Science & Technology Blog Posts | Comedy Central Indecision

It's bad enough that 2012 was America's hottest year on record, and that our crush on hydrofracking may be poisoning the nation's watersheds. Now the Obama administration is facing a new "environmental disaster" in the making:

"Pubic grooming has led to a severe depletion of crab louse populations," said Ian F. Burgess, a medical entomologist with Insect Research & Development Ltd. in Cambridge, England. "Add to that other aspects of body hair depilation, and you can see an environmental disaster in the making for this species." [...]

"We put the flag out, so to speak, if we see a case of pubic lice nowadays," [sexual health expert Janet] Wilson said in an e-mailed response to questions. "The 'habitat destruction' of the pubic lice is increasing and they are becoming an endangered species."

The funny thing about this reporting that claims "Brazilian Bikini Waxes Make Crab Lice Endangered Species" is that there's no hard evidence that it's actually happening. We have some data on the increasing popularity of waxing in the United States and Australia, and some anecdotes about a decline in the number of crab lice reports at local health clinics, but that's not nearly enough to proclaim Brazilians a public health miracle, nor to bring pubic lice to the attention of the EPA.

So let's not get carried away, boys and girls. Pubic grooming should always be a matter of personal preference, or else our civilization will be in deep trouble when some "health expert" decides that vajazzling cures HPV.

Previously
Social Conservatives Identify New Threat to Military: Yoga
San Francisco Bans Public Nudity

Photo by London Scientific Films/Oxford Scientific/Getty Images

Tags: Environment, Men and Women, Science & Technology, Sex

A Brief History of the Republican War on Math

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Jan 10, 2013 04:45 PM by Ilya Gerner | Comments:

Fill in the blank: (2+5) x ____ = (5×2)+(5×5). If you answered "learnin' about the distributive property is for communists," you're of one mind with Eric Bolling of Fox News, who took issue with a Scholastic worksheet he accused of "push[ing] the liberal agenda."

"Distribute the wealth with the lovely rich girl with a big ole bag of money, handing some money out," mocked Bolling, who claimed the textbook was part of leftist "indoctrination in schools."

Bolling still has a ways to go to reach the heights of math paranoia. In Glenn Beck's hands, this worksheet would have produced a soliloquy about algebra's Arabic origins and transitioned to a rant about the commutative property, which sounds like commutation, which sounds like Obama releasing violent felons from prisons to steal Americans' money. Nevertheless, Bolling did enough to join the conservative anti math-league, whose members include: