Eating your nose goblins could be good for you!

If you don’t know what a "nose goblin" is, you haven't been watching Ren & Stimpy! Yes, gentle readers, the videos that were too gross for kids TV are still out there. But if you don't like that kind of thing, this story is snot for you.

Canadian Press reports today that an associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Saskatchewan is trying to get more students interested in science by looking at the health benefits of picking your nose and eating it.

Prof S. Napper -- no kidding: his first name is "Scott" -- says nature pushes us to do different things because it is to our advantage to have certain behaviours, to consume different types of foods. Mucus traps germs and stops them from getting into our body, but if we consume that mucus, it could help train our immune system by exposing it to the germs. So he says when children have the urge to pick their nose and eat it, parents shouldn’t get upset.

Dr. Napper says he hopes to conduct a study where some type of molecule is inserted in people’s noses and then half the participants pick their nose and eat it and the other half don’t.
“I think the challenge would be getting volunteers to participate in this experiment,” he says with a laugh. [A snort, possibly. Ed.] “Especially if you didn’t know which group you were going to fall into.”

Napper also says making science more humorous and fun keeps students interested and engaged.
“I don’t try to convert them all to biochemistry. My goal is always if I can teach you one thing that you’re going to tell somebody else about outside the scope of this class, then I’ve prompted you to think a little bit, to question these things and I think with this example, it probably succeeded in that.”

Walt must admit that he always found such experiments fascinating, back in his school days. Haven't we all -- all the boys at least -- tried to find out if it's true that you can ignite a fart? We even had songs and poems about flatulence and other excretions... like this one...

Everybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it
Pickin' their nose and chewin' it, chewin' it.
They think it's candy
But it's not.