Satire with a Middle Eastern flavor

I recently came across The Pan-Arabia Enquirer, which describes itself as 'Spreading the hummous of satire over the flatbread of news'.  They note:

As the Middle East’s premier source of SATIRE (much like The Onion, The Daily Mash and Emirates 24/7), The Pan-Arabia Enquirer is not intented, in any way whatsoever, to be taken as factual. It’s just here to amuse and any similarities in names (well, except for Ahmadinejad) are purely coincidental.

I think they're on to something.  I laughed out loud when I saw their cheeky response to the controversial stadium design in Qatar (which we discussed here a couple of months ago).  Their headline to this picture read:  'Lead developer of Qatar island project on run after new photos taken from space released'.

Look above the main cluster of lights of the city.  If you ask me, that's a perfect response to orthodox Gulf morals offended by the stadium design!  Take a look at their Web site for more satirical perspectives on Middle East news.



Peter

The janitor's revenge

A tip o' the hat to reader E. J. for sending me the link to this video.

Peter

Barbie Jeep racing???

I'd never heard of a 'Barbie Jeep' until today.

It's apparently an electrically-powered toy vehicle that's intended to be driven around the house (or perhaps the garden) by little girls.  It's part of a whole range of similar toys.

It seems boys will be boys when it comes to toys like that . . . even big boys.  It seems that Morris Mountain held a race for these things last year.  An offroad race.  Downhill.  With adult drivers.

Oy.

Watch it in full-screen mode to make the most of the mayhem.

Peter

Oh, yeah?

It seems scientists are claiming to have proved it's possible to levitate objects in mid-air using only sound.

As Garfield would say:

That's ancient news, as any cat owner will confirm.  Try walking up behind our sleeping moggie and dropping something heavy on the floor.  Those sound waves will levitate that sucker three to four feet faster than you can blink.  (She'll probably shred you on the way down for daring to disturb her slumbers, but that's another matter . . . )





Peter

Even scientists have a sense of humor

I was delighted to read a wonderful research spoof in the BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal.  It's couched in what seems like impenetrable academic and professional language, but in reality it's a tongue-in-cheek dig at the whole 'publish-or-perish' mentality.  Here's the abstract (a.k.a. 'executive summary' for those used to business reports).

Objective  To review the beneficial and harmful effects of laughter.

Design  Narrative synthesis.

Data sources and review methods  We searched Medline (1946 to June 2013) and Embase (1974 to June 2013) for reports of benefits or harms from laughter in humans, and counted the number of papers in each category.

Results  Benefits of laughter include reduced anger, anxiety, depression, and stress; reduced tension (psychological and cardiovascular); increased pain threshold; reduced risk of myocardial infarction (presumably requiring hearty laughter); improved lung function; increased energy expenditure; and reduced blood glucose concentration. However, laughter is no joke—dangers include syncope, cardiac and oesophageal rupture, and protrusion of abdominal hernias (from side splitting laughter or laughing fit to burst), asthma attacks, interlobular emphysema, cataplexy, headaches, jaw dislocation, and stress incontinence (from laughing like a drain). Infectious laughter can disseminate real infection, which is potentially preventable by laughing up your sleeve. As a side effect of our search for side effects, we also list pathological causes of laughter, among them epilepsy (gelastic seizures), cerebral tumours, Angelman’s syndrome, strokes, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or motor neuron disease.

Conclusions  Laughter is not purely beneficial. The harms it can cause are immediate and dose related, the risks being highest for Homeric (uncontrollable) laughter. The benefit-harm balance is probably favourable. It remains to be seen whether sick jokes make you ill or jokes in bad taste cause dysgeusia, and whether our views on comedians stand up to further scrutiny.

There's more at the link.

I'll leave you to look up the medical technicalities on Wikipedia or elsewhere, if you wish.  I had a good laugh at the authors' impish sense of humor.

Peter

Never mind vitamins - take Medicinal Compound!

I've been amused by the brouhaha over this week's report that vitamin and mineral supplements are unnecessary.  I don't know who's right or wrong about that;  but with dietary imbalances being what they are, Miss D. and I pop a simple multivitamin each day to take care of anything we lack.  We don't indulge in mega-overdoses or carefully tailored, balanced supplements, but we see no harm in ensuring that if we don't eat enough of the right things, we still get reasonably balanced nutrition.  For the same reason, a couple of jars of multivitamin tablets are part of our emergency supplies.  If we ever have to live on rice and beans for an extended period, we're going to need all the help we can get!

Nevertheless, I remind the medical profession that the solution was discovered as early as the 1870's.  It was re-popularized in 1968, when The Scaffold brought us 'Lily The Pink'.

So much for multivitamins . . .



Peter

Merry Christmas - firepower edition!

A tip o' the hat to reader J. D. for sending me the link to this video.

Peter

The Japanese submarine episode . . .

. . . of The Carol Burnett Show is definitely politically incorrect, but it's still funny.  In the light of how much people enjoyed the couple of clips I put up earlier this week, I'll give you more of them from time to time - so here's the first.

I wonder what that did to diplomatic relations between the US and Japan when it first aired?





Peter

Working hard

Not much time for posting tonight - I'm hard at work on the revisions to Maxwell Volume 3.  I'll try to put up some more articles tomorrow morning.

To hold you until then, check out the very funny reviews of products on Amazon.com listed by Brain Pickings in two articles.  Click on each link to see them.  Here's one example.  One of the products mentioned is the Cyclone 4006 - Ultra High Pressure Hard Surface Cleaner, 40,000 psi water with Full Recovery, which looks like this:

Customer Wandrwoman (who describes herself as "Wise As Aphrodite, Beautiful As Athena...") says of it:

It used to take me 1½ hours to get to work in the morning. It takes me less than 15 minutes now and that includes stopping to get an Egg McMuffin!

My secret? Easy. I bought a Cyclone 4006. Now, if there is anyone in front of me on the road, I beep my air horn once or twice. If they don't get out of my way, I turn on the "juice". If 40,000 psi water pressure (with full recovery) is strong enough to blast off concrete curing compound from asphalt, you won't believe what it does to a Toyota Corolla! Woo hoo! Beep beep! Wooooooosh!

OK, it's a little difficult to parallel park and it doesn't go faster than 30 mph. I'll give you that. But, trust me, when you are behind the wheel of a bright yellow Cyclone 4006, these things don't really matter.

PS. It comes with an "optional remote walk-behind head." If you figure out what this is, please let me know.

There are more at both links.  Enjoy!





Peter

About that stadium . . .

Yesterday's Doofus Of The Day award went to a proposed stadium in Qatar that looks like an unmentionable portion of a woman's anatomy.  Well, it turns out that's not the only anatomically reminiscent architecture out there.  Slate points out the existence of a neighborhood in England, and a church in Illinois, that both resemble a rather familiar shape from the air.

From street level, you probably wouldn't give either of them a passing glans . . .





Peter

So much for workout routines . . .

Having been subjected to far too many fitness-program 'infomercials' on late night TV in hospitals over the years . . . this made me laugh.

(It's a medical mystery to me. Why does hospital TV keep showing infomercials for exercise equipment and programs when their patients are still sore from physiotherapy and in no mood for more of the same?)





Peter

Doofus Of The Day #735

It looks like the bigots of the Westboro Baptist Church have competition.  Today's award goes to the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina.  Here's why.

Looks like they've bought into one of the more recent heresies to sweep through fundamentalist Christianity, the so-called 'King James Only movement'. Briefly, this movement considers the King James Version of the Protestant Bible - a translation dating from the early seventeenth century - to be 'inerrant', divinely inspired, and the only legitimate English translation of the Bible.  Of course, there's no evidence whatsoever for this kooky, whacko belief.  It's utterly ridiculous.  Nevertheless, they believe it, and can become quite nasty to those who disagree with them - witness their labeling as 'heretics' people that many Christians would consider shining examples.

It's always the same with fanatics of any description, be they religious, political, social, economic, or any other flavor. They can't and won't listen to reason. They've got The Truth, and the rest of us will have to get with the program - Or Else.

Personally, if I have to pick between their blind, misguided fanaticism and something else, I'll take 'Or Else', thank you very much . . .

Peter

Business names that are also puns

A tip o' the hat to reader A. M. for sending me the link to this article.  It lists 30 businesses with names that are also puns - some of them excruciatingly funny.  Here are a few examples.

There are many more at the link.  Great fun!



Peter

An anatomically precise Halloween maze . . .

I'm laughing at the fuss over a certain anatomical feature in a Pennsylvania farm's Halloween maze for kids.  (For foreign readers, let me explain that a 'Halloween maze' is cut into a cornfield. Kids follow the mown paths, flanked by tall corn that blocks their line of sight.)

Here's the maze in question.

The image at the article citing the controversy (see here) has clearly been edited to make the nether regions 'stand out' (or up) to a greater extent (as noted by commenter Mike_C). It's definitely a manufactured controversy, if you ask me.

Even so, it looks like a fine upstanding critter to me . . .





Peter

They clearly have WAY too much time on their hands!

Looks like it's turkey season in Kentucky.

Peter

I've got this particular crud real bad . . .

Received via e-mail, origin unknown:

Peter