Tag: news from the stupid

While browsing on Gizmondo, I found the trifecta of useless, costly crap. I bring you, in order of stupidity:

The $1200 toilet seat

The Panasonic DL-GWN toilet seat has a light that illuminates a bull's-eye in the water at which to aim your stream. Its light has a dual function, also warming the toilet seat. Now call me crazy, but instead of dropping more than a grand on a toilet seat, I'd get a dimmable light switch in the bathroom along with a heated toilet seat, both which can be had for a fraction of that price and accomplish the same thing.

The $1200 keyboard

Now I'm all for stainless steel. It just looks cooler than anything else. However, there are limits. The only thing that this keyboard has going for it, besides being made from stainless steel, is that it has an integrated trackball. No wireless, no integrated card readers, no other gizmos. Just steel and a freakin ball bearing.

$1.89M bra

Korean designers have created a $1.89 million solid gold bra decorated with diamonds during a fashion show in Seoul. Besides being cold, heavy and completely impractical, just look at how it's biting into those poor boobies!!

A Brazilian employee at the EBI was observed dipping his remaining chips in the custard of his apple/rhubarb-crumble-with-custard pudding and started quite a debate, some real-life comments in the poll below. So I ask you:

U.S. President George Bush is a big winner in this year's World Stupidity Awards, joining the likes of the entire petroleum industry and Vice President Dick Cheney as the recipients of top honours.

Bush was nominated in several categories, including Stupidest Statement of the Year and Most Out of Touch with Reality in the awards roundup which was created to “salute achievement in ignorance and stupidity.”

But the big winner, taking home the prize for the flagship category Stupidest Man of the Year, was District Judge Donald Thompson.

Known as the “Oklahoma Penis Pump Judge,” Thompson operated a powerful penis pump underneath his robes — while court was in session — during at least three trials. He was convicted on June 29 of four counts of felony indecent exposure.

The awards, now in their fourth year, were created by Canadian actor, director and journalist Albert Nerenberg who worked with the philosophy that “we're all stupid, some of us just need to have it pointed out.”

He first came up with the idea four years ago while working on a documentary on the subject of stupidity. As a publicity stunt for the film, a mock event called the World Stupidity Awards was held. The event garnered international coverage from mainstream media such as the BBC, and Nerenberg realized he was onto something.

Now in its fourth year, the awards show has continued to garner attention, with nominations submitted online and a panel of judges deciding the winners. Nerenberg hopes it will eventually become an annual television special.

In addition to Bush and Thompson, there are other worthy winners this year.

Harry Whittington won the Stupidest Statement of the Year award, for apologizing after Vice-President Dick Cheney shot him during a hunting outing.

“My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week,” Whittington said at the time, still weak and visibly bruised from the birdshot that Cheney peppered him with.

Whittington beat out Mel Gibson's statement: “What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?” which he made to a female sergeant following his arrest for drunk driving.

Not to be outdone, Cheney took his own award, winning the “Dumbest Moment of the Year” award for the act of shooting Whittington.

The petroleum industry took honours for reckless endangerment of the planet, and Fox News was recognized for having “Best Furthered Ignorance,” in the world.

Basic Instinct 2, starring Sharon Stone, beat out Little Man and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, among others, to take the title of Stupidest Movie of the Year.

Stupidest Trend of the Year was won cleanly by “Killing people for God.”

Bush took honours in the category of “Stupidest Statement by George W. Bush.” The president's televised statement to FEMA director Michael Brown during the Hurricane Katrina devastation: “Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job,” won easily.

Bush also won for being Most out of Touch with Reality.

The Middle East won the Lifetime Achievement Award for Stupidity.

Nick Flynn won the award for Making a Stupid Situation Stupider by tripping on his shoelaces, falling down a set of stairs and smashing three antique Chinese vases in a museum. He then criticized the museum for not taking better care of the precious artifacts

Nerenberg is currently finishing off Escape to Canada, a documentary about Americans fleeing their country. Nerenberg is also a series for Discovery Channel about the science of sexual attraction called Why Is It Sexy?

Mums in burger backlash over healthy eating

TWO mums are organising junk food runs to a South Yorkshire school – because they don't agree with its healthy eating policy.

Julie Critchlow and Sam Walker deliver fish and chips, pies, and burgers to hungry kids at Rawmarsh Comprehensive every day. They say they have started the food runs because pupils are turning their noses up at the 'low fat rubbish' served up at the school and they are angry at a recent ruling by headteacher John Lambert that pupils can't leave at lunchtime to visit the local chippy – and should eat pasta, salads and sandwiches.

[Low fat rubbish? you're overweight and your kid is probably spherical.]

The two mums say demand is so great they have had to start using an old supermarket trolley for their lunchtime deliveries. Sam, of Monkwood Road, Rawmarsh, said: “This is all down to that Jamie Oliver. Well I don't like him or what he stands for – he is forcing our kids to be more picky about their food.”

[No he's not, he's forcing them not to die of a coronary at 23 you dumbass.]

Julie, also of Monkwood Road, added: “Kids need a bit of fat in their diet – there is nothing wrong with burgers and chips. At school they only get chips once a week if they are lucky.

“The school have objected to what we are doing and they have even threatened to call in the police. But we will carry on – the kids just won't eat the food they are given at school.”
But the two mums have angered local healthy eating campaigners who say they are trying to sabotage the school's new healthy menus. Rotherham Council healthy eating campaigner Jill Adams said: “What these two women are doing is shameful. I don't believe they think they are doing the right thing by the kids.

“There have been numerous studies which show that children are not only healthier if they cut junk food out of their diet, but they learn better as well.

“We fought hard to get Turkey Twizzlers, chips and other fatty food off the menu and now we have some parents campaigning against healthy food – it is staggering.”
Headteacher John Lambert said: “All the freshly prepared food now served complies with the government's healthy eating guidelines, and I can't imagine why the children want to go elsewhere.

“The food that these two parents are handing out is not part of that healthy eating diet and on top of that I have to question the morality of delivering it.”

Redheads have more sex than blondes or brunettes

Blondes may have more fun but redheads have more sex, according to new research in Germany. The study by Hamburg Sex Researcher Professor Dr Werner Habermehl looked at the sex lives of hundreds of German women and compared them with their hair colour.

He said: “The sex lives of women with red hair were clearly more active than those with other hair colour, with more partners and having sex more often than the average. The research shows that the fiery redhead certainly lives up to her reputation.”

He added that women who dyed their hair red from another colour were signalling they were looking for a partner, and added: “Even women in a fixed relationship are letting their partners know they are unhappy if they dye their hair red. They are saying that they are looking for something better.”

Psychologist Christine Baumanns said however that it may not be the women who were to blame for the better sex lives of redheads. She said: “Red stands for passion and when a man sees a redhead he will think he is dealing with a woman who won't mess around, and gets straight to the point when it comes to sex.”

Security 'bad news for sex drive'

A woman's sex drive begins to plummet once she is in a secure relationship, according to research.

Researchers from Germany found that four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex. Conversely, the team found a man's libido remained the same regardless of how long he had been in a relationship. Writing in the journal Human Nature, the scientists said the differences resulted from how humans had evolved.

The researchers from Hamburg-Eppendorf University interviewed 530 men and women about their relationships.

They found 60% of 30-year-old women wanted sex “often” at the beginning of a relationship, but within four years of the relationship this figure fell to under 50%, and after 20 years it dropped to about 20%. In contrast, they found the proportion of men wanting regular sex remained at between 60-80%, regardless of how long they had been in a relationship.

Tenderness

The study also revealed tenderness was important for women in a relationship. About 90% of women wanted tenderness, regardless of how long they had been in a relationship, but only 25% of men who had been in a relationship for 10 years said they were still seeking tenderness from their partner.

Dr Dietrich Klusmann, lead author of the study and a psychologist from Hamburg-Eppendorf University, believed the differences were down to human evolution.

He said: “For men, a good reason their sexual motivation to remain constant would be to guard against being cuckolded by another male.” But women, he said, have evolved to have a high sex drive when they are initially in a relationship in order to form a “pair bond” with their partner. But, once this bond is sealed a woman's sexual appetite declines, he added.

He said animal behaviour studies suggest this could be because females may be diverting their sexual interest towards other men, in order to secure the best combinations of genetic material for their offspring. Or, he said, this could be because limiting sex may boost their partner's interest in it.

Professor George Fieldman, an evolutionary psychologist from Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, said: “These findings seem to fit in with anecdotal studies and his explanations seem plausible.

“The rational for why a woman's sex drive declines may be down to supply and demand. If something is in infinite supply, the perceived value would drop.”

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/4790313.stm

In our latest installment of NFTS, we bring you:

Self-timing egg
http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=17948&in_page_id=2

Throughout history, boiling an egg has been one of the toughest domesticated tasks to master. But now scientists have developed a foolproof way of getting the perfect result every time. The answer was to produce a dye which changes its appearance when the egg reaches a certain temperature. Supermarkets will sell eggs carrying small clear plastic stickers which, when boiled properly, will reveal a black Lion Quality logo. Customers will have the choice of buying the eggs in boxes with soft, medium or hard boiling stickers to suit their taste.

Americans too fat for Xrays and MRIs
http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/07/26/obesity.xrays.reut/index.html

According to radiologists, more and more american obese people are unable to get full medical care because they are either too big to fit into scanners, or their fat is too dense for X-rays or sound waves to penetrate. Scanning machines with larger-bore openings are in demand, a reflection of increasing obesity in America, where 64% of the population is overweight or obese.

Edit: This has to be added, because no NFTS entry should be without a goofy religion post.

Natural Earth Museum, Bible-style
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Creation_Museum.html

Like most natural history museums, this one has exhibits showing dinosaurs roaming the Earth. Except here, the giant reptiles share the forest with Adam and Eve. That, of course, is contradicted by science, but that's the point of the $25 million Creation Museum rising fast in rural Kentucky. Its inspiration is the Bible – the literal interpretation that contends God created the heavens and the Earth and everything in them just a few thousand years ago.

“If the Bible is the word of God, and its history really is true, that's our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there,” museum founder Ken Ham said during recent tour of the sleek and modern facility, which is due to open next year. […] John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, an organization that promotes creationism, said the museum will affirm the doubts many people have about science, namely the notion that man evolved from lower forms of life.

“Americans just aren't gullible enough to believe that they came from a fish,” he said.

Emphasis mine on that last quote, which is priceless and has just made my day.