News You Can't Use: Goats Prefer to Interact with Humans who Look Happy

If you're like most healthy human units you probably spend a lot of time wondering how you can improve your interactions with goats. I remember when I was twelve my friends and I would run up on a goat kept by a local farmer, wave our arms and shout or whatever and than run off. What I'm trying to establish is that I'm an expert at wasting the precious gift of life. Fortunately, decades later, a solution has been reached by lying scientists. It turns out you can improve your time around the cloven-hoofed can-chewers that same way you connect with your fellow wise, wise men: by walking around with a rictus smile carved into your greasy bloated face.

Goats recognise and are attracted to happy humans, a study has found.

I'm not going to make the obvious joke, so don't even ask. The word choice in the very first sentence isn't helping, obviously.

Much like us, they seem to be drawn to smiling faces. But don’t expect to make friends with a goat if you scowl at it.

Time to win over this goat by making scary faces. Why isn't this working?

Scientists showed 20 goats unfamiliar photos of the same human face looking happy or angry.

A football team that went 4-8 and this nonsense is what your student loan debt is funding.

The research, conducted at Buttercups Sanctuary for Goats in Kent, demonstrated that the goats preferred to interact with the smiling face.

So we're going to enter a goat sanctuary and hold up pictures of faces. Sold! Here's your grant money.

Released from a distance of four metres (13ft) they generally made straight for the happy image, exploring it curiously with their snouts.

Snout exploration is a good basis for any quality relationship, just like how snout-counting is the best way to elect our rulers.

This suggested that goats use the left hemisphere of their brains to process positive emotion, said the team from Queen Mary, University of London.

I mean, sure! Anything could be going on here.

Dr Alan McElligott, who led the research, said: “The study has important implications for how we interact with livestock and other species, because the abilities of animals to perceive human emotions might be widespread and not just limited to pets.”

Now when you're doing backbreaking and disgusting agricultural labor we'll force you to smile the whole time for the benefit of the livestock.

Co-author Dr Christian Nawroth, a member of the Queen Mary team now based at the Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology in Germany, said: “Here we show for the first time that goats do not only distinguish between these expressions, but they also prefer to interact with happy ones.”

Scratch a German and find precision.

 Now with scientifically accurate human emotion interaction DLC.

Sheep are known to possess a powerful visual memory and an ability to recognise human faces from photographs. 

Being called "sheeple" is actually a complement on your visual memory.

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Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Government Waste Includes Swedish Massages for Rabbits, Monkey Gambling Lessons

How would you like to hear about massive government waste involving your tax dollars? I know, the Big Game is on soon and thinking causes physical pain and sexual side-effects, but in this case I promise it will be worth it. We're talking gambling monkeys, rabbits that live in the lap of decadent luxury and some Republican trapped on the wrong side of history trying to get someone, anyone, to actually care about this appalling misappropriation. Yes, this should be the new youth fad. "Hey dawg, let's rap about the appropriation of federal funds. Totally rad! Twenty-three skiddoo!"

More than a dozen lucky rabbits were given Swedish massages four times a day, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, as part of a study to figure out whether massage can help recovery times after strenuous exercise — a practice Sen. Tom Coburn says makes a mockery of federal spending.

I can see giving tax dollars to "moderate" terrorists or blimp attack defense domes, but I didn't get all those automatic pay check deductions so Bugs Bunny can get endless deep tissue stimulation! Basic research, the oldest con game in the book.

The rabbit massages are one of the hundred wasteful products Mr. Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, identified in his latest edition of the Wastebook, an annual compendium of the ridiculous and outrageous items in government spending, which he is releasing on Wednesday.

On Wastebook you post pictures of yourself achieving nothing of any value, sometimes paired with self-congratulatory text updates. So it's just like that other one.

Every year this guy lists the outrages and nothing ever changes. We need to start caring about PEOPLE, man. Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna fall off this bar stool, stagger home and beat my family savagely.

Other highlights included the National Science Foundation paying academics to teach monkeys to gamble

"No, Chin Chin! You don't split up two tens!!!

A first-person combat shooting video game the Army developed — but which intelligence officials fear terrorists could use to train their own recruits.

I don't want to alarm you, but the terrorists may have access to video games. Seriously, what is this? I always assumed terrorists trainees (complete with special little name tags) just watch endless episodes of "Jersey Shore," "Teen Mom" and "Real Housewives" until the proper hatred for the American Satan has been instilled.

Indeed, Hezbollah has adapted the game’s design to train suicide martyrs.

"Pretend the dots are innocent people and the ghosts represent enemy soldiers."

Mr. Coburn’s investigators also found scientists putting mountain lions, monkeys, rats and cows on treadmills.

Our national mountain lion obesity problem is deeply troubling. This is the way forward.

In the case of the rabbits, they weren’t put on treadmills but were forced to exercise in order to create stress.

"Get off that treadmill, Thumper! What do you think you are, a cow or something?"

Science!

Taxpayers paid $387,000 for the two-year study, which concluded that other studies were right, and massage seemed to help in recovery — though it wasn’t clear that rabbit physiology could be extrapolated to humans. The rabbits were euthanized at the end of the study, Mr. Coburn’s report says.

It's funny that in the rush to get all scandalized over the sweet life of these jumping vermin we kind of glossed over the whole "euthanized" thing. 

Full Story.

Komment Korner  

The country fell short by roughly 536 impeachment hearings that year.

Who Is John Galt?

Next time Sen. Coburn needs life saving modern medial care, maybe he should decline as it is almost certainly grounded in basic research that, since he has no expertise or ability to put in context, he'd declare was a waste of taxpayers money when it was performed.

You've got to pass what's in the cupboard before you can see what's in the cupboard

Barbara, I think you're falling for a classic Tom Coburn misdirection.

Check Out My Books!

Aaron Zehner is the author of "Posts from the Underground," now available in paperback and e-book. Read free excerpts here and here.

His first novel "The Foolchild Invention" is also available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.