WASHINGTON (FMLiveWire) - Scientists have discovered that well before George Bush and John McCain say something stupid, their brains start acting abnormally.
Known as "Republican brain farts," it turns out that the origin of these sorry events are a special kind of abnormal brain activity that begins 30 seconds or more before a mistake even happens.
The solution to such screw-ups is a tin-foil mind-reading hat. Such a device can predict and even prevent the mindless errors of Republican leaders that lead to embarrassment and confusion.
When Republicans blunder after performing the same task over and over, scientists suspected that such lapses were due to momentary hiccups in concentration. To investigate, the brains of Bush and McCain were scanned as they performed tasks such as trying to read Dr. Seuss and Curious George books.
Unexpectedly, before these volunteers made errors, their brains started displaying abnormal behavior over a half-minute beforehand.
"We thought that it would be quite remarkable if we found abnormal activity six seconds ahead," said researcher Tom Tommygun, a neuroscientist at Columbia University.
"That the entire process spans across a much longer timescale of minutes beforehand is quite astonishing, so we checked this finding over and over again. But their brains just kept on farting."
A brain region that is normally active only when a Republican is asleep began firing up. It's as if the brain had lost consciousness. At the same time, another group of brain regions that is usually lively when a person is sustaining effort on a task faded away.
After Bush and McCain made serious mistakes reading the children's books, the abnormal behavior went away.
Now these new portable tin-foil hat-like devices can detect this abnormal brain activity before an accident happens, and they can help Bush and McCain and other Republicans by sounding an alert before a slip-up.
Such abnormal brain activity is detected by using electrodes on the scalp inside the hat, so brain-scanning caps under development for video games and other applications can also be used, Tommygun said.
Bush and McCain will start wearing such hats in the next few weeks during all public appearances to jolt them awake and make them stop doing and saying such stupid things, he indicated.
The scientists detailed their findings online April 21 in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.
--Copyright Felix Minderbinder Live Wire
