Sore Thumb (or My Place in the World)

I wish I had the thousand words that this picture very easily sums up.

Radio Pirate Artichoke: Tonight, We Make Soap

To make soap, we first render fat.

Mammatocumulus

Give us clouds.
Clouds like big breasts.
Like condensed milk dissolving in water.
Like ripe fruit hanging from the branches, waiting to be plucked.
Give us rain unending.

Choreomania (Saint Vitus' Dance)

Most people have heard of this. People spontaneously errupting into dance. Wobbling and jiggling until they colapse. Hallucinating about demons and such crap. Most people attribute it to "mass hysteria". Here's my scientific opinion on "mass hysteria". Bollocks. Utter and complete bollocks. You want to explain a complex social phenomenon based on people's psychology? Find a half-decent explanation then rather than a cheap cop-out that saves you the trouble of doing real research and work. Anyway, bollocking done. Back to the dancing mania. There is no real consensus as to what caused (and is causing) this. My guess, at least fot the cases that occured in the Middle Ages (let's just say that soap wasn't a prized possession back then, neither was a burial a thing of habit), and judging by the fact that the symptoms described sound a lot like the symptoms of poisoning and general neurological doo-hickeys (yes, doo-hickeys is a scientific term), the people that danced like crazy until they colapsed, foamed at the mouth and saw DEMONS!!! DEMONS!!! DEMONS EVERYWHERE!!! were most likely poisoned (possibly with ergot). Although I don't discard the possibility that under stressful conditions, psychologically vulnerable people are very susceptible to other people's behaviour (just look at all the crap about "The King of Pop"), "mass hysteria" is not a valid scientific explanation, in fact it's not an explanation at all. So, next time you use the term, expect the Science Ninjas to creep up to you when you least expect it to exact critically acurate and rigorous revenge. With the power of Peer Review!!!