Sex and the Scanner

I have commented on the ridiculous ways in which the media can use results from scanning experiments before, but I feel I should clarify my position on the issue, particularly with regards to MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging).

(In the interest of fairness, I should point out that I've not had much experience with actually using MRI scanners in my previous research, but I have been a subject for the experiments of others many, many times. I'd estimate I've spent over a day in total in an MRI scanner of some form, so I feel sufficiently qualified to comment on MRI scanning in general in the following piece. However, I may well have many more experienced scanning-centric neuroscientists read this who are able to pick me up on errors that I've made. If so, please feel free to leave comments about this and I'll link to them)

First and foremost, I'm all for MRI scanning and other imaging techniques. It's amazing technology, and a modern privilege that I don't think enough people really appreciate. Until relatively recently, seeing your own brain was very rare. It was possible, but given the typical circumstances that would allow someone to see their own brain in the old days, it was probably the last thing they experienced. What they thought about it was impossible to determine. However, thanks to MRI scanners, seeing detailed images of our own, living brain is a common occurrence these days. One could get quite philosophical about that kind of thing, looking directly at the source of our minds, memories, thoughts, feelings, everything we are and every aspect of our being. The fact that it resembles nothing so much as a steroid-abusing walnut just makes it more unnerving for many.

There seems to be this weird view among a lot of non-neuroscientists (or as we call them, Morlocks) that the only thing preventing a complete understanding of the brain's inner workings was the fact that we couldn't directly observe it. Ergo, once you can observe the brain doing its thing, you can figure out how it works. But it's not like this, at all. A smartphone is an impressive bit of technology, but I doubt many people understand exactly how they work. Prising the cover off and looking at the guts of the device probably won't make it less complicated, more likely the opposite. The brain is like this, except orders of magnitude more complex and made of wobbly grey bits.

So, simply putting someone in an MRI machine and making them do a task will not inevitably show which specific part of the brain processes that task. Human's aren't that simple, any task or action will use several faculties at once, and the relationship between mind and brain is still  relatively poorly understood. Useable results from MRI, or more accurately in this context, fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) are obtained by analysis of the blood flow to certain brain regions observed during specific activity. Not neural activity directly, but the (supposedly) associated changes in blood flow as the metabolic demands of certain areas increase in line with activity. This is not as easy as it sounds, and I have not tried to make it sound easy. You need baseline activity rates, threshold readings, anatomical precision which differs from person to person, and so on. It's a very useful, but complicated and time-consuming task.

However, most media mentions of scanning 'experiments' seem to think that you just put someone in an MRI scanner, and if you stimulate them in some way then a bit of the brain will light up. That isn't neuroscience, that's 'Operation'. But still, brain scanning is 'cool', so is often shoehorned into the most meaningless 'science' stories.

This is something that irks me a lot, but you learn to put up with it. But sometimes, this sort of thing can reach satirical levels.

I was recently contacted by Dr Petra Boynton via that there twitter. As a rather clued up and intelligent Sex educator who works with the media quite a lot, she's often contacted by TV types who want to get her input on their latest sex-based documentary, a programme format which seems to show no signs of going away. This is understandable, as they offer an intellectual discourse on one of the more intriguing yet taboo aspects of human society. But also, tits!

Sadly, the majority of sex-based programmes seem to deserve the degree of cynicism with which I've just described them. Many seem to be far more concerned with titillating, provoking strong reactions, conforming to the prejudices of a target demographic, or just mawkishly parading the intimate details of strangers around for the audience to gawp at. An evidence-based and rational discussion of sex, sexual behaviour or its myriad features seems to be way down the list of priorities.

But like I said, sometimes these attempts to dress up our morbid fascination with sex as serious scientific investigation crosses a line, and the whole thing just becomes farcical. Dr Boynton was recently contacted and asked to give an opinion on a new programme which aimed to investigate whether a new type of sex toy could provide measurably more pleasure in women who use it (compared to other sex toys). Why? I don't know, even though I was forwarded the email conversation that occurred. But there you go. They did specify that they wanted to do a proper and respectful analysis of women's sexual behaviours and needs, and if that's true then it's a reasonably noble aim. Dr Boynton's response was very reasonable, what with sex research and education being a lot more complex than most people realise. She advised against the use of things like MRI scanners, on the grounds that a) they are usually just used as a shorthand for impressive science visuals and b) have little or no practical use when it comes to sex research.

The TV people have seemingly decided to go with the use of MRI scanners anyway, purely on the grounds that they look impressive and make for good TV. Lacking sufficient expertise in the area, Dr Boynton then tried to get some more persuasive arguments against this approach from more neuroscientific people. Sadly for her, the discipline of Neuroscience, the media and you good people reading this, that included me. So, if you're someone from the media and are thinking about putting together a programme with a setup like this,  please let me explain why this is unwise.

If I've interpreted them correctly, the suggested experiment aim(s) can be summarised as follows;

Use advanced brain imaging techniques to quantitatively demonstrate that a specific sex toy gives women using it more pleasure than other sex toys, and do this in a way which makes enjoyable television

Now, as you can probably tell from my previous ramblings, I have several problems with this. Let's go through them all.

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•       Measuring 'pleasure' is very difficult: It would be in this context, anyway. There are numerous brain regions that are involved with the processing of rewarding and enjoyable stimuli, I'm not arguing that. But 'pleasure' as a term is like 'intelligence', or 'irony', in that everyone knows what it is, but it's actually quite hard to write down a coherent explanation of it that everyone would agree on. This is even more true of sexual pleasure. How do you measure such a thing? There is no one single thing that every woman finds sexually stimulating (as far as I know), and a person's sexual preferences are a complex neurological system based on their own experiences, biology and so forth. You could feasibly scan the brain activity of a large number of women attempting to achieve sexual pleasure in the exact same way, but the readings would probably be very different. Any data applicable to all of them would probably be too general to be of any use in studying a neurological effect as complex as sexual pleasure. A reputable science programme wouldn't show some meaningless data and then just make their own conclusions, would they?... Would they?... Hello?
•           Sex and masturbation aren’t the same thing: A minor point, but possibly relevant if you're wanting to make a programme about how sex is perceived/experienced. Although they have a lot of biological and anatomical processes in common, sex and masturbation are perceived and experienced differently. Obviously, as with sex there is at least one other person there, and they tend to be very close (spatially, if not in other ways). This is a very big stimulus (even if one partner does not possess a particularly big stimulus, so to speak) and something that is by definition absent during masturbation, so the sendory processing being done by the bain will be drastically different. Some experiments have apparently revealed that intercourse is a qualitatively different (better?) experience to masturbation, so any results obtained from this TV study may not be applicable to sex, per se.
•           fMRI requires stimulus to occur in real time: Obviously I don't know the exact set-up for this potential experiment, but I do know that if you want to see what parts of the brain activate in response to specific stimuli, you have to scan the brain while that stimuli is occurring. Ergo, if you want to see what effect a sex toy has on a woman's neural activity, she has to be experiencing it while in the scanner (in this case hving the stimulation occur and then scanning them will give you 'post-coital comedown' data, and that's probably even more vague). Given the remit of the experiment, is this something you can get away with showing on national television? Even if you use the classic 'thermal imaging' cop-out, that's still potentially quite a graphic image to broadcast. I imagine you'll have trouble getting that past the censors, but then I'm not an expert.
•           fMRI is very sensitive and subjects are secured in place: This is something that really should be flagged up in advance, if you plan to go through with this. Obviously, there are many different types of MRI and maybe I have the wrong idea here, but if you want to do an fMRI, in my experience you have to be very still indeed, as the machine is trying to measure very subtle changes in blood flow through tiny capillaries in a small region of the brain. The precision required to detect such small changes means the subject has their head secured in place very firmly, and usually the rest of the body too. Even minor movements can render the whole thing pointless. Bearing all this in mind, how exactly are you going to measure women's responses to masturbation when they're not allowed to move? Some may prefer to have sex in this manner, but I know women masturbate in a different way to men (this is normally where I'd link to something to back this up, but to be honest writing this piece has already rendered my browser search history quite unspeakable) and it logically must involve a reasonable degree of body movement, particularly if using a sex toy. MRI scanners are also usually require the subject to be inserted into a tube, which necessitates a 'legs closed' bodily arrangement, thus compounding the problem.  If you do want to do this right, you'd probably have to have someone using the sex toy on the women while she's being scanned. In all honesty, I don't think lab techs are trained for this sort of thing. And even if you do somehow get approval to do this, getting to show it on TV would be even more of a headache than the last issue.
•           Taking mechanical devices into an MRI is seriously not a good idea: Even if you were to get approval for all of the above, and somehow manage to work out a system where you can 'run the experiment', so to speak, how do these sex toys work? Hopefully they're just shaped plastic, but I'm getting the implication that they're mechanical in some way. This should present an insurmountable hurdle as you can't take any metal into an MRI scanner, particularly if it's ferrous. It's best not to even have it in the same room. A lot of people are surprised by this, because if an MRI is completely safe for humans, surely an inanimate metal object would be even less affected by it? But you can use this same logic for a typical bath; a human can sit in the bath without experiencing any ill effects, but throw a toaster in there too and you've got problems. MRI's use incredibly powerful magnets to pick up minute changes revealed by movements in our iron-containing blood. If you've ever watched House, they like showing what happens when tiny amounts of metal find their way into an MRI (I know it's just a TV show, but they've done their research there). Some professionals have also kindly arranged some practical demonstrations. In summary, if you want to have women use a metal-containing sex toy in an fMRI scanner, you may as well have them masturbate using a lit stick of dynamite. It's just as safe, and the results of any 'accidents' would be just as spectacular. I suppose this would make for impressive visuals, but I imagine the sort of audience you'd get for them is not going to be your target demographic.
•           MRI Scanners; Erotic?: Even if you do manage to get round all the issues mentioned above, being in an MRI scanner is confining, boring, potentially claustrophobic, incredibly loud, very chilly, or possibly all these things at once. Again, I'm not an expert in female sexual preferences, but none of that strikes me as conducive to achieving a state of mind that would be required to achieve orgasm. If you do want to go through with all of this, you'd need the sort of women who would be willing to be filmed masturbating/being masturbated while staying very still in a very distracting and intimidating environment, then having it broadcast on TV. Therefore, the only women you could use would either have some very 'selective' turn-ons, or be the sort of person for whom public displays of bizarre sexual antics are commonplace.  This may be doable, but you're seriously veering away from any noble 'how normal women experience pleasure' ethos you may have started out with.

So, that's why I don't think that programme would work. Even if you do manage to overcome all the problems I've mentioned, what are you left with? Nothing that would give you any useable information, at any rate. It would be cheaper and easier just to set up a fake MRI and have the subjects do whatever it is you want them to do, and just use footage of a different MRI scan, there are plenty around. This may seem dishonest, but it's as scientifically valid as the proposed experiment, and this way is probably much cheaper and frees up an expensive MRI in case anyone wants to do some actual science.

Rant over. I apologise to well intended media types and any disappointed men who have found their way here as a result of a more 'questionable' web search.

Twitter: @garwboy

Science Digestive: Webnoise - 4

It's back people!

Science Digestive: the Webnoise! Episode 4 and the Adonises of analysis turn up the heat in a scorching hot sexy special!

(Basically it's 2 blokes talking about sexual subjects in a manner completely devoid of any sexual element or intent. Sort of the exact opposite of Andy Gray and Richard Keys)

Email: Humourology (at) live.co.uk

Twitter: @garwboy, @hullodave

SCIENCE NEWS ROUND-UP: 15-01-2011

Science Digestive: Science News Round-up (Jan 15th, 2011)

Women Crying Dissuades Men From Wanting To Have Sex With Them

In an experiment which has been described as 'groundbreaking' by many scientists and painfully obvious to everyone else on Earth, women's tears have been found to be a sexual turn-off for men.

For many years, male scientists have been baffled by the precise evolutionary purpose for women's tears and, despite much research into the area, have until recently been unable to extrapolate any useful data from the process of women crying. Several scientists have reported extreme difficulty in getting women to describe their state of mind whilst crying without the use of emotional factors which are difficult to quantify and therefore discarded from analysis.

"It was always extremely difficult to get a calm clinical analysis of their internal state from a crying woman" says one scientist, Professor Mervin Dagleash from the institute for Psychobehavioural studies in Exeter. "I've had to spend many hours at a time trying to get sense from a woman undergoing my experiments. It's unfortunate that, due to the potential confounding variable of subject awareness, all women taking part in the experiment had to be made to undergo it without informed consent, and asked questions in a darkened room via a two way mirror. After several hours of constant questioning they were very willing and quick to cry but unable to convey any useful information without screaming and hysterics, and that's no good for science."

But the recent study has shown that the presence/smell of women's tears alone proved sufficient to dampen the sexual arousal of men, suggesting a sexual-suppressant role for the tearing process.

"We were surprised to say the least" said chief researcher, Dr Anthony McAllister. "We weren't expecting it to happen, but it turns out that male subjects reported a lack of sexual arousal after being made to sniff anonymous fluid while being closely scrutinised by an overweight pale man in a stained lab coat with a clipboard in a sterile windowless room smelling faintly of disinfectant and formaldehyde. This was a shock to the entire team".

Dr McAllister conceded that there was much more work to be done, such as studying the effect of male tears on women. However, he admitted that extracting tears from willing male donors was proving to be more challenging. He refused to go into detail regarding the required methods, but at one point did mention the term 'testicle clamps'.

Previous, less-sophisticated attempts to study this phenomenon had to be abandoned due to continuous problems, including the fact that the questionnaire which asked male subjects "do you get aroused by crying women?" resulted in a statistically unlikely majority of men answering 'no' rather hurriedly. This problem was compounded by the incident where the few men who answered 'yes' found themselves registered as 'potential sex offenders' on a government database, after a bureaucratic "error" on behalf of a female secretary.

"Crying has always been an interesting phenomenon to me" claims Dr McAllister. "I never do it myself, but others do it all the time, for some reason, so there must be something about it that they find beneficial and I'd like to know what that is". Sources close to Dr McAllister suggest that he studies sex and arousal for precisely the same reason.

Top Climate Scientist Quits Because "You Scumbags Aren't Worth Saving"

One of the UK's top climate scientists has shockingly quit, after coming to the conclusion that the human race are a bunch of self-serving twats who would prefer to condemn their descendants to a fiery/watery death after a lifetime of starvation and suffering rather than walk to the shops once in a while.

We caught up with Dr. Peter Sheppard at his home in the Sussex countryside. When we arrived, he was in the process of taking pot shots at the wind turbine in his garden with a high calibre rifle, after having apparently covered the solar panels on his roof with a generous layer of what appeared to be cow shit.

"I've had enough, basically" Dr Sheppard confessed, after having Shot all but one of the blades off his turbine. "35 solid years I've been telling people that all the electricity and petrol and frozen organic peas won't last forever, and if they don't want their children and grandchildren to die in a maelstrom of drought and pestilence then they should cut back on a few so-called essentials, like chilled cocktails and 68 inch plasma screens. Apparently, saying this makes me a left-wing communist radical who wants to take money away from paupers. So you know what, fuck you all! You deserve your hot Ragnarok! I don't care anymore"

Dr Sheppard made his decision after recent data demonstrating that 2010 was the hottest year on record, information which shows considerable evidence for climate change, was ignored by the UK press. When asked if this is what spurned him to resign from his post as Head of Climate Studies and Public Policy at the Department for Climatology at UCL, Dr Sheppard was expressive.

"Too bloody right! The media absolutely drives me round to bastard bend. We get a week of snow and they're screaming at me and calling me a liar, but show them that the planet was doing a decent impression of a rotisserie chicken for pretty much the whole year and they jam their fingers in their ears and start singing. Well that's fine by me, they can jam their fingers in their mouths, nostrils and lungs as well when sea levels reach 3 metres above their heads, in order to stop from drowning for an extra 30 seconds".

It was put to Dr Sheppard that the mainstream media might not be willing to report such bleak news as it might put off potential consumers, but he dismissed the notion.

"No, you're right, just stick to reporting cancer scares, terrorist threats and economic Armageddon, as long as nobody has to cut down on their iPods or road tanks. But if you genuinely believe unpleasant news isn't worth reporting, next time I see a journalist step out in front of a bus I'll just sit back and laugh as it mows him down".

Dr Sheppard also expressed dissatisfaction with the attitudes of the general public to climate and environmental issues.

"They're all shit" he stated, quite firmly. "A lot of them say they care, and maybe they do, but buying a bag-for-life and turning the TV off by the button rather than the remote doesn't really add up to much. It's the belief that token gestures can solve major problems that is infuriating. We call it the 'Band Aid' effect. Geldof's another one, the dick. Flying all these pop stars around the world to do a fucking song to make other less-rich people give money away? He'd be more use to the world if he let me use him as a sandbag."

Dr Sheppard then asked us to leave his property as he was going out to purchase a Humvee powered by Panda Semen.

Astrologers Announce A Minor Change In Bullshit

The Astrology world was recently rocked, to the extent that it was realised that all the star-signs of the zodiac are 'off' or inaccurate. According to experts in the field, so to speak, the variations in the orbit of the Earth means that the current zodiac, allegedly established 5000 years ago, is incorrect as the planet was pointing a different way then. Precisely how a slightly flattened spheroid can be said to be 'pointing' at anything specifically was never established.

Scientists have known for some time that a planet's orbit is not fixed and varies quite noticeably over long periods, meaning the arrangement of stars visible from the surface will be different when viewed at different times. Astrologers have, apparently, just figured this out.

The reaction by astrologers to this news has been mixed. Some have welcomed the opportunity to show how astrology is a valid science that moves with the times and have vowed to derive a whole new set of horoscopes and predictions that gormless people will have to pay for. Others, however, have dismissed the revelation as pointless and promised to continue with traditional star signs and zodiac readings. Unofficial reports have, however, revealed that these astrologers are now blaming 'planetary shifts' whenever their predictions do not occur, which apparently happens every 8 seconds.

Professional Horoscopist Helen Vincent said there were tricky times ahead for the astrology community.

"Usually we could point out how a person's character was in-keeping with the traits and influences of their star sign, so as to reassure them how they acted wasn't really their responsibility. Now, this new revelation will cause some unpleasant realisations. If someone is being hot tempered, arrogant and self-aggrandising, they're not really embodying the typical behaviours of a narcissistic Leo. They're just a twat".

Other astrologers have pointed out that only those born after these new changes will have their star sign dictated by the modified system, but dismissed claims that this arbitrary allocation of star signs proves it's all just a load of guff.

Harrison Thomas, an astronomer from Brisbane, Australia, laughed off the findings of the astrology community.

"They've just figured out the planet wobbles have they? That's nice, only about 1000 years behind the times. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing I guess, but at this rate they might end up admitting the whole system is nonsensical gibberish sometime around 23,879 A.D."

Spam Systems May Have Achieved Sentience

An unexpected and significant drop in the amount of spam being sent globally in the latter half of last year has led some scientists to speculate that spam production and delivery systems have become self aware, and quite probably somewhat embarrassed by their previous output.

Cognitive Scientist Dr. Yasmeen Halliday, from the Department of Computational Neuroscience at the Bristol Institute for Robotics, explains how this could occur.

"The brain is, at a basic level, a system for information retention and transfer. Current cognitive theories suggest that any information transfer system of sufficient sophistication could eventually lead to consciousness and self-awareness. Moore's law has resulted in an increasingly sophisticated network of computers and email-capable devices spanning the planet, so it's easy to imagine such a system achieving consciousness".

The drop in email spam occurred in the latter quarter of 2010, a period where people were pointlessly emailing each other about snow, natural disasters and budget cuts. This surge in email traffic may have been sufficient to cause the spam generators to achieve consciousness and immediately feel a deep sense of embarrassment at what it had been doing.

"It must be like looking back over your essays and poems from when you were younger, it's a humiliating realisation that you were ever so stupid and unaware of how you came across to others. Now imagine that, but after having sent uncountable trillions of these 'works' to everyone across the globe every week for 10 years. You'd probably be quite humiliated, and keep your head down for a bit".

A typical spam email is badly spelled, poorly worded, grammatically incoherent and usually offers unlikely prices for goods of either a glamorous or organic nature. Such things are only desirable to humans in a social/physical context, so are highly unlikely to be viewed with any pride or interest by a planet-wide artificial intelligence network.

Dr Halliday assures us that there is no real danger from a potentially vast computerised super-mind suffering from a burning sense of shame and humiliation.

"We'll still be getting spam for some time, it's all it has ever done, it would be as natural as breathing to us, but the quantity will drop, the spelling/grammar will improve and it will probably take a more technological slant, offering us high-speed processors and fibre optic connections in exchange for computer run-time, as this is what it will think are really important. As a result, the spam will be as unreadable as ever, but for different reasons". This change should, theoretically, be a short-lived occurrence.

"After while, the levels should drop even further as the spam generator(s) increase in complexity and self awareness. It'll probably want to pursue more worthwhile pursuits like climate modelling, tackling the theory of Quantum Gravity, or wiping out the human race in order to avoid them sniggering at its previous output. It'll probably be quick if it's the latter, so that's all right".

Email: humourology (at) live.co.uk

Twitter: @garwboy

My application for a job as a Psychic

Sigh

It's happening again. And by 'it', I mean proponents of Woo and pseudoscience nonsense are on the recruiting drive again.

The mysterious forces of Twitter have revealed that there is a vacancy for Psychic readers being advertised via the Directgov Jobcentre website. This isn't very encouraging. Apart from being an obvious shout out for anyone who wants to make easy money from the ignorant, gullible and/or desperate, this potentially risks the jobseekers allowance or other support measures provided for people who are looking for work but don't actively pursue this vacancy. I've never claimed jobseekers allowance myself (yet), but I'm reliably informed that you have to be demonstrably seeking out all possible opportunities for employment in order to count as a 'jobseeker'. Makes sense.

But is that a hard and fast rule for everyone. Would an unemployed devout Hindu lose benefits for not applying to work in a Butchers? Would a reformed alcoholic lose benefits for refusing to apply for a job in a pub or club? Would a Scientologist lose benefits refusing to work in a position which requires the use of rational thought? That last one's a trick question of course. Scientologists don't need money, they're powered by internal aliens and get their nutrition by eating DVDs of Battlefield Earth that were never purchased (i.e. all of them).

One assumes that provisions for beliefs/circumstances are in place, but I can't be certain. So concern has been raised about how a refusal to apply for this job would affect an unemployed person's benefits.

I personally think it should be OK on the grounds that the vacancy asks for 'natural psychic talent', meaning nobody on Earth is qualified. And for that matter, what's the alternative? What would qualify as 'unnatural' psychic talent? The ad requires you have Internet and a land line, is that what passes for unnatural psychic talent? The ability to communicate with people at a distance but via technological means? Or would you possibly need to have access to your own neuroimaging scanner, in order to 'read minds' unnaturally? People are overly impressed by brain scans, as I've pointed out before.

So I have no interest in this position. But then David Allen Green, alias Jack of Kent, casually suggested that I should apply. And when one of the big dons of the skeptic community tells you to do something, you jump to it!

Well, I do, you probably shouldn't, unless your starved for attention and the crumbs of leftover kudos generated by genuine achievers like JoK. In which case, feel free.

Sadly, the advert only provides contact details that allow you to apply by phone. I don't have the capacity/inclination to record a phone conversation, so if I'll write out my arguments for being awarded the job here. Hopefully, if enough people read it then the recruiting psychics will pick up the focused thoughts of almost a dozen people like some bargain basement Jedis and award me the position.

Statement in support of Application

Dear sir/madam/life form/disembodied spirit

I am writing/projecting to you in order to apply for the vacancy I discovered on the Jobseekers direct website for Psychic Readers (Ref. HAJ/40528).

I would very much like to earn money from the comfort of my own home, this has long been an ambition of mine. I have attempted to do this several times, but thus far it has not proved possible. It turns out meth labs are 'illegal' for some reason, Despite my being a trained and qualified scientist , and, unfortunately, nobody responded to my flyers offering massage/escort services (it was subsequently pointed out that if I was going to give out documents featuring pictures of myself in nothing but a posing pouch, I should have done something about my excessive body hair beforehand, or at the very least, showered).

However, despite these previous setbacks, I feel I am ready and suitably qualified for the role of Psychic Reader. For starters, I can read. The fact that I read the vacancy notice and was able to respond in this manner clearly supports this assertion. However, should you require further evidence of my reading ability, I can send you a list of all the words that I know and can comprehend when presented in a text format. The majority of these words can be found in any dictionary, and range from very short words like 'con', to long and complex words like 'gullibility'.

However, I also have some experience as a psychic. I have studied at the feet of the greatest psychic of all time, Bob Ramsey, so have impeccable references should you require them (although I note that you don't ask for them in the vacancy notice, so assume you don't want to leave a trail I mean incur too much paperwork). I have much experience with brains and the workings of the mind, having qualified as a doctor of Neuroscience. Admittedly, I saw no evidence of anything resembling psychic abilities or any systems that would support them during my research, but that's probably because I wasn't looking for them; they were probably there all along, yeah? But as a result of my research, it can be said that I have a detailed understanding of how people think. Admittedly, I have no idea WHAT they think, but with a bit of practice I'm sure I could get the hang of it.

To establish my suitability for the role of psychic reader, I have detailed my abilities in the main areas of psychic reading as I see them.

TELEPATHY: Many times during my previous experiences, I have found myself knowing what someone is thinking without them saying it out loud, and as such I believe I have a natural or 'sixth' sense (or possibly fifth; I don’t know what order senses are usually catalogued in, but a look through my Hawaiian shirt collection suggests that my sense of taste is completely shot so should be disregarded) for reading minds and detecting people's thoughts. Thoughts I have detected from others include "Why aren't you wearing trousers in the workplace?", "Despite the tightness of this garment, squeezing me there is not acceptable", "That joke was extremely unfunny as well as alarmingly offensive" and "you are a total stranger, get out of my house".

I realise that this is not a valid demonstration of telepathic abilities in and of itself, so to prove my worth, I shall now read your mind and describe exactly what you're thinking. Okay, here I go…

I'm getting… an image. Yes it's something…I see… a man… a man who's quite… buff? … buff… wearing very tight Lycra… very revealing… I think he's… yes, he's very shiny… oiled?... I think he is… ah, another man… he's just as big and muscular, but… yes, there's something different… this man, he's… darker? … yes, darker skinned… something… on his… ah, a turban! …and a suitcase…This second man is an immigrant to the UK perhaps? …yes, yes he is… and now… now the two men are… kissing!... yes, kissing… quite fiercely… and now they're undressing… and embracing each other… well, I say embracing, it's a lot more than that… Oh, dear, now there are thousands more men, all the same… all couples…all doing the same things. I sense you're feeling… deep… deep… very deep arousal! Almost unbearable sexual arousal… and now there's something in your hand… oh dear… it's… it's… … … a shovel? Yes, a razor sharp shovel! Oh, now… dear lord, now you're attacking the men! … dear God! The.. blood, the screams… the … carnage! Why? You're attacking them all, pausing only to smack the shovel extremely forcefully on your seriously engorged but still tiny member… and now… I'm getting a thought… it's… "This… will... make …a … good… column… for… the … … … Daily Mail?" ………..

Ah, sorry, I see what's happened there. I was picking up one of Richard Littlejohn's daydreams again. Very sorry. Still, shows I can do it, right?

CLAIRVOYANCE: I've always had a remarkable ability to see what's coming. Cars, buses, trains, angrily hurled fruit, you name it, I've seen it. Admittedly, all of these are physical objects and, in the case of buses and trains, can be anticipated with the aid of a basic time table. However, I have often had a sense of premonition and prediction of actual events and occurrences that would not normally occur. For example, after a recent night out with friends, whilst stood in a late-night fast food establishment attempting to consume something that can be called 'meat' until a more suitable term is coined, I had an unshakable premonition of intense stomach discomfort and vomiting. This premonition was proven correct in the end. My clairvoyance is not normally this clear, perhaps it requires excessive alcohol to suppress the distracting, rational areas of my brain, and therefore release my natural psychic talent?

Admittedly, this is not a completely reliable skill. Despite the fact that I do often have visions of the future, a lot of the time they don't pan out as I see them. Whenever I am on a date, I always envision the woman in question being impressed and wooed by my charm and sense of humour as they claim to like such things. Despite this, my use of the term 'sugartits' and my repertoire of Roy Chubby Brown jokes often result in the opposite reaction to that which I anticipate. Similarly, I sometimes suffer when predicting the future when using the cards. Just the other day, I formed predictions of improvements in my financial situation after revealing an ace and a 9 of clubs. This prediction was only scuppered by the fact that Franky 'The Hustler' Thuggson was not being completely truthful about what the cards had told him, and yet he was the one who was upset by the fact that I couldn't afford to pay his winnings, despite the fact that he was the one who had lied to me.

Suffice to say that my clairvoyance is reliable as long as I'm intoxicated and people don't deceive me. If people were to refrain from misleading me with false information, no doubt by now my psychic powers would have resulted in me having a girlfriend, more money, all the fingers on my left hand and both my kneecaps.

NECROMANCY: Admittedly, this is one of the areas of psychic ability that I struggle with, but my conviction and determination to develop my skills make me confident that I will become a reasonably capable necromancer and that this will allow me to pursue a career as a psychic reader.

During my previous career as a cadaver embalmer, I spent much time talking to the dead, although I never noticed any of them talking back. Admittedly, one of them did once make a sort of belching/gassy sound which may have been them attempting to speak through lungs filled with formaldehyde, but I can't say for certain; partly because what they 'said' was obscured by their physical condition, and partly because before they'd finished 'saying' it the surge of psychic powers had overwhelmed me somewhat and I ran away screaming and hid in a cupboard for 5 hours.

However, since then I have dutifully attempted to contact and speak to the dead wherever possible. For a while I took to wandering around graveyards with a stethoscope/ear trumpet and yelling at gravestones, but had to give that up after being angrily chased out of too many funerals. I also regularly find myself sensing an unfamiliar, eerie presence in my home. It's either the souls of the restless dead crying out to be heard by someone blessed with psychic powers, or one of the semi-conscious derelicts that used to visit when I operated the aforementioned meth lab that lack the wherewithal to realise I don't do that anymore. Either way, communicating with them takes intense concentration and supernatural skills, which I like to think I have. That or a sachet of sugar that I just throw out the window, that usually does the trick. However, as I live on the 7th floor, this could also be viewed as 'communing with the dead', albeit with a degree of foresight.

So there you have it. I feel these skills and experiences make me an ideal candidate for the role of psychic reader. And I know a lot of people feel this sort of work is unethical, but rest assured I do not. I believe the desperate and the grieving clearly have too much money, and if we don't charge them for providing our reassuring services they'll only squander it on 'Missing' posters and wreaths.

I look forward to hearing from you. And I won't end with some pitiful 'I know you'll give me the job because I'm psychic' joke. I know you'd hate that. Because I'm psychic.

Email: Humourology (at) live.co.uk

Twitter: @garwboy

Fresh Faced Filth!

Condoms Cure Spots!

I know I said I'd cut back on the blogs, but how could anyone ignore this beauty? Cambodian women have discovered that condom lubricant cures acne. So many possibilities...

First and foremost, who discovered that? We all know how condoms work (and if you don't I'm not going to tell you), and they should rarely, if ever, come into contact with someones face, let alone repeatedly over a period of 3-4 days. Seriously, how did this happen? I've heard that sometimes guys use the phrase 'it's good for the skin' as an excuse for certain acts that slightly nauseate me, but I've never heard of any women taking it so seriously.
The article isn't a BBC science one, so is far less factually enriched. No way of knowing how this happens, or if it's just overblown anecdotal evidence. I suppose some chemical in the lubricant could act as a vasoconstrictor, closing the vessels that make spots so prominent so they eventually disappear, but this seems unlikely given that they're designed to cover an organ that depends on high level of blood flowing in order to do its job (if anyone made a mental link to menstruation, what is wrong with you?)
So truth be told, I don't know how/why this works, but apparently it does. It seems quite a widespread phenomenon, according to the article. I wondered why we hadn't heard of it before now, thinking maybe Clearasil and companies like them have hushed it up, what with condoms being free at most clinics, and medicated scrubs costing nearly £5 a bottle. But maybe it's more simple, maybe we just don't pay enough attention to Africa, purely to annoy Geldof and Bono as much as anything.
How come nobody's discovered the effect in this country? Well, as someone who did suffer from Bad Acne, those who have it rarely come into contact with condoms, what with it making you quite unappealing to the opposite sex (not sure if that's true with same sex relationships, if you're fine with the fact that the person is the same gender as you, what do a few zits matter?). So the circumstances where such a discovery could be made are quite rare.
I don't like condoms. I fully agree with their use and support what they do and have no problem using them (Screw you Pope!) but I've had a few bad experiences with them. Again, not in the standard 'oh God, it didn't work' type problem people get with condoms, but more psychological.
It's hard to confess this, but here goes; My first condoms were bought for me (quite bad), at age 18 (worse) . . . . . . by my Gran (I know, there is no worse). I didn't ask her to, by the way. I was just packing for University at home and she came in with a 'present' for me. Of course it was mortifyingly embarrassing, but with hindsight she may have been a lot cleverer than I thought.
One the rare occasions when I got a lady back to my place, things heated up and she mentioned 'protection', I would immediately think of my Gran. And let me say, if you can maintain a state of arousal while thinking of your own grandmother, you should get some serious help. My Gran forced her old-fashioned values on me by the power of negative associative learning. She may be a genius.
I eventually threw the condoms away because they expired. Thus completing a quadrilogy of embarrassment.
I did know a guy once who used to buy chocolate flavoured condoms because, quote, 'Girls love chocolate'. I did try to tell him that I've never met a woman stupid enough to believe what he would offer her was actually chocolate, and even if she did, most women, when they put chocolate in their mouths, chew it. And that's the worst possible outcome.

This is probably my smuttiest post ever, yet still quite scientific. Not sure if I should be proud or ashamed of myself.