Have you checked your humors today? Not the gunky jelly stuff in people's eyes, the other kind.

Are you melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, or choleric? Are you a salamander, gnome, nymph or sylph? Earth, water, air or fire? Elf, Ninja, Pirate or Dwarf? (arrrr! buckets of blood! flagons of phlegm and barrels of black bile!)

If nothing else, the theory of humors adds to one's arcane vocabulary.
posted by Capn on Mar 23, 2005 - 16 comments

Digging for Nasal Gold with a Doc's Blessing
An Austrian doctor is proposing that children be encouraged to pick their nose and to eat their boogers. "Dr Bischinger said: 'With the finger you can get to places you just can't reach with a handkerchief, keeping your nose far cleaner.'"
And ".....people who pick their nose and eat it get a natural boost to their immune system for free."
Who knew that the dirty kid in your grade school class who picked his nose all the time and ate it would have a stronger immune system?
Do kids really need to be encouraged to go mining in their faces at every opportunity?
posted by fenriq on Mar 26, 2004 - 33 comments

Why a ban on spitting is catching in the throats of Chinese. Apparently, spitting in public is very common in China. "They consider phlegm excrement," explained a coworker of mine who recently visited Shanghai. With SARS spreading in airborne saliva and mucous particles (aka respiratory secretions, China has had to tackle the challenge of outlawing a practice as "common as breathing."
posted by scarabic on May 27, 2003 - 33 comments