Just look at this picture for one minute and ask yourself this: Just what in the hell has gone wrong with us as a species? Did we take a wrong turn somewhere along the way? Or was this the great divine plan all along? To have humans rise up to rule over the animal kingdom so that one glorious day we could take a poodle and shave and spray paint the shit out of him to make him look like…like…I actually have no idea what the hell this poor dog is supposed to be. A chicken? Turkey? Punk rocker? No that’s not it.
Oh I know. It’s supposed to look like a dog who wants someone to shoot him. Success! Seriously, look into that dog’s eyes. He’s begging for the Old Yeller treatment.
And the award for most likely to happily run into oncoming traffic goes to…
Sharon Gursky-Doyen, a Texas University anthropologist, and her team of researchers have discovered a group of the long-lost pygmy tarsiers of Indonesia. These 2oz nocturnal primates (pictured above) are about the size of a mouse and have not been observed since 1921.
Unlike all other primates, the pygmys have fingers with claws instead of nails.
Also unlike all other primates, pygmy tarsiers don’t have sex to reproduce. Instead, they perform a most unusual mating ritual which involves one pygmy sneaking up behind another pygmy and putting a drop of water on his head. This causes the now wet pygmy to start smoking and, before you know it, a big furry boil forms on his back. That boil then pops off the creature and grows into another pygmy.
The only drawback to this method of reproduction is that each new pygmy seems to be a bit more evil than the last one. Probably a result of the extreme inbreeding that takes place when one creatures replicates itself. Luckily you can always tell an evil pygmy from a nice one since the evil ones tend to have a mohawk.
Not much else is known about the pygmies, but that will soon change.
“I’m going to be up around the clock studying these fascinating creatures,” says Sharon Gursky-Doyen, “In fact, it’s already after midnight here and I’m about to go back into the lab to try and determine what these creatures eat. I think I’ll start with some leftover fried chicken.”
Good luck to you, Sharon. I’m sure that your reserach will yield all sorts of fascinating details about these mysterious creatures.
UPDATE: Sharon Gursky-Doyen’s lab has been burned to the ground. Firefighters responded to the blaze at approximately 12:39am last night. While fighting the flames, firefighters reported that they heard loud cackling noises coming from inside, along with what one fireman described as “A bunch of goddamn freaks singing that Hi Ho Hi Ho, Off to Work We Go song.”
The fire was put out at approximately 1:45am. However, Sharon Gursky-Doyen is nowhere to be found. The only clue to her whereabouts that authorities have to go on is the fact that her Facebook profile picture was changed moments before the fire broke out.
Looks like we’re all one step closer to being able to survive in the impending Waterworld, as predicted by Dr. Kevin Costner, Professor of Egomaniacal Filmmaking at USC.
NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour has been equipped with a $250 million wastewater recycling system which will allow the lucky seven astronauts on-board to drink their own urine.
Once again. They will be drinking their own URINE.
NASA’s Bob Bagdigian says that the water tastes just fine to him. Just a faint taste of iodine.
“I’ve got some in my fridge,” said Bob. “It tastes fine to me. Who wants a glass? Anyone? Anyone want a nice cold glass of Big Bob’s urine? No? Really? Alrighty then. How about a purified piece of my own feces? Other than a faint aftertaste of human shit, it’s just as delicious as your mom’s fresh baked brownies.”
Endeavour blasted off Friday night on a mission to spruce up the international space station. Other than the urine watercooler, they’ll also be adding a couple extra bedrooms, an additional bathroom, and a kitchenette.
Not sure why they need the extra bathroom since they’ll now be able to piss right into their drinking supply.
Oh the joys of living in space. If drinking your urine isn’t enough to make you realize that humans are meant to live on Earth (and not in space, or on the moon, or Mars, or anywhere else in the universe as far as I can tell), and that we should make it a top priority to protect our planet’s natural resources, then I don’t know what will.
- Tom Stallard, scientist, University of Leicester
A blue glow was recently detected over Saturn’s north polar region. It was discovered by NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft, which can view parts of Saturn that Hubble cannot.
Auroras like this (such as the Earth’s Northern lights) are caused by charged particles flying along the magnetic field lines of a planet into its atmosphere.
Where could all of those blue particles on Saturn have come from? That’s the question NASA scientists asked themselves. And here are the five competing theories they came up with as to how blue particles could make their way up high into the Saturn sky.
After watching the following video I may have to move up my estimated start date for the Great Robohuman War, from 2058 to 2009.
Meet Jules. The biologically designed robot who only wants to do one thing: obliterate a large part of England.
Jules is the first android that can mimic the facial expressions and lip movements of human beings. The evil monster observes people’s expressions through its video camera eyes and then converts the image into digital commands. Those commands are then sent to the 34 tiny electronic motors underneath the robot’s rubber skin (which is hilariously called Frubber, short for flexible rubber).
All this happens in real time with no delay. So if Jules ever decides to go through with his little plan of mass destruction, we won’t have those precious few seconds to react while he boots up.
The project is called “Human-Robot Interaction,” and was created by the blood-thirsty lunatics at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in England. It certainly is reassuring to know that one of the first projects studying human-robot interactions ended up creating a robot who wants to destroy Wales. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot, robots. Jerks.
Thankfully, right now Jules is just a head with no body. So he can’t come after us. But I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before some idiot slaps good ‘ol Jules on top of one of those hexapods.
Every April, ambitious (and deranged) robotics students gather in Austria to compete in the annual Austrian Hexapod Championships.
What’s a hexapod, you may ask? It’s simply a six-legged robot. Why six legs instead of two or four? Isn’t it obvious? They give them those two extra legs so if one leg gets damaged the robot will still be able to chase you down and kill you.
That’s really all I know about hexapods. They have six legs. That, and the fact that they’re modeled after insects. I assume they do that to make them extra creepy to humans. If so, mission accomplished.
The site for the Hexapod Championships is in German, and since I don’t spreken ze deutsche I can’t really get a handle on exactly what these robots are competing for. But I kind of like it that way. I’d hate to learn that they’re competing to see which robots can bring about the fall of man in the shortest amount of time.
Here’s a compilation video of all the hexapod contestants from the 2008 event. Take a look and see if you can tell what they’re competing for. Funniest hexapod? Creepiest hexapod? Dumbest hexapod? You be the judge.
UPDATE: I just found out that the below hexapod won the 2008 grand prize. So my greatest fears have been confirmed. They were competing to see which hexapod will bring about the fall of man in the shortest amount of time.
How else can you explain the reckless, heartless, and downright diabolical use of Mambo #5?
If you hate looking at pictures of yourself like I do, then you’re going to love what researchers at Tel Aviv University have come up with.
They’ve built a Beauty Machine that takes a picture of your ugly face, manipulates the image, and then spits out a photo of a more beautiful you.
In short, it’ll help you visually lie about how you look on Facebook. This will go along perfectly with all those other lies you slap up on Facebook to try to make yourself look more interesting and cuter than you really are (e.g. all that nonsense you write in the “Interests” section. As if you’re really into Nietzsche, dancing naked, and bubble baths).
Here’s a sampling of some before-and-after photos which show the Beauty Machine in action:
Samples of photos manipulated by the Beauty Machine. Original photos on top, manipulated ones on the bottom. Looks like the machine made Lincoln uglier.
If you’re wondering how the machine knows what beauty is, Professor Daniel Cohen-Or of the Blavatnik School of Computer Sciences at Tel Aviv University says this:
“Beauty can be quantified by mathematical measurements and ratios. It can be defined as average distances between features, which a majority of people agree are the most beautiful. I don’t claim to know much about beauty. For us, every picture in this research project is just a collection of numbers.”
So there you have it, guys. Next time you get an unexplained boner you’ll now know why. Numbers. You were probably doing some kind of quadratic equation in your head and that made you hornier than a two-peckered Billy Goat.
In the future this technology could be used as a guide for plastic surgeons, and it may even be a function on your digital camera. So instead of having to photoshop the hell out of all your pictures, you and your friends can live the lie in real time.
