Archives for October 2011

Every year people like you and I bemoan the ravages on the human intellect. It seems that screaming has become the new discourse and wild conjecture the new science. From people believing, without a shred of proof, that our president is a Kenyan native who practices Islam to the fun folks who use pocket calculators to predict the end of the world, we do seem to be surrounded by morons. But, you have to ask, is this a new thing? In many ways, no. There have been stupid people forever. But, and this is where things get tricky, when stupid people discovered they could get on TV and radio, either as hosts or guests, even if it meant humiliating their occasional loved ones, all bets were off. I once asked a young lady why she went on a tawdry show and she responded “They got me a nice room and a bottle of champagne and I got to ride in a limo.” Just in case anyone wants to know what the price of abject humiliation is.

But, I think it may even go deeper than that. I think it goes back to the time when morons were given access to cameras. Not satisfied to be drooling societal rejects left to their own devices, now they had a way to share. Not just their own stupidity, but their abject joy of being stupid parents somehow makes them feel better about themselves. Seriously, what kind of tool dresses their kid up as a toddling stripper or pot plant?

When faced with human dross such as this you tend not to be surprised when someone grows up, gets arrested for stealing a sandwich ….. and a forklift.

Really? This was his grand plan? Steal a forklift in public? Sheesh.

A pilfered Reuben sandwich and a stolen forklift have a Pittsburgh man in quite a pickle.

Ross Township police say 38-year-old Sean Faulkner ordered the sandwich from a bar, then ran out without paying and climbed on a forklift for his getaway.

Faulkner allegedly stole the forklift from a construction site on Sunday then drove it two miles to Sieb’s Pub. Bartender Karie Donatelli says Faulkner ordered the sandwich then bolted for the door after his food arrived.

Investigators say Faulkner was still in the parking lot when officers arrived. Police say he couldn’t get the forklift to go into reverse.

Faulkner is being held at Allegheny County Jail on charges of theft and receiving stolen property.

Can you imagine that 911 call? Yeah, neither can I. But I bet the cops demanded that it be confirmed before they left their local doughnut shop.

Of course, when you want the creme de la creme of brain crushing stupidity you have to go to Florida. All I can say is that I’m not making this up.

The battle for pizza supremacy has taken a wrong turn in Florida.

Two managers of a Domino’s Pizza restaurant in Lake City, in north-central Florida, have been charged with burning down a rival Papa John’s location.

The motive? Police say one of the men admitted that he believed with his competitor out of the way, more pizza lovers would flock to his restaurant.

The Papa John’s was gutted in the Oct. 20 fire.

Sean Everett Davidson, 23, and Bryan David Sullivan, 22 were arrested Thursday and Friday, respectively, and booked on an arson charge each and were being held in jail.

The Star-Banner of Ocala reports that police are still looking for an ignition device that the men claimed they made but did not use to start the fire.

Police said the suspects described a device made out of a clack, a nine-volt battery, a golf ball-size amount of black gunpowder and a plastic bag, the newspaper reported.

The suspects allegedly told police that they dismantled the device and threw the parts out of their vehicle along Interstate 75.

Police warned anyone finding an odd device along the highway not to touch it.

Oh, c’mon, this is a state where 1/3 of all famous last words are “Hey ya’ll, watch this!” Someone’s picking that sucker up.

However, in an effort to present some fair and balanced journalism here, it is not true that cops figured out who the culprits were because the pizza parlor burned in 30 minutes or less.

I could go on, but today’s your first day back from surviving the company Halloween parties. Not that we had any here at Nude Hippo with all the redecorating going on, but I am old enough and wise enough to feel your pain anyway.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU6iP0WLsU8&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

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It is interesting to note that there is a sub sult of humans who are not only fire eaters, they are nude fire eaters (no, not safe for work or church, etc.). I guess there’s so much more chance of big fun for the whole family if you can actually scorch your privates in public. Not my cup of tea, admittedly, but I’d buy a ticket. Then again, I have a lot of body hair, things could go drastically wrong in a heartbeat. But fire eaters and their ilk almost pale in comparison to people like Gary Olsen who rides a sperm-cycle to work. Actually, he rides it at work too since his job is to deliver human sperm to ….. people who buy human sperm I guess. I really didn’t know that sperm banks delivered and I know I don’t want to know how that works.

“Hi Ms. Smith, I’ve got a nice warm turkey baster and a fresh batch of blond genius sperm, so let’s get cracking!”

Of course, we live in a world populated by people who would be better off getting out of the gene pool. Folks like Kevin Gaylor who tried to pick up a chick online and was forced to report her as a burglar when his girlfriend came home early. Seriously Kevin, just get a nudie magazine and a jar of lube. The human race will thank you.

And don’t donate. Whatever you do, no matter how cute that bike looks, resist the temptation.

Of course, Indiana (the new Florida) has a different kind of problem. It seems a nice young man, wearing a perfectly matched pink bra and panty set, tried to rob the Kidscape Learning Center. Police know this because the camera placed directly below the sign that says “Under Video Surveillance” captured the whole thing.

Yeah, dude, get out of the pool.

Of course not all freaks are human. Police in Florida, of course, were forced to shoot a 16 foot python that had just eaten a full grown deer. It seems that mutant pythons, which are scouring the wild and getting nearer and nearer to humans, have become quite the problem down there.

Well of course they have. We’re talking about the fun loving state that is being overrun by mutant cockroaches that are threatening the entire eco system. Why wouldn’t they have horror movie quality reptiles to go along with them?

But, if you do want a freak show, of the traditional variety, there’s still room for you in the pool. James Taylor, the author not the singer, reports that, even though the creator died, the Legendary Freak Show in Pennsylvania will go on.

Legacy isn’t the first word that comes to most folks’ minds when they think of swordswallowers, fire breathers and people who eat broken glass. It came to mind for tattoo entrepreneur Franco Kossa, though, when he created the Sideshow Gathering 10 years ago as an off-shoot of his already-successful Inkin’ the Valley Tattoo Convention, both running simultaneously at the Woodlands Inn & Resort in Wilkes-Barre, PA. And at this year’s 10th anniversary festivities — with all the aforesaid swordswallowers, fire breathers and people who eat broken glass — Kossa won’t be alive to see it.

Tragically, Franco Kossa passed away in the spring of this year, just 45, but well over a decade ago, he had an idea to create for sideshow talent a convention they could call their own. On the verge of making his final decision — deep in the push & pull of what such an event would cost, how to spread the word, whether he should honor some old timer in the business — he called me, that is, the “me” who publishes James Taylor’s Shocked and Amazed! — On & Off the Midway, the only journal devoted to “weirdness as entertainment.” And Franco had called to ask a simple question: Should he? I told him the truth: You’re nuts; don’t do it. And true to the showman’s blood that was already pumping in Franco’s veins, he saw right through my father’s advice to what I’d really told him: Sure, go ahead, tilt at a windmill; tilted at a few hundred in my time, and it don’t get fun till they tilt back.

For the next decade, Kossa did just that, and made a stunning success of it, garnering international attention for the event from day one. Now, with his passing, a huge portion of the Gathering’s survival to its 10th anniversary is the work of Franco’s widow, Kim (who continues in Franco’s role as event chair), sideshow duo the Lucky Daredevil Thrillshow — Tyler Fyre and wife Thrill Kill Jill (who continue in their roles as stage managers and bookers for the event), and all the talent who volunteer their performance time. Kim’s history with Franco preceded the creation of the Gathering. As she put it, she may be continuing the Gathering “in his honor,” but, “In my mind,” she said, “I’m doing next year already.” Kim Kossa, of course, understands Franco’s creation as well as anyone: legacy, his own as well as that of the sideshow business. No lesser a showman than Buffalo Bill Cody invented showmen’s clubs over a century ago to give show folk a reason to gather and network (though the term was unknown in its modern sense so long ago), and though the business’ legacy might not have been uppermost in his mind, Cody’s creation laid the path for just that. Franco’s savvy, as showman Tyler Fyre put it, was to create “the showmen’s club for the modern generation of sideshow performers.” And for that, all the talent affected by it are in Franco’s debt, directly and indirectly.

The audience for the Sideshow Gathering is in his debt as well: They’ll pay a stunningly cheap $15 per person to see over 2 dozen acts over the course of the Nov. 4 – 6 weekend. As someone else put it to me, that low-down 3 day pass works out to $5 a day for hours & hours of live entertainment; as I’d put it, that’s around 60 cents a show, and at that price, it’s probably cheaper than television. And at the Gathering, you can hang out with the stars after the show. All of that’s a pretty sweet deal for so huge a hunk of sideshow, novelty and variety entertainment legacy. After all, as the old sideshow pitchmen would’ve put it to the crowds so long ago, it’s the show all your neighbors will be talking about, the show you’ll be telling your grandkids about, the show you’ll remember as long as you live.

I’ve been to two of these shows and have written about them a few times. They are the best bang for your buck on the planet and they are seriously good fun. From blockheads to sword swallowers they have them all. None are nude but don’t let that deter you. This may be the most fun you can have with clothed people.

If you can’t make it to Wilkes-Baare, you can still have some fun here in town by checking out Cirque de la Femme. They use power saws on steel bikini bottoms to help light your way.

Big fun. Seriously big fun!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irWbXeYQGwk&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

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Given the economic horrors we’ve all been faced with Halloween almost seems anticlimactic. But, what the heck, I’ll give it the old school try. Let’s start with the Attack of the Giant Lego Man!!! Well, there’s not really much to report here. He didn’t attack anyone since he’s just a big statue built to look like he’s made of Legos and some fool left him on a beach in California. His motto of “No Real Than You Are” hasn’t really caught on since no one has a clue what it really means. Speaking of surreal, let’s catch up on the judge who used a penis pump in court while claiming it had no adverse effect on the court’s decorum. It turns out that other, non penis pumping, judges disagreed with him and now he’s lost his pension. No word yet on what’s going to happen with his unrelated DUI charges. Yeah, memo to self, DO NOT party with this guy. One guy I might want to party with is Prince Charles of England. He now claims, and seems to have the genealogy to back it up, that he is a direct descendant of Vlad the Impaler. Since the Tepes line is still considered part of the ruling class in Romania that could get interesting if Chucky decides to push the issue. He probably won’t though since he’s more interested in helping Transylvania preserve its glorious forests.

A vampire who cares?

Why not?

Anyway, Detroit commuters got a rude surprise when hundreds of pumpkins attacked their cars. Great Pumpkin my ….. well, the good news is that no one was injured or killed. The bad news is that hundreds of kids are going to have a pumpkin-less Halloween. Not to worry, I’m sure someone will host a TV marathon and get Elton John to sing “Pumpkin in the Patch” (his 300th reworking of a song that sucked the first time around).

Hmm, that song sucks, vampires suck … ELTON JOHN’S A VAMPIRE!!!!!

But, at least, he’s not insane. Bellingham, Washington police are reporting that a young man there was unclear what a guillotine was for and managed to sever his own arm off with one. The young man is in a nice room with lots of padding and soft music and his arm has been, hopefully, reattached.

But there are different kinds of crazy scary people. For example, cops in Zimbabwe report that they arrested a man after he was caught with a shape shifting prostitute.

A 28-year old Zimbabwe man arrested for allegedly having sex with a donkey tied to a tree has a simple explanation for his actions: the donkey was actually a prostitute who had, well, made an ass of herself.

According to New Zimbabwe, Sunday Moyo, a 28-year-old, told the court he paid $20 for a prostitute he met at a night club. Somewhere in the time between meeting her and when he was arrested, the prostitute transformed from a woman into a donkey.

“Your worship, I only came to know that I was being intimate with a donkey when I got arrested,” he told the court, according to New Zimbabwe.

Moyo also said at his court appearance that he’s a donkey.

“I think I am also a donkey,” he said, reports AFP, quoting The Herald. “I do not know what happened when I left the bar, but I am seriously in love with (the) donkey.”

According to the Zimbabwe Guardian, Moyo was arrested in Zvishavane, a town of 35,000 people that’s about 230 miles south of Harare, the country’s capital.

Moyo was charged with bestiality and ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation, according to AFP.

There are places where having sex with an animal is a rite of passage. In a Vice documentary, Hani Miletski, a sex therapist and the author of Understanding Bestiality and Zoophilia, spoke about a community in northern Colombia where some people have relations with donkeys. “In that society, it is an ancient pre-Colombian belief [that] adolescent males will not reach competence in marriage unless they practice intercourse with donkeys,” she said in the VBS.TV video.

In the United States, bestiality is illegal in thirty states, according to the Animal Legal and Historical Center at Michigan State University College of Law.

Isn’t that good news kids? There are still states and commonwealths in the U.S. where you and your significant barnyard buddy can do the horizontal mambo in peace. Yeah, that was the scariest part of the story to me too. In case you’re making vacation plans, and your sheep isn’t driving, you might want to check out Alabama, American Samoa, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Guam, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Florida did make bestiality illegal recently but the law was so poorly written it also outlawed sex between consenting adults – no matter their gender. They’re bringing in someone with a 3rd grade education to help them fix the language.

In the meantime, in the completely bat (guano) crazy category we have a winner from Georgia who has serious anger issues and makes very bad food choices.

An unhappy Taco Bell customer firebombed a Georgia fast food joint after finding there wasn’t enough meat in his XL Chalupas, police say.

After ordering a meal from the drive-thru, a man believed to be the bomber called the Albany eatery and accused the restaurant of skimping on the meat, according to a police report obtained by the Smoking Gun.

The caller demanded that his order be corrected, but an employee explained that nothing could be done because the restaurant was about to close, the report said.

The caller then referred to the Taco Bell employee using a racial epithet and made what could be interpreted as a threatening statement, according to the police document.

“That’s alright, I’ll just come and redecorate the place,” the man allegedly stated.

Later that night, someone threw a Molotov cocktail that burned the area under the drive-thru, WALB reports.

Police recovered a melted plastic bottle from the scene of the crime, according to WALB.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that those cops have already asked for a copy of the phone records.

But if you want a real fright you’ll be pleased to know that there’s more than just corn in Indiana. There’s a house full of body parts as well.

With Halloween just around the corner, one Indiana family is starting to feel like they’re living in a haunted house after discovering bones, embalming tools and gruesome photos of the dead in their attic.

“I won’t stay by myself,” Patricia Booher told The Huffington Post. “I have an uneasy feeling. I don’t know what it is. I’ve tried to stay here but I can’t.”

Booher and her husband, Richard, recently moved into their home in Knightstown, a small town about 40 miles east of Indianapolis. On Monday, they were looking in the attic for a place to store their air conditioner when they made the first of a series of bizarre discoveries.

“There were boxes of stuff in there. We thought it was knickknacks or some old dishes someone had left,” Booher said. “When [Richard] started pulling the stuff out, we found a box of empty disinfectant bottles and a wooden crate full of bottles of embalming fluid. Then he pulled out a suitcase that was full of embalming equipment — hoses and stuff.”

The more the family looked through the boxes, the creepier their finds became.

“There were knives in a case that folded out, scalpels, scissors and things they work on people with,” Booher continued. “Then we found pictures of dead people — before and after pictures of them being worked on, a projector with similar films and a skeleton.”

The skeleton and the collection of morbid items concerned the family enough that they contacted the Knightstown Police Department. Officers took photos of the items and examined the bones.

“The skeleton was determined to be a model — like you would see on display in a doctor’s office or a school classroom,” Knightstown Police officer Anthony Lorton told The Huffington Post.

While police examined the other items, Booher and her family got curious and began digging around in their basement and backyard.

“My daughter, son and niece found a few bones in the basement. Then we found four more pieces: a hip joint, vertebra, index finger bone and a rib bone,” Booher said.

So far, the findings have been frightening — but they haven’t aroused suspicions of foul play, according to police.

“The bones found in the cellar have been ruled out as animal bones,” Lorton said. “We took the others to [the anthropology department at] Ball State University to be tested to see what they are. That will be done Friday.”

Booher said family members are continuing to dig in the backyard today.

“I’m not saying the person who put this stuff here was a bad man. I just want to know why it was left here. Why are there bones here? You have to honor the dead,” Booher said.

Whether the most recent bones are human is yet to be seen, but Lorton said he thinks he may have some explanation for the scary discoveries.

“The story we are getting is that there was a gentleman who was renting to own the property and up and left it, along with a lot of his stuff at the house,” he said. “So that is probably where all that stuff came from.”

The photos of dead people appear to be from the 1970s and 1980s, the officer said, and were likely taken by the person who performed their embalming.

“Look at them from the standpoint of an individual who is keeping a portfolio of his work,” Lorton said. “To the everyday person, they are going to be disturbing to look at, but for a person trying to get a job at a funeral home, they are examples of his work.”

Lorton added, “Is it creepy? Yes. Criminal? No.”

As for the skeleton, the officer said he may have his own plans for it if the Boohers do not want it back.

“I am half tempted to put a hat on it and have it running radar,” Lorton joked.

You know what? I want to party with Anthony Lorton. He has a good head on his shoulders ….. for now.

MU HU HA HA HA ……

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV4SnQXhwWk&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

If you want to kill a bunch of your brain cells pick up a copy of Battlefield Earth and plow through it. One of the most blatantly racist books ever written it is almost incomprehensible in many other ways as well. For example, all the “good Chinese” people are Mandarins. You remember them, those fun loving, caste system enabling, psychotic bureaucrats? Gosh, they’d be my first choice too. Oh, and then there are those thrilling Germans. Somehow, according to the book, they managed to maintain a complete history of banking and a viable way to implement it even though …. wait for it …. there was no money for centuries. Let us not forget that the Scots were the only honest people on the planet. Well, until they got to the Russians who were honest but tended toward heavy drink. People from Mexico, those worth knowing anyway, are gauchos. Naturally the residents of Africa are “mud people.” No, I really see no need to comment further on that.

The good guy in the book has blond hair and blue eyes. The bad guy has brown hair and a limp. In case that’s too subtle for you the bad guy is named “Brown Limper” and idolizes Adolph Hitler. Oh, still too subtle for you? Okay, the “hero” is named Johnny “Good Boy” Tyler. If you haven’t caught on yet you’re probably reading the wrong blog.

Anyway, the author of that wreck, L. Ron Hubbard, is also the founder of a religion, Scientology. I use the term “religion” humorously. To join you have to pass a 200 question personality test that is so poorly written you would laugh at it if it appeared in a magazine.

Actual questions.

Do you have spells of being sad and depressed for no apparent reason?
Do you do much grumbling about conditions you have to face in life?

Believe it or not there are “correct answers” for those stunning insights into your day.

So, clearly, people – I guess we still have to call them that – who become Scientologists aren’t ever going to be Mensa members. Most should probably not be allowed to drive. Or marry. Or breed. Or ….

Never mind.

Nevertheless, they are very good at protecting their interests. Not explaining them since once you get to the “dead aliens inhabit my brain” part of their beliefs people (the real ones like you and me) are usually on the floor howling in laughter. So it comes as no surprise that when the creators of South Park made fun of them they would respond in a mature, rational and intelligent way.

Oh, you know I’m kidding. They spent tons of money going through the trash of Matt Stone and Trey Parker to …. well, to do something.

For Matt Stone and Trey Parker, nothing is holy or immune to satire. And since the launch of their groundbreaking animated TV series “South Park,” they’ve skewered a multitude of world religions, pointing out hypocrisies, inanities or just playing with ridiculous stereotypes. One of their most famous religious satires, 2005’s Scientology-targeting “Trapped In The Closet” episode, allegedly struck such a nerve with the church’s leaders that the group responded by targeting Stone, Parker and their friends in a long-term covert investigation.

Marty Rathbun, a former Church of Scientology executive-turned-critic and independent worshipper, revealed to the Village Voice a number of documents that detailed the religious sect’s detailed surveillance of the Emmy-winning TV moguls. Through the help of informants, public records and various other means, they searched for “vulnerabilities” in the pair’s personal lives, and after exploring their personal and business connections, widened their focus to investigating actors such as John Stamos, as well.

“Phone records. Bank records. Personal letters that expose some kind of vulnerability,” Rathbun told the Voice. “They’ll read stuff into the kind of alcohol you’re drinking and how much. Prescriptions. They’ll figure out your diet. They can find out a lot about you through your trash.”

Rathbun’s personal site leads with a post that includes more information, including this summary: “In ’06 the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, became targets of Corporate Scientology’s OSA. Operations were run in an attempt to silence Parker and Stone. While Corporate Scientology was ultimately unsuccessful, left behind an instructive data trail during their efforts.”

“Trapped in the Closet” featured a storyline that had Stan, one of the four children that make up the show’s core, take a “personality test” after being encountered on the street by a group of Scientologists. The vague test reveals that he is miserable, which leads him to agree to pay the church to make him happy again. An “E-meter” reading reveals that he is housing the soul of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, and various Hollywood celebrities who are members of the church flock to his home to help convince him to become their new leader.

One of those celebrities included Tom Cruise, who locks himself in a closet, which was a clear allusion to various rumors about his sexuality. John Travolta, another member of the church, soon joined him in the closet. Stan’s friends tell him that the religion is actually a cult, pointing out that Hubbard was a science fiction writer, though he at first refuses to believe it. Eventually, the Scientology elders reveal that the church is a for-profit con, calling their own religion “crap.”

Cruise was so incensed by the episode that he allegedly threatened to not participate in promotion for “Mission: Impossible III” junket if a re-run of the episode was aired; Viacom owns both Comedy Central and Paramount, the studio that put out the film. Cruise’s reps denied this, though the episode was indeed pulled. Stone and Parker, for their part, put out a satirical statement on the matter:

“So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!”

“Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu.“

Rathbun teased more documents, which reveal major advances in their investigations, would come soon. He was arrested in September, allegedly at the behest of the Church of Scientology, though charges were later dropped; the Voice reported then that the Church of Scientology was harassing him, in part because he practices the faith outside of the official Church.

“South Park” satirizes religion in just about every episode. The show has cast Satan as the cowardly lover of Saddam Hussein, while Kyle, another of the four core children, comes from a very stereotypical Jewish family. Parker and Stone also created the Broadway show, “Book of Mormon,” which pokes fun at that religion.

John Stamos? Yeah, there’s a threat to all that’s good and holy.

Next they’ll be suing Virgin Mobile for their holiday commercials.

Until the Thetans come to get me here’s a musical history of Scientology’s beliefs.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT1UjCQTL0I&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

First off, let me introduce you to America’s newest scam. It’s fun, it’s easy and it will cause you to file bankruptcy. Here you go. You innocently go online to check out those “online colleges” you’ve heard so much about. You innocently enter your cell number to get more info. Then the calls start. I got over 60 in one week. Here’s the scam. As long as you’ve never had a student loan, or have paid your previous one off, they will sign you up, get you the loan (at insane interest) and then you’ll discover that, even if you actually get a degree, many states won’t recognize it. Now, you have a worthless education, you’re on the hook for more money than a standard education would cost and you’re unemployable. There’s a great conversation going online about how the various scams work when it comes to an online degree. I’ll keep it simple; if the program is part of an accredited college (i.e., Northwestern) then have at it. If not, run away from it. Oh, and just FYI, there is no such thing as an easy payment plan for student loans. They pay back just like regular loans. Anyway, after getting the nice people at Verizon to help me block a series of numbers, my life is back to normal. That’ll teach me to want to better myself.

Ah, who am I kidding, no it won’t. I’ll just continue to be careful about it.

So, let’s start with something funny just so we can all relax. A bear walked into a pizza parlor and stole a beef and blue cheese pie. Since the bear weighed around 600lbs, the staff let him. He left without paying his bill and authorities were called. I can’t wait to see if they can collect.

Now, back to the topic at hand. The reason people get conned is, for the most part, they’re either greedy or stupid. In many cases both. Reuters is reporting that one in five British women believe that men who lie on the couch and watch sports are suffering from the “man flu.” More importantly, they think there’s a medical cure.

One in five British women believe that the debilitating “man-flu” disease which temporarily leaves sufferers prostrate on the sofa watching televised sports is real, according to a new study.

The survey, which questioned 2,000 British adults about health and wellbeing, showed that misconceptions and old wives’ tales, including the myth that eating carrots improves night vision, prevail among the population when it comes to beliefs about common illnesses.

“Unbelievably, there are still a lot of misconceptions around how minor illnesses and conditions are caused or prevented,” study leader Mike Smith, said in a statement.

The top 10 health myths ranged from the theory that eating carrots will aid night vision to the belief that too much stress will turn your hair grey, both subscribed to by one in 10 of the population.

More than a third of people said that sugar makes children hyper, and 37 percent said they believed we lose most of our body heat through our heads — the most popular misconception of the survey.

While the face, head and chest are more sensitive to temperature change than the rest of the body, covering one part of the body has as much effect as covering any other, researchers said.

“The Contagion study suggests that a large majority of the population are still under the illusion that they can, for example, get square eyes from watching too much television, or get better night vision from eating more carrots,” Smith said.

“These are just not true, but do go to show that no matter how many millions are spent on health and education, some medical myths still prevail,” he said.

When illness strikes, almost half of people agreed that men exaggerate their symptoms to get attention, with 38 percent also believing that men take longer to recover from illness than women.

Over half of respondents admitted to self-diagnosis, using the internet to research their symptoms.

“Old wives’ tales are just that — tales that should not be listened to or abided by. If the public are in any real doubt as to how to treat a condition, they should always refer to their GP (family doctor) or professional medical adviser,” Smith said.

The study was specially commissioned to mark the release of Hollywood thriller “Contagion” starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law.

Before you go nuts, there’s a reason that the whole carrots improve eyesight was actually taught in schools and so on. It was invented in the 1940’s by the British Air Force to explain why their pilots were so good at bombing at night. They didn’t want the Nazi’s to know they’d invented a new kind of bomb sight that gave their pilots tremendous advantages. And, they accomplished all this without alien technology.

I bet there are some of you who don’t believe that last sentence.

Oh well.

Anyway, in Northampton Massachusetts, lesbian capitol of America and home of Smith College, a professor conned an entire campus into thinking the campus was going all veggie and locavore.

A prank at a Massachusetts college convinced many students the campus was going vegetarian and locavore — serving only local food and beverages.

Smith College Professors Jay Garfield and Jim Henle said they masterminded the prank as part of their introductory class in logic. They instructed their 100 students to convince the campus the administration was planning to ban meat and all foods from outside of New England from being served at the school, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.

The faux news sparked protests and counter-protests last week with chalk slogans opposing the move appearing on sidewalks across the college. About one-third of the students in the class at the all-female school said they believed they had been successful in fooling the campus.

The prank culminated Monday with President Carol Christ showing up at Garfield and Henle’s class to inform them they were being fired for revealing the school’s “secret” plan to go vegetarian and locavore. She accused them of owning a share in a local farm set to profit from the plan.

However, the class discovered the announcement was all part of the hoax when Christ was interrupted by the school’s provost, who explained the instructors could not be fired because they have tenure.

Garfield and Henle said they are thinking of ways to top the prank next year.

Now, before I get angry letters from women in the Northeast, allow me to explain my earlier comments. The town has a sign promoting itself as Lesbianville, USA. There, I really don’t think I need any more. It also used to house the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Museum, but that seems to have disappeared.

BTW, the fact that it was two men who came up with this prank shall remain unremarked.

So, kids, consider these simple truths. If it sounds to good to be true, it is. If it makes no freaking sense whatsoever, it probably doesn’t work and, last but not least, there is not one single person in Nigeria who really wants to make you rich.

Or, use my grandfather’s test of veracity; “Would you believe it if you heard it in a bar?”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HBxUWSxcq8&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Today is a day of weirdness. The kind of day you just sit back and go “Really?” Because there are some things you can’t make up and, thanks to the internet, the rest you don’t have to. To give you an idea of the kind of day I’m having allow me to share a little vignette with you. I like to go to the library. It’s quiet, I can get stuff done and then check out a book or two if I want. They even have free Wi Fi for my laptop. I occasionally run into this one gentleman there. Nice guy, easy to talk to. He uses the complimentary computers the library provides. When he gets off them he comes over to me to talk about the multi-million dollar deals he’s working on. Because, as you well know, multi-millionaires are clamoring to their local libraries to do major business deals. Of course, when I noted that he doesn’t own a computer, lives in a friend’s living room and has worn the same outfit (albeit kept very clean) for almost a year, and that he may, just may, wish to rethink some of the things he tells people, he got horribly offended.

Darn, now I’ll never be a millionaire.

So, it is in that spirit that we trundle forward today. Imagine, if you will, that you’re cold sober in the middle of London and suddenly are accosted by 60 Elvi (that being the plural for Elvis). Well, that’s what happened recently to a group of people at a Holiday Inn in the U.K.

A group of panicked Elvises were left all shook up when they had to flee a hotel with the fire alarm ringing.

Around 60 Kings were rocking when a smoke machine went wrong and they had to get out fast.

Bewildered hotel guests, dragged out of bed in the middle of the night, were even more surprised when they were confronted by a sea of rhinestones in the car park.

One guest said: “I was in a bit of a state getting out of my room. But I was more confused when I got outside to see all these people dressed as Elvis.

“There were people in the full Elvis jumpsuits and wigs standing by a roundabout, looking a bit the worse for wear.”

The Elvis impersonators were at the Holiday Inn in Rochester, Kent, for a charity fundraiser in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support when the alarms sounded on Saturday night.

Kevin Coombes, hotel manager, said: “A smoke machine set off the fire alarm and at no point was anyone in any danger, but yes, Elvis did leave the building.”

Silly English, can’t even speak the language right. I already told them that the proper plural was Elvi.

That being said, how can you possibly tell anyone about this unless you have pics of you and the Elvi? Otherwise I would think that people would treat your credibility the same way I treat the nice man at the library’s.

Of course not everyone can be accosted by Elvi. Some people need to be accosted by UFOs. And, of course, the local Air Force loves getting calls about them (call twice, that makes them happy). They get even happier when the people calling are reporting the sighting of a B -2 Stealth Bomber.

People in Missouri have been scratching their heads this month over a rash of UFO sightings that has them wondering if it’s alien visitors, small plane experimental flying teams, the B-2 stealth bomber or all of the above.

So far, eyewitnesses in the “Show Me” state have been entertained by aerial displays of lights or orbs in the night sky, with the majority of sightings centered around the Kansas City area.

“With all the sightings, we’ve had a description of a triangle-shaped craft with multicolored lights surrounding it,” said Debbie Ziegelmeyer, state director for Missouri MUFON, a chapter of the International Mutual UFO Network.

“We have information that the nearby Whiteman Air Force Base, 50 miles east of Kansas City, is under a yellow alert with training mission activities of the B-2 stealth bombers around the area.”

But, according to Ziegelmeyer, it wasn’t just the B-2 craft that may be responsible for many of the nearly 60 UFO sightings since the beginning of the month.

“We learned about an EAA flight team (Experimental Aircraft Association), based in Lee’s Summit, Mo., that was doing some stunt flying on Oct. 4,” Ziegelmeyer told The Huffington Post.

“They practiced for an audition to do a night aerial formation flight for the Kansas City Chiefs. Their team leader told me it was a group of six small planes that fly in groups, and they flew together in a delta or triangular formation, circling over Lee’s Summit before heading to Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Chiefs, where they circled the stadium and then returned to the Lee’s Summit Municipal Airport.”

“If you look at the first 12 seconds of the video, you can see them aligned with another smaller dot in the sky,” Ziegelmeyer said. “Around half way through the video, the lights try to group up and you can make out a light strobing effect on one of them as they’re turning.

“Then, near the end of the video, they start to form a triangle-shape formation.”

Over in Independence, Mo., MUFON assistant state director Margie Kay is busy trying to unravel the mystery of several UFO reports that don’t appear to be either the stealth bomber or a squadron of stunt flyers.

One video, taken from inside a car, appears to show two glowing spheres or orbs chasing each other around in the night sky.

“The strangest thing about this and other events that happened over several days are these spheres, some of which were reported very close to people — as close as 30 feet away and in or behind their backyards,” Kay told HuffPost. “We don’t have an explanation for it yet.”

When the Missouri UFO reports started coming in, Kay contacted Whiteman Air Force Base.

“They can’t tell us very much, but they did say that they’re running B-2 training missions during October. So we think that some of the sightings that were from a distance may have been this,” Kay explained.

She added that they’re most interested in investigating the still-unexplained sightings, like the one of a large craft reported hovering 30 feet above a water tower in Raytown, Mo., on Oct. 4.

“It was round in shape with lights all over the entire bottom of it, and then it raised up a little bit, turned 90 degrees on its side, flew for a little while and then shot off at what the witness said was light speed — it was instantly gone.

“There may be some experimental aircraft that can do this, but we’re not being told about it. For them to do this in a metropolitan area is a little odd.”

Clifford W. Clift Jr., MUFON’s international director, told HuffPost he was surprised when their typical national monthly average of 500 UFO reports jumped to over 1,000 in August.

“We found there was no computer problem or duplication of reports. Then we discovered that over 50 percent of the number over the 500 average were old cases from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.”

MUFON tried to evaluate why people were now reporting old cases and, according to Clift, “This past summer and into the fall, there were so many UFO documentary shows being run that included MUFON’s name that people finally learned where they could report a UFO event.

“I think that’s why we’ve had such a significant increase.”

And as we’ve seen in Missouri, a variety of things could account for UFO sightings. The only thing left to say about that is “Show me!”

If you watch the video (linked above) you’ll note three things; (1) the camera person is shooting directly over a street light; (2) the camera moves far more than any of the objects and (3) the objects behave exactly like military planes aligning into a night time formation.

But other than that it’s a perfect video of UFOs.

Not all weird things involve aliens however. Some involve beer. Although I would wager that the number of tiems both were involved is a very large one. Nevertheless police in Brazil are trying to figure out how over 100 cases of beer were delivered to a jail.

Brazilian police say they are trying to find out why 2,600 cans of beer were delivered to a jail holding police officers charged with crimes.

The Rio de Janeiro radio station BandNews FM reports the beer was delivered Sunday to the prison in a northern suburb of the city.

Police inspector Waldyr Soares Filho tells the O Globo newspaper that officials are investigating the person who allowed the alcohol into the facility. He says he does not believe it was meant to be used for a party, but doesn’t offer an alternative explanation.

Local newspapers last month published photos of a party at the same jail thrown by an officer charged with 16 murders. The man later escaped.

Have they ruled out aliens? I know I haven’t.

Speaking of aliens, let’s finish today off with a jaunt down to Florida. Everyone’s favorite Martian, Rep. Rich Workman, is being forced to defend his “pro dwarf tossing” position.

He also defends another one, but I’m saving that until you’ve read this.

Rep. Ritch Workman is a regulation-chopping Republican lawmaker who says yes to liberty, personal freedom and “dwarf-tossing,” but no to gay marriage, medical marijuana and other libertarian causes.

The Florida state representative is battling Big Brother in some, but not all of its forms. In his quest to eliminate what he describes as unnecessary Sunshine State laws, Workman has exposed himself to controversy this month by pushing to legalize “dwarf-tossing.”

Make no mistake, Workman is no fan of the banned bar competition in which little people are literally turned into human shot puts.

“It’s a barbaric activity,” said Workman, first elected to the statehouse in 2008 to represent Melbourne, a city of 78,000 residents east of Orlando.

“But they [little people] don’t need government to decide for them,” he added. “This is insulting. Their actions aren’t endangering anybody else. For every law that’s on the books a little piece of your liberty and freedom is lost.”

But don’t ask Workman to advocate for gay marriage, medical marijuana or prostitution.

“I’m not a libertarian,” Workman said. “Prostitution and drug abuse are not situations that don’t affect anyone else. Prostitution spreads communicable diseases. Medical marijuana is just a way to legalize marijuana and we don’t need to give our kids other things to get high on.”

“I understand the almost-irony of me fighting to remove this ban [on dwarf-tossing] and my not wanting to legalize drugs and prostitution,” Workman said. “I don’t see them as parallels.”

Workman, who says he is a Christian, said he wasn’t interested in writing a state constitutional amendment allowing same-sex marriages either. He does, however, favor legalizing adultery among heterosexual couples.

There are other prohibitions and illicit activities that Workman said he sees as pointless intrusions on personal freedom. He’s introduced bills this term that would repeal the statutes banning beer bottle collections and requiring bicyclists to ride with at least one hand on the handlebars at all times. Another Workman number would allow unmarried men and women to legally live together.

The chances of scrapping these allegedly inane measures are not promising. Workman said he doesn’t expect a sponsor to emerge in the state Senate for the bills, because there’s little to be gained politically by tackling the obscure topics.

Nothing’s whipped up more controversy than his bill to lift the 22-year-old ban on “dwarf-tossing,” an activity that took root in some bars around the state in the 1980s.

Complaints and criticism have flooded his office, he said, especially from little people around the country. The Little People of America launched an Internet petition to voice disapproval of his idea.

“The issue with dwarf-tossing is it objectifies the entire little person community,” said Jennifer Arnold, the 3-foot-2-inch co-star of the reality show “The Little Couple.” Arnold, who has dwarfism, is now a Texas pediatrician, but grew up in Florida when “dwarf-tossing” was legal.

“My biggest concern is to feel that we’re going backwards,” she said. “It seems okay today to still make fun of little people. It’s not okay to do that for races, religions and other disabled people.”

Yeah, the second part kind of skips by. He wants to legalize adultery. But only for straight people. Something tells me his wife’s ears perked up on that little tid bit. But, as to the concerns espoused by Dr. Arnold in the last couple of paragraphs, I wouldn’t worry. When people like Mr. Workman get done, you’ll be able to make fun of anyone with any handicap as well as anyone who isn’t just like him.

So, hang in there, you’re about to be joined by some very august company.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7movKfyTBII&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

I was having a hard time finding anything to write about today. Oh, I ran across the story of the big bad Obama Zombies, a/k/a Secret Service, who decided to terrorize a sweet, and very white, 78 year old grandmother at a Denny’s. After all, all she was trying to do was help her sick grandchild …… by selling $1,400,000 worth of stolen government property. But that was about it. Then I found the story of the pinhead who bet his friends he could fit in a child’s swing (you know the ones, with the leg holes cut into hard plastic) and then did. Of course, to no one’s surprise, he got stuck and his friends (wisely I assure you) left him hanging there until the fire department got around to rescuing him ….. 9 hours later. But that’s pretty much the whole story there. Then there were the humorous comments made by New Jersey state senate candidate Phil Mitsch who showed off his tender side by giving women all over America useful relationship advice via Twitter.

you increase your odds of keeping your men by being faithful, a lady in the living room and a whore in the bedroom.

Man oh man, as you might have guessed, women all over the country said “Damn! Thanks Phil! We never could have saved our marriages if it weren’t for you!”

Okay, they didn’t actually say that. And, to the credit of women everywhere, not one called for him to be bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer. But, beyond that, the response wasn’t nearly as positive as Mr. Mitsch might have hoped.

And, let us now forget the caring and professional Crisis Pregnancy Centers in North Carolina that recently advised a Jewish woman that “in order to avoid eternal damnation she should keep her baby and think about accepting Jesus as her lord and savior.” This is while they’re asking for government funding.

Yeah, that’s going well.

Then I ran into the spate of stories I’m going to feature today. The TSA, which has been accused of being racist, morally bereft and staffed by the egregiously incompetent has been making a sincere effort of late to shore up its public image. And, gosh, aren’t they doing a skippy job of it?

Let’s ask masectomy survivor, Lori Dorn, what she thinks.

Now that she’s calmed down from being almost strip searched in public.

You can rest easy next time you fly, because TSA screeners are ensuring our safety by thoroughly inspecting the chests of breast cancer survivors, and dismissing their pleas for basic human sensitivity.

The Associated Press reports that last week, Lori Dorn was flying from New York to San Francisco when she set off a full-body scanner. After being diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, Dorn underwent a bilateral masectomy and chemotherapy. The scanner detected tissue expanders that were implanted as part of her breast reconstruction. Though Dorn has a medical device ID card, a TSA agent and her supervisor refused to allow her to get the card from her bag, and told her she’s have to undergo a pat-down. Dorn writes on her blog:

She then said, “And if we don’t clear you, you don’t fly” loud enough for other passengers to hear. And they did. And they stared at the bald woman being yelled at by a TSA Supervisor.

Dorn says she didn’t object to undergoing a pat down, but didn’t want to have a TSA agent touch her breasts in full view of other passengers without allowing her to explain her medical condition. She adds:

I just didn’t understand why these agents were so insensitive to the situation. I would have been happy to show her which bag was mine and have her retrieve the card, but she did not allow even that. I have been through emotional and physical hell this past year due to breast cancer. The way I was treated by these TSA agents added a shitload of insult to injury and caused me a great deal of humiliation.

Now after reviewing the situation, the TSA has issued a public apology. The agency stated on its blog:

We do our best to treat passengers with the dignity and respect they deserve, but in Lori Dorn’s case, it looks like we missed our mark. We sincerely regret and apologize for the experience Mrs. Dorn had at JFK. The Federal Security Director for JFK has personally reached out to learn more about what happened so he can help ensure that she and others will have better travel experiences in the future.

It goes on to explain that she should have been allowed to retrieve her medical card. This wouldn’t make her exempt from a pat down, but agents were supposed to offer to take her to a private screening room. The post also says:

TSA has just rolled out an in-service technical training course focused on screening prosthetics. This curriculum focuses on all types of prosthetics and the requirements of the standard operating procedures related to the screening of Persons with Disabilities and Medical Conditions

Dorn has accepted the TSA’s apology, and it’s good to hear that the agency is acknowledging that agents behaved inappropriately and trying to do something about it. However, it’s staggering that incidents like this are still happening on a regular basis. There are bound to be a few disgruntled asshats in any organization, and working for airport security is definitely stressful. However, it’s not like we’ve only seen a handful of these incidents. Why didn’t the agency start emphasizing treating flyers with dignity and respect after the first several dozen complaints? Not that TSA employees should need specific instructions on dialing down the dickishness when dealing with a woman who’s recovering from breast cancer.

I have one of those medical cards for my left leg which has two steel rods in it. I have yet to be allowed to show it to anyone, ever. I have, however, learned to only wear shorts when I travel so I can point to the scars. It’s just easier that way.

As to charges that they are racist, the TSA has responded by singling out African American women who don’t try to make themselves look white.

What could possibly go wrong?

“My hair is called an Afro,” says Isis Brantley in the video. The Dallas hairdresser hasn’t cut her hair since she was 12 years old. She says it was that hair that led her to be chased down by a TSA guard and subjected to an extra patdown. The TSA claims she left before the full inspection was completed.

Last month, the New York Times travel columnist Joe Sharkey reported on the experiences of two African-American women who felt they had been unfairly singled out for patdowns because of their natural hairstyles.

Separately, at least one woman said she was being targeted by black TSA employees, which she attributed to prejudices within the black community against unstraightened hair.

Brantley was at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, she told Dallas’ KXAS-TV, when she went through security and then “I just heard these voices saying, ‘Hey, you! Hey, you! Ma’am, stop! Stop! The lady with the hair! You!'”

The TSA responded that it has a responsibility to search for hazardous items anywhere they might be hidden. But a supervisor in Atlanta did apologize to Brantley, who said, “I was outraged. I was humiliated. I was confused.”

If you ever get the chance, pick up The Autobiography of Malcolm X since there is a great rant in there about his having to “conk” his hair so he could date white women. For whatever it’s worth, I happen to think Afros look nice. Not on me, that would be silly, but for people whose hair naturally flows like that then have at it I say.

Just plan on taking the train in the future.

But the one story I had to save for last is one that, I know, will be the one of most interest to all the female Nude Hippo staffers. This passes creepy about five miles back so have your hand sanitizer ready. The TSA wrapped an encouraging note around a woman’s vibrator.

When blogger Jill Filipovic unpacked after her most recent trip, she noticed that TSA screeners had found her vibrator. And they’d left her (a note which read “Get your freak on girl).

Filipovic told BoingBoing that she’d been traveling with a “Silver Bullet” vibrator from Babeland. Screeners apparently discovered it and decided to add a helpful comment. Filipovic’s reaction, which she posted on Feministe:

Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not ok, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room.

It’s nice that Filipovic has a sense of humor about this, but she’s right that the note is not okay — especially for an organization that’s already come under fire for its invasive search practices. Given that “groping” leaps to many people’s minds the minute the TSA is mentioned, it might behoove agents to exercise a little discretion when going through people’s stuff. At least agents didn’t take the vibe, but Filipovic says “I’m unsure if they handled it. Given that uncertainty, it’s definitely being retired.” Wise move — but it’s pretty sad that an agency that’s supposed to keep us safe from terror is instead forcing people to throw out their sex toys.

There is sympathetic sobbing coming from the break room right now as the women of Nude Hippo mourn the loss of another, high quality, silver bullet. And, because I care so much, you can order one by clicking that link.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs5_jB46xQE&w=500&h=317]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Done a pure Sunday science blog in a while I have not. But yank one out of my butt I you look bored so I figured would. Since I recently read the Hominid trilogyI thought, find something related to Neanderthals to write about, would I. To my surprise I found something much. In fact, of cool I actually found something kind. Made an astounding, scientists have been reverse engineering the history of language and have, and interesting, discovery. Let them tell you all about it but it comes down to this, will I; like Yoda at one point every single living humanoid on the planet spoke.

Thanks to Yoda Speak for helping me with that paragraph.

Don’t worry, I’m done now.

Really, no, mean it I do.

Nevertheless, everything has to have come from somewhere so Natalie Wolchover has an in-depth look at why we speak the way we speak.

Many linguists believe all human languages derived from a single tongue spoken in East Africa around 50,000 years ago. They’ve found clues scattered throughout the vocabularies and grammars of the world as to how that original “proto-human language” might have sounded. New research suggests that it sounded somewhat like the speech of Yoda, the tiny green Jedi from “Star Wars.”

There are various word orders used in the languages of the world. Some, like English, use subject-verb-object (SVO) ordering, as in the sentence “I like you.” Others, such as Latin, use subject-object-verb (SOV) ordering, as in “I you like.” In rare cases, OSV, OVS, VOS and VSO are used. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Merritt Ruhlen and Murray Gell-Mann, co-directors of the Santa Fe Institute Program on the Evolution of Human Languages, argue that the original language used SOV ordering (“I you like”).

“This language would have been spoken by a small East African population who seemingly invented fully modern language and then spread around the world, replacing everyone else,” Ruhlen told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience.

The researchers came to their conclusion after creating a language family tree, which shows the historical relationships between all the languages of the world. For example, all the Romance languages (Italian, Rumanian, French, Spanish) derive from Latin, which was spoken in Rome 2,000 years ago; that Latin family is itself a branch of an even larger tree, whose other branches include Germanic, Slavic, Greek, Indic and others. Together, all those languages make up the Indo-European language family, which fits like a puzzle piece with all the other language families in the world.

“These families — all families — are identified by finding words in a set of languages that are similar to each other but not found elsewhere,” Ruhlen explained in an email.

In the language family tree, Ruhlen and Gell-Mann discovered a distinct pattern in how word orders change as languages branch off from their mother tongues. “What we found was that the distribution of the six possible word orders did not vary randomly. … Rather, the distribution of these six types was highly structured, and the paths of linguistic change in word order were clear,” Ruhlen said.

Out of the 2,000 modern languages that fit in the family tree, the researchers found that more than half are SOV languages. The ones that are SVO, OVS and OSV all derive directly from SOV languages — never the other way around. For example, French, which is SVO, derives from Latin, which is SOV.

Furthermore, languages that are VSO and VOS always derive from SVO languages. Thus, all languages descend from an original SOV word order – “which leads to the conclusion that the word order in the language from which all modern languages derive must have been SOV,” Ruhlen wrote.

Was it just an accident that the mother of all mother tongues was probably SOV, rather than one of the other five possibilities? The researchers think not. Predating Ruhlen’s and Gell-Mann’s work, Tom Givon, a linguist at the University of Oregon, argued that SOV had to have been the first word order, based on how children learn language. He found that the SOV word ordering seems to come most naturally to humans.

And if that’s the case, it seems strange that languages switch word orders as they evolve. Indeed, no one really knows why word orders would switch. “We have found that word changes in very precise ways,” Ruhlen said. “But the fact remains that half of the world’s languages still have SOV word order because, in Murray’s and my opinion, they have not changed word order at all. [Our data] shows how word order changes … but it is unpredictable if word order will change, and I really don’t know why.”

I know that can seem a touch confusing. Think of it this way, when you’re first learning to speak you learn the subject, since that’s most important to you (I, Me, Mommy, Daddy, etc), then the object you’re talking about (you, dog, cat, particle physics) and then what you want to say about that (like, hate, love, am ambivalent, etc). It is only later that you are taught the rules of grammar.

And then, only much later, that you grasp the nuances of simile, metaphor, allegory and so on since those concepts require socially specific verbiage.

And once you get it all straight in your head you spend big bucks to buy a GPS that talks like Yoda.

Not to worry, good it all is.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxaFhHCMMuc&w=480&h=360]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

I hope everyone had a happy Rapture yesterday. I know I did. Before we get to anything resembling a salient point I have to get the important stuff out of the way since I don’t want you to be distracted later. You’ll all be pleased to note that Elizabeth Olsen, the sane Olsen sister, had no problems doing the nude scenes for her new movie “Martha Marcy May Marlene.” You’re welcome. In unrelated nude news, a woman in India developed an insatiable sex drive and then died four days later. As it turns out rabies causes that particular symptom and by the time you notice it you’re too late. So, no, getting bitten by a squirrel isn’t worth it. In other news, completely non-nude, it turns out that if you cook your own feces on an apartment heater you will not create gold. A nice man in Northern Ireland found this out the hard way and is now in jail for all sorts of hilarious charges.

Okay, now to the point.

We have all heard recently about how the only way to save the American economy is to deregulate businesses and let capitalism decide what works and what doesn’t. Given that every major financial collapse has happened within 10 years of the banking or insurance industries being deregulated you would think that history isn’t on their side. But, hey, that’s what keeps this country great.

Nevertheless, ironically enough, students at the University of Texas have a prime testing ground in their home state to study the effects of deregulation. Texas has the fewest business restrictions in the country. Also the lowest wages but I’m told that’s just a coincidence and I should shut up about that and quit bothering people.

Anyway, to make this study work they went to the one place that has been living under similar regulations as Texas, China, to see what the long term effects could be. What the nice students found was that environmental deregulation did increase business, did add jobs and only caused a 450% increase in birth defects.

Pesticides and pollutants are related to an alarming 450 percent increase in the risk of spina bifida and anencephaly in rural China, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Peking University.

Two of the pesticides found in high concentrations in the placentas of affected newborns and stillborn fetuses were endosulfan and lindane. Endosulfan is only now being phased out in the United States for treatment of cotton, potatoes, tomatoes and apples. Lindane was only recently banned in the United States for treatment of barley, corn, oats, rye, sorghum and wheat seeds.

Strong associations were also found between spina bifida and anencephaly and high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are byproducts of burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Spina bifida is a defect in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close before birth. Anencephaly is the absence of a large part of the brain and skull.

“Our advanced industrialized societies have unleashed upon us a lot of pollutants,” says Richard Finnell, professor of nutritional sciences and director of genomic research at the Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas. “We’ve suspected for a while that some of these pollutants are related to an increase in birth defects, but we haven’t always had the evidence to show it. Here we quite clearly showed that the concentration of compounds from pesticides and coal-burning are much higher in the placentas of cases with neural tube defects than in controls.”

The study, which was published in August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the result of a more than decadelong collaboration between Finnell and a team of researchers in Shanxi, a province in northern China.
Finnell sought collaborators in China because the prevalence of neural tube defects is much greater there than it is in the United States. Also, because of its population policies, China is good at tracking births.

“It’s an extraordinary natural experiment,” says Finnell, who was recently recruited to the university to help anchor the Dell Pediatric Research Institute. “It would be much harder to do this study in the United States, where neural tube defects are more rare. It’s also an opportunity to assist the Chinese government in their efforts to lower their birth defect rates.”

Working with public health officials in four rural counties in Shanxi, researchers collected placentas from 80 newborn or stillborn fetuses that suffered from spina bifida or anencephaly. Once a fetus or a newborn with such defects was identified as a case, the placenta of a healthy newborn with no congenital malformations born in the same hospital was selected as a control.

Finnell and his colleagues screened these placentas for the presence of a class of substances known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Common POPs include agricultural pesticides, industrial solvents and the byproducts of burning fuels such as oil and coal.

They found strong associations between the birth defects and high levels of a number of compounds present in commonly used pesticides. They also found elevated placental concentrations of PAHs.

“This is a region where they mine and burn a lot of coal,” says Finnell. “Many people cook with coal in their homes. The air is often black. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to say that maybe there’s something in there that isn’t good for babies.”

Finnell says although the environmental conditions in Shanxi are dramatically worse than they are in most areas of the United States, they are comparable to what the United States was like a century ago, and the neural tube defects are not solely a Chinese problem.

Every year approximately 3,000 pregnancies in the United States are complicated by neural tube defects. Many other congenital conditions, including autism, may one day prove to be related to environmental pollutants.

“Ultimately you need enough cells to make a proper, healthy baby,” says Finnell, “and these are the types of compounds that cause cell death. At the most basic level, we’re learning that environmental things kill cells, and if that occurs in a critical progenitor population at a crucial time, you’re going to have problems.”

So there you have it. In 10 or 20 years, when Texas catches up to China, there’ll be lots and lots babies who look like something from a low budget horror movie. So, while I do think that government has become too intrusive – damn it I want to smoke in my local bar! – there are times where a little regulation isn’t such a bad idea.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/3609548 w=400&h=300]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Less than one week after the world was blown up by the rouge planet Niribu we are faced with Rapture. Some people, the descendants of those who read entrails and bones for omens, view various aspects of popular media mixed with distorted science to see the true date for the End of Times. One such portent, I’m sure you’ll all admit, was me getting mentioned on the Ellen Degeneres show. The bonus of that, of course, was that she used my recent FB pic so I’m naked in a bathtub, smoking a cigarette, demanding that she dress as a toaster. God truly does work in mysterious ways. Others see the End of Times writ large in weather patters since, as you all know, there was no weather prior to the birth of their Lord and Savior. I’m reluctant to use the phrase “my Lord….” since their interpretation of the Bible requires me to lose far too many brain cells to follow along. I already lived through the 80’s, I see no need to increase the damage.

As I noted in my article about Niribu, these people don’t really think about the effect they have on those around them. From children calling NASA asking for suicide advice to people selling all their possessions for dirt cheap, since they won’t be needing them, the aftermath for these people can be devastating. Both emotionally and fiscally. Nevertheless, celebrated whack job, Harold Camping says today’s the day.

Maybe.

Today might be the end of the world, but Family Radio Network preacher Harold Camping, whose last Doomsday prediction in May fizzled, doesn’t want to make a big fuss of it this time.

Camping’s home phone has been disconnected and a visitor to the radio station in Alameda, Calif., is gently turned away with “no comment,” Inside Bay Area reports.

The Associated Press reports that Susan Espinoa, daughter of the 90-year-old Camping, responded by e-mail to one request for comment by saying: “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we at Family Radio have been directed to not talk to the media or the press.”

Camping, who suffered a stroke in the weeks after his May 21 for the End of the World failed to materialize, reset the date for Oct. 21, but has notably sprinkled his prediction with “probably” and “maybe.”

On the other hand, an earthquake rocked San Francisco on Thursday.

On his Family Radio Network website, Camping noted that Doomsday predicting is not easy.

“There’s a lot of things that we didn’t have quite right, and that’s God’s good provision,” he says. “I really am beginning to think, as I restudy these matters, that there’s going to be no big display of any kind. The end is going to come very, very quietly, probably within the next month. It will happen, that is, by Oct. 21.”

After May 21 came and went, Camping — who blamed a similar 1994 misfire on a math error — did readjust his assessment by saying “God’s judgment” was completed on that day, and the final sword would fall today.

“Thus we can be sure that the whole world, with the exception of those who are presently saved (the elect), are under the judgment of God, and will be annihilated together with the whole physical world on Oct. 21,” he says.

In the leadup to May 21, the non-profit took in millions in donations, while thousands of followers spread the word in their hometowns or quit their jobs to set out on caravans that crisscrossed the country. The network also spent millions on 5,000 billboards around the world warning of the coming Apocaplypse.

This time, Family Radio Network apparently will let Doomsday speak for itself.

“Family Stations Inc. has no comment concerning Oct. 21,” spokesman Thomas Evans wrote in an e-mail, Inside Bay Area reports. “Our media response was made back in May.”

Here’s a question for you; what are the odds of a quarter landing head’s up?

Answer: 50%

What are the odds of a quarter landing head’s up after landing on tail’s fifteen times in a row?

Answer: 50%

I bring that up to remind you that numerology is the art of finding patterns where none exist. And it is that – ahem – discipline that Mr. Camping has applied to the Bible. You may as well grab random letters out of a Scrabble bag and use them to define your next grocery order for all the logic that’s involved.

Nevertheless, some people take this very seriously. And some, like NORAD, use their Santa trackers to keep the Rapture honest.

I have no idea who’s in charge at NORAD right now, but I want to buy them a beer.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command has today announced its intention to track the Rapture, as a curtain raiser to tracking the End of the World.

Commencing at 6pm on Saturday the 21st May, NORAD will use it’s highly acclaimed “SantaTracker” network of satellites and webcams to follow the Rapture from it’s beginning in Fiji and New Zealand and on, through the Far East, Asia, Europe and finally to the United States of America.

It is expected that the Rapture will change speed as it travels the world time zones. This may mean that the Rapture arrives a little earlier or later than expected in your local time zone, and so you should be prepared a little early, and not be too disappointed if you are still here a little later than you expect.

This is due to the logistics of transporting the various population densities of expected “rapturees” in various parts of the world.

Clearly, for example, the Rapture will move speedily through Europe, especially because the Catholics are not going, but slow down massively when it hits the East Coast of the USA, slowing almost to a crawl when it hits Tulsa, but then speeding considerably as it mops up California.

Travel arrangements have been made to accommodate the Southern Baptists, staging posts might be required.

NORAD has been told to expect that they will not be able to use the regular “World Daylight Map”, because it will be so bright everywhere that this map will, for this day, have little meaningful use.

Counselors and psychiatrists have been stationed at Post Offices all over the USA to deal with the disappointment of Atheists when they realize that so few American Christians qualify that the GOP will probably be able to maintain it’s majority in the House, although it’s unlikely they will take the Senate.

There could be an unexpected vacancy in the White House, housing as it does an actual Christian.

This has been a Public Service Announcement.

This may be the best use ever of a military unit.

I’m normally amused by people like Camping but, as I’ve noted, it’s become increasingly clear that these people run roughshod over other’s lives without even remotely considering the consequences. Hopefully, as I sit here writing this noting that the priest nearby is steadfastly NOT flying into the sun, people will finally come to realize that fear mongering a**holes like Camping are best ignored.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnhKPw2NXIw&w=500&h=317]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!