Are you ready for smart underwear?

Some researchers have invented smart underwear that monitors your flatulence. Side note: This conversation could go a couple of different ways, so let’s explore both! 🙂

On the serious side, this is actually helpful. Scientists can learn a lot about people’s gut health based on their flatulence, and up until now it was difficult to study. It has been attempted, but it involved “extremely invasive techniques”, and the less said about that the better! Now, with smart underwear, people can easily submit information about their microbiomes to scientists. It contributes to a research study called the Human Flatus Atlas. It tracks the amount of farts per day and the hydrogen content. Did you know your toots are made of mostly hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen? Methane is also in the mix, but less common.

The first group test with this new underwear included 19 healthy participants, and it found that the average number of farts per day was 32, ranging from 4 to a maximum of 59. While 59 is a rather large number of farts for one day, I had a college roommate who once passed gas over 100 times in a day. It was so excessive that he actually counted them. And I believe him, because I unfortunately had to witness some of that. I don’t know what he ate to enable that superpower.

Someone had told me about this smart underwear, so I searched for info on it, and one headline said, “Everyone does this. But how much is too much? Scientists want to know.” The article started out with: “Whether you call it breaking wind, sounding the trumpet, or cutting the cheese, everyone farts. But how much gas is too much? The short answer: no one knows – yet.” It’s safe to say that 100+ is too much for one day. Not only was something unusual going on with their health, but probably everyone around them!

Is this topic gross? To some, yes. But as another article said:

Whether you’re breaking wind, farting hard or just letting out a quick toot, flatulence is — whether you want to admit it or not — as much a daily necessity as breathing.

So while it is necessary, some people don’t like to talk about it. That’s fine. If you are one of those, you should probably not finish the rest of this post. You have been warned. 🙂

On the lighter side, this invention could be used for fun! For people who enjoy farting, there could be a competition setting. Someone could create a way for friends to have a leaderboard. The results could be uploaded to a shared site or sent via text. The smart underwear could track the number of times, the loudest volume, and the most stank. Obviously this isn’t for everyone, but I guarantee there are some people who would enjoy making it competitive.

I need a flamethrower

Perhaps “need” is slightly exaggerated here, because I’ve survived without one so far. But it would be really helpful and convenient to have one right now. I recently got quite a bit of snow and sleet that accumulated, and I don’t have a snow shovel. I have a regular shovel, but that’s slow and tiring for snow removal. Plus once the snow mixture started to thaw and then refroze, it became ice that made my driveway treacherous to traverse, and a shovel just didn’t cut it. Obviously the best way to melt snow and ice off my driveway would be with a flamethrower. Plus it would be fun! So it’s a win-win!

Snow in the South

People in the South don’t get snow very often, so it’s a big deal. Schools and businesses may preemptively close if there’s a forecast of even an inch of snow on the ground. This isn’t panic — we simply don’t have the infrastructure for it. Why would the cities invest in many snow plows when they’d get used only once every few years?

Many of us enjoy the snow, because it is such a rare occurrence. I live in the South, and we recently got several inches (of a snow and sleet mixture), and the schools were closed for a week. We got to do sledding, throwing snowballs, making snow ice cream (if you don’t know, try it, seriously), building snowmen (or trying to, depending on the texture), and just enjoying how it looks different.

But there is something we do wrong, and we know it. We panic buy. This funny parody song (below) highlights that. Once snow is in the forecast, people buy all the milk and bread. Even though we may be snowed in for just a couple of days (because it’ll be 50 degrees before you know it), that doesn’t matter. We must have enough milk and bread to last weeks, even if we’ve never been snowed in that long. And even though it would make more sense to stock up on non-perishable foods, that doesn’t matter. It’s just part of the experience. People joke about it, but then they do it anyway. Friends shared pictures of the grocery stores, and the whole bread aisle would be empty. People even bought up the yucky expensive bread that’s topped with sticks and rocks.

a chocolate countdown

Did you survive the shopping madness that is Black Friday? I did, so you get more ramblings. Speaking of that, since large TVs are rather affordable now, I was hoping for some great deals on groceries instead, but didn’t find anything really discounted. (I suppose that means I’m officially an adult now, if I’m thinking more about grocery prices than getting a bigger TV on Black Friday.)

Now we’re into the busiest time of the year, but I’ll still make time to share some funny pictures related to Christmas.

I see these every year for Advent / Christmas, but a chocolate-a-day countdown seems like it would be good for a number of other events. What do you think?

Is this a fail? Or genius? Or some points for making a good attempt? Some might say it’s tacky, but is it still better than no car decoration?
This was also listed as a Christmas decorating fail. Granted, monkey flinging poop isn’t exactly holiday-themed, but it is funny.
Again, this was listed as a fail. It’s not Christmas, but it’s neat. If there was a “Star Trek Saves Christmas” episode, it probably did fail by being really cheesy. Seems like a lot of older shows had episodes like that.
It’s log!!!

For the log reference:

Bonus reference: When Phineas and Ferb became toy designers, they created Perry The Inaction Figure, which doesn’t do much. That’s the genius of it, because it can be anything to a kid with an imagination. (Think of how a box of random Lego blocks can be anything, but now so many Legos are kits. You can still build other things with a kit, but people are more likely to build what is on the box. Likewise with other toys — a generic action figure can be anything. But I digress…) After their day of being toy designers, they moved on. The Har D Har Toy Company tried to design another product with a similar ethos, coming up with Brick, which reminded me of Log.