humor

Scientific Humor: Cello Scrotum

In 1974 Elaine Murphy reported the condition that came to be known as “Cello Scrotum” to the British Medical Journal. The condition was supposed to be occur among cellists and was a painful complaint caused by their instrument repeatedly rubbing against their body. Well over 30 years later the originator admits that the condition was a just a hoax. BBC writes:

“Anyone who has ever watched a cello being played would realise the physical impossibility of our claim. “Somewhat to our astonishment, the letter was published.”

Baroness Murphy, formerly a professor at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, did not sign the 1974 letter herself, fearing that she might get into trouble. Her husband John, now chairman of a Suffolk brewery, signed it instead.

The reason for coming clean according to the Baroness was when the hoax was included again in the 2008 Christmas edition of the BMJ. Even though making up science is serious I just can’t stop smiling at this which feels more like a prank than the scientific fraud it is. It also goes to show that even well established journals are not to be trusted.

Rubbing the cello against the body causes “cello scrotum”? It makes you wonder how the editors of the BMJ thought the cello was played – or did they think it was something that cellists did after hours?

Cellist by St Stev (CC by-nc-nd)


Posted on by mklang

From the public relations department

Dear World:

We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of ideals of democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4. Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional on January 20. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage. We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding,

Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(via Art Threat)

Posted on by mklang

Was Tintin gay?

What causes controversy? Well I was surprised to find out that Matthew Parris’ article Of course Tintin’s gay. Ask Snowy in The Times has caused a bit of a stir. Perry begins his article

A callow, androgynous blonde-quiffed youth in funny trousers and a scarf moving into the country mansion of his best friend, a middle-aged sailor? A sweet-faced lad devoted to a fluffy white toy terrier, whose other closest pals are an inseparable couple of detectives in bowler hats, and whose only serious female friend is an opera diva…

. . . And you’re telling me Tintin isn’t gay?

The wonderful part is that this has actually upset some people! A spokesperson for the Studio Herge is quoted in The Sun: “Just because there is an absence of women does not mean that Tintin was gay. “When the comic strip was created, women rarely featured in any stories of that time in the 40s and 50s. “Tintin is not at all gay – he was very macho in fact. He has many friends who are boys but they are not boyfriends.”

In the comments section of the Times article there are lots of people who seem genuinely upset over the thought of this sexual orientation in a cartoon character. The real response should be: Who cares! but I must admit I did enjoy reading the annoyed responses to the article. It’s amazing what people have the energy to get worked up about. Tintin is fiction, daubs of ink, enjoyable reading no matter what his sexuality.

Posted on by mklang

Friday list 1: Worst 100 films

Everyone needs a useless list. Especially on a Friday. Among the more interesting useless is the 100 worst films (ever). This comes from the Internet Movie Database. Here are the worst ten films ever:

90. 2.3 Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) 671
91. 2.3 The Quick and the Undead (2006) 803
92. 2.3 Kazaam (1996) 9,637
93. 2.3 Levottomat 3 (2004) 1,660
94. 2.3 Shark: Rosso nell’oceano (1984) 1,018
95. 2.3 Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie (1997) 3,077
96. 2.3 House IV (1992) 797
97. 2.3 Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 (2000) 31,463
98. 2.3 The Last Sign (2005) 972
99. 2.3 Track of the Moon Beast (1976) 1,254
100. 2.3 American Soldiers (2005) 1,417

Makes me want to go and rent them!

Posted on by mklang

Science humor

An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.

Posted on by mklang