So what's the problem then? After all it has recently been shown that swimming through syrup is just as easy as swimming through water.

Cussler and Gettelfinger took more than 300 kilograms of guar gum, an edible thickening agent found in salad dressings, ice cream and shampoo, and dumped it into a 25-metre swimming pool, creating a gloopy liquid twice as thick as water. "It looked like snot," says Cussler.

How's that for a pick-up line? "Hey Baby, want to swim through my pool of snot?"

The pair then asked 16 volunteers, a mix of both competitive and recreational swimmers, to swim in a regular pool and in the guar syrup. Whatever strokes they used, the swimmers' times differed by no more than 4%, with neither water nor syrup producing consistently faster times, the researchers report in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal.

I seems that although there is more drag on the body as it passes through a thicker liquid there is also more thrust from pushing against the liquid and the two cancel out for a human sized object.

Now we know. Isn't science grand?

(Hat tip to Dopple-G)

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Dad Says School Duct-Taped Son's Pants

The dress code says no pants hanging off of your ass. Assistant Principal Patricia Walters takes that shit seriously. When Spencer Allison wore his baggies down low his teacher sent him to see her and she corrected the problem in impeccable fashion.

"She then proceeded to duct tape his waist, three times around the waist," said [the boy's father Scott] Allison. "Then she sent him back to class, in front of his peers."

He said he worried his son would be mocked by his classmates at the school in the town about 20 miles east of South Bend.

"This outrages me and shocks me," Allison said.

Of course he's going to be mocked. The Assistant Principal taped his pants! That's beautiful! Talk about fodder for mocking. And what are the chances that lil Spence violates that particular section of the dress code again?

Actually, Spencer is pretty lucky. Whenever I see an example of this particular fashion statement I always think of a staple gun, not duct tape.

(Hat tips to Jason Trommetter and Jack Mitcham.)

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Kelley of Suburban Blight was in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, along with a bunch of other bloggers who are less important simply because I don't know them. The article is here and you can avoid the annoying registration here.

Congrats Kelley!

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