Sounds to me like the makings of a Darwin Award.

I think the idea is that your mouth is going to act akin to a lobster trap. You'll be able to shove the lightbulb in until the fat part is past your teeth and it will get stuck there. I can't imagine getting a lightbulb into my mouth so I'm having trouble imagining that part, but if you need to have a pronounced overbite in order to get it in, it could also be the case that the inserted lightbulb prevents the reverse.

I was a kid (well, a teenager). I swear.

I was barely able to get the lightbulb out. Even I was only stupid enough to do this once.

The bloody nose that followed was spectacular.

Oh, Making Light, how I love thee.

(I have not had anything intoxicating to drink today. I am too curious for my own good.)

Can't find the article in the New Yorker online archive at the mo, but it's probably just as well. (Their archives don't seem to include pix, alas?)

That's odd; what it is making me think of is juniper twigs.

Some of the photographs do not seem to depend on CGI or other trickery.

I do not, however, recommend searching for these photographs in a casual manner.

Indeed Dan Mannix has, and describes it in vivid detail in one of my favorite books. He had two tubes, one red, one green but retired that particular trick after the one he wasn't swallowing exploded on its stand one night....

I can still place three fingers between my rear molars (vertically).

When I was working as a security guard at an ER we once spent the evening laughing at someone who had gotten a new toy stuck behind the anus (it's very grabby, and a vibrator is built to go in, the flat plane at the rear causes problems when one get's completely inside).

It wasn't that he'd gotten it stuck, that happened, to someon, every month or so. It was that they had been so eager to use it that no batteries had been inserted (he admitted that it was a Christmas present).

Our sense of humor was skewed.

On the other hand, the rule was that vibrator which were on (the majority) weren't gone after until the batteries had died.

On occasion light-bulbs were "lost" in a similar manner. If they broke (not as uncommon as one might like to think) the removal method was not surgery, but rather a plaster of paris enema.

TK

Wait, how would massaging the abdomen help get a light bulb out of one's mouth?

Oh, drat! And I've already sent my question off to Snopes, too...

And no, that's not an urban legend.

MKK

...I know this because a former professor at my college once had a body 'borrowed' from her possession, and couldn't get the cops to take the case because the body wasn't worth anything.

Nuclear Fusion makes the stars to shine;
Tropisms make the ivy twine;
Rayleigh scattering makes the skies so blue;
Testicular hormones is why I love you.
-- Asimov

I don't think the question is "unanswerable" in the sense of "has no factual response," but in the sense of "the question displays a reasoning so lateral that the factual reply has no place to sit down."

To one example, if you snort crushed glass, thou shalt not surely die, just as if you put a .38 Special against your temple and pull the trigger you will not infallibly join the bleedin' choir invisible. It is the nature of the question, and what prompted it, that causes potential answerers to stay their facilitations in consideration of, where the heck did this come from and if we facilitate it are we going to have to explain ourselves to the Medical Examiner? Which being deconstructed runs, "we were watching Pulp Fiction on DVD, and we started arguing about the effects of various white powdery substances that might be found around the average suburban household on the upper sinus equipment, and by the time the eighteenth Miller Lite had kicked in we'd kinda exhausted the possibilities of the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedside table -- like you do -- and as we were headed down the the the the basement, the shop table window got smashed by the cat that we used to have when the girls lived here, and it kinda expanded our field of inquiry. Now, we're online, and Natasha -- we can't remember if she was the one with the cat or was the cat an sich -- had this place bookmarked and kept rubbing our noses in stuff she looked up there, which is why we thought of you in our hour of need."

Or in different terms, sometimes noumenon just gives phenomenon a significant wedgie and steals its wallet.

(Off topic: My definitive Not Going to Glasgow post is up: On Living in Someone Else's Utopia.)

The story of the "Killers of Eden" has been put into at least a couple of books, Killers of Eden: The Killer Whales of Twofold Bay, by Tom Mead. and Killers in Eden, by Danielle Clode.
Here are the local Eden Community Access Centre History of Eden page, and one for the Eden Killer Whale Museum.

And some stories from the ABC Site:
Ockahm's Razor: Killers in Eden Broadcast Sunday 3 November 2002, with Robyn Williams; Whales, Fish & Sealions Andrew Trites on the Science Show, Saturday 29 May 2004; Eden Killers Radio National Breakfast, 8:24am - Tuesday 30 July 2002, with Danielle Clode

I think back to an evening of drinking in Tokyo with my company's customers when I was mortified to realize that I couldn't open my mouth wide enough to get a shot glass past my teeth. That my brother couldn't either was scant amelioration.

i think a lot of people need new hobbies.

http://www.well.com/user/cynsa/newbutt.html

And I think that the equivalent German phrase is Reichssicherheitshauptamt - literally Reich Security Head Office.

Ajay's Law of Domestic Policy: never implement any policy initiative which sounds unnerving or menacing when translated into German.

While you find all kinds of things in all sorts of orifices (peas in noses, for example), so far I've never yet transported or seen or heard about anyone with a lightbulb in their mouth.

(You wouldn't believe the number of folks who get things stuck significantly lower. The best part of those is hearing the stories ... "There I was, changing a lightbulb in my kitchen ceiling in the nude, when I fell off the table and it just must have gone in....")

On the subject of pets eating faces, Tae the Paramedic From Hell has a funny story.... http://www.netreach.net/~rjones/taestuff/been.html

can you tell me how i would analyze the effect each statistic has on the world.

Not exactly Snopes-y nor the kind of thing that makes you wonder what the circumstances of asking were; but a beautiful question, a beautiful quest to embark upon.

From the tv show House:

Dr. House: What's wrong with you?

Patient #2: I can't get my contact lenses out.

House, peering: Out of what? They're not in your eyes.

Patient: But they're red.

House: That's because you're trying to remove your corneas. [moves on to Patient #3]

I don't know if this its intended consequence, but this Law would include MOST policy initiatives.

It would include most things.

If we weren't 30-some years too late, I would introduce you to my grandfather. He could describe his garden and make it sound "unnerving or menacing".

(OTOH, I have relatives who claim that Goethe has to be the World's Greatest Poet, because he was handicapped by having to work within the German Language.)

I'm always reminded of those showcases at the airport, where they have a Wall O' Seized Stuff, presented as if every nailfile confiscated from a passenger represents a terrorist incident prevented.

...I believe no serious student will contradict me when I say that, on the whole, the German text represents an enormous improvement over the English.
Take, for example, the well-known first sentence of Campbell's "Wer Da?"

The place stank.

This is a short, skinny, pallid sentence; it understates; it is half ashamed of itself. But see what a robust, impressive, nose-filling thing it becomes in the German:

Der Raum war voller Gestank.

Even when our English-speaking writer is doing his best, as in Padgett's:

"S-s-s-spit!" Emma shrieked, overcome by a sudden fit of badness. "Spit."

--the Teuton can better him without even breathing hard:

"Ssspucke!" schrie Emma in einem ploetzlichen Anfall von Ungezogenheit. "Spucke."

Since this was back in the day when most stations were lit by incandescent bulbs, there would have been a dead giveaway. To prevent people from stealing the light bulbs, subway stations used a special variety that were threaded backwards, so they screwed in counterclockwise. An observant (and presumably non-killed-by-plague) track cleaner might notice this. Assuming anyone bothered to clean the tracks...

There's one on the wall of the waiting room at the Otolaryngology clinic at Children's Hospital in Boston. My knees get weak when I see some of that stuff.

And wasn't it the Emperor Maximilian who remarked that he spoke Italian to his mistress, French to his soldiers and German to his horse?

I have to agree and disagree with your relatives about Goethe. While the german language has 1/3 the words of english (roughly) and can be harsh...at least I can make it rhyme properly!

Jeremy, as someone who's worked as a statistician -- yes, that's a wonderful phrase.

Probably because my father did it, I tend to use German with dogs, even with my niece's miniature Pinschers, whom she generally commands in Italian.

It isn't clear to me that the dogs can tell the difference.

Mr Ford: good point about lightbulbs being inconspicuous. Especially in the USSR, where carrying around a non-working lightbulb was common practice: you took it into the office, substituted it for your desk light's bulb, then reported it and took the working bulb home. You did this because trying to get working lightbulbs from a shop in the USSR was a lengthy, soul-scorching, fruitless endeavour, while your State office would have a good supply.

Maybe? Occasionally I bite into an apple in such a way that the chunk gets lodged up against my palate beyond the help of any mouth contortions (the range of which, I am told, is endlessly amusing to watch), and eventually I have to reach in with a finger or two to unjam it.

That said, apparently I could get my entire fist into my mouth if I had sufficient depth to accommodate it; it can fit in past the maximum diameter at the knuckles but runs out of space about halfway from the base of my thumb to my wrist. However, in the preparatory experiments, I noticed that at the four-finger stage, my jaws made their little TMJ popping noises on both sides as they slid out of their normal joints. I was relieved to notice that my knuckles did *not* get jammed between my palate and upper teeth, however, as that would've been difficult to explain even beyond purely physical limitations.

I was skeptical but not willing to try it myself.

I did see Johnny Fox swallow a purple florescent light tube at Renn Fair after hours one night. Everyone around me owed and ahhed while I cringed and remembered what happened the last time I saw one of those tubes implode. Do they implode or is that yet another piece of childhood misinformation and they really explode?

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
    So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
    So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

At least I'll never try to get a light bulb in. Why would you?

Jeremy - I set that poem to music once. SATB. IIRC, most of the main melody is in 7/8, with an occasional 6/8 measure for variety. It actually flows quite naturally once you get the hang of it.

Patrick - can dogs really tell the difference between German and English?

And I thought that if you got something stuck in your mouth (billiard balls is what I heard, too) the emergency room guys would inject a muscle relaxant into your jaw to get you to open up.

Any dog that could be countermanded by a stranger while its handler is there commanding it is insufficiently trained.

Besides, what language would they command the dogs in in Germany?

Patrick Connors - I don't think that the dog knows the difference between German and English. Even if a police dog is trained in English (or the attackee knows German) very few people strangers can successfully call off a properly trained dog.

In any case, I doubt too many of them (cops or dogs) could parse Goethe in the original.

We also used to goof around saying mundane German phrases as if they were dire threats, or mundane Portuguese words as if they were passionate declarations. I can still get a laugh out of him by saying, breathlessly, "Fiambre! Queijo! Pastelaria!", which roughly translates as "Ham! Cheese! Cake shop!"

For the same reason I have not used Russian on our dogs, because we want other people to be able to make them do some things.

TK

Regarding impromptu eye drops: breast milk, should you have a handy supply (which I do). And it has the added benefit of natural antibiotics and antivirals.

Steve: Completely agree. Any working dog is insufficiently trained if a stranger can make it break training in a pinch.

Steve again: I have wondered that myself.

Or, just because we managed to survive something as children doesn't mean we could as adults. I'm certainly not planning to chew on my toes on a regular basis at this stage in life.

Here's another question you were dying to know the answer to: what happens to a conventional diaper if a child wears it into a kiddie pool and then repeatedly jumps off a chair into the pool?

Answer: It explodes.

Algis Budrys, "The Master of the Hounds."

As usual, a genre writer Got There First.

"Shall I compare thee to a stagnant pond"

and ending

"Thou breeding ground of mixomycophyte!
Aroint thee, I am sickened by the sight"

A simple google search doesn't turn up a copy of it on the Web. Too bad.

I can touch my nose with my tongue, though, most of the way out to the tip. OK, TMI.

I mean, you know, if I should want to.

"Look, kids, so whadda we care if you can't really get into the Ziegfeld Follies by dressing up as William Randolph Hearst and singing 'On the Good Ship Lollipop'?"
"And that was my favorite urban legend, too."
"I'll tellya what. We can put on our own show."
"Yeah! We can use my uncle's money and my daddy knows LaGuardia!"
"We'll need some acts and specialties. Billy, can you still get your hand so far into your mouth that you can't get it out again?"
"Mmmhrmph."
"Great! Eddie'll make sure to bring the winch and cable shears. Pollyann, does your Pekingese still speak German?"
"Gee manee, don'cha read the papers? But she still knows Mandarin."
"Even better! Okay, what else have we got rehearsed?"
"Lessee . . . We've got two sketches, 'Penguin Egg in Texas' and 'Who Stole the Dead Guy?', and the 'Invisible Bloodsucking Witches, Oh My!' number."
"Think you can handle that one, Judy?"
"I guess I'll try."
"There's a trouper! Mr. Berkeley's going to have so much fun with that. Now, all we need is for Mr. Hart to finish the lyrics for 'Licking the Perfume I Love,' 'Mouthful of Lightbulbs,' and 'I Turned Gay from a Milky Way,' and bright lights, here we come!"

Well, that's the drawback with a conventional diaper. A neutron diaper will at least leave the kiddie pool standing.

When you say 'explodes'; actually explodes? Cool. I must try this. Servitor! (My lord?) Bring me the least necessary of my small cousins.

Commercial diapers -- in this case a PullUp -- are filled with polymer. That suspicious white powder is capable of absorbing really a lot of liquid. Steve Spangler's Science explains:

The Baby Diaper Secret One of the most common applications for super absorbent polymers is their use as the water-absorbing ingredient in baby diapers. That's right... baby diapers! It's possible that you may even have worn them for a few years not so long ago. Ask your parents about the difference this kind of diaper made in their attitudes about life.

In spite of their usefulness, these diapers can be a problem. If you've ever observed a baby in diapers splashing in a wading pool, you know that even one diaper can absorb lots and lots of water! Most public pools won't allow them to be worn in the water because huge globs of gooey gel can leak out and make a mess of the filter system. Also, some folks used to throw them away in toilets. Not a good idea unless you're a plumber.
. . . Determine the amount of water a disposable diaper can hold by slowly pouring about 1/4 cup (approximately 50 ml) of warm tap water into the center of the diaper. Holding the diaper over a dishpan or sink, and continue to add increments of water. Tip the diaper back and forth after adding water each time. Record the amount of water the diaper holds before it becomes saturated and steadily leaks. Try testing different brands of diapers.

I knew about the polymer. But last night when the kids were playing in the kiddie pool, I had decided to be cheap and not use a disposable swim diaper, since the things are expensive. My thought was so she'll have a bulky bottom. So what. When she's done, I'll just take it off. I had not anticipated that the kids would decide to jump off chairs into the kiddie pool, landing on their bottoms.

So when I took her long-sleeved, long-legged bathing suit off, all this stuff that looked like crushed ice fell out, all over the carpet. I reached out and touched it, expecting it to be cold, and wondering who had put the ice down her back and why wasn't she complaining about it.

But low and behold, it was the contents of an exploded diaper. Wonders never cease!

(no, she's not reading weblogs yet, but I'm making a list of interesting sounding science stuff, in hopes of not having to resort to the [wonderful] Janice Van Cleave)

Do they use this super-absorbent polymer in menstrual pads too?

(here's a link with probably more information than you need: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Cockpit/8107/superabsorbe.html )

Thanks for the tip.

I can just see me going around to my friends with infants, begging for diaper samples . . . .

It would be an interesting follow-up to what dd did last year, a study on the relative elasticity of frozen and never-frozen Bazooka Bubblegum (in both chewed and non-chewed states).

And if we put food coloring in the water, we'll even get an interesting-looking display! (I'm thinking blue . . . .)

But I'm really old, and when I see 'conventional diaper' I think the kind I remember (!) wearing: cloth ones. They definitely wouldn't explode under any circumstances, but put one on a baby in a pool and you'll soon have a crying baby.

Once I realized you meant these fancy newfangled corn-traptions full up with polywhatsit (coughs, shakes cane in air), it made a whole LOT more sense.

Speaking of which, I forgot to post this:

*The Secret Society of Demolition Writers*: "In the spirit of the demolition derby, where drivers take heedless risks with reckless abandon, welcome to the first convocation of the Secret Society of Demolition Writers. Here is a one-of-a-kind collection by famous authors writing anonymously–and dangerously. With the usual concerns about reputations and renown cast side, these twelve daredevils have each contributed an extreme, no-holds-barred unsigned story, each shining as brightly and urgently as hazard lights." (from Amazon.com-- http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400062640/ref=pd_sbs_b_2/104-0044561-6723177?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance)

Unfortunately, it doesn't sound really like InfernoKrusher, more like a bunch of writers got anonymous and had at it. I mean, with a story by Rosie O'Donnell, I don't see how it could possibly be all *that* demolishing.

But still potentially interesting, anyway.

The thing looked like an enormous, pale parasitic blob attached to the last part of the body you'd care to have a pale parasitic blob attached to.

[obligatory joke]
"For God's sake, when was the last time you changed him?"

"Huh? Just a couple days ago."

"Two days? What gave you the idea one diaper could last that long?"

"Well, look at the package: '25 - 35 lbs.'"
[/obligatory joke]

FWIW, my dd (who is 9) wore cloth diapers nearly exclusively for the first 3 years.

There's plenty of folks out there using cloth--there's a whole cloth diaper industry. What there mostly aren't, anymore, are diaper services. I think I used one of the last ones in NYC.

We did use disposables when we were going to be away from home for more than a few hours, and later, at night.

Cloth was wonderful.

I've even conducted that very same experiment with small child/diaper/wading pool; so, while I knew exactly what Kathryn Kramer meant, when I heard mention of a "conventional" diaper, I too first thought of a square of cotton.

It's interesting, watching the language shift.

I'm not sure I'd want to be in the vicinity when any of those explode.

(I know - so many choices)

Years ago, a friend cracked me up after I was high priestess of a Beltane ritual by using a twinkie to simulate a part of the male anatomy, included squeezing it to produce, well, I will leave that up to people's imaginations.

It was much, much more amusing than those bare facts (sorry) would suggest.

Then Toxic Shock Syndrome came along, and they don't do that anymore.

There's not considered to be a problem with dippy-dydees, mainly because a saturated diaper doesn't stay in place for long; there shouldn't be time for the buildup of bacterial nasties that that caused TSS.

And Andrew, all diapers are biological, sooner or later. Someone should probably do a story about infant care among silicon-based parents ("Well, little soft friend, of course the kid dropped a brick. Your point would be?") The heck with getting an sf story into the "literary" magazines; it's time we cracked Redbook.

On a good day I can manage three fingers under that particular construction.

Three, four hurts a bit, and I have to bow my fingers, so I don't think that really counts.

TK

when I first started menstruating again after the birth of my son I found menstrual products, especially tampons, to be excruciatingly uncomfortable, and I was looking out for non-super-absorbent ones because I thought they would be less painful, and I couldn't find any until after the toxic shock warnings went up all over the place.

Are we veering into TMI?

I was at Six Flags in MD (before it was Six Flags) and someone's extensions got wrapped around my feet. That was a bit of a shock.

While doing research for my column today I found this interesting tidbit in the history of Lake Compounce, the oldest amusement park in the US:

On October 6, 1846, Samuel Botsford, an influential Bristol scientist, persuaded property owner Gad Norton, an original settler descendant, to let him conduct "a series of beautiful experiments in electricity." Well publicized, the event drew thousands of spectators to witness the demonstration amidst the beauty of the woods and water. Although the final experiment of "blowing up from shore, two huge jugs of gunpowder tied under a raft in the middle of the lake" failed...

When I read that I thought now there is our kind of guy, not just beautiful electrical experiments but also trying to blow things up.

It was actually possible to hear an orchestra (remember, without amplification) playing during a baroque fireworks display. The big splashes of light were considered interesting in themselves; gorgeous music was quaintly considered preferable to eardrum-shattering bangs.

Re: Contact lenses: The absolute worst IME is when they fold in half and then wander off somewhere around the eyelid area. But even reading the contacts-related comments makes me want to sing hosannas to LASIK, remembering all the woes I no longer suffer.

Some of my friends who've never worn contacts say "Ewwww! I can't IMAGINE that!! If I even get a grain of dust in my eye..." To which I reply "If the grain of dust were made of well-soaked hydrophilic plastic, it not only wouldn't hurt, you'd never notice it at all."

I'm reasonably certain they don't believe me.

Next up: how many mustardseeds are necessary to put the mountain back where it started?

One, but the mountain has to want to move.

Let me know if you want some for science projects. I can send them in with David.

The other diapering methods against which this can be compared are cloth diapers of various styles and the more ecologically sound diapers which use cotton fibers rather than polymer for absoption. The existence of these other diapering methods are why I instered the word "conventional."

Regarding the idea of pads in pools, I think that usage of the product is extremely rare. I can't think of any instances that I know of. (Given that this is swimming season and the Age of AIDS, this may not be a topic to be pursued in depth.)

BRENTWOOD, N.H. -- Emergency workers helped a New Hampshire man out of a difficult situation over the weekend after a friend apparently locked a padlock around his testicles....The man, who was not identified, told them that he had the padlock around his testicles for two weeks.

I notice it's always while they're drunk and passed out that these sorts of things happen. I used to pay medical claims for a man who got drunk and passed out in seven different states and every single time a total stranger inserted a foreign object into his penis. Isn't that the most amazing coincidence?

Thanks very much for the kind offer.

DD is mulling over the idea. Alas, we won't need the diapers themselves until some time in the fall, so if you need to clear space, don't worry about holding onto any for me.

I know several women w/babies, mostly through my local single mothers group, so getting hold of diapers should not be that hard if dd decides to do this project (and the science teacher approves it).

Gas Air Tests Conducted in NYC

August 08,2005 | NEW YORK -- Government scientists released colorless, harmless gas at four Manhattan locations Monday as part of an effort to find out how fast and far a toxic substance could spread if released in the city.

"It went very well," said Susan Bauer, a spokeswoman for the Urban Dispersion Program, which aims to produce a computerized model of air flow patterns that could help authorities decide how to evacuate people after a chemical or biological attack.

The project started five years ago with pilot programs in Salt Lake City and Oklahoma City.

In March, gas was released in sections of Manhattan to allow scientists to learn about outdoor air patterns in the city. This month's tests will track how gases would move in and out of structures.

"You can use those models to say, `What if something happened here?'" said Jerry Allwine, an engineer with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash., who oversees the project.

On Monday, Bauer said, the gases were released in an office building and at three outdoor locations in midtown. There will be five more test days over the next three weeks, depending on the weather.

Air samples will be taken by "tracer" boxes fastened to light poles and stationed on subway platforms, and smaller boxes clipped to the belts of volunteers.

The scientists will conduct a third set of tests in New York next March, and plan to complete their research by 2007.

The $10 million project is sponsored by the federal departments of homeland security, defense and energy.

On the Net:

http://urbandispersion.pnl.gov/

http://rudy.mif.pg.gda.pl/~t_cobalt/grafika/bulb.txt

P.S. Strangely enough, I have a cousin named Kathryn, but she's not the one who posts here.