Snails On Methamphetamine

sciencehabit writes "Science answers the question: What happens when you put a snail on speed? From the article: 'The results suggest that meth improves memory, something that has been previously observed in creatures with large, complex brains like rats and humans. But since the snails store their memories in a simple, three-neuron network, the team hopes that studying the meth effect in these gastropods will help pinpoint how the drug's memory magnification powers work.'"

Comments

Interesting

[davidsinn]

Three neurons for a memory. Sounds like the congress.

Re:Interesting

[ragefan]

Clearly due to all the meth and coke on the cash.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Three neurons for a memory. Sounds like the congress.

I think you are thinking of morons, not neurons.

Re:Interesting

[ConceptJunkie]

OK. It's really simple.

"Libraries of Congress" is a measure of information. It is unit based on the amount of printed data stored by the Library of Congress expressed in bytes. It's value is 10 terabytes, according to some random website I googled, but that value seems awfully low to me unless you're talking strictly text data.

"Congress" is a measure of corruption and incompetence. It is a unit based on the measure of immoral and destructive acts committed by the U. S. Congress expressed in terms of bogon flux. A bogon is a quantum of stupidity (also referred to as an "anti-cluon" or "tau-moron"). All stupid and many evil people emit a bogon flux, which increases proportionally with the level of stupidity or petty evil a person commits. For instance, if a 10-year-old calls you "gay" because you like classical music, he is emitting approximately 1 bogon per cm^2*s (also referred to a having a "bogosity of 1"). If your boss forces you to work late and miss a concert because you neglected to put the new covers on your TPS reports, he has a bogosity of around 1000. A bogosity of a million (10e6) has been officially designed in the SI system as a "darl".

Andy Dick registers in the 5 to 8 darl range. Steve Ballmer averages about 20 darls, but researchers measured a spike of nearly a kilodarl when he performed his "monkeyboy" dance. Although the U.S. Congress has been measured at bogosity levels as low as 800 kilodarls, measured shortly after they balanced the budget in 1998, all the way to well over 300 megadarls in the aftermath of 9/11 to nearly 4 gigadarls measured during the passage of the latest "stimulus" bill, a "Congress" was traditionally (and informally) considered to represent a bogon flux of 1 megadarl. This began to be regarded as woefully out of date by 2003. In recent years, the round number of 1 gigadarl has become the commonly accepted value of "Congress", which is equal to approximately 6.4 Kim Jong-Ils or an even six-pack of Mahmoud Ahmadinejads.

What about the converse?

[Locke2005]

What happens when you put a greyhound on qualudes?

Re:What about the converse?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens when you put a greyhound on qualudes?

Same thing as if you have snails on meth. WALK FOR YOUR LIVES!

Re:What about the converse?

[Farmer Tim]

It slows down enough for you to see the individual colours.

Practical Usage

[diakka]

Maybe this bit of science doesn't have much practical usage just yet, but maybe they could somehow exploit the improved memories of these snails on meth to prevent dups right here on Slashdot.

Re:Practical Usage

[Farmer Tim]

The snails are busy. How else do you think everything ends up here a week late?

This...

[ArsonSmith]

This is what happens when you put scientists on pot.

scientist1: "DUDE!!! what would happen if we took a snail, (pause) and gave him speed?"

scientist2: "PHHAAAA HAHAHAHAHA, lets' get to the lab!!"

Re:This...

[Mindcontrolled]

Oh man, how did you have my lab bugged during my PhD work? Seriously, dude, I though that stuff was long buried and forgotten...

Science has come so far.

[UncHellMatt]

I can imagine these are the same folks who thought it was "BRILLIANT!" to blow smoke in their dog's face with a one hitter. However the "On meth it does" ads will get much more amusing. "A snail doing 60mph down the highway isn't normal. But on meth it is..."

All joking aside, being no biologist I do wonder about the validity of such experiments. Anyone able to educate me on how they think that the effects on so different a neuron network will yield important information about how humans store / process memories? Are our brains THAT similar to ones found in a snail? Congress not withstanding, of course.

Surprising

[camperdave]

Surprising. I would have thought that a story about snails on speed would have a "Look at that S-Car Go" comment by now.

Another framework language

[Captain Spam]

Guys, seriously, the cadence worked for Ruby on Rails, and the silly reference might have worked for Python on Planes if they went through with it, but you're going to have to come up with a better name than Snails on Methamphetamine if you ever want to make COBOL a "cool" programming language.

Re:Too much credit

[Darth Hamsy]

Oh, the irony.