Things everyone believes that aren't true.

Here are a few things we think people should know about common myths in child raising.
1. Don't swim for an hour after eating.
This one really irritates us. There is no valid reason to not swim after eating, Sure some blood goes to your stomach to aide digestion, but not enough to effect any other organs or muscle processes. We say feed the kid a large meal and shove em in the pool.
2. The 5 Second rule for food on the floor. Some bored scientists who had nothing better to do tested this hypothesis by dropping food on various surfaces and leaving it for up to one hour. They then tested to food for bacteria and contaminants. They found firstly that food that was on the floor for 5 seconds was just as likely to pick up contaminants as food that was on the floor for one hour. They also discovered that even though some contaminants were picked up in none of the cases were the foods dangerous to consume, which the scientists proved by consuming the food.
3. You will catch a cold if you don't wear a coat in cold weather. Studies on this one were done for years and until recently were inconclusive, sometimes colds were gotten sometimes not. But recent studies have suggested that having a cold sinus cavity allows more oxygen into the local blood vessels which can allow viruses or bacteria to more easily enter the bloodstream, but having a cold nose is unaffected by wearing a coat or hat so again a false statement.
4. Sitting too close to the tv will ruin your eyes. Not true at all, if this were the case millions of people who have spent hours a day in front of computer screens for years (yours truly for example.) would have major eye damage by now. There was some truth to this myth before 1968 when televisions emitted x-rays but their is no truth to it now.
5. Stranger Danger. This one really burns our brioche and is the most harmful of all the myths. Stranger danger. Parents all across the country, (and the world) have been filling their children full of fear that they will be abducted or raped or worse by every stranger they meet. In reality a child has a better chance of being hit by lightning or killed by a bee sting. Of the 73.7 Million children in America last year there were 115 Stranger abductions which means 1 in about 610,000. Your child getting killed in an airplane crash 1 in 310,000. Hit by lightening 1 in 240,000. Your child is twice as likely to get hit by lightening as being abducted by a stranger. So please, PLEASE do not fill your child with fear. A child needs to feel that the world is a safe place as they grow up. Their are all sorts of psychological problems that can result from spending their days worrying about every stranger. If you want to scare your child do it honestly, rent Ju-on. But cut the stranger danger crap.

And we think we have problems!

Here in the Good Old U.S. of A. we have some problems to be sure, most of them political in nature, the left and the right sputter nonsense at each other in ever louder and more vulgar tones. But the people of Australia have serious problems of their own. Camel problems, It seems roving gangs of wild camels are terrorizing towns in the outback. People are actually afraid to leave their homes for fear of being trampled or bitten, or possibly stepping in what must be innumerable piles of camel dung. So this morning when you leave your house stop and take a deep breath and enjoy your camel free environment, and take a moment to reflect on those poor Australian citizens living in fear of the dreaded dromedary, (if only they were allowed to own guns.)

Going first person here for a minute.

Ever had one of THOSE nights. I had a very busy day yesterday and were what some might call bone tired. So at 10:30 or so I decided bedtime was in order, sleep came easily but not so rest. 2:30 and the sandman sneezed, and I lay wide awake and wondering what the heck do we do now. A little milk, get online try to find something a little boring to put myself back into sleep state. And what do I come across but a news story from Pascagoula Mississippi. In 1942 Pascagoula had expanded to about 15,000 population due to manufacturing, specifically warships. In early June of that year a strange terror struck the town. They called him The Phantom Barber. He first struck at The Convent of Our Lady of Victories entering in the middle of the night and cutting the hair of Evelyn Marie Briggs and Edna Marie Hydel, this on a friday night. On the following monday he entered the home of Carol Peatie and cut what the papers called her blonde locks, the babysitter (who was watching the house while Carol's mother was in the hospital)was stirred by a noise and entered to find a just awakening Carol sitting in bed asking "Why, Why, Where's my hair?" The sitter found a mans bare footprint on the empty bed by the window. The Barber Struck a total of ten times, he would enter on a monday or friday night,
cutting a screen in almost all cases to gain entry. He would cut some hair and depart. One victim described waking to a faint feeling of something passing over her face and then waking up later violently ill. Police guessed chloroform. One attack that seemed unrelated was that of the Heidlebergs who were attacked in the night with what they believed was a solid iron bar. Mrs Heidlberg lost two teeth and Mister Heidleberg was knocked unconscious. Neither saw the attacker.
Two months later an arrest was made in the Heidlberg attack. William Dolan a 57 year old german chemist. He had a grudge against the Heidlbergs father who was a magistrate and had refused to lower the bail in a case against Dolan for tresspassing. The general agreement was that the Heidlberg attack was out of character for the Barber but the Police Chief was convinced he did it. As to motive, the chief believed it was to impair the morale of war workers. Other rumours of motive, He was using the hair to make bomb sites for the axis, or he was placing a Hex on someone. Personally I think Dolan was a victim of wartime hysteria, neighbors signed statments mentioning his german sympathies. He was sentenced to 10 years for the attack on the Heidlbergs, he went to prison denying his involvement,
and six years later was given a limited suspension by Mississippi Governor Fielding Wright who then had a lie detector test administered which he passed. Three years after that he was freed. The only description of the Barber was by young Mary Evelyn Briggs "He was sort of short, sort of fat, and wearing a white sweatshirt." So who was this crazed hair fetishist wandering the midnight streets of Pascagoula. We will never know. On another note, Pascagoula is also the town where in 1972 two fisherman Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker claimed they were abducted by aliens who they described as having no legs or having their legs fused together, they floated above the ground, they had no eyes or mouth. Where their nose and ears would have been were "carrot-like" growths instead. The local Sheriff left the two men alone in a room recording them without their knowledge and they continued to speak to each other in frightened confusion. Which convinced him that they at least believed thier story. Some advice then, If you ever go the Pascagoula Mississippi, don't drink the water. I think I'm going to try to get some sleep now.

It's about to get more confusing.

If your mind was bending slightly yesterday when we discussed Schrodinger Wavefunction wrap your brain around this. It's called the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment.
The basic idea is you put a cat in a box with a randomly decaying material that may or may not decay and cause a poison to be released which would kill the cat. The experiment states that until you open the box to view the cat it is both Alive and Dead. We have a cat who we have named Bowser, he is hard to describe personality wise, he shows affection by grabbing on with his claws and biting your hand, he never draws blood (well almost never.). We feel that our cat Bowser would have another interpetation which we will call Bowser's Corollary of Schrodingers Cat thought experiment. In Bowser's Corollary the question would become will YOU survive opening the box to see if the cat is alive or dead.

If this is confusing, don't feel alone.

If you are about to read this blog entry, Beware!, we are about to discuss Physics, and it won't make much sense. The actual name of the theory we are going to discuss is 'QUANTUMN ENTANGLEMENT AND NONLOCALITY', which could mean anything and sounds a little dirty. The actual theory behind this has been proven scientifically by a number of men in white lab coats with pocket protectors and bald spot comb overs (the bald spot comb overs are a requirement when entering the field of physics.) The theory states, and we are quoting here "In quantum theory, certain physical systems can become "entangled," meaning that their states are directly related to the state of another object somewhere else. When one object is measured, and the Schroedinger wavefunction collapses into a single state, the other object collapses into its corresponding state ... no matter how far away the objects are (i.e. nonlocality)." Think intergalactic instantaneous phone calls, which could actually be a possible outcome of the use of this theory. But we think our old friend Einstein (see picture) said it better. He called it "Spooky action at a distance." and that's why we think he was a genius.

I am an admitted hamster lover.

We came across a news story in our bleary eyed coffee chugging attempt to wake up our brain this morning. It seems the madison avenue money machine has already decided what the "OMG I gotta get one of those!" toy is going to be this year. A little artificial hamster called a Zhu Zhu pet. The commercial for the Zhu Zhu pet is available at http://www.zhuzhupets.com/. The last line of the commercial jingle is "You will love your Zhu Zhu pets cause they're so real without the mess." You can buy one of 5 different artificial hamsters and sold seperatley (of course), nine different hamster habitats.
Do we have a problem with buying artificial hamsters for your child? Well... Yes.
The hamsters make pooping noises, but no poop, you don't have to feed them water them or clean their habitat. We were taught that having a pet is a reponsibility. It was a way for a parent to teach a child that caring for another creature required you to pay attention. Because if you didn't it would die. An important life lesson that is slowly being taken away from our children. By owning and then eventually losing a beloved pet, we learned a little bit about how fleeting and important life is. So if you are planning on buying a Zhu Zhu pet for your children, please also buy a goldfish. And on another note, Our cats are gonna love Zhu Zhu pets for christmas. (The preceding rant was payed for by The American Goldfish Board, and donations from readers like you.)

What is the opposite of writers block?

Back on September 21, 2009 Netflix awarded a 1Million dollar grand prize in a contest designed to improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to enjoy a movie based on their movie preferences. The prize went to an group of people who called themselves BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos. Yesterday while searching for an instantly streaming movie on Netflix we came across this little spontaneous laughter event. The movie title we were looking at was in documentaries, 'Mysteries of the Bible: Apocalypse'
and beneath it '3.9 Stars Our best guess for Kenton, Recommended based on your interest in 'Scooby Doo and the Goblin King'. Money well earned gentlemen.

Things we learned while dealing with writers block.

It's been a strange couple of days since we last posted, we have been very busy here at the crazy, and have had little time to work on the blog. Having said that, we should point out that even had we the time it seemed that we we didn't have anything interesting to write about. On the news side there was all the falderall over Sarah Palins new book which to us seemed as interesting as watching dust settle on our knick knacks. Our personal lives have taken an unusual turn, but were most definitely of a private nature. Someone has pointed out that our early television broadcasts have had the time to travel 80 Light years or 400 trillion miles or so from earth. So if they have the capabilities people (or spongoid microformal flexworms) in the alpha centauri system are watching 'Lost'. Near Zeta Reticuli whatever creatures may inhabit those planets are being subjected to 'The Brady Bunch' (We certainly hope they don't see it as an act of war.} The lucky creatures near Mu Arae if they have the equipment, (or possibly natural tv antenna eye stalks.) are viewing 'The Twilight Zone'. And finally near Pi Mensae they could be watching 'Howdy Doody', which gave us the strange idea that if the creatures that may exist near Pi Mensae were able to pick up TV signals but thought they were messages from God. Would we call that religion Howdyism, and would the members of that religion be doodyites? Forgive us, it's early in the morning and we haven't had our coffee yet.

A change of pace.

It has come to our attention that our first 4 entries into the blog are political in nature, which was entirely unintended, if you wanted to see blogs or news stories on general political discourse you could simply enter Left Leaning Loon, Or Right wing retard in any search engine and find thousands of them. So today we go in a different direction. Our researchers have stumbled upon an interesting news story from the 1990's. (this was done by randomly entering words into search engines while on a coffee and energy drink fueled attempt to avoid housework.) In 1997 U.S. navy "spy" sensors picked up a noise that was heard by sensors 3000 miles apart. It was described as the big bloop, you can hear it here, remember that it is sped up 16 times to make it clearer for the listener. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop. Scientists simply don't know what it was, some assume it was a large animal. (Which would have to be larger than any known animal to be heard that far away.) There have been many other sounds heard by both deep sea listeners and deep space listeners. (The WOW signal in 1977 picked up by S.E.T.I. (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.) Is another interesting one. As a great writer once said, "There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies."
(Was he calling Horatio an idiot, We don't know.) So listen to the Big Bloop, think about what it may mean. We, on the other hand, have housework to do.

On the etiquette of bowing.

Our friend brushy clump large weasel recently emailed a news story showing President Barack Obama bowing to the Japanese emperor Akihito you can view it here http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/11/obama-emperor-akihito-japan.html
He believes the U.S. president should bow to no one. We disagree. We love America and do believe it is the greatest nation on earth. But that's the point, we are one nation on a planet that holds 195 nations. And if we are going to live peacefully with the friendly nations we need to do so by showing mutual respect. We understand that some feel that the President of the United States bowing to a foreign leader shows weakness.
And to some we're sure it does. But it also shows these world leaders that the United States comes to them on equal footing, because after all perhaps we are the greatest nation on earth. But we are not the ONLY nation on earth. The old saying of When in Rome, do as the Romans do holds true today. President Obama was a visitor in a foreign country where bowing to show respect is a tradition. We think the impression he leaves will be one of a powerful world leader who respects and understands that other cultures exist. So kudos to President Obama for showing he is a world leader and not just the American president. And remember if Japan gets out of hand we can just nuke em again. Ciao for now.

A quick note.

We are finding working on this blog daily to be cathartic. But if you are wondering why we keep referring to ourselves as we, and not I, it's because this blog is currently being written by the two of us. We would certainly enjoy posting other peoples opinions or psychotic ramblings in this blog, so if you have anything you want to get off your chest email it to the address above and we will post it if it meets our obviously low standards. Ciao for now.

End of the world... again.

"The earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, everyman wants to write a book, and it is evident the end of the world is fast approaching." Lately we have been seeing a lot of end of the world predictions based on the erroneous belief that the Mayan Calendar ends in 2012.
Or that the sun is in the equinox of the milky way galaxy, or that planet X is going to hit the earth, or numerous other end of the earth prophecies, (Y2K, Revelations, etc.) People have been predicting the end times since the beginning times, in some cases resulting in millions of deaths, (In China one end of the world prophecy resulted in a war which killed 20.000.000 people.) Usually these end of the world prophecies are started due to celestial events or religious fervor. Christopher Columbus predicted the world ending during his lifetime. Its easy to understand people feeling as if chaos is ensuing when death and destruction are shown 24 hours a day on news feeds around the world. But keep in mind that there have always been mass murderers, rapists, psychotic leaders, drugged out killers and clean freaks. (Those clean freaks scare the heck out of me.) But just as there are a lot more bad people in the world, there are also a lot more good people. So when predictions like the one we started this little diatribe with are spouted, take them with a grain of salt.
After all the quote above was found on an assyrian clay tablet dated from 2800 BC.

If all terrorists looked like this.

We were reading a New York Times story about the trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, (the 9/11 mastermind.) We were surprised to find he had been waterboarded 183 times by the CIA. Which, looking at the photo we have to think the CIA simply believed he needed a bath. (For those of you who are offended by the idea that we use waterboarding as a springboard for a joke please understand we find torture abhorrent, and we think waterboarding is torture. On the other hand this guy admitted at a hearing held in front of international officials to personally decapitating Daniel Pearl. So let's torture him a little more before we saw his head off with a dull hacksaw.) Ciao for now.

Something from the morning news.

Just finished reading the morning news, (Internet versions of course, why get the paper version which can only print yesterdays news?) It seems that the left is too far left, the right is too far right, and the middle is muddled. One headline that made us laugh, "Irish priest kidnapped in Philippines released by MILF." I think that one speaks for itself... Who is this aggressive cougar and what does she want with an Irish Priest? Ok so upon reading the story which was in the christian science monitor by the way, we find that MILF stands for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Which we have shortened for our purposes to the Moronic Liberation Front. (Shhh just pretend there is an N in Moro Islamic.) By the way, if we have offended any islamists by our lame joke, get a sense of humor. And Christians and athiests alike will get theirs in due time. Also Buddhists, Bocononists, Rastafarians, Scientologists, Secular humanists, and those of you who answered none when asked for religous preference on any given form. If we left out any major religions, or lack thereof, please feel free to post a comment so we can add it. That's all the time we have this morning, hopefully we can add more as the weirdness intensifies. Heads up fellow looney tooners, in case you missed it, the MILF is a group, not Lara Croft/Angelina Jolie.

First day on the new blog.

This is our first attempt at a blog so bear with us. We are hoping to update this once weekly for now just to get a feel for what a blog is and how it would work for us. We plan on using this blog to voice our opinions (and perhaps a few other peoples opinions) about current events, interesting happenings, nature, gardening, laundry tips (Just kidding about the laundry tips but who knows?)
Generally we plan on taking things out of our brains and displaying them here for your amusement, or debasement, or whatever twisted use you may have for them. So here we are. Day one. Genesis.