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.

August 17, 2009 | Mad Science

Professional bodybuilding magazines – you’ll find a stack the next time you’re in the recreation room of a maximum security prison – provide all sorts of tips on how to build up your physique so that trapezius muscles can jut out past the ears, conferring the unique aesthetic of looking like you’re wearing football equipment under your shirt.

Some of these tips, however, go beyond mere push-ups or exercising your calves by kicking sand in the face of a 90-pound weakling while his best girl looks on. Many pro bodybuilders – and even some amateur pretenders to bodybuilding’s sweaty throne – who feel that providence has short-changed them concerning a particular part of their physique, will opt for implants in the area of concern. Others who feel similarly slighted—say, breast size that isn’t close enough to resembling a regulation NBA basketball (side-note here: for breast size, unlike scholastic aptitude, an ‘A’ is considered inferior to a ‘D’) opt for silicon valleys.

Places like South Beach are home to more smiling artificial faces at risk of melting in the noonday sun than Madame Tussaud’s, and, not surprisingly, where such surgery is easily booked. As plastic surgery has taken off though, there are some very serious questions being raised about who is actually performing these—not so much, what kind of personality is performing them (we know this: vain, superficial, attracted to the field because it’s very lucrative) but what kind of training they actually have.

A recent ABC article asked, “Can an eye doctor perform breast augmentation?  Can a gynecologist perform liposuction?” If the answers to such questions is “Yes, if the price is right”, well, you’re not too far off base.

When a chef steps out of their comfort zone, you might get pasta primavera tinged with the flavors of south Vietnam, but when a medical practitioner does so, it’s understandably frightening. Apparently, The Arizona Medical Board has created guidelines for physicians who change their scope of practice, but before you applaud such a measure, they are not mandatory and “There is no competency test when a physician goes to change their scope of practice.” Check the American Board of Medical Specialties and most certainly talk to former patients who don’t look like they’d be cast in the next George Romero movie.

On a less life-altering note, an Albany, New York plastic surgery group was recently busted for using a bargain basement Botox substitute not approved by the FDA (the fact that the real botulinum toxin is approved, is weird but there are lots of medically-necessary procedures it’s used for—namely excessive underarm sweating and uncontrollable blinking).

Here’s an interesting press release from Health Canada for those interested in facial expressions that resemble American Gothic:

Health Canada is informing Canadians and Canadian health care professionals that the labeling information of BOTOX ® and BOTOX Cosmetic ® will now include the risk of the toxin spreading to other distant parts of the body. Possible symptoms of “distant toxin spread,” which can be fatal, include muscle weakness, swallowing difficulties, pneumonia, speech disorders and breathing problems.