Science & Health – Page 6 – The Daily Opinion

The Lion, the Witch, and the Magic Poo Machine

It sounds like a great title for a book does it not? Ok, maybe it’s just me then. Even though the title sounds too unreal to possibly be believable, it’s true. There’s a poo machine on our planet right now. And no, it’s not your grandmother or your bald-headed cousin fresh out of the womb. It’s actually in a museum in Tasmania.

Australia can be a strange place and this is just one of the reasons why. Dubbed as an ‘adult Disneyland’, the Museum of Old and New Art features a number of works, such as Egyptian mummies and pieces of art by young artists from all over the world.

However, none of these is the main attraction. And that is the legendary poo machine. Created by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye, this machine is designed to replicate the human digestive system. It does so through a number of glass receptacles that hang in a row. The machine is then fed from one end and the device steadily digests its meal and then ejects it at 2pm daily.

The truth is that many visitors can’t handle the smell and some even throw up. I’ve no idea where they get its fuel from, but I’d like to think that it’s not from the staff. Surprisingly, the machine is actually hated by many visitors, and yet it also gets the most visits.

Now this certainly does challenge one’s interpretation of what art is. To me it seems more like a piece of engineering genius than anything else. If you look at the picture we have provided here then it looks more like an elegant machine than art. I would even argue that it could be used as a teaching tool to demonstrate the digestive system. Obviously, it wouldn’t be a live demonstration due to health and safety, however I think that a video link would be good.

This is not the only machine like this, though. This machine, which is actually named the Cloaca, is part of a series. Apparently, there are about five similar machines that have already been created by the artist. One of these poo machines will actually be exhibited at the Louvre in the very near future. Just don’t put it anywhere near the Mona Lisa or her facial expression will turn into a frown!

Why Some People Should Just Not Indulge in Masturbation

With May being National Masturbation Month, it’s only right to have a dedicated post. Masturbation is healthy. It’s a way to relieve sexual tension and it’s also how the body ejects some of its waste products. But there are some people who compromise this healthy action. There are some people who should just stop.

First of all, all of these stories will consist of men as a study published in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine discovered that teenage boys masturbate more than teenage girls. This is not designed to reveal anything particularly new, but they may be stories which you have never heard about before.

Broken Limb

Yes, somebody actually managed to break their third leg. It wasn’t through some exotic sexual manoeuvre – although I imagine that he will be telling his friends it was – it was through his own doing.

The guy who managed to break his penis, a Nigerian case report revealed, was actually twisting his penis towards himself with his right hand. It was sexually stimulating for himself, but the problem is that he heard a click and then felt lots of pain. But the good thing is that he could still have an erection after surgery, so all was not lost.

But this is actually a common way of masturbation and this very rarely has an impact on whether someone fractures their penis or not. Some people are more prone to fractures than others, but conventional techniques will rarely, if ever, have any detrimental effect.

Hitting it With a Foreign Object

The urethra is the place your urine comes out of. It rarely plays much of a part whilst sexually stimulating oneself through masturbation, but when you bring it into the equation it can have painful and humiliating outcomes.

One such incident occurred in Japan where a 40-year old man managed to stick a 55-inch tube into there for the purposes of masturbation. Eventually, he had to have it surgically removed due to the fact that it was causing bladder problems.

But this is the sort of thing that happens all around world; another individual stuck a copper wire up there, which inevitably led to it becoming entangled in his bladder. The point is that this is just something that should be avoided at all costs, no matter how sexually stimulating it may or may not be.

Suicide by Masturbation

Some people enjoy being strangled during sex. Don’t judge them, it might seem weird to you, but to them it’s completely normal.

On the other hand, some people take this too far, and one man certainly did as he managed to kill himself through this practice. Autoerotic asphyxiation is where the individual chokes themselves during sex or masturbation to deprive the brain of oxygen. People say that this dramatically increases the amount of pleasure felt during the ejaculation period. And it may well do. But it also puts your life at risk.

David Carradine is an actor who is believed to have died in this way as when the police found him he had a rope around both his neck and genitals. Now either he really annoyed somebody or he was hitting it pretty good that day. Although for an actor you would have thought that he would have no problem having sex with a real human being.

Did Dinosaur Farts Cause Global Warming?

It seems strange to be talking about heating the world on your own, but there may be something to it as another group of animal has already managed to do it: the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs supposedly managed to heat the planet through their flatulence.

The Liverpool John Moore’s University, the University of London and the University of Glasgow came together to carry out a study on this, and they published their results in the science journal Current Biology.

They investigated the wind output of the cows of today, came up with a figure, and then scaled it up to match the Sauropods from millions of years ago. For those not in the know, Sauropods are the type of dinosaurs with long necks, large bodies, and small heads; just think of the brontosaurus.

They then compared the output of one Sauropod and scaled it up to match the estimated population of the dinosaurs. This then led to their final figure that the dinosaur population produced a massive 520 million tonnes of gas each year; which is handy for heating the world.

This may seem like a massive figure, but what we have to remember is that these animals were simply gigantic. They were taller than most of our buildings and the tops of trees could barely reach a Sauropod’s shoulders.

But why do these gases supposedly heat up the earth?

The answer is that whilst the gas produced from one’s rear-end is filled with many things, it also contains traces of methane. And methane is a greenhouse gas that heats up the earth. If you have lots of this then, in theory, the whole planet can be heated up by a population of dinosaurs. And its effects are well-documented as the Earth was supposedly ten degrees Celsius hotter than it is today, previous studies demonstrated, even if they didn’t know exactly why this was the case.

Furthermore, what we have to remember is that livestock and its methane emissions have been shown to have an impact on the global temperature. Granted, it pales in comparison to the impact that humans and their technology have on the environment, but it’s still there.

520 million tonnes a year is what they produced back then, and an estimated 500 million tonnes are what we have now. This may seem like there was very little difference between the two, however the difference is in who is producing it. The 520 million tonnes came purely from the dinosaurs themselves, whereas the 500 million tonnes is from everything currently on the earth. This can only mean that there would have been millions and millions more tonnes of unaccounted emissions in the time of the dinosaurs.

Obviously technology isn’t the only method used when heating the world. There are going to be more questions than ever now, though. If the dinosaurs could eclipse our emissions with all our technology then surely the potential impact of global warming isn’t as large as we initially feared? Perhaps there really is something to the argument that the current weather patterns are only as a result of the natural environment cycle of the Earth?

Schools Put Girls Off Playing Sports

No, it’s not because they would much rather be making their man a sandwich in the kitchen, it’s because of their treatment at an early age. I think that all of us will remember those old-fashioned PE lessons where some old man/woman who obviously couldn’t teach would scream and yell things at the fat kids because they couldn’t bench press one of their peers over the banister of the stairs. And this is apparently what has put many girls off of sport.

The research carried out by Loughborough University measured the differences in attitudes to sport between girls and boys. The figures showed that around 60% of girls and boys aged eight did at least five hours of exercise each week.

However, for 14-year-old girls this had been halved down to 31%, whereas 50% of 14-year-old boys completed at least five hours of exercise a week. In other words, this means that girls are generally being put off sport by the time they reach the middle of their high school education.

Common complaints included things like many girls weren’t confident of their sporting ability in PE lessons, they didn’t like exercising in front of boys, and they felt that teachers generally didn’t pay attention to those with less sporting ability.

All of these things are valid complaints as we all know that those who are useless at the conventional sports, such as hockey and football, are going to be laughed at by their peers. This only leads to a lack of self-confidence and a reduction in their desire to continue with sports of any kind.

Let’s look at another complaint. They don’t like exercising in front of boys. In the past this wouldn’t be a problem as being a gentleman was more of the done thing. That doesn’t happen now because now you have sex-charged maniacs who think that it’s ok to sexually harass members of the female gender. I’m not talking about rape or anything physical, I’m talking about the verbal abuse and the other comments that girls all around the world, and of all ages, have to put up with on a near daily basis.

And finally, the fact that teachers generally won’t pay attention to those girls who are no good at sport is something that has persisted for generations. The only way many of these teachers can motivate those who are not interested is to scream at them, and that only pushes them further away. The solution to this problem is that you need to find teachers who can actually teach PE lessons, as screaming is the sign of a teacher who can’t teach without descending to the motivational techniques of the white supremacist who drives a vehicle to work which runs off the bodies and broken dreams of an African-American family.

Screaming teacher — WHICH PART OF NON-STOP 16 MILE RUN DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?!?!

As the research suggests, people need to accept that not everybody is interested in competitive sports. But it’s still important to remain as fit as possible, and this doesn’t have to come as a result of competitive sports. Walking, cycling, and dance classes are all perfectly valid forms of exercise.

Moving away from the main point, though, I will admit that the reduction in the number of people carrying out regular exercise is going to be partially down to the fact that our society isn’t one that encourages physical activity. Most of the technical advances of the last 30 years have been great, but they have also been simultaneously directing people towards doing less physically.

So all of this can’t be put at the feet of what happens in schools.

The Philips Light bulb: A 20-Year Idea

When somebody has an idea a light bulb bursts into life above their heads so everybody knows about it. Ok, not really, but what if we could create a light bulb that lasts for 20 years? Think about it, if you had a 20-year light bulb for every room in the house then by the time you have to replace it your kids will have left home. And that’s one less task to be dealing with.

But the future is already here because a 20-year light bulb has gone into production in America. The Dutch electronics giant Philips is the creator of this and has set its new invention for release on Earth Day. It was originally created as an entry for the Bright Tomorrow competition, which aimed to find an alternative to the 60-watt lights that will be phased out in America by 2014, and are already completely out of production in Europe.

The bulb is a change from your normal source of light, though, because it doesn’t use any filaments. Instead, it uses light-emitting diodes (LED) to light up a room. And it’s these LEDs that have created the long-lasting qualities and hefty price tag associated with this bulb.

In America you can expect to fork out the equivalent of £37 for one of these bulbs. Even though it seems to be quite hefty, it’s probably a good idea in the long-run because you have to remember that it’s £37 for 20 years. Now that’s good value.

And yes, I can already hear many people commenting on the fact that new bulbs in general tend to have very cold and sterile glows. But this 20-year light bulb was created to keep the warm glow and be more energy efficient.

The only issue is that we’re not sure how well this is going to go down with an average person as the only reason Philips won was because it was the only entrant in the competition. So really it won by default.

On a side note, I’m not sure whether the fact that it was the only entry means that Philips is the only firm capable of creating this sort of device or whether it’s just because most people couldn’t care less. I sincerely hope that it’s the former.

Nevertheless, if it works then expect to see these LED bulbs in houses all around the world quite soon. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t demonstrate the very worst of a cold and heartless modern world.