7 Video Game Healing Methods Least Likely to Actually Work Thanks to the many, many problems young men possess, video games about killing things have become more popular than ever. And because the pleasure felt in violently slaughtering a man is only surpassed by that felt by violently slaughtering many men, video game design has leaned towards the ideal of pitting the player against ever increasing quantities of enemies, lining thousands of poor pixelated bastards up to be cut down by greasy teens. But this "maniac butcher hero" design choice has forced designers to make allowances for the possibility that the player might make a small mistake along the way. Killing enough Nazis to fill a stadium without any of them laying a claw upon you would be almost impossible, and at a minimum frustrating to play. To avoid this, video games have developed a variety of mechanics that allow their protagonists to absorb and recover from ridiculously grotesque wounds. 1) First Aid Kits As Seen In Every First Person Shooter prior to 2002How it Works Realism
8 Actors Who Look Exactly The Same on Every Movie Poster In Zoolander, Ben Stiller plays a male model who only knows how to make one facial expression in front of a camera: Blue Steel. Most of us have Facebook friends with their own version of Blue Steel -- a particular facial expression (or if they've had a few drinks, body part) that comes out every time someone tells them to say cheese. Well, it turns out that some of Hollywood's most iconic actors are no different when it comes to selling their movie. For instance ... Eddie Murphy Raises His Eyebrow Eddie Murphy has this thing he can do with his eyebrow that he wants you to check out. Murphy appears to be looking out at us from inside this fish out of water comedy, and saying, "You believe these Hollywood assholes?" Then he brought it out for The Golden Child, where he used it to say, "You believe these Chinese assholes?" "You believe these Hollywood assholes paid me to make this movie?" He doesn't break it out for Dr. Eyebrow. Do you think that theory's too far fetched, Mr. Eyebrow? Huh.
6 Resolutions for Those With Realistic Expectations Well, folks, it's a new year, and like a lot of you, I'll be damned if I'm going to let this one turn into the shitshow that 2010 did. God, what a disaster. Who knew a dolphin could bleed that much? "This dolphin is all I need for the best Valentine's Day ever!" But unlike a lot of you, I'm not going to partake in any new year's resolutions -- the traditional way to improve one's life at the start of a calendar year. But, for those of you that still want to make resolutions, I've offered some advice below on how to make them suck less. Resolution 1: Lose Weight If you're using a special, extra-wide keyboard to access this page, then you might be in the group of people who've vowed to lose weight this coming year. Why it sucks: Because this is also the most broken, least plausible new year's resolution. A better resolution: Move some place flatter See this is good because it's easy, requiring only a one time commitment, rather than major lifestyle changes. Resolution 3: Quit Smoking
6 Insane Versions of Famous Cartoons They Almost Made In a business full of endless reboots and remakes, maybe nothing in Hollywood gets recycled more than animation. Since cartoon characters aren't associated with any one actor (in the audience's mind) studios feel even more free to come up with endless revamps starring the same characters. But even with Hollywood's low, low standards, some shows wind up too ridiculous to see the light of day. Way back in the year 2010, DC Comics began developing yet another new Batman cartoon series. You know there would have been at least one episode where the Joker learned about the dangers of drug abuse. Based on the concept, this isn't a bad idea. Or ... maybe not. It's a brave gym coach who runs that detention hall. Yeah, instead of just another Batman show rehashing the same old plots, the Gotham High concept would have given us Bane and Killer Croc dunking the Riddler's head in a toilet bowl while the Penguin acted as lookout. Is it actually possible for him to be more of a whiny bastard?
6 Animals Humanity Accidentally Made Way Scarier Wolves have gotten a bad rap where pop-culture is concerned: They're constantly menacing peasants or participating in rape metaphors involving young girls visiting elderly relatives. But despite this age-old slander, not a single wolf-related fatality was recorded in the entire 20th century for all of North America. Even non-fatal attacks happened less than once a year. Regular dogs kill more people. But just as humanity started changing its tune and embracing our awesome wolf brothers -- depicting them as sexy, caveman-faced hunks in Twilight, buying our three-wolf shirts, and teaching them to high five on command -- everything changed. What the hell did we do? Two things lie behind the twenty-first century's Rise of the Wolves (as our grandchildren will surely call it, in hushed whispers, lest the Great Pack hear them and sniff out their hiding caves). They tore our greatest armies into Kibbles and Bits The first is habituation, which is the same problem as the cougars, essentially.
7 Basic Things You Won't Believe You're All Doing Wrong If you're like us, you might sometimes have a problem with complex tasks, like trying to drive an ambulance and send a text message at the same time. But hey, at least most of us have figured out the simplest things that get us through the day, right? Except, you know, some of the simple things we've done every day of our lives, like ... What could be simpler than taking a good crap? Even babies are good at it. You might be surprised, then, to find out that even those of us who can burp without throwing up get this wrong every single day. The one who just threw up on the other one's shoulder is better at pooping. Chances are the pooping facility nearest you is a sitting toilet, a relatively recent invention that flushed its way into mankind's heart with the advent of indoor plumbing in the 19th century. GettyFuture toilets will exist just to kill us. So how the hell are we meant to do it? Luckily, there's a relatively simple way to end this poop dilemma. GettyDemonstrated here.
6 Animals Humanity Accidentally Made Way Scarier On any given day, we might get food poisoning from the entire roast chicken we ate for lunch, catch bird flu from the bi-weekly cockfight we attend behind the Circle K, or crash our car while swerving to hit some smug-ass deer, taunting us from the roadside with his arrogant beauty. There are plenty of dangers that can befall humanity by virtue of our own asshole behaviors, but none that hold a candle to these: Jellyfish are creepy looking, kind of dangerous, and unlike their fellow marine killer, the shark, they don't even taste that good. H.P. In 2006 and 2010, huge swarms of jellyfish invaded the beaches of Spain, stinging tens of thousands of swimmers. Don't start screaming now. Japan has also been attacked by a (greater-than-usual) number of giant tentacle monsters, with the 6-feet-long venomous Nomura jellyfish showing up in increasing numbers in the surrounding waters. Man-Sized Jellyfish: Nature's way of saying, "fuck right off, divers." What the hell did we do? Never forget.
7 Horrible Ways The Universe Can Destroy Us Without Warning You know what the universe is? A total dick, that's what. You know what else it is? A giant microwave oven. If you tune your TV set between channels, part of the "snow" that you see on the screen is background noise caused by cosmic radiation. You can also hear this phenomenon as a low, humming hiss behind all other noise. Via Wiki CommonsThis is called a horn antenna. How It Will Get Us: While cosmic rays aren't able to deliver microwaves powerful enough to do what an actual microwave oven does (i.e., explode us like hot dogs), other kinds of rays out there are more than capable of harming our machinery and turning us into walking tumor farms. GettyHey, is it cool to start spraying CFCs again? OK! GettySo at least you know one thing is getting cooked up there. And what about the cosmic microwave background? Getty"Damn you, space. While cosmic rays can be harmful and even fatal, they're stopped just short of eradicating all life on Earth by our built-in defense system. Just once a day.
5 Ways Stores Use Science to Trick You Into Buying Crap #2. You Can't Comprehend Numbers The headlines after Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad mostly focused on how inexpensive it was. Only $499! That's a good price for a ... ... wait -- for a what? Also, why are we still doing the $_99 thing on our prices? Source Actually, no. Humans are really bad with numbers, and it manifests itself in a whole bunch of different ways in the world of retail. By the time you actually own this place the roof will have burrito stains. So when it comes to setting prices, sellers know that it's mostly up to them to frame for us what the price should be. As for the iPad's pleasant surprise price of $499? Why It Works: Picture three golf balls, lined up in a row. Now picture a box full of 4,258 golf balls. Not only can you not see in your head what 4,258 balls looks like, you probably don't even have a ballpark idea of how big of a box it would take. The $499 vs $500 thing is a perfect example. Or "enough Ramen to get you through graduate school". Hooray for ignorance! #1.
8 Scenes That Prove Hollywood Doesn't Get Technology As we have previously mentioned, hilarious things happen when writers try to write characters who are smarter than themselves. For instance, I don't doubt that some research goes into writing the medical jargon on House, but we all know that at some point they fake it. And that's fine, because what percentage of the audience is composed of not only doctors, but genius doctors? It's probably not even half. But that's why it's so baffling when Hollywood fucks up every scene involving computers or video games. (Note: Credit goes to the tech savvy gang at the NeoGAF forums for hunting down many of these clips, and countless others). NCIS -- Two People Sharing a Keyboard Let's assume you know absolutely nothing about computers. So it's the navy cop show NCIS, and they're under a hacker attack! The hot goth chick starts hammering away at her keyboard as dozens of windows erupt on her screen, looking like she's trying to close all of the porn popups before her mom walks in and catches her.