Breakfast Links: Beat her cheek!, Action figures & Cooties
Ok, those crazy japanese have done it again. You know that frustration that builds inside because you’re a common Victorian girl working in a noble house and the nobles are all mean to you? Well, then this game is totally for you! Rose&Camellia (via frankie23) is a flash game that pits you in a slap fight against a fancy lady. The page is japanese, but strangely has some english on it, like it says “How to Play” - except all the subsequent instructions are in japanese. Fortunately for you, gentle reader, I read japanese! Ok, I don’t, but I messed around with the game - basically you play and a box pops up on the bottom right corner (attack!) or in the bottom left corner (evade!), as soon as it appears you need to click on it and drag it across the arrow that pops up. It’s simple, but strangely difficult and even more strangely compelling… I always new I was a victorian serf in a previous life.
Cough. Cough. Ahem. I mean, that game’s just for ladies. Real men have their own action figures (via gizmodo)! That’s right for $425 you can get a custom made action figure (well, just the head is custom made, but that’s the important part)! If you want it can even be a talking action figure! They don’t, unfortunately, have a blogging action hero, but I bet they’re working on it. Once you get them, you get can buy tons more for just $39.95 (or $49.95 for the talking one). Sadly they don’t make no asian hero’s, only white and African American. I’m not saying… I’m just saying.
So TIME has this piece up on scientists discovering cooties. This important research shows that people don’t like eat things that have touched something disgusting! Even if, scientifically speaking, that thing isn’t disgusting. That’s right! These brilliant scientists ran this experiment:
[they] took a cockroach that had been sterilized, dipped it into a glass of orange juice, then asked if anyone was willing to take a sip. Nobody was.
What the hell is a sterile cockroach? Does anyone but a scientist care that the cockroach can’t have kids?? (they must have very small operating instruments in that lab…) They needed to have an experiment to prove that nobody would drink cockroach juice? Then this experiment:
So he and Morales set out to see whether toilet paper and other products could psychologically contaminate food in a shopping basket.
Any food that touched something perceived to be disgusting became immediately less desirable itself, though all of the products were in their original wrapping. [...] “We’d take cookies out of the basket and offer them to the subjects,” says Fitzsimons [...] No takers. Moreover, he says, “everything we did suggested that these feelings were below the level of awareness. If we told someone, ‘You didn’t take the cookie because it touched the kitty litter,’ they would say, ‘That’s ridiculous.’”
No. That’s right at the level of awareness. I’m not eating no kitty litter cookies. I could have told them that and saved them the time. Sigh.
July 19th, 2007 at 8:40 am
I sometimes wonder how scientists get funding to run these experiments that have such OBVIOUS results. The roach experiment had already been performed and well-documented years ago, BTW. Didn’t those guys ever hear of a little TV show called “Fear Factor”? Jeez!
July 19th, 2007 at 9:12 am
sterilizing a cockroach reminds me of that old joke; “ever smell moth balls?” “yeah?” ” how do you get their little legs apart.”
good stuff.
good posting this morning. you got on a roll there.
July 19th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Ahh… .fear factor. I remember one episode where the gross food was “thousand year old egg” (it’s not really a thousand years). They were gagging and what not trying to get it down. I used to love that stuff! Eat it all the time with breakfast. I guess it’s all perspective! Still… roaches are gross. Sterile, virile, or what not. :)
Thanks, Howard. :) I know, though, that you just liked it for the excuse it gave you to say moth balls.. And slapping fancy ladies.
July 19th, 2007 at 10:18 am
ill slap ANY kinda lady!
July 19th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Ehh… I’m pretty sure their definition of sterile doesn’t mean that the cockroach can’t have kids. Speaking of which don’t they eat cockroaches somewhere in the world? And just because I know you loooove cockroaches almost as much as howie likes slapping ladies, I found this wonderful FAQ just for you.
http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/cockroach_faq.html
With gems like “What are cockroaches good for?” and “Do cockroaches like to be touched?”
July 19th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Nasty. Just… nasty.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:48 am
[...] controlling the game using their hands or bottles of water into urinals. Remember that thing about people not wanting to touch gross things? Yeah, that wouldn’t be me with my hands in no urinal. Here’s what I don’t like [...]
October 18th, 2007 at 7:16 am
[...] wanted to be a scientist, then I found out it was hard, so I switched. But check it, in addition to discovering cooties scientists are now showing that swearing like a sailor in front of your co-workers is the [...]