Constipation Occupation: Read It and Squeak

History of Pain: Before oxycodone and fentanyl, passing a kidney stone could make a man tear a urinal from the wall. Thanks to pharmaceuticals it now just feels like passing a wet fart through your wee-wee.

The analgesic power of willow bark was known 2,000 years before scientists named its active ingredient acetylsalicylic acid - or aspirin to you and me. As Dormandy says, it is now "the most commercially successful proprietary drug ever". Indeed, the first vending machine installed in the House of Commons "dispensed containers with four of the magic pills".

Chicks Dig Ugly: Freakonimblog post stirs up confusion: Perhaps good-looking couples have good-looking girl-kids because the good-looking woman's womb is hostile to dude-babies, who may or may not be good-looking. Great slithering ouroboros, Batman!

The study apparently looked at both parents’ attractiveness, which was rated separately by some observer on a scale of 1-5. I can certainly see why if certain traits would be more advantageous for one sex of offspring than the other then it would (turn out to have been?) advantageous to produce more offspring of the desireable sex. But how is the mother going to contribute to this effect, hypothetically? She ain’t got nothing to offer but X chromosomes, attractive or not.

Coconut bras for Amazon women? No. [sigh] Just sound mirrors to eavesdrop on Nazis.