Atomictumor

OK, I’ll do it.

Your Brain is 53% Female, 47% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

This is kind of a disgusting post, with links to really gross stuff. If you don’t like gross stuff, go here!

I have two classes with a very funny girl named Kathy. Kathy is Polish, but grew up in Germany, so to the untrained ear, she sounds Russian. Exactly like Molotov Cocktease, actually. One day I will get her to say “Brock Sampson”.

But I digress.

Kathy came into class a few weeks ago talking about a nasty-as-fuck problem her husband was having. He woke up one morning with a large bump on his arm. It was bright red, with a good-sized hole in the center. So they did what any of us would do: they squeezed the crap out of it.

Pus seeped out and something could be seen behind the hole. So she broke out the tweezers. After what I can only assume was copius amounts of husbandly cussing, she pulled out a yellow sack-like thing. They threw the sack-like thing away, but took pictures of it for posterity’s sake.

Because it’s always good to know what you pull out of your body, her husband went to see his doc. After looking at the pictures, she admitted she didn’t know what it was. So she took the pictures to a colleague.

The colleague knew. It was a dermatobia hominis, aka human botfly.

Human botflies are typically found in Central & South America. The female botfly catches a mosquito and lays her eggs on it. When the mosquito lands on its victim, the egg(s) fall off onto the host and hatches. The maggot burrows under the skin where it lives and feasts on flesh. After about 8 weeks, it squirms out and goes off in search of a mate.

They grow up so fast!

The doctors said it’s not unheard of for someone to be a botfly host so far north, but it is extremely unusual. I guess he was just one lucky s.o.b.

Kathy got a kick out of telling this story to absolutely everyone at school. Kind of like how I’m enjoying grossing you all out now. :)

Public city schools in Cleveland, Ohio are initiating a program to teach age-appropriate sex ed to all students, K-12.  The classes will, of course, teach biological aspects of sex ed, but will also include lessons on self-esteem and peer pressure.

K-3rd grade will discuss topics such as how a virus works and appropriate vs. unappropriate touching.  4th-6th grades will learn about menstruation and reproductive health, while 7th-12th graders will learn about interpersonal relationships and STDs.

These classes are the result of high teen pregnancy rates as well as alarmingly high rates of STDs.

It’s this sort of progressive, pro-active teaching that I’m such an advocate of.  I wish this were the norm instead of surprising and news-worthy.

This is the first installment (hopefully) of a series. This is by no means the first unintended scientific experiment we have undertaken, merely the first one documented.

While putting a box of Capri Suns in the refrigerator, I came across a faux-tupperware’d box of left-overs. Unable to recall the last time we had a meal that warranted saving for future supping, I took it out to have a look-see.

Upon initial examination, I noted that the box appeared to contain rice and was sealed. Its contents rattled when shaken.

Previous experience has taught me not to inhale when opening mysterious containers, so I’m afraid I am unable to share with you any olfactory data.

The specimen was found to indeed contain rice (reverted back to its uncooked texture, devoid of moisture), but there was also an unknown quantity present.

The unknown quantity appeared to be small 1″ cubes of an uniform grey color, with small black spots on its exterior. There appeared to be a thin coating of milky-white slime on the cubes.

I did not attempt to identify the unknown quantity via taste test. I am not paid nearly enough.

Searching through my mental index of side dishes, I have come to the conclusion that the unknown quantity must be hashed potatoes.

Virgin Galactic seems to be serious about starting suborbital flights for the well-heeled, which is completely awesome, even if my heel is not quite as kept.

Wired’s NextFest had a display of the interior of Scaled Composite’s SpaceShipTwo, based on the craft that famously won the Ansari X-Prize a year or two ago, and the ship commissioned by Virgin’s Richard Branson (who would most likely be a real life Batman, had he suffered an early parenting tragedy) to take folks for a few minutes of weightlessness.  At a price of, oh, about $200,000.

Now I hear people in the back saying “Oh snap, AT, thats about $50,000 more than I intend to pay for suborbital travel,” but to you naysayers out there, I’d like to point out the fact that Virgin is going to spring for a week of flight training for that 4 minutes.  Because weightlessness, undoubtedly, takes some conditioning.

I’m joking, but that hides the fact that I think this is the among the awesomest news we’ve gotten out of just about anything in the past 20 years.  People don’t see the purpose in space travel, and hell, there may not be on other than expanding the human frontier (in that we’ve pretty much expanded about as much as Earth has) and because I think that the idea of casual spaceflight would do tremendous good for society.  Sure, you’re not going to hitch a flight on one of these bad boys this year, but in 10 years you can bet the price will drop.

Just wait until they have overnight stays in space.  I’d be interested in the practical applications of zero-g romance, myself, and that might just be worth the ticket price…