It Rubs the Lotion on Its Skin

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Last night, I drove to my Aunt Faye's new house (nice place) and watched the Olympics with about a dozen of my aunts and uncles...and my mom & grandma. I was the youngest in the crowd by...about ten to fifteen years...and that was just one uncle that close. However, the company was excellent. We caught up on going-ons, discussed theories of politics, and tried to make sense of what we were watching. "Why do none of the divers or runners have (breasts)?" "Well, for the divers, it's because that'll cause a splash that will negatively effect their score...and for runners, it's hard to race 10,000 meters with the girls jumping around. I'm sure that aerodynamics are involved too. You don't see cars shaped like that." "Not since the sixties. I used to have a Cadillac built like Dolly Parton...but yeah, it got about five to the gallon."



"Is that guy crying during the National Anthem?" "You're representing your country, you wuss. Man up!!!" "I'm sure he's just got chlorine in his eyes or something." "Yeah, it's the lights. Quit being like the Frenchie, you won!!! Stop crying." "His sister in the stands there has a huge mouth...oh, and it seems to be a little cold there in the Cube. Turkey's done." Great times. In honor of the host nation, we had Chinese food to go along with the usual brownies, cookies, and beer.



My Fortune Cookie of the Day - "Your will have a great journey to a land far away." Yes, it said "Your" on the fortune cookie instead of "You", that's how you know that it's authentic. Anyway, don't want to spoil the end results for those who have yet to see it or TiVo'd it. Check out the Michael Phelps race though. It just goes to show that you have to give it your all, all the way to the end to be successful. Here's some news...



That's How You Debate - An argument between two debate coaches that was caught on video was not the sharp-witted dialogue typically associated with college debate teams. Instead, the two traded profanity-laced barbs and one of them pulled down his shorts, exposing his underwear. An eight-minute segment of the argument, in which each cursed repeatedly and one student near the camera can be heard crying, was posted on YouTube on Aug. 2 and has garnered more than 100,000 hits. In the video, Fort Hays State University debate coach William Shanahan (Go TIGERS!!!) is shown arguing with Shanara Reid-Brinkley, debate coach at the University of Pittsburgh (Go PANTHERS!!!), during the competition's quarterfinals. The argument, which appears to be at least in part about race, is punctuated with frequent cursing and name-calling. Shanahan, who is white, and Reid-Brinkley, who is black, scream criticisms about one another's body language during students' debates. At one point Shanahan screams as he jumps up, then yanks his shorts down to his knees and points his rear end at Reid-Brinkley. I'm not one to promote this kind of behavior…but do you wanna see the video? Here you go…



Now that's how you debate!!!


Jealousy's Ugly Head? - A British man has been banned from visiting his girlfriend's home after neighbors complained about noisy sex, a local official said Thursday. A court barred Adam Hinton, 32, from being within 110 yards of his 29-year-old girlfriend Kerry Norris' apartment, Brighton and Hove City Council spokesman Mike Taggart said. Residents of Norris's publicly owned home had been complaining since 2006 about thumping music, banging headboards and screamed obscenities. Neighbors also complained about Norris sunbathing naked in her yard, and were upset that a 6-year-old child in the building had been "subjected to the sort of obscenities you wouldn't want a 6-year-old to hear." "She is a classic nightmare neighbor (or dream depending on your perspective of her sunbathing)," Taggart said, insisting the case was not about sex. "It's about allowing your neighbors to have a normal decent life without being disturbed." The court granted the city council's request for an injunction banning Hinton from the apartment because Norris had ignored a previous court order demanding that she be more quiet. Norris last week was forced to pay $560 in fines and court costs for breaking the noise abatement order. Nude sunbathing? Thumping music? Banging headboards? Screaming orgasms? That takes me back. More things that I miss. Well, except the sunbathing. More of a moon bather when it comes to that.



Beer Goggle Study - For the first time, scientists have proven that "beer goggles" are real - other people really do look more attractive to us if we have been drinking. Surprisingly, the beer goggles effect was not limited to just the opposite sex among the ostensibly straight volunteers recruited for the study - they also rated people from their own sex as more attractive. Scientists in England gave 84 heterosexual college students chilled lime-flavored drinks that were either non-alcoholic or given a dose of vodka equivalent in alcohol to a large glass of wine or a pint-and-a-half of beer. After 15 minutes, the volunteers were shown photos of 40 other college students from both sexes. Both men and women who drank booze found these faces more attractive, "a roughly 10 percent increase in ratings of attractiveness," said researcher Marcus Munafo, an experimental psychologist at the University of Bristol in England. The researchers also asked volunteers to rate their mood, "and there were no differences on those measures in the alcohol group compared to the no-alcohol group. This suggests that the effect we observed wasn't due to a general change in mood." It did not escape Munafo that the results are rather obvious. "Everyone knows about beer goggles, but some of our results suggest that there's more going on than we might have thought." The discovery that the effect is not specific to the opposite sex was surprising. One possibility is that alcohol generally makes us see things as more attractive, but when this occurs in social situations, such as at a bar, "this might become targeted at opposite-sex faces," Munafo said. By repeating the experiment with video clips shot at bars, the scientists hope to recreate those social cues and see what happens. "The main question is whether these effects are specific to faces, or whether we would rate anything as more attractive after a drink." Future research could expose people who have been drinking to landscapes or the faces of puppies and other animals, "to see if alcohol has a more general effect on perceiving beauty in the environment." However, one important scientific question still remains…how does this help ME get laid?



Gatorade Should Get On This - Some of Britain's top athletes have decided to bare all ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Triple jumper Phillips Idowu, cyclist Rebecca Romero and swimmer Gregor Tait have all been photographed taking part in their individual sports stark naked as part of an advertising campaign for a sports drink. "Everyone is used to seeing athletes in competition or winning, but we wanted to give people the chance to see the real make-up of an athlete and their muscle and power," said Cathryn Sleight, marketing director for Coca-Cola Great Britain, which launched the Powerade campaign. Idowu said the photo shoot was "definitely one of the more unusual shoots I've taken part in, but also one of the most enjoyable." Obviously because voting Americans seem to be a bunch of conservative prudes, these advertisements will have to be regulated to foreign countries (and possibly the internet) but I like the idea. Not just because there's a slim possibility that I could see Ana Ivanovic, Amanda Beard, Sue Bird, Gabrielle Reece or anybody with an ice-skater butt in the buff…but because it shows the physical effects of watching what you eat & drink, working hard, dedicating yourself to good physical health, and the positive emotional benefits that come from it by being able to look at yourself in the mirror (apparently on a bicycle) and saying "I really am a gorgeous creature. Now I know why $teve (or perhaps the name of a significant other) keeps telling me that." Just a thought…



Sexbot Update - Meet Gordon, probably the world's first robot controlled exclusively by living brain tissue. Stitched together from cultured rat neurons, Gordon's primitive grey matter was designed at the University of Reading by scientists who unveiled the neuron-powered machine on Wednesday. Their groundbreaking experiments explore the vanishing boundary between natural and artificial intelligence, and could shed light on the fundamental building blocks of memory and learning, one of the lead researchers told AFP. "The purpose is to figure out how memories are actually stored in a biological brain," said Kevin Warwick, a professor at the University of Reading and one of the robot's principle architects. "If we can understand some of the basics of what is going on in our little model brain, it could have enormous medical spin-offs," he said. Looking a bit like the garbage-compacting hero of the blockbuster animation "Wall-E", Gordon has a brain composed of 50,000 to 100,000 active neurons. Once removed from rat fetuses and disentangled from each other with an enzyme bath, the specialized nerve cells are laid out in a nutrient-rich medium across an eight-by-eight centimeter (five-by-five inch) array of 60 electrodes. It's primary function now is to avoid objects in its way when rolling along…and it has no additional control from a human or computer. Observing how the nerve cells cohere into a network as they fire off electrical impulses, he said, may also help scientists combat neurodegenerative diseases that attack the brain such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. They may say that it's to combat those diseases…but that's only until it becomes self-aware and adapts…and then Skynet will launch the missiles…and the Apocalypse will be upon us. That's right, cyborgs taking over. Oh wait, this is Sexbot Update…so I guess they're either making a sexbot that can adapt to the subjects' needs (because the last thing we need is another free-thinker…am I right?) or just a robot that feels more real…because its skull is full of rat brains instead of a standard motherboard. Yeah, probably the first one…and we can combat Alzheimer's. I'll go with that too.



Well, that'll do it for today. Olympics are still going on. USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! Maybe a little love for Germany since I think my buddy Ruben still reads this blog once in a while. It hurts me to say it...but a little Love for France too (you're welcome Lilie). Have a great weekend everybody!!!