Wild & Wacky Wednesday

A few random things that have struck me as silly recently. . . some of them have obviously been around for awhile. . . but they are all new to me.

#1 Wackiness: Bee Efficiency Beats Vee Effiency
If you compare how well a bee uses its fuel--honey--compared to how well a car (and specifically a Volkswagon) uses gas, there is obviously no comparison. According to a scientist who actually gets paid to do this this work, in a comparitive framework, a bee would get 4,704,280 miles/gallon. Now tell me, aren't you just dying to know how they calculated this? Here's the scoop from the NPR story :

"Experimenters take a bee, give it all the honey it can eat and then tether it to a pole. (This neither harms nor seems to disturb the bee.) It then flies round and round until, basically, it runs out of fuel. The pole measures the distance flown by the rotating bee. Because the experimenter now knows how far a bee can travel on a bee-belly of fuel, you scale up to imagine how far it would go if it had a gallon-sized belly. That's how you calculate Bee Miles Per Gallon. "

If you want to hear the full story, with a great "bee" song by none other than Muddy Waters, you can listen to the How Bees Humiliate Humans--click the listen link at the top. Then, you can hear my favorite line from the story: "Ummmm, if you could introduce me as the International Coordinator for the Pollinator Partnership." If that job doesn't excite you perhaps you want to be the person who tethers bees?

Perhaps my mom should apply. . . my mom tethered a praying mantis once--I kid you not--it was our pet and she thought it looked sickly so she tied it to the porch so it could eat grass (sadly, they are carnivores)--my sister and I ran outside to retrieve and found a red thread tied to the porch and dangling in the wind. . .

#2 Wackiness: Kids Get a Lift at Mardi Gras Parades
A friend of mine went to Mardi Gras last weekend. I've never been so I did not know of the prolific ladder lifting devices they use to raise children to the heights of tossed beads. Various homemade devices have some kind of "box" at the top, with attahed wheels, I suppose for easier toting to the parade site. I had no trouble finding pictures online once I knew these things existed.

Seems a little teetering to me. . . but then again I broke my wrist falling off a little one step stool. . . shouldn't these kids be wearing helmets? At the least catcher's masks?? And wouldn't this make you nuts if you were suddenly standing behind an 8 ft tall 2 year old??

#3 Wackiness: Pet Rapture Insurance

No, I don't mean insurance for prehistoric pet rapTORS. . .I refer instead to insurance for those Christians waiting for THE rapture and who also happen to have pets. According to Christian sources, pets have no souls and therefore will not be taken to heaven at the time of judgement.

So what is a pet loving Christian to do?

The answer: get rapture insurance. For a mere $110, and only $15  for additional pets, Christians can leave this earth feeling assured that Fluffy and Spot will be taken care of after their departure.

Oh, did we mention they'll be leaving their beloved dears with a SINNER--not just ANY sinner but the sinner of the worst kind--a nonbelieving SINNER--a self-declared atheist. I am not making this up. 

"He (the insurance broker) must reassure the Rapture crowd that his pet rescuers are wicked enough to be left behind but good enough to take proper care of the abandoned pets. Rescuers must sign an affidavit to affirm their disbelief in God—and they must also clear a criminal background check."

I saw the story in the Atlanta Journal & Constitution just yesterday, though apparently it's been around for a at least a year--maybe that's why the sinking AJC didn't post the story online yesterday. . . I had to find it on a Businessweek site.  

The last line of the story is priceless:

"If we thought the Rapture was really going to happen," Centre says, "obviously our rate structure would be much higher."


Wackiness #4: iPod, iPhone, IPad. . . iTit

Ok, I got this in an e-mail just yesterday too, though apparently it's also been around for awhile. . . I found reference to it since 2007!

Apple Computer announced today that it has developed a computer chip that can store and play high fidelity music in women’s breast implants.

The iTit will cost $499 or $599 depending on speaker size . This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women have always complained about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them.

If this were true, all those waitresses in Tilted Kilt & Hooters would have theirs tuned to sports radio . . . bring on the tips!