No Sex in The ISS (International Space Station)
According to NASA commander Alan Poindexter, (his real name – I’m guessing high school was pretty rough for Al) sexual relations between crewmembers are strictly forbidden. Yet another thing our Mars500 crew is being deprived of! I wonder if they’re allowed porn?
PS – Time Magazine made a “mile high club†joke in this article. I’ll spare you the click to the webpage – it was the first sentence and it reads, “Talk about joining the mile high clubâ€. (Feel free to add your own sound effects right here, like crickets chirping or me screaming into a pillow) Oh, shame on you. You’re real writers. Those jokes are for unfunny uncles and Morning Zoo broadcasts. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have important dick jokes to make. *Flips hair, turns on heel, and skips out of the room*
[via Time NewsFeed]
Female Fish Prefer Moustaches
Scientists at the University of Oklahoma have found that female fish prefer male fish with “moustachesâ€. Some, but not all, Mexican mollies (which sounds like the name of a perverse sexual act…the person is definitely not awake when you do it) grow tentacles above their mouths that resemble moustaches, which they use in mating rituals. These rituals involve the male fish rubbing their moustaches on the genitalia of the female fish (HI-YO!), a behavior which scientists believe helps the female fish acquire information about the males. I like to imagine that all of the researchers working on this study had huge handlebar or Fu Manchu moustaches – including the women.
[via BBC]
Terrifying Disease of the Week:
Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI) is a rare inherited prion disease, which causes insomnia and is ultimately fatal. Symptoms of FFI usually manifest later in life (~50 years old) and begin with about four months of insomnia, panic attacks and paranoia. The previous symptoms continue and are followed by about five months of hallucinations, leading to complete inability to sleep, weight loss and after about six months the patient dies.
Though they are extremely rare, prion diseases have terrified me since I learned about them in genetics class. Every time I can’t sleep I think I have this disease – but don’t worry, only about 40 families in the world have this and let me repeat: it is EXTREMELY rare (just make sure not to fuck anyone in those families). I also used to think I had another prion disease called Kuru because one of the symptoms is spontaneously bursting into laughter – but since I don’t spend much time cannibalizing tribesmen in Papua New Guinea, I’m probably safe.
Thank you for all the wonderful comments! It’s refreshing to have a place to be funny, especially when you work with people who make jokes with punch lines like “Yeah RIGHT! Maybe if you used a non-linear glucose assay!**†UGH – somebody punch me in the neck.
** Actual joke someone told in my lab meeting this week. The room then erupted into laughter while I sat there expressionless.
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@Andy – Done and DONE. I’ll have my people call your people.
@Sarah: People’s Endowment for Nookie In Space.
Hey now, my embryology professor said they were testing out zero-grav sex suits!
@Zon – No, no, no it’s definitely going to be Kuru.
@Daniel – Couldn’t tell ya, I was daydreaming/completely uninterested in their attempts at humor, and only caught the end of it.
@Andy – I agree! Let’s start a foundation to fund this research. What to call it? Hmm…
What? No zero-gravity boot-knockin’? No horizontal, then vertical, then horizontal mambo? I feel like there are important discoveries we’re missing out on here.
What was the full joke?
Well fatal insomnia was exactly what I needed to read about, seeing as how I fit all the symptoms. Screw that it’s incredibly rare. I’M GOING TO DIE FROM IT.
hahah unfunny uncles. “Maybe if you used a non-linear glucose assay!” is going to be my new catchphrase.
I prefer to acquire information about males before any “moustache” rubbing.