I love useless trivia. I'm that kid who knew the average speed at which Heinz ketchup moves down a 45% incline at room temperature. No surprise, then, that I can be endlessly entertained by the new Google Trends feature. This nifty new engine allows a user to find out which city or area is Googling a particular term the most.

For instance, the people of Providence are searching for "donut" the most, but they're not even in the top ten for "doughnut." The good people of Minneapolis are very concerned about "gas prices," but they are also among the top searchers for both "art" and "science." Meriden, CT, prefers to search for "oral sex." Most searches for "blog" come out of Lima, Peru.

You can also compare the search frequency for multiple terms by separating them with a comma, which gets fun when you try trend-searching things like "Red sox, Yankees." Or "god, dog." Folks in Madison, Wisconsin, prefer chocolate ice cream to vanilla by an amazing margin, but in Portland the two flavors are neck-and-neck. "Democrats" are out-googling "Republicans," which makes sense when you confirm that "good" is indeed winning over "evil."

So far, my favorite finding is that Salt Lake City is ranked number one for "orgasm."

File this one under "Holy Jesus. What are these goddamn animals?"

This morning, I read about how Pat Robertson is forcasting a massive tsunami to punish the decadent American coastal elites.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - In another in a series of notable pronouncements, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America's coastline this year.

...

Robertson said the revelations about this year's weather came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January.

When I read that last bit, a quote sprang into my head: "We were somewhere around the prayer retreat when the drugs began to take hold."

As it turns out, Brad over at Sadly, No! had exactly the same reaction. Spooky.

Meanwhile, PZ Myers explains that God clearly wants us to kill Pat Robertson.

Remember, the GOP is the party of fiscal responsibility.

I must be out of the loop. While I often joke about the antics of idiot homophobes, I was not aware that they actually do claim that Teh Gay causes cancer.

Over at My Left Wing, there is a graphic diary about one of the most horrific military battles in American history.

Gotta love The Onion:

NEW YORK—Pro-life advocates celebrated approval of the new anti-abortion drug UR-86 by the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday, calling it a "safe and effective method" for terminating pregnant women while leaving their unborn children unharmed.

Pfizer, manufacturer of UR-86—dubbed the "last-morning-ever pill"—said the drug is intended only for occasions when the mind-set or politics of the mother threaten the life of the fetus.

...

Tuesday night, South Dakota legislators introduced a bill to impose a five-day waiting period for teenage girls and women before they can buy the pill, claiming its use does not adequately safeguard the lifestyle of the father, the laundry of the father, or the favorite meals of the father. The legislators cited Pfizer's own published list of side effects of UR-86, which include domestic messiness, already-born-child neglect, and inadequate stocking of the fridge.

According to USA Today, lesbians' brains respond differently from those of heterosexual women:

Heterosexual women found the male and female pheromones about equally pleasant, while straight men and lesbians liked the female pheromone more than the male one. Men and lesbians also found the male hormone more irritating than the female one, while straight women were more likely to be irritated by the female hormone than the male one.

All three groups rated the male hormone more familiar than the female one. Straight women found both hormones about equal in intensity, while lesbians and straight men found the male hormone more intense than the female one.

The brains of all three groups were scanned when sniffing male and female hormones and a set of four ordinary odors. Ordinary odors were processed in the brain circuits associated with smell in all the volunteers.

In heterosexual males the male hormone was processed in the scent area but the female hormone was processed in the hypothalamus, which is related to sexual stimulation. In straight women the sexual area of the brain responded to the male hormone while the female hormone was perceived by the scent area.

In lesbians, both male and female hormones were processed the same, in the basic odor processing circuits, Savic and her team reported.

Each of the three groups of subjects included 12 healthy, unmedicated, right-handed and HIV-negative individuals.

Okay, kids, let's play Spot The Bad Science!

First of all, 36 subjects? Color me unimpressed. It's a nice bit of preliminary research, sure, but hardly conclusive with that small a subject pool.

Second, we don't even know that human beings respond to sex pheromones in the first place. It is entirely possible that the differences in processing of these scents has absolutely nothing to do with sex or sexual orientation.

Third, stop making shit up:

In both cases the findings add weight to the idea that homosexuality has a physical basis and is not learned behavior.

This makes it sound as though learned behavior does not influence brain activity or individual responses to stimulation. This is part of a popular trend these days, wherein "physical basis" means "genetically determined and fixed by time of birth," and "learned behavior" means "you choose to be a fag." Learn 2 science, noobs.

Watch, I'll show you how easy it is:

"Our study can't answer questions of cause and effect," cautions lead researcher Ivanka Savic at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. "We can't say whether the differences are because of pre-existing differences in their brains, or if past sexual experiences have conditioned their brains to respond differently."(link)

See how that works?

Look, they scanned the brains of a small group of adults and discovered some differences in how those adults responded to a particular stimulus. That tells you precisely nothing about what led to any differences in how their brains are responding. Sure, it's possible that gay people are born with some gay wiring that changes how they respond to smells. Or maybe people who are attracted to women learn to associate woman-smells with the joyful experience of being intimate with a woman, and thus have a different response to said smells than a gay man or straight woman might have. Or maybe lesbians emit invisible fields of gay radiation that mutate the olfactory receptors of their partners.

I'm delighted to see that research is being done in this area, and especially delighted to see that FEMALE homosexuals are actually getting some bloody notice for a change. I'm all for the scanning of brains and the exploration of physiological processes involved in complex human behaviors. That shit is cool. What I'm not delighted about is the media's chronic inability to report scientific findings accurately.

And just to be very clear, I'm not trying to argue that homosexuality is a choice, or that biological factors aren't involved, or that genetic elements aren't involved, or any of that. I'm just sick of the media completely missing the point whenever they try to report on scientific research. Either do your homework and learn the fundamentals, or get a transfer to the sports page.

For your reading pleasure, some quality science writing.

Daddio snapped a picture of this amazing find at Marshal Field's.


Yes, it is indeed a boob vase. And you've got to pronounce it the way it deserves: boooob vaahhz.

The price tag is $640.00, which by my rough estimate works out to about $7 per boob. If that's not a bargain I don't know what is.

I'm too young to remember Kent State. But I will remember it anyway.

Things That Make Me Chuckle, #1,356,989:

The New York Times has informed me that it costs the U.S. Mint 1.4 cents to make one penny.

I'm a bit out of the loop, so I am just now finding out about the wingnuts' answer to the Dia Sin Imigrantes yesterday.

You have a way to answer the illegal aliens in a counter-protest on Monday. My friend, Dan Stein, of Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has an excellent idea: Meatless Monday...

...On Monday, Tyson and other meat-packers (Seaboard, Cargill, Hormel, etc.) are giving their alien employees the day off to protest necessary immigration reform. They want to show us what a day without the "services" of illegal aliens would be like. Let's show them what a day without the customer base of law abiding U.S. citizens would be like. DON'T BUY OR EAT MEAT ON MONDAY! Adds Dan Stein:

Yes, on a day when immigrants are protesting by refusing to work, to sell products, or to buy products, the white man is going to show them who is boss by not eating meat.

I guess their hatred of immigrants is surpassed by their hatred of breaking a nail.

Never fear, wingnuts, because I've got a better idea. I'm calling it, "Steal A Job From A Mexican" Day. How it works is, you clean your own goddam pool. You take out your own garbage. You get a job at a meat packing plant, or a textile factory, or an orchard. You accept a minimum wage paycheck in exchange for hours of thankless manual labor.

See, these are the jobs you claim the brown people are stealing from us, and I think it's high time you brave conservative commandos go steal them back.

Am I the only one who finds it particularly ham-fisted to create Loyalty Day on May 1st?

Oops, my first Loyalty Day and I've already gone and expressed disloyalty to His Imperial Highness, King George. Oh well, maybe next year.