How Much Does This Hurt, Exactly?

Pain measurement! Pyromania analysis! NASA rocket! Hefty bacteria! Galaxy shapes! Hot summer! Murderous bird! Flying snails! And scientists playing with hoses for fake experiments! It's your Wednesday Science Watch, where we watch science—in agony!

  • Sure, you might say something "hurts," but don't we need a scientifically objective way to measure pain? For example, when I poke you in the eye with a safety pin, exactly how much does that "hurt?" Hard to say objectively, right? How about when I stab you with this trowel from my garden? How about when I kick you in the shin with steel-toed Timberlands? How about now, when I set you aflame? Better or worse than now, as I shoot your kneecaps with buckshot? Difficult to say with precision, right? How about when I just disembowel you, like this? You see what I'm getting at. How about when I punch you? I'm punching you now.
  • You might think you know what pyromania is, but do you really know what pyromania is? Something about fire? Well yes, that's right. I'll try to finder a harder one next time.
  • NASA has designed a big new rocket that will go past the moon, to "asteroids and Mars." That's cool NASA, right before that make sure you take datass to the bank! U broke!
  • The average human being is walking around right now with three to five pounds of bacteria in their body. Or in your case, sitting around like a fat slob on a couch with a big bag of Funyuns, and three to five pounds of bacteria. And one to three pounds of Funyuns.
  • Let's get real: the Milky Way owes its shape to crashes with a dwarf galaxy. Let's be honest.
  • Congratulations, Americans, you've just endured the second hottest summer on record. Meanwhile all the people on the sun are like "That's nothing, try summer on the sun!" Well we don't live on the sun, okay? Apples and oranges.
  • If you were a honeyguide bird what would happen is your mom would lay you as an egg in the nest of some other bird and then when you hatched you would kill the chicks that the bird in the nest actually laid with a "prolonged, shaking bite that causes fatal internal bleeding." And you could be anything you wanted to be when you grow up, if you stayed in school.
  • "Did flying snails cross Mexico?" Who told you that? We don't talk about that.
  • What are scientists gonna do next? "Scientists will attempt to pump water up a hose suspended one kilometre off the ground beneath a helium-filled balloon." To study climate change, sure. Climate change in their butt.
[Photo: AP ]