Depressing News

Looks like we should have known the Eagles were going to lose yesterday. It had been predicted by science! According to a British psychologist, today is the most depressing day in history.

Some of you may be skeptical. Why today? Wasn’t in January 24 the other year? Yes, it was, but I only remember that because it’s also my father’s birthday. The Jan. 24 date came from the same person, who releases the same study every year, knowing the press will print it. Anyway: The most depressing day of the year is more like Easter than Christmas, as it moves around from day to day. It, I guess, always falls on a Monday.

But you might still be skeptical, knowing that American science reporting is often no more than crazy charts and graphs about “hacking your brain” and British science stories are even worse, including the recent panic of coffee-induced hallucinations in nearly every major paper. Psshaw. Not only do we have the Eagles’ loss — including the heartbreaking comeback and ensuing failure — as evidence, we also have this:

Millions will feel so glum they will decide to stay in bed and up to a quarter of workers are expected to call in sick, research suggests. Psychologist Dr Cliff Arnall has devised a mathematical formula that pinpoints today as Blue Monday.

You get that! It’s a mathematical formula! That proves millions will just not get out of bed today — in England? or in the world? — and almost a quarter of workers called in sick. This has some merit: I mean, geeze, look at all the people off today! I passed by a government building and it was closed! Guess all the workers called in sick. Even the colleges are closed!

As to why this isn’t just the depressing day of the year, and is instead the saddest, bluest day in all of history, one needs to only ask Dr. Arnall again for his input: “The credit crunch means today is potentially the most depressing Blue Monday we have had.” Duh, people. Duh. I can’t believe I even have to explain this to you.

I know, you’re still wondering: But I’m pretty happy right now! Looks like I got off easy on the worst day in history. Please.

Meanwhile, William Hartson, a psychologist at Cambridge University, has devised a mathematical formula which marks today as the most likely for accidents.

Anyway, as I (and Dr. Arnall, and Dr. Hartson) have now conclusively proved, today is the most depressing day of all time. Either that, or we’ve proved that you can say whatever you want about anything, and someone will take you seriously. And if you’re doctor and have research that can suggest something, newspapers will treat your word as gospel.

Feeling blue? Today - January 19, 2009 - is the most depressing day in HISTORY, say experts [Daily Mail]
Image (of a record!) by Kevin Doley used under a Creative Commons license

Scientists Finally Do Something To Help People

Scientists at the University of Maryland are developing a pizza they say can fight serious illnesses, such as heart disease and cancer.

Next up: Donuts that help you lose weight.

Scientists Claim Healthy Pizza Fights Diseases [NBC 10]

And Don’t Get Them Started On Unicorns

Blogger: Scientists, Mathematicians better shut the hell up before they get a boot in the ass for annoying me.

Skeptic: Math, Science Refute Vampires, Ghosts [AP/CBS 3]

An Historic Merger

I didn’t notice this until a fellow PW staffer alerted me to it yesterday. It’s from the current issue of the Philadelphia Gay News. The first two paragraphs of the story (emphasis mine):

The number-two executive at the Free Library of Philadelphia is the new right hand of the city’s chief taskmaster, the official announced this week.

Kevin Vaughan is leaving his position as Free Library associate director to become Managing Director Pedro Ramos, according to Ramos’s chief of staff.

Holy shit! He’s taking over his body? They should say “according to scientists!”

With slur out, official heads to City Hall [Philadelphia Gay News]

And, for that, we are thankful

You can always count on scientists to make you feel just a bit hipper.

Scientists Giddy Over Geysers on a Saturn Moon [AP/KYW 1060]

Rick Santorum’s Intelligent Design

You have to hand it to Sen. Rick Santorum (at left, with Goliath). With the possibility of a dogfight in the general election — and with a possible loan scandal, courtesy of Will Bunch — you might think Santorum would run toward the center. And by “run toward the center,” I mean, “avoid saying anything too controversial.” Santorum has his views out there views, and I don’t think it’s political posturing. It seems he actually believes them. And that’s fine, he can think what he wants to, &c. &c.

But you might think his handlers would be like, “Hey, Rick, lay off the gays for a little bit.” Or, you know, “Hey, Ricky, try not to tell everyone how you communicate directly with God.” But, no, Rick doesn’t do any of that. In fact, he does the opposite: He writes the foreward to an intelligent design book.

Sigh. Yes, Santorum has written the foreward to Darwin’s Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement, which comes out in paperback in late April.

For those of you not in the know, intelligent design is the belief that God created the world and set up everything and bada bing, bada boom. Intelligent design rejects evolution — so it’s not like a Catholic school teaching religion one period and biology the next — yells “teach the controversy” and wants it taught alongside evolution. Except, well, there isn’t much to it besides “Wow, humans sure are complicated. Musta been God!”

Right. And so Santorum has written the foreward to a book of essays honoring Phillip Johnson, who wrote Darwin on Trial and is credited with getting this BS into classrooms. Here’s Rick’s foreward:

This volume celebrates Phillip Johnson’s leadership in the intelligent design (ID) movement. Scholars who have known Phil best and worked with him most closely assembled in April 2004 at Biola University to present him with a collection of papers in his honor. I wish I could have been there to offer my congratulations and thanks in person. Instead, I have the privilege of writing this brief foreword from Washington.

Since the publication of “Darwin on Trial” more than ten years ago, Phillip Johnson has provided extraordinary leadership for an extraordinary cause, namely, to rid science of false philosophy. The importance of the cause is clear: what could be more important than showing that only a shallow, partisan understanding of science supports the false philosophy of materialist reductionism with its thoroughly unscientific denial of formal and final causes in nature and its repudiation of the first cause of all being? As the decline of true science has been a major factor in the decline of Western culture, so too the renewal of science will play a big part in cultural renewal.

Johnson’s extraordinary leadership also is clear: rather than fall into the trap of building a cult of personality around himself and his own considerable intellectual talents, he has instead helped raise up and promote a whole group of intellectual leaders in the cause of scientific renewal. This kind of selfless Christian leadership is a shining example to us all, young and old.

Speaking of the young, I personally wish to commend Phil for the great help he has given me in my efforts to inject a renewed and unbiased understanding of science and its practice into the curricula of our public schools. There is much more for us to do, but working with Phil’s colleagues at Seattle’s Discovery Institute, we have begun the difficult fight for removing the stranglehold of philosophical materialism on textbook science.

Phil, I congratulate and praise you for your tireless work to return science to a sure philosophical grounding in the nature of things as they really are. Please know that during your Biola celebration, I was with you and your colleagues in spirit. As much as I was delighted when I first heard about this celebration in your honor, I am again delighted now that the proceedings from that celebration have appeared in book form.

Right. Rick thinks evolution isn’t science, but intelligent design is. I’m willing to bet there’s some sort of creator, some sort of God, but to discount all the evidence for evolution just because it kinda makes you squeamish to think we came from “lower” life forms seems pretty effing stupid. Then again, it’s not like Ricky has an important job where it’d be good if he analyzed the evidence or anything. Erhm.

Darwin’s Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement [Amazon]
Feb. 21: Rick Santorum loves hot beef

Six feet above and filled with silicon

By now you’ve either heard of or been to Body Worlds, the creepy-but-educational exhibit of actual dead human bodies currently showing at the Franklin Institute.

And, you know, after seeing the exhibit (or the photo at left), I’m sure you thought about it, decided it was either really neat or really weird (or both), and moved on. But if you were either 19-year-old Chrissy Jenks or 31-year-old Shawn Petri, you would look at the bodies and go, “Sign me up!”

Yes, two local residents (one originally from Berks County and the other from Montco, so they’re “local” in the NBC 10 dictionary) have signed up to have their bodies plastinated after death. In Plastination, which was invented by Dr. Gunther von Hagens, the bodily fluids are replaced with silicon, preserving it. The two bodies will be used for research or in a display like the one currently at the Franklin Institute.

That’s about it, although 6,500 people have signed up for this process since the early 1980s, so Petri and Jenks have to get in line, I suppose. The best part of the entire press release is this:

Both body donors are proceeding with plans to inform their entire families about their wishes, change their living wills, and possibly even participate in the body donor program’s annual meeting with Dr. von Hagens in Heidelberg, Germany.

“Excuse me, Aunt Valerie? Just so you know, after I die, my body is going to be filled with silicon and possibly put on display at a museum or an institute. And also perhaps used in an advertisement for said display. Just thought you’d like to know.”

Full release after the jump.

More »

I’ll tell you what you can do with your ‘disputes’

Hey, Mr. “Expert,” how about you shut your cakehole.

Expert Disputes Findings of “Fat Tolerance” Survey

Also: Baby teeth usually fall out

Yep. There is no news going on this week.

Pediatricians: Most kids outgrow bedwetting [Reuters via CNN.com]

Who wants to screw a writer?

A friend alerted me to a study this morning claiming that writers and artists have better sex than anybody else.

Anyway, this study was for “creative artists and poets,” but I don’t really think it’s much of a stretch to include prose writers. This strikes me as odd, since, you know (leans in forward to whisper) we writers aren’t always the most desirable of the bunch. And not just physically, either; do you really want to spend a night out on the town discussing funny headlines, inverted pyramid style writing and why the AP style for the word website is stupid?

The study states that creative people and poets surveyed had an average of 4 to 10 sexual partners since 18, compared to 3 for the ‘average’ person. The researchers surmised that there could be more exploration for the creative person and that the more creative the person, the more partners he or she had. (This latter statement seems to be coming from someone with a Ph.D. in bullshit.)

I, of course, though encourage this stereotype as writers and artists as wild sexual creatures. In fact, you might want to spread it around. Yeah, go ahead. Make sure to add “especially bloggers” at the end of anything good you say. Please?

Creative Spark Fuels Active Sex Life [NBC 10]