Song Against Sex

According to a new study from the University of Pittsburgh, "Teens who prefer popular songs with degrading sexual references are more likely to engage in intercourse or in pre-coital activities." (upi)

Good thing I listened to these guys growing up--or wait, maybe that's why....

Global Warming Can Suck It - Good News Wednesday XXXV

Take this environmentalists!

A satellite that was designed to monitor carbon dioxide (that molecule that causes "global warming") somehow crashed into the ocean before it reached orbit. I say "somehow" because it's obvious that someone sabotaged this thing to prevent all those crazy liberal environmentalists from getting proof that global warming is real. Not that it actually is--everyone knows that this satellite would just manufacture data that scientists could spin to produce the results they want. Not today NASA, not today. Good try though. And thanks for wasting $278 million of my dollars on this little science project crash test of yours. (wapo)

Wow. I went a little overboard with the italics today, didn't I?

Update On Your Teeth

We talked about this a few months ago.

Looks like they found the gene to regrow teeth. You can stop flossing..... now. (dailymail.co.uk)

Social Networking Could Kill You

"People's health could be harmed by social networking sites because they reduce levels of face-to-face contact, an expert claims." (bbc.co.uk)

We sort of talked about this stuff a few weeks ago, but this version of the story, via the bbc, adds a few more terrifying quotes that I wanted to share.

Dr. Aric Sigman, the author of the study the story referenced, is quoted extensively in the article:

Dr Sigman also argues using electronic media undermines people's social skills and their ability to read body language.

"One of the most pronounced changes in the daily habits of British citizens is a reduction in the number of minutes per day that they interact with another human being," he said.

"In less than two decades, the number of people saying there is no-one with whom they discuss important matters nearly tripled."

Dr Sigman says he is "worried about where this is all leading".(bbc.co.uk)

So are we.

I wonder if writing a blog counts as "social-networking." [yes, it does -.ed]
Shit.

the internet makes things go viral. like this picture.

good morning.
Question: Did you overindulge this weekend? eat too much? party too much? drink too much? If so take a look at this picture and maybe next weekend you'll think twice before stuffing your face with all those wings and guinness.



[click on me and I get bigger, really]

this is what we've come to.
and this is clearly where it ends.

remember kids: everything in moderation...
...and for the love of god, remember to fucking walk once in a while.

[image via somewhere via reddit.com]

Global Warming + Asteroid = Death... Asteroid + Nothing = Just Annoying.

A gigantic asteroid isn't enough. Turns out you need a gigantic asteroid AND GLOBAL WARMING to cause a mass extinction. Who knew? Given what's been "happening" with "global warming" the last few "years" it looks like we're close. Come on asteroid, where are you?

According to discovery news,

"In a recent paper in the journal Paleobiology, [Nan Arens] and colleague Ian West argue that there are two types of events that can cause extinctions -- "pulses" (quick, deadly shocks, like comets) and "presses" (drawn-out stresses that push ecosystems to the brink but may not kill outright, like million-year-long volcanic eruptions)." The chances of mass dyings go way up when both happen together, argues Arens.

So those idiots that said the dinosaurs were killed by a comet were partially right, and the people that said the dinosaurs were killed by global warming were partially right. But that idiot that said they were killed by cigarettes was way off.

Step On A Crack...

Break your mother's... planet.

Cracks in the Earth--okay not the kind in sidewalks--may be contributing to global warming, according to discovery news.

Whether devastating faults, dank caves or mud cracks on a drying desert plain, Earth's surface is riddled with fractures. Now a new study had found that the cracks exhale large quantities of gas, perhaps enough to affect global warming. (discovery.com)

So it's not all because of my giant SUV. Take that environmentalists!


In other news, the Earth may be looking at another mass extinction. More on that tomorrow.

Nuclear Submarines Collide In FAO; People Are Fat; Facebook should be renamed Fakebook

+Our apologies to our loyal reader(s?) for the lack of posts the last few weeks. I have been going over a large backlog of stories I have just waiting to be discussed here but have been lacking the time to post due to a variety of reasons- my real job probably being at the top of the list.

Anyway. Here are a few weekend snippets for your earth is about to go nova reading pleasure terror.

*The obese now outnumber the overweight. (reuters)

*There are an increasing large number of impostors on facebook. Wait, is cnn trying to tell us that people like to forge fake identities on the internet? Holy shit! Who would do such a thing? Watch out everyone!!! (cnn)

*A British and a French nuclear submarines collided in the Atlantic Ocean earlier this month. The Fucking Atlantic Ocean (FAO). What are the odds of hitting someone else in that much water? And they were NUCLEAR submarines. Jesus. Seriously. Jesus. We're doomed. (AP via sfgate)

Guest Post: I <3 Nerds

[ed. note: Occasional EIGN Guest Contributor jg3 has this Good News Wednesday piece for us]

We have long known that the brain is the body's largest sex organ, and knowing how to use it and manipulate it results in superior intercourse. But we were encouraged to learn of a report published by researchers at Elon University shows that women prefer men with brains over brawn. The study covered women seeking one night of nooky and also long term partners. In both cases women preferred minds over muscles. And who can blame them, really?

It is thought that even dumb, hot chicks have the evolutionary wiring to prefer those mates who can provide for their family, the cleverness to make them laugh, and the intelligence to understand that buying a dozen overpriced roses for valentine's day is a crock of shit.

That's not to say that you can quit jogging and just sit in the Science Club and expect a line to form, fatso. All other things being equal (which they never are), attractiveness still wins, but cleverness does go a long way.

Which explains why I always keep my copy of New Scientist open on the floor in front of me while I do my hundredpushups.

And if you do happen to drop the little fact that tomorrow is Charles Darwin's birthday on some sweet lady at the pub tonight and she takes you home for a roll in the hay, you can thank us later.

[image via google images]

[jg3 is the creative force behind the hilarious, if rarely updated, slack-hacker blog. Do yourself a favor and read it now. It is way funnier than this site.]

Good News Monday - Large Hadron Collider Restart Date Pushed Back Even Further

It now appears the most expensive failed science project ever, CERN's Large Hadron Collider, isn't going to start up until "Late 2009" according to scientific american.

"According to CERN, some of the magnets in the LHC's 17-mile-long tunnel will not be ready for testing until September" (sciam.com)

Even better, "...the LHC would run at an energy of five trillion electron-volts (5 TeV) per beam, down from its design energy of 7 TeV, until fall 2010."

EIGN at Borders

We here at Earth Is Going Nova often wonder why we're not more popular. We've been at it almost a year, we have actual content (over 200 posts), we're (occasionally) funny, and we find funny and scary stories that you don't see on the front page of cnn or the new york times. And we counter our normal pessimistic, depressing stories with Good News on Wednesdays.

But maybe our day will be coming soon. I was just browsing around Borders on a nice day in February and came across this end-of-row special display.

It appears that as December 21, 2012 gets closer people are starting to pay more attention. (We've been paying attention since the beginning and, actually, 12-21-2012 was the genesis of this blog.)

At Least You're Not A Teenage Girl - Good News Wednesday XXXIV

Do you like texting? Do you like facebook? Do you like obsessing over your failures in relationships while texting and using facebook? Are you a teenage girl?

If you answer yes to these questions than it isn't Good News Wednesday for you. But if you answer no to any of these questions then you may not be depressed! Good for you!

According to a report out of Stony Brook University in New York, via an article in the telegraph.co.uk, "Girls can be prone to anxiety and depression by talking too much to their friends through texting, email and social networking sites such as Facebook." (times.co.uk)

"Repeated conversations among adolescent girls, known as co-rumination, can be unhelpful, particularly if it is about romantic disappointments.

Frequently discussing the same problem can intensify into an unhealthy activity for those who use Facebook and other electronic means to obsess about it, according to the researchers." (teletgraph.co.uk)

So, since I'm one of the last people on the planet not on facebook, I'm feeling pretty good about myself this wednesday. The fact that I am not a teenage girl also helps.

Even More Evidence That Bees Are Going To Take Over

EIGN has talked about bees a lot. No really, a lot. About how they are dying. And swarming. And suffer some CCD disease whose name sounds a lot like the religious classes friends of ours took when growing up. But now scientists are learning bees can possibly COUNT.

Honeybees have the ability to distinguish and remember visual quantities up to four, according to a new study. Researchers demonstrated that honeybees can match patterns containing the same number of icons, even when the icons are of mixed color and shape. This suggests that honeybees possess a basic number sense that was once thought to be exclusive to vertebrates. (discover magazine)

Great, now even bees are better at math than US kids.

Large And In Charge, Are You Kidding Me?

In the news of the "holy crap, really?" variety, from ScienceBlog via an EIGN reader we have this story out of the University of Hawaii:

Fat women have more sex than you. Unless you are fat in which case you have more sex than half of the women in this country. (You should click through the first link here for the pictures associated with the article, if nothing else.)

"...you might have heard about a study out of the University of Hawaii that found overweight and obese women (BMI>25) had 'more sex' than normal-weighted ones. The study was all over the news because it challenged what we would generally believe - after all, 'skinny' women are hotter, so they should have more sex." (scienceblog)

So it turns out they get more sex "because of a lack of impulse control" and are more prone to say "yes" when sexually propositioned, probably because they think it's such a rare event. This just seems to be so sad. Find your self esteem people. It has to be around you somewhere! (PS: Try checking under that twinkie.)