Science news amuses me more than the Daily Mail, the Daily Beast, Babble, Jezebel, CafeMom, Gawker and Huffington Post combined, even including HuffPo’s Love & Sex with its BDSM section (bondage, meh). Just as I was finishing typing out Love & Sex, I swear to you, the pop-up box on my screen announced the latest Love & Sex update had arrived in my inbox, and no, I never signed up for them – Couples Ask Each Other, ‘Am I the Best Sex You Ever Had?’
Guess what, I didn’t click on that tantalizing sociological exploration into human sexual behavior. Why? I could write that article in my head while driving the soccer carpool and holding on Verizon. Not that I would, mind you, but after enough The Most Erotic Fantasies I’ve Had While Breastfeeding, a person could come up with a story on sex positions or infidelity pretty quick and HuffPo might even post it.
We’re supposed to titter and giggle while reading the latest in bondage but I have the same reaction to experiments and empirical evidence and I doubt this is the intended reaction. I take perverse pleasure in that.
Such as these Children’s Health News Updates (Science Daily, Nov. 6):
Betting on brain research: Experts review challenges of translational neuroscience
Research suggests high-fat diets during pregnancy could [negatively] influence brain functioning, behavior of children
High-fat diet postpones brain aging in mice
Brain changes linked to prematurity may explain risk of neurodevelopmental disorders
Oxytocin levels in blood, cerebrospinal fluid are linked, study finds
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Holy cranium! Neuroscientists must be making incredibly strides in curing and preventing brain disease:
Despite great advances in understanding how the human brain works, psychiatric conditions, neurodegenerative disorders, and brain injuries are on the rise. Progress in the development of new diagnostic and treatment approaches appears to have stalled [see first study above for more].
Brain research has been such a dud Science Daily followed up this disappointing news with more brain research! Thus we learn a high-fat diet harms brains. Then, a high-fat diet protects brains. I wonder if the Science Daily intern compiling these updates is intentionally messing with readers. The New York Times might agree.
Then there’s this evidence that scientific behavior trumps sex. Check it out:
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| Participants in brain study: Stretching limits of scientific research and human dignity (credit: Univ of Wash) |
Soft-porn doesn’t have a thing on science. The latter, it’s much harder to fake. I couldn’t make up half of it up, in part because it’s just too absurd, too twisted:
Direct Brain Interface Between Humans
Researchers have successfully replicated a direct brain-to-brain connection between pairs of people as part of a scientific study following the team’s initial demonstration a year ago. In the newly published study, which involved six people, researchers were able to transmit the signals from one person’s brain over the Internet and use these signals to control the hand motions of another person within a split second of sending that signal.
You read it right. Someone might be controlling your brain in the near future. And it’s not the shirtless zombie-hunter hunk or the dominatrix with a whip. Get used to it. Love might be the universal language but it no longer has the monopoly on non-verbal communication. Bodies, speech, words, so last century:
“Sometimes, words just complicate things. What if our brains could communicate directly with each other, bypassing the need for language?”
I couldn’t make any of this up. Truly. Who says that? Who thinks that?
Better yet, who agrees to this stuff? Who volunteers for that kind of torture? Getting strapped into all that? The harness, the chin holder, the discomfort, the indignity. Look at the volunteer on the left, clearly The Submissive.
The things people do in the name of love lust science.
Science is stranger! Had a good laugh, I now need to sign up for science updates.