Here’s hoping she didn’t use their website in her research…
Don’t get me wrong, when it comes to primates, Goodall is one of the foremost experts in the field. But by her own admission, she has never studied plants, which happen to be the topic of her new book Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of Plants. Thus, as the Post remarks, “It is when the book moves away from Goodall’s own stories to deliver background information on plants and their history that the instances of borrowing creep in.” In fact, when an expert botanist was invited to review the book by the D.C. based newspaper, he jumped all over the plagiarized passages and declined the assignment.
But this shocking revelation isn’t bad news for everybody. In fact, if you contributed to the Wikipedia page on 18th-century botanist John Bartram, you could probably demand royalties from Goodall’s publisher, as she reportedly lifted a sentence from the site. Said publisher, Grand Central, says it plans on “crediting the sources in subsequent releases,” but in the meantime, you could surely find a lawyer who would take your case—if you can prove you’re the one who wrote it in the first place.
When Inspiration Mars first sends spacemen to the red planet, it’s safe to say its astronauts will be happier than pigs in their own shit. As New Scientist reports, a member of the project says “solid and liquid human waste products would get put into bags and used as a radiation shield – as well as being dehydrated so that any water can be recycled for drinking.” Hey, it worked for Meat Loaf, right?
As per New Scientist, the project’s Water Walls concept “involves polyethylene bags that use osmosis to process clean drinking water from urine and faeces.” So instead of eating shit, they’ll be drinking it? If all goes well, that is. The science mag also notes that “The urine-to-water processing bags were tested in orbit on the last ever flight of the space shuttle in 2011 and found to be 50 per cent less efficient in microgravity than in ground-based tests.” Here’s hoping they can be perfected to the point where testers can brag “Now With 50% Less Faeces!”
But even if they’re an essential source of vitamins and nutrients, it might be best to disguise the fact that astronauts are drinking their own dookie. ”Hopefully they’re not clear bags,” one confessed to New Scientist. Then again, you can wrap a turd up in a nice fancy package, but at the end of the day, well, it’s still a turd…
A shocking study from the New England Journal of Medicine has dispelled several commonly-held weight-loss myths, most notably that banging—with friends or strangers—burns calories. As the University of Alabama at Birmingham discovered (just when I had already exhausted my redneck sex jokes, dadgummit!), the average sex session only burns off 21 calories, about as much as a brisk walk. Perhaps even more disappointing, it only lasts an average of six minutes.
Thus, in seizing the day, one Englishwoman has decided to publish the results of her own, completely unscientific findings; namely that men who can’t last in the sack don’t spend much time with a vacuum cleaner, either:
This appears somewhat contradictory to yesterday’s scientific study, which determined that men who do less housework have more sex. Then again, you can probably do it more often when you only do it for six minutes at a time…
In what has to be the most sexist sexual study ever conducted, a research team at the University of Washington has discovered that a traditional gender-based division of chores leads to an increase in sexual activity amongst married couples. Or, as David Bouchard put it in Bon Cop, Bad Cop (roughly translated), “I’m no good in the kitchen, but there’s another room where she finds me quite useful.”
As the Toronto Star reports, the study found that “households where Dagwood-like dreamboats preformed none of the ‘women’s work’ reported 1.6 times more sexual encounters than those in which men took on the bulk of cooking and cleaning chores.” The turn of phrase “Dagwood-like dreamboats” was written by a man, by the way. Even more amusing is the Star story’s accompanying photograph of a black man vacuuming Senator Joseph Lieberman’s carpeted podium at a convention. C’mon, they couldn’t find a better stock image?
In any case, it seems the Star’s photo editor isn’t the only one who could’ve dug deeper for some supporting data. It appears that the U-Dub study, which determined that “Households where husbands claimed 40 per cent of that housework reported almost one less sexual encounter a month than those in which the males took on none of those chores,” is based on data from the early to mid 90’s. Its author, however, claims that not much has changed since the days of Friends, Ace Ventura and Gary Bettman locking out the NHLPA. (Well, one of those things hasn’t changed, anyways…) Sociologist Julie Brines told the Star that when it comes to household labour, “the pace of change started to slow down in the ‘80s and by the mid 1990s it kind of remained stuck and you’re pretty much at the same point.”
Other academics beg to differ, however. Sharon Sassler, a sociologist at Cornell, says “I’m not so sure about their uptick in cleaning, but I think [men] have increased their share in cooking and perhaps even laundry (thanks to years of living on their own, they now know how to do it),” as per the Star. Wait, you mean laundry is supposed to be woman’s work? Maybe that’s why my shirt smells kinda funky; I must be doing it wrong…
Alas, I can’t say I can corroborate the findings of this study, as I don’t do any housework whatsoever. You do not wanna see my apartment, trust me!
Seeing as breast implants are often considered unattractive nowadays and butt implants are fraught with complications from the use of industrial-grade silicone, I suppose it’s only natural that the synthetic transplant industry looks for a new product to market. That said, reports suggest that their latest efforts have gone to shit—literally. “The fake stool, dubbed ‘RePOOPulate,’ is intended to replace donated human stool used in fecal transplants,” according to The Canadian Press.
Mind you, people won’t be getting rePOOPulated for cosmetic purposes or as a part of the latest fad diet. It’s actually meant to be used in treatment of C. difficile, a noxious bacteria in the colon that really is the shits, causing “severe and often debilitating diarrhea,” as per the CP. It was developed by microbiologists at the University of Guelph as a less-disgusting alternative to having someone else’s fecal matter shoved up your rectum. No, really.
Y’see, Clostridium difficile often becomes a problem when people take antibiotics that kill the friendly bacteria in their stomachs in order to treat an infection elsewhere in their body. This allows C. diff, the illest of the ill, to own the colon as the biggest gangsta in the hood. Even when other antibiotics are used to flush out C. diff, it often comes back the very next day, like a cat in a Fred Penner joint. (Gangsta rap and Fred Penner in the same paragraph? Booyah!)
As it turns out, doctors found they could treat C. diff by injecting someone else’s dookie, but that procedure proved to be problematic. “Patients don’t like it,” Guelph microbiologist Emma Allen-Vercoe told the CP. “A lot of them will put up with it because they’re desperate … and donors are not terribly keen usually.” Mind you, I can’t say I’ve seen too many poop-donation clinics around town. They don’t seem to advertise in the Globe or the Star, in any case.
Nevertheless, by using one generous donor’s stool sample, Guelph U was able to produce a secret blend of 33 bacteria and fungi that’ll rock your body right. “It looks a little like a vanilla milkshake,” Allen-Vercoe told the CP. “And it doesn’t smell nearly as bad as poop, I must say.” While only two elderly patients have been rePOOPulated to date, both showed no signs of C. difficile for six months, even after taking other antibiotics. The doctor who performed the transplants also noted “stool samples from the women showed that some features of the synthetic stool had stabilized and persisted in their colons.” So maybe it does enhance your defecating experience after all…
