folgha

Dirty Jobs is on, and the host just made the comment that bee society echoes ancient Rome, with much sex, lots of eating, political assassinations, and vomiting. I find that I like the show more every time I watch it; it's just that damned interesting.

I watch shows on Discovery and the History Channel pretty regularly, actually. Aside from the fact that I learn stuff from them (and I do love to learn), I get a lot of stuff I can use to mess with my students. One of my favorites has been a show that dealt with the history of boxing; the show discussed a fight in the West during the later 19th Century in which one combatant was struck such that his eyeball popped out of its socket and dangled by the optic nerve. The referee refused to allow a delay for the afflicted to put the eye back in its socket, and rather than forfeit, the idiot kept fighting.

The next punch hit the eyeball, bursting it in a welter of watery jelly.

My students shiver every time I tell the story. They cringe when I discuss the incidence of a man getting kicked in the balls hard enough to either force them up into his pelvis or pulp them like smashed grapes.

Think about it and see if you don't agree.