Friday, August 12, 2011

God, I Love Science!!!

Sheep Drugged and Shocked to Prove Taser Safety





Seriously. Go read it for yourself.

Now, while I admit that I have no particular desire to teach sheep to freebase and then go all Tasermatic on their sheepy asses, there's a certain wild-eyed enthusiasm to this whole project that I find fundamentally admirable. Who came up with this idea? More importantly, who did they find to implement it? It goes to show: we may live in a modern world, but there's still a job for Igor whenver he needs it. Because who else could you possibly call upon to make sheep snort meth, then apply the lightning rod to their woolly butts if not that most tried and tested of all B-movie stereotypes: the Mad Scientist's Equally Mad Assistant.

Look, I know this whole thing is awfully hard on the sheep, but as a longtime fan of B-movies, I can't help but approve. In my youth, I often envisioned myself as a Victor Frankenstein for a new age. I liked Science. I liked weird stuff. I liked mixing chemicals until they changed colour and smelled funny (and made the cat fall over). I liked explosions and lightning. At no point have I ever been concerned with the idea that there are Some Things Man Wasn't Meant To Know. I have wild hair. I can cackle maniacally.
There really ought to be a useful place for me in the world of science. And now, thanks to this... clearly VERY scientific project, it is apparent that somewhere, somehow, Mad Science is still happening. Could it be that at last, at long last, my project to crossbreed magpies and tiger sharks has a future?

7 comments:

  1. Why not do all the testing on the people who think it's a good idea?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent plan, sir. I heartily agree. Silliness aside, I'm completely boggled by the insanity of pumping sheep full of meth and then electrocuting them. I would dearly like to know how they got permission to carry out such 'experiments' in the first place.

    If I recall correctly, the Qld police force requires officers to submit to a quick taser jolt before they're permitted to use one. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah, I fail to see the point.

    "Baaa, yeah, baaa that's effective ... baaaa ... fuck"

    ReplyDelete
  4. Who doesn't love science.

    Former New Scientist Editor Alun Anderson in response to being asked what is the magazines policy on what should go into New Scientist replied “Science is interesting. And if you don’t agree, you can fuck off!”

    If you like this I recommend keeping an eye out for 'Dark Matters: Twisted But True which is being hosted by Fringe's own John Noble (Walternate) here is a run down of the first six episodes.

    EPISODE 1: The Philadelphia Experiment, Ape-Man Army, Zapped to Death


    UFO expert Morris Jessup tested invisibility and teleportation after receiving an extraordinary letter stating that the U.S. Navy had experimented with this very concept before. Would his investigation be the end of his career?

    In the 1920s, Soviet scientist Dr. Ilya Ivanov began performing disturbing experiments to crossbreed humans with apes. Could he create intelligent apes, or would his experiments result in horror?

    In the early 20th century, a race was under way to increase America's flow of electricity. To that end, Thomas Edison conducted a number of unorthodox studies to meet this growing demand. To his surprise and regret, however, these experiments would eventually lead to a dark creation that remains infamous today.

    ReplyDelete
  5. EPISODE 5: 21 Grams, Missing Cosmonauts, Sound of Death


    When French scientist Vladimir Gavreau finds his laboratory flooded with a mysterious energy, his research takes a menacing new direction. Had Gavreau invented a new weapon of mass destruction?

    At the dawn of the age of space exploration, two radio buffs stumbled across a heart-stopping sound. Were the Soviets covering up a space mission gone terribly wrong?

    Boston medic Dr. Duncan MacDougall sets out to scientifically prove the existence of the human soul by weighing a man at the moment of death.

    EPISODE 6: Radio Waves of Death, How to Make a Zombie, Jekyll vs. Hyde


    Death by deadly ray sounds like a scene from a science fiction movie. However, the legendary Nikola Tesla claims to have created one in the early 20th century. Some say an 800-mile area in Siberia was devastated during his radio-wave experiments, leaving very few survivors. Could this be true?

    Scientist Wade Davis was obsessed with cracking the zombie secrets. After tracking down a man with his own death certificate, he believed he had uncovered the science to zombie legend.

    After Dr. Horace Wells fails to invent anesthesia using laughing gas, he experiments with a new drug: chloroform. Wells' experiments would lead to horrific, devastating mistakes.

    Is this not AWESOME.. if only they included a guide to home experiments

    ReplyDelete
  6. For the most seriously fracked research how about this one
    a paper from 1972 by Dr. Robert G. Heath titled "Pleasure and brain activity in man: Deep and surface electroencephalograms during orgasm". The first thing I noticed was that 15 out of the 18 works cited in this manuscript are self-citations. That is, 83% of the previous research that this paper was built upon was written by the author himself.
    I'm just going to quote huge swaths of this paper and let you all say, "WHAT THE HELL!!?"
    In patient B-19, a man, EEG's were obtained on two occasions when this arousal culminated in orgasm: once, as a consequence of masturbation and once through heterosexual intercourse.
    Wait, what's that Dr. Heath? This patient is homosexual? Oh...

    Well please, tell us more about the patient and your experiments.
    This man... had a 5-year history of overt homosexuality and a 3-year history of drug abuse. He was considered a chronic suicidal risk... and had made several abortive suicidal attempts... One month of military service... was terminated by medical discharge because of "homosexual tendencies"... The patient's experimentation with drugs began... with ingestion of vanilla extract. He became habituated to amphetamines, and he had used a variety of other sedative and hallucinogenic chemicals (marijuana regularly, nutmeg frequently, d-LSD sporadically, as well as inhalants, such as glues, paints, and thinners, and sedatives).
    This is to set the stage. This patient has severe epilepsy, is a drug addict, and is extremely depressed.

    So what does Heath do next?
    ...the patient was equipped with a three-button self-stimulating transistorized device... The three buttons... were attached to electrodes in the various deep [brain] sites, and the patient was free to stimulate any of these three sites as he chose... He was permitted to wear the device for 3 hours at a time: on one occasion he stimulated his septal region 1,200 times, on another occasion 1,500 times, and on a third occasion 900 times. He protested each time the unit was taken from him, pleading to self-stimulate just a few more times... the patient reported feelings of pleasure, alertness, and warmth (goodwill); he had feelings of sexual arousal and described a compulsion to masturbate.
    One aspect of the total treatment program for this patient was to explore the possibility of altering his sexual orientation through electrical stimulation of pleasure sites of the brain. As indicated in the history, his interests, contacts, and fantasies were exclusively homosexual; heterosexual activities were repugnant to him.

    He's gay. Very clearly gay. And his brain is getting forcibly stimulated such that he's experience strong sensations of sexual pleasure.


    http://blog.ketyov.com/2011/08/self-stimulating-brain-for-heterosexual.html

    ReplyDelete