Furthering your education? Funny.

Bob and I often get lost on internet research tangents after some benign comment about something random.

For example, the other night, we were laughing about people picking their nose and eating it.  We have a theory that pretty much everyone picks their nose, but only honest folk will admit it.  Everyone has boogers.  They are crusty and annoying in everyone's noses.  Our path of logic leads us to the conclusion that everyone possessing at least one finger picks those things.  But why eat them?

Is that Brittney going in for a nose dive??

My thinking was that the booger-eating is a result of not having anywhere to put the booger once it is harvested.  It's sort of by default that it ends up in the mouth.  Little kids have been told not to wipe their hands all over everything, so...nom nom nom.

 

Bob was thinking that it's just a habit formed when growing up.  Little kids are gross.  They eat boogers.  Somewhere along the way, the behavior is ingrained, and the result is booger-eating adults.

Then we surmised that perhaps there is some biological reason for eating boogers.  You know how some dogs will eat their own poo, or horse poo, or deer poo, or rabbit poo...stop me if I've lost you...maybe all this poo-eating is only done by dogs that I or my parents have owned.  In which case, I guess I just keep company with dogs of little taste.  But I always thought that dogs would do that because there is some nutritional reason for it, or some evolutionary reason.  Maybe if you eat all the poo of other dogs in the area, they won't have a chance to breed or something.  Maybe female dogs dig poo breath.

 

Or maybe they are doing us a favor.

 

It's sort of like how meth addicts will eat their scabs to get the most out of their meth.  Like recycling.  Those methheads, they are doing what they can to reduce waste.  Good work.

The pictures I found for this are too gross...and not funny.  Back to boogers.

 

So anyway, we looked it up.  I guessed that if I started typing "Why do people eat..." into google, it would come up first.

It does.

"Why do people eat boogers?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_mucus

...that's right, there is a wiki page on it.  And this wiki page doesn't even have one of those disclaimers at the beginning that basically warns you that all the "information" you are about to read is total crap.  Nope, this one appears to be legit.  In our quest for knowledge, I read several webpages on the topic, and many of them reference a study that was done about booger-eating, along with a doctor who advocates the practice.

The study was performed by Sidney Tarachow of the State University of New York.  Sounds like a real person at a real place.  It reported that people who ate their boogers found them "tasty".

HAHAHAAHAHAHHA is this a band named Tasty???  HAHAHAHHAAAAA

The doctor who is all for these tasty snacks is named Friedrich Bischinger, from Austria, and his reasoning includes that boogers act sort of like vaccinations against bacteria and disease.

So Bob and I became virtual experts on this topic in a matter of about 20 minutes of laughter-fueled reading.  But I also started thinking about these people who have done these studies on the benefits or reasons behind booger-eating.

Which leads me to my next thought.

Sidney Tarachow is probably a graduate student in psychology or biology or medicine or something.  He (or she) conducted University-funded research, with a panel of volunteers, to find out why people eat boogers.  His/her conclusions?  "They are tasty".

BAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAAA

Can you imagine the doctoral defense?  Can you imagine the initial proposal of this study???  Hilarious!  I love it.  I think everyone I know who is currently engaged in or is thinking about going into a master's or doctoral program needs to stop everything and re-think their theses. I have some ideas that I think are definitely worth a few years of your time...

"Why do boys enjoy the smell of their own farts?"

"Why is it so satisfying to squeeze a pimple?"

"Why is it disappointing to remove a q-tip from one's ear and find that it is not covered in crud?"

...and so forth.

I have to think that Sidney was having a bit of a laugh at the University's expense throughout that whole process.  And to that I say: kudos, Sidney, you are a master- or perhaps doctor- of the funny follow-through.  Well done.

"You are WELCOME." -Sidney

Moral of this story: Just because some jerk says eating your boogers is good for you, doesn't mean you should start doing it.  Especially in front of me.