That dog really looks unhappy!

If you're really interested in torturing your pet here's the link to the costumes at spoiledrottondoggies.com (yes really).

Here's the details:

Chris Jackson, presenter of Inside Out in the North East and Cumbria, registered pet George with three industry bodies.

Each one accepted a certificate from the non-existent Society of Certified Advanced Mind Therapists as proof of George's credentials.

It follows a similar investigation by an American clinical psychologist.

Dr Steve Eichel suspected industry bodies in the US were not running checks on their members.

He said: "I felt I'd test my hypothesis and I did that by getting my cat certified by a number of the most prominent lay hypnosis organisations in the United States. It was a frighteningly simple process."

In the UK, George was registered with the British Board of Neuro Linguistic Programming (BBNLP), the United Fellowship of Hypnotherapists (UFH) and the Professional Hypnotherapy Practitioner Association (PHPA).

Maybe I'll rant about hypnotherapy later if I can get this article resubmitted.

But someone DID steal the Ig Nobel Prize. Bastards.... Be on the lookout for some funny looking dice mounted on a wooden thing.

-via neatorama-

Anyway, here's the abstract:

Since Time immemorial, man has sought to explain the powers of Kal-El, a.k.a. Superman. Siegel et al. Supposed that His mighty strength stems from His origin on another planet whose density and as a result, gravity, was much higher than our own. Natural selection on the planet of krypton would therefore endow Kal El with more ecient muscles and higher bone density; explaining, to rst order, Superman's extraordinary powers. Though concise, this theory has proved inaccurate. It is now clear that Superman is actually flying rather than just jumping really high; and His freeze-breath, x-ray vision, and heat vision also have no account in Seigel's theory. In this paper we propose a new unied theory for the source of Superman's powers; that is to say, all of Superman's extraordinary powers are manifestation of one supernatural ability, rather than a host. It is our opinion that all of Superman's recognized powers can be unied if His power is the ability to manipulate, from atomic to kilometer length scales, the inertia of His own and any matter with which He is in contact.

This is some serious science... look there's even some figures:

And some math!

But first, before we get into the meat of the paper, lets see what others around the InterWebs have said about Superman's amazing seeing through underwear powers.

In Correcting Misconceptions about Superman Lorenzo Vincent Aurelius says:

What of the other powers? Superman's X-ray vision is not truly x-ray vision. What do you think -- Superman's eyes emit x-rays, which he uses to see with? That's not how x-rays work. They require a source that aims the x-rays toward the receiving end, whether it be eyes or photographic film. No, Superman's vision involves sensing energy fields that have hitherto been unidentified by human science. These energy fields surround and pervade all forms of matter, varying by density and vibratory rate, according to the density and composition of the object. In other words, Superman is seeing the subtle energy fields involved in the inter-transformation of energy into matter. His ability to distinguish those fields depends upon the "signal-to-noise ratio" between any object he is sensing and any intervening objects. Lead, being dense, has a field so dense that less-dense fields behind it are hard to distinguish. Gold has the same effect. But since people do not commonly use gold as shielding, it has not been written about. So people think, "Lead blocks x-rays; lead blocks Superman's x-ray vision."

Ok so we need energy fields unidentified by human science. I'll go out on a limb and guess that the scientists of Superman's home planet have discovered this energy field but didn't include it in that weird crystal house/computer/whatever thing.

Answerbag.com has a number of great speculations as well:

Just like rods and cones in the human eye, Superman possibly has x-ray detecting crystals like Silicon or Cadmium-Telluride in his eye that detect x-rays passing through a special lens called Kumakhov polycapillary focusing x-ray lens implanted in his eye.

The other possibility could be that x-rays get converted to normal light by a film of x-ray fluorescent material and then it is the normal work of the rods and cones like in case of the human eye.

and

Superman's eyes actually PROJECT X-rays; depending on how much is absorbed or reflected back at him allows him to see through solif objects.

Back in the day, Superman's "heat vision" was actually just a creative use of his X-ray vision -- he would project enough X-Rays to actually melt or destroy an object.

and finally my favorite:

In "Frozen," Larry Johnson, a former executive at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., writes that Williams' head, which had been severed and frozen for storage, was abused at the facility. Johnson claims a technician took baseball-like swings at Williams' frozen head with a monkey wrench.

Seriously... look what they did to his head!

Anyone want to translate the, what I'm assuming, is Japanese for me?

-Via Neatorama-

-via ihasahotdog-

Check out the abstract (I absolutely LOVE the introducing statement):

While most men prefer women as their sexual partners, some are bisexual and others are homosexuals. It has been debated for a long time whether a person's sexual preference is innate, learned, or due to a combination of both causes.
It was recently discovered that the human right-versus-left-hand use preference and the direction of scalp hair-whorl rotation develop from a common genetic mechanism. Such a mechanism controls functional specialization of brain hemispheres. Whether the same mechanism specifying mental makeup influences sexual preference was determined here by comparing hair-whorl rotation in groups enriched with homosexual men with that in males at large. Only a minority of 8.2% (n = 207) unselected 'control' group of males had counterclockwise rotation. In contrast, all three samples enriched with homosexual men exhibited highly significant (P < 0.0001), 3.6-fold excess (29.8%, n = 272) counterclockwise rotation. These results suggest that sexual preference may be influenced in a significant proportion of homosexual men by a biological/genetic factor that also controls direction of hair-whorl rotation.

Now what would this hair swirl exactly look like so you can be an informed citizen? Here's the culprit. Be on the look out for this person who may be homosexual (or more likely not homosexual).

Boing Boing presents a remix of "Synesthesia," a documentary directed by Jonathan Fowler about people whose senses blend, or mix. For instance: a synesthete might see colors when listening to music, or taste flavors when hearing a spoken word.

In this documentary, Dr. David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine explains this condition, and four synesthetes explain how they perceive the world.

Not only are the Zombies eating Detroit's brains it sounds like the young folk are escaping and leaving no brains left for the Zombies to eat! Check out this snippet from CNN.com:

Broad numbers are difficult to come by, but nearly a quarter of respondents in a survey for Fusion, the area's young professional association, said they plan on leaving Detroit within the next two years.

Among the larger population of 4.6 million people, 63,000 households left the greater Detroit area in 2007 alone, according to Internal Revenue Service numbers supplied by the Urban Studies Department at Wayne State University.

City leaders are well aware of this problem, and are working hard to fix it.

As it turns out, young people generally want the same things other people want out of a city - good jobs, safe streets, stuff to do at night, decent schools, quality healthcare, ample parks, easy public transport. Basically, they want a pleasant life.

Zombies!!!!

For the setup here's the (really pretty amazing!) story:

On the hike, Cole started fooling around by walking in the water. It was not incredibly steep, but the water had lots of slippery algae and rocks.

To Johnson, it looked dangerous. She pleaded with her boyfriend to get back on dry ground.

"He's one of those daredevil kids, so it (the warning) did not do any good," Johnson said.

Suddenly Cole slipped. For a split second, it seemed OK.

"Then I lost control and could not stop," he said.

He careened about 120 feet, bashing his head on rocks. He stopped, bloody and unconscious, face-down in a pool of water. That was actually a lucky break because he just missed sliding off a tall drop-off.

His second lucky break was the fact his girlfriend of four years is a senior nursing student at the University of Michigan.

Cole was not breathing when she reached him, so she gave him a few "rescue breaths." It worked. Cole coughed and spit water.

Johnson took off her swimming suit to bandage gashes on his head, then carried him down a hill that took them 45 minutes to climb. Most of the way, she said, she cradled him, talked to him and tried to keep him conscious.

"With head injuries, I knew it was important to keep him from going into a coma," she said.

Johnson is athletic -- a state champion hurdler at Grass Lake -- but it defies explanation that she, at 115 pounds, carried a 160-pound man so far.

"She tried picking me up again the other day and could hold me for only a few seconds," Cole said.

"If all the money in the world was placed on it now," she said, "I don't think I could do it again. It was adrenaline and God."

Cole's third piece of luck came at the bottom of the hill. The first people to find them were an intensive-care nurse and an emergency-room nurse.

Now here's the problem, comments praising God all fall into a very similar pattern...

Real posts to come.