Christi's Corpus

"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures-in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." 

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des hommes

Science wouldn't lie: You can bring a corpse to orgasm

1 APRIL 2015       SALON       ANNA PULLEY

(AlterNet) -- Science has made many groundbreaking discoveries through research and experimentation (and sometimes guessing and getting lucky). But sometimes we wonder how certain experiments came to be in the first place. For instance, the study that found the smell of Good ‘n’ Plenty candy increases vaginal blood flow, or the one that asked “What might be the minimal stimulus required to excite a turkey?” With that in mind, we found some of the most bizarre sex and relationship studies to share in the collective what-the-f*ckery. Enjoy.

1. Turkeys will mate with a head on a stick. 

Let’s start with the excitable turkeys. In the far-out 1960s, researchers Martin Schein and Edgar Hale of the University of Pennsylvania determined that male turkeys would try to mate with female turkeys who, well, were half the gals they used to be. Researchers started by removing from the female a wing, a tail, etc., part by part, until all that was left was a head on a stick, which the male turkey determined was still good enough to have sex with. And you thought men were unfussy when it came to sex partners! The male turkey would not, however, try to mate with the opposite setup — a turkey body with no head attached. Good to see male turkeys have at least one standard. Researchers theorized that male turkeys were neither leg nor breast men, but that they mostly cared about female turkey faces, which is kind of sweet if you forget about the rest of this barbaric study. 

... 7. You can bring a corpse to orgasm. 

Another Mary Roach gem, found in her book Stiff on human cadavers (and in her TED talk), is the study that found out if you stimulate the sacral nerve root of a beating-heart cadaver with an electrode, it triggers the Lazarus reflex, which is a movement in which the legally dead person will cross its arms across its chest. “Very unsettling for people working in pathology labs,” as Roach put it. Roach surmised that if a corpse can be stimulated to do the Lazarus, it could also be stimulated to orgasm. So she asked brain death expert Stephanie Mann:  “Could you conceivably trigger an orgasm in a dead person?” She said, ‘Yes, if the sacral nerve is being oxygenated, you conceivably could.’ Obviously it wouldn’t be as much fun for the person. But it would be an orgasm — nonetheless.” So not only can researchers make corpses do part of the macarena, they can also give dead people the time of their lives (deaths?). Read More

We make French toast from castella cake, and it’s absolutely yums!【Rocket Kitchen】

How can you make an almost perfect food taste better? Make it with cake!

27 JUNE 2016       ROCKETNEWS24       MEG MURPHEY

On the Japanese internet, users are raving about castella (カステラ) French toast, made from the popular Japanese sponge cake originally brought to the country by Portuguese merchants. French toast and sponge cake — sounds like a match made in heaven, no? Well, we had to see if it really is worth all of the fuss, so our Japanese-language writer Ahiru Neko, lover of sweets, hopped on the bandwagon and set to the task of creating this delicacy.

The ingredients are few and simple, and you’re likely to already have them in your kitchen. 

You will need:
100 millilitres of milk
1 egg
1 tablespoon of butter
And of course, your castella sponge cake 

Ahiru says that with the sweetness of the sponge cake, you can enjoy it as-is, but if you want that little extra something, a light drizzle of maple syrup makes it simply divine. Read More