November 4, 2009 | Mad Science

Last year at this time, after analyzing President Barack Obama’s profile as a consumer of alcoholic beverages, we wrote: “In the spirit of fresh starts and fresh pints, we raise a glass to the president and hope that there’s more cause for celebratory drinking – as opposed to the misery-drowning drinking of recent times – over the next four years.”

We’re not here to dissect Obama’s political performance over the past year. As internet trolls have made it clear to us in our online pursuits, there is no pleasing everybody (once one steps off the set of the World’s Biggest Gangbang that is).

We’d like to spare a thought for those who weren’t enjoying election night nookie with their liberal-leaning sweetie pies one year ago,  but who instead supported the losing ticket and who, according to a recent study, saw their testosterone levels drop along with their hopes of electing a man president who was older than most museum exhibits.

To emasculated and defeated, we can add “obese”, and “filling out the questionairre in death’s waiting room”.

The graphic below shows how the voting breakdown last year went along party lines. Obese states are so indicated by the placement of the late, great, freight train Yokozuna, while light states are indicated by our favorite orange representative of home fitness products, Chalene (of Turbo Jam fame). It is clear that Chalene’s presence in states that voted for Obama is as ubiquitous as the presence of her company’s marketing people on blogs that mention their products.

A study has shown recently that obese people are more likely to be killed by swine flu than skinny people (bacon intake thus is a risk factor, but not an isolated one). Heavier people tend to have more health problems in general and are less able to stave off disease than skinny folk, and also they are slower-moving and then less likely to be able to catch a doctor sprinting away once he sniffs a cut-rate insurance policy.

To recap, here’s what those who voted for the McCain/Palin ticket have had to face: one year of a president they can’t stand, awkward midnight explanations to the missus about how “this has never happened to me before”, and the spectre of death in a pandemic.

August 24, 2009 | Mad Science,Rants

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control suggests that gamers are not mainly young kids learning life lessons about the joys of indiscriminate violence and destruction, or college kids looking for something to do while smoking pot that does not involve contact with a book. They are, in fact, old enough to have moved on to more productive pursuits like developing a disastrous gambling addiction and/or writing daily letters to the editor that will one day find their way into a police evidence file.

According to the study, the average gamer is 35, thus old enough to have fathered many of the people who comprise the target audience for many games (had they been out and shagging at an age when they were in all likelihood filling a room at their parents’ place with the smell of musty human). The study also says that most gamers are male, depressed, and obese – the latter two being boxes best left unchecked when signing up for an internet matchmaking service.

Before you get too excited about the prospect of the majority of gamers being guys with a couple of decades’ worth of Doritos lodged in the couch cushions, it should be noted that the study is – like one blaming drinking on television and another on how Facebook causes jealousy – dubious. It was based on an online survey of 552 people in Washington’s Seattle-Tacoma area from the ages of 19-99 (educated guess: the 99-year-old does not exist). So this tells us that people in Seattle who have the time and inclination to fill out online surveys about their lives are also likelier to spend hours developing thumb calluses rocking out to “Living on A Prayer” on Guitar Hero. Neither of us smacked our gobs in disbelief at learning that.

As the authors state in the study’s conclusion: “Because the study uses a cross-sectional design, conclusions about causality cannot be made.” And indeed you’d have a chicken and the egg scenario to figure out what came first: did the person come to the video game with a long face and a wide bottom, or did the realization that one’s best friend is someone who you chase around with an automatic weapon in a virtual post-apocalyptic world take the wind from beneath their wings.

Well, we are not psychologists — unless we’re drunk and in a bar then we’ll offer you everything from marriage tips to the card of a reputable roofer — and neither are the people who published this study, which tells us nothing more than newspapers have next to no filter when it comes to this kind of science and when in doubt blame a video game for absolutely everything.

August 20, 2009 | Mad Science

We’d like to take this time to congratulate Stephen Colbert, for having the ‘Colbert’, or the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill,  launched into the firmament aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery.

If the Turbo Jam can’t be sent skyward, this is definitely the next best thing.