I know most people in the world have already made major changes to their fitness regimen to avoid a nasty case of Wii knee.
You'll all remember Wii knee. This was the condition, caused by excessive Wii console waggling, that was discovered, quite miraculously, just before the Christmas shopping season.
Now doctors are warning all PlayStation obsessives not to grip their consoles so tightly. If you do, you may be at risk of PlayStation palmar hidradenitis.
This is a skin disorder that is characterized by painful lumps on your palms. And you just thought you were holding your four-iron too tightly.
Vincent Piguet and his colleagues at University Hospitals and Medical School of Geneva revealed their gripping discovery in the British Journal of Dermatology. They liken the condition to patches that appear on children's feet after too much hopping, skipping, and jumping or whatever.
This may be the first case of PlayStation hand worm. Doctors are suggesting the cause is simply not removing your hand from the console for a period of five years.
(Credit: Cc Schizoform)Perhaps you, the people who treat your PlayStation with loving reverence, will be a touch skeptical about PlayStation Palm Lumps. Sony is already there, putting its arms around you and telling you that the mad people will be captured shortly.
... Read moreThis one is for mature audiences only.
The whole of Britain is aghast and, quite naturally, deeply interested in the story of Alfie Patten, a 13-year-old boy who has just become a father for the first time. Yes, he and his maybe girlfriend, 15-year-old Chantelle Steadman, are celebrating the birth of little Maisie.
And they're toasting their bliss like every other newly-blessed couple- with a touch of PlayStation.
In these wonderful, touching pictures, baby Maisie rests in Alfie's lap, while he fights off fatherhood's lack of sleep by fighting a bunch of drug dealers in Stilwater Prison. He is, indeed, enjoying the carnage of Saints Row 2.
"It was easier that I thought," Alfie told the Sun newspaper. No, he was not referring to the charming hand-to-hand combat of the game, but rather to the first night of the hand-to-mouth tribulations of being a father.
I know that those of you who adore Saints Row 2 will be aware that it is something of an adult pleasure. So you, too, will find additional symbolism in the fact that Alfie adores this game, rated for 18s and over in the UK, rather than something a touch more family-friendly.
Your face will, perhaps, crease in involuntary ecstasy when I tell you there have been overnight developments worthy of Saints Row 2.
In the game, respect has to be earned. Well, imagine, then, the human respect-o-meter this morning as two other teenage boys, Richard Goodsell, aged 16 and 14-year-old Tyler Barker have emerged from their playrooms to declare that they might be the father of little Maisie and not Alfie.
I am sure that you, too, are only waiting for the first wise academic to declare that this sort of behavior is the fault of the video game culture. And regular readers will know how we feel about academic video game research here.
Alfie is just as much of an adult for playing Saints Row 2 as he is for allegedly fathering a child. An amount that might be described as not at all.
Maisie, take that console away from Daddy and see if you can slap him with it.
A survey of 3000 pet owners has revealed that tech gadgets are proving hazardous to their pets' health.
No, this seems to be nothing to do with dangerous rays being projected from their electronics. Rather, it seems that our dogs, cats, and, goodness, guinea pigs, haven't quite got used to the rapid proliferation of domestic electronic playthings. Neither, apparently, have reptiles and birds.
For a reason that remains slightly unclear, iPods are, apparently, most likely to injure cats. I am not sure if this is because the cats are slipping the headphones into their ears and turning up the volume too loud. Or because their paws still haven't got the hang of the random shuffle.
However, Apple's wonderful invention comes top of the survey's "gadget most likely to injure pets" league table. 15% of respondents appear to have cited their iPod in pet accidents. While around 10% cited the laptops, remote controls, Plasma TVs and Wiis.
Perhaps the most moving example of pet pain is the story of Pugsley, the Jack Russell cross who cannot resist jumping at dogs that are displayed in the supremely realistic HD of his owner's Plasma.
His owner, Jemma Scott, appears to be so inconsiderate of Pugsley's instincts and feelings that she leaves her Playstation wired up to her TV. Naturally, Pugsley, having failed to make sniffing contact with the projected pooch, then bounces off the screen and gets entangled in the Playstation wires.
With a grim and repeated inevitability, the Playstation then falls on Pugsley's head.
This is clearly a huge and growing problem in our already troubled society. Which is why I am delighted to have discovered that pets can now have their own technological playthings.
Take the PetsCell, for example. Yes, a waterproof cellphone that attaches just under your dog's slobbery parts. The dog has its own number and you can call him whenever you like. To call him back to your side, or just to ask him how he is.
While only 5.8% of the survey's respondents actually said that their own cellphones caused injury to their pets (they swallowed them? they cut their paws on the keyboards?), you may be disturbed that the same number admitted that their pets had been hurt by their karaoke machine.
However, in the midst of all this anguish, you may also want to pause to consider who sponsored this fascinating pet gadget injury survey.
It was a company called Petplan.
You will be stunned to discover that Petplan sells insurance policies for pets.
Let's create our own survey here. How many of your gadgets have caused injury to your pets? Please be honest, now. Even those of you who are secret salamander owners and have a karaoke machine.
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