Another Casualty of the Obesity Crisis

It appears that the world is getting too big for the It's a Small Word ride at Disneyland:

Heavier-than-anticipated loads have been causing the boats to come to a standstill in two different spots, allowing for an extra-long gander at the Canadian Mounties and the Scandinavian geese, said Al Lutz, whose website MiceAge first reported the refurbishment plans.

"If these boats get stuck . . . they have to send someone back in there to lighten the load on the boat," said Lutz, who has been on the ride when a guest or two was asked to disembark.

"They've even built a platform next to that [Mounties] curve because they've had so many problems."

Disneyland plans to add an inch of depth to the water channel and design more-buoyant boats, Lutz said.

Of course, it's not the expanding waist lines of Americans and tourists. It's the "layers and layers of fiberglass have built up where maintenance teams have patched and re-patched problem areas, said Disneyland Resort spokesman Bob Tucker."

Layers of fiberglass. Riiiight. That would explain the need to redesign many of its costumes and to start stocking them in larger sizes to accommodate ever-expanding waistlines of the cast members (Disney doesn't have employees. They're called cast members. It's all a big show, you know?).

But here is the insult that gets added to the injury:

So when somebody gets booted from the boat, Lutz said, Disneyland ride operators make sure the guests don't leave disappointed: They hand them a food ticket.

Overweight tourists getting free food tickets? At the rate the world is growing these days, it will be a large world, after all.

Sounds like it's time to head over to The Little Land of Duff ride where allowances for extra weight are built into the ride's design. But then there's that song.

This Just In: Men Are Simple Creatures...DUH!

From the Department of the Blatantly Obvious: Males are simple creatures who simply want to get laid.

And now there is scientific proof:

Despite flash, males are simple creatures

Females evolve slower, but it's because they're more complex

The secret to why male organisms evolve faster than their female counterparts comes down to this: Males are simple creatures.

In nearly all species, males seem to ramp up glitzier garbs, more graceful dance moves and more melodic warbles in a never-ending vie to woo the best mates. Called sexual selection, the result is typically a showy male and a plain-Jane female. Evolution speeds along in the males compared to females.

The idea that males evolve more quickly than females has been around since 19th century biologist Charles Darwin observed the majesty of a peacock’s tail feather in comparison with those of the drab peahen.

How and why males exist in evolutionary overdrive despite carrying essentially the same genes as females has long puzzled scientists.

New research on fruit flies, detailed online last week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds males have fewer genetic obstacles to prevent them from responding quickly to selection pressures in their environments.

"It’s because males are simpler," said lead author Marta Wayne, a zoologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "The mode of inheritance in males involves simpler genetic architecture that does not include as many interactions between genes as could be involved in female inheritance."

Need further proof? How about this new study by researchers at the University of Paris X-Nanterre that found that a woman's hair color influenced men's performance on general intelligence tests. Men who looked at photographs of blonde women scored lower on the tests than men shown images of brunettes and redheads.

Researchers discovered what might be called the “bimbo delusion” by studying men’s ability to complete general knowledge tests after exposure to different women. The academics found that men’s scores fell after they were shown pictures of blondes.

Further analysis convinced the team that, rather than simply being distracted by the flaxen hair, those who performed poorly had been unconsciously driven by social stereotypes to “think blonde”.

“This proves that people confronted with stereotypes generally behave in line with them,” said Thierry Meyer, joint author of the study and professor of social psychology at the University of Paris X-Nanterre. “In this case blondes have the potential to make people act in a dumber way, because they mimic the unconscious stereotype of the dumb blonde.”

But are men really "talking down" to blondes or is it something more sinister?

Michelle Collins, the blonde-haired former EastEnders actress, suspected the results were more to do with men’s approach to sex than intelligence. “I don’t think it’s to do with hair at all; it’s all about the breasts,” she said.

So let's recap: the rapid evolution and adaptation by males is all because we want to get laid--especially by blondes because we think they're easier to bed because they're stupid.

Eh, so be it. It's not like this is news to anybody, particularly women (although, somebody may need to spell it out for the blondes of the world. But be sure to use small words and brightly colored pictures. Maybe a flannelgraph will help.).

Come on Spaghetti Monster!

From MSNBC:

Indeed, the tale of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and its followers cuts to the heart of the one of the thorniest questions in religious studies: What defines a religion? Does it require a genuine theological belief? Or simply a set of rituals and a community joining together as a way of signaling their cultural alliances to others?

A great read that asks a simple question about the origin of religion: am I part of something bigger?

Lucas Johnston, the third Florida student, argues the Flying Spaghetti Monsterism exhibits at least some of the traits of a traditional religion _ including, perhaps, that deep human need to feel like there's something bigger than oneself out there.

He recognized the point when his neighbor, a militant atheist who sports a pro-Darwin bumper sticker on her car, tried recently to start her car on a dying battery.

As she turned the key, she murmured under her breath: "Come on Spaghetti Monster!"

And may you be touched by His noodly appendage. Ramen.