4Jun/106
Study
by Jeff
Image text: Volunteers needed for a study on transmission of urushiol from digital contact with thin strips of fibrous cellulose pulp.
I'm always wary of these things, especially when they said they will require a 24-48 hour stay at "our facility". Yikes.
The key word in the image text is: Urishiol is the chemical produced by poision ivy.
From there you can probably figure it out, but essentially the image text is a soliciting volunteers for a study in which the volunteers use their fingers or toes to touch poison ivy leaves. Brilliant readers have notified me that fibrous cellulose pulp is not leaves, but in fact the strips of paper that are on the ad in the comic. Thanks for correcting me!
Sounds like fun!
June 4th, 2010
poison ivy leaves aren’t “thin strips of fibrous cellulose pulp”, having never been pulped and not really fibrous cellulose anyway.
Paper, on the other hand, is made of fibrous cellulose pulp, and can easily be made into thin strips by, say, cutting a bunch of tabs at the bottom of a sheet labeled with phone numbers.
June 4th, 2010
Yes. Thank you. I was going to point that out too, but you beat me to it! The joke here is that the paper tabs at the bottom HAVE the poison ivy oil ON them… so when you take the tab, it transfers from the oil to your skin
June 4th, 2010
*the oil transfers from the tab to your skin
must re-read before posting
June 4th, 2010
Two jokes for the same punch line.
The punch line is the raggedy torn tabs on the bottom.
The theme is how some people actually pull these tabs off of ridiculous advertisements.
The first joke is obvious: it is not really a scientific study, but a kidney harvesting scam for people who think they are going to a scientific study about whether they can tell the difference between a scientific study and a kidney harvesting scam. Their kidneys will be stolen if they show up.
The image text is an alternate caption that would have shown equal stupidity for those grabbing the tabs. The study is how poison ivy chemicals are transmitted through paper to skin. The person grabbing will be infected by the chemical from poison ivy.
June 7th, 2010
ah ha! Thanks for the correction. I missed that one.
June 16th, 2010
Incidentally, the term ‘digital’ is used to refer to the digits of the hand rather than the other kind of digital.