Non-anecdote (within a non-series)
Today was to have been the day I hit the ground running, embarking with confidence on renewed schemes to amass Wealth and to promote and create Art.
Bees get sick?
Mummies with Ulcers
Two Mexican mummies circa 1350 A.D. have been found to contain Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria that causes ulcers, in their intestinal tracts. In other Mexico news, mysterious pyramids north of Mexico city are being excavated in the hope they will provide insight into a pre-Aztecan culture that inhabited the area then abandoned it in 700 A.D.
G8 Kind of Sucks
Japan, Russia, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, and the United States—the current G8—bear heavy criticism for possessing 90% of the world’s wealth, consuming 93% of its resources, controlling 85% of its military assets, and producing 97% of its reality-TV programs.
Each of these most powerful nations holds an adequate food supply, although much of it is contaminated, e.g., tomatoes or ground beef, or otherwise toxic, e.g., all fast food. Poorer countries cheerfully subsist on scant rations of rice, maize, sorghum, and cardboard.
Pregnant Man Has Baby Girl
An American man who was born female but underwent gender realignment surgery, has given birth to a female baby.
Dinks and Boobs
Dinks and Boobs are hand crocheted and designed to help raise awareness of testicular and breast cancer. Each comes with a little lump in it and instructions on how to find it. Available at Shannon Gerard for $25 Canadian, with $5 going to the Cottage Dreams cancer charity.
(via Bourne Magazine)
Depression Not So Great
New York, NY — Last Friday’s stock market near-crash sent waves of intestinal cramps rippling through the world’s investment community.
With the Dow Jones Industrial Average having lost more value than at any time post-1929 and reaching its lowest point in the past 22 months, the current financial crisis is taking a psychological and emotional toll on jittery investors.
Aging: The Disease - The Cure - The Implications
Aubrey de Grey, of The Methuselah Foundation, is hosting a symposium on aging-as-disease at UCLA this weekend. He is working to raise funds to target the mechanisms of aging so that they can be reversed. He perceives the battle to be as much about public perception as about fund raising and research.
Less than a decade ago, de Grey was a relatively unknown computer scientist doing his own research into aging. As recently as three years ago a cadre of scientists wrote in the Nature-sponsored journal EMBO Reports, that his research program, known as Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, was “so far from plausible that it commands no respect at all within the informed scientific community.” Also in 2005, MIT-sponsored magazine Technology Review went so far as to offer a $20,000 prize to anyone who could prove that de Grey’s program was “so wrong that it was unworthy of learned debate.” (No one won.)
Bird balls prevent urban cancer water
LA’s Ivanhoe Reservoir contains millions of gallons of drinking water for LA residents. In the summer, however, problem presents itself: the water can potentially become contaminated with bromate (depending on daily outbound flow rates, one would presume), which is a natural reaction between solar light, chlorine (a treatment chemical) and naturally-occurring bromide.
Seeing how chlorine is a necessary treatment additive and the bromide is a natural element within the water, Ivanhoe officials got creative and decided to keep sunlight away from the water by dropping over 3 million black spheres (called bird balls) into the reservoir. This effectively created an opaque layer atop the water that serves as a solar shield, which eliminates the solar component of the reaction. Problem solved. Yay, right?
Check out a video of the action here.
But allow me to think out loud for a second: Ivanhoe is preventing the formation of a carcinogen by interrupting the photochemical reaction that forms bromate, the threat in question. But is anyone thinking about the potential toxicity of millions of plastic balls leeching into the drinking water supply, especially millions of black balls that take the beating of the LA sun all summer? To me, this seems like you could be trading one problem for another.
A bunch more photos at Curbed.
(via Unfiltered)
After Every Apple Keynote, We Get This
I know Apple memes go viral incredibly quickly and all, but can we just have one major Apple event without everyone speculating that Steve Jobs is sick?
In 2006 the same thing was speculated, and not just by one source. There were a few murmurs of it in 2007, and this year it’s back with a vengeance.
I know that tens of billions of market cap dollars rest on Steve’s position at the helm of Apple, but perhaps Steve has changed his diet? He seems, given what we all know about his lifestyle at a meta level, to be the sort of guy who would investigate a CR-based diet to extend his health and longevity. Or perhaps we’ve all forgotten what a lean person looks like. And let’s not forget the man is in his mid-50s, and there’s this thing called natural aging. Has anyone heard of it?
I know I’m adding to the meme with this very post, but to me, Steve didn’t look unhealthy, just thin.
Weekly Picture 120
Acupuncture 3614, Highway 71, Austin, TX, 6.3.2008
U.S. Food Supply Deemed Unsafe for Bacteria
Washington, DC — Continued severe outbreaks of dangerous contamination have caused the United States Food & Drug Administration to give all American fruits, vegetables, and meat a “not acceptable” rating.
The latest salmonellosis scourge, this time involving fresh Roma and red plum tomatoes, has caused economic and dietary upheaval as well as enraging millions of consumers of pico de gallo salsa, gazpacho, Cobb salad, and BLT sandwiches.
FDA Assistant Commissioner Dr. Jane Corey expressed deep concern for the illnesses—and in some cases deaths—caused by food supply quality lapses, while promising her agency would redouble its inspection efforts upon returning to full staffing strength.
“We’re a little shorthanded at the moment,” Dr. Corey told reporters Tuesday. “A lot of our inspectors have called in sick due to stomach viruses and the 24-hour flu.”
“Commissioner von Eschenbach sends his apologies for missing this press conference,” the Assistant Commissioner continued, “but he’s feeling a little under the weather, too. He thinks it was something he ate.”
Blue Zones
What do Sardinian sheepherders, Japanese grandmothers, and Seventh-Day Adventists in Los Angeles have in common? They are among the most long-lived people in the world. Dan Buettner spent five years visiting areas where people tend to live longer and wrote a book about them called The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest.
One of the most striking people he met during his travels was 104-year-old Giovanni Sannai of Sardinia. “He was out chopping wood at 9 in the morning,” Buettner tells guest host Audie Cornish. “He started his day with a glass of wine and there was a steady parade of people coming by to ask his advice. That’s one of the characteristics of the Sardinian Blue Zone — the older you get, the more celebrated you are.”
Ex Fat Girl
From the woman who brought you Follicle Reference Hats, it’s Nagi Noda’s video featuring white poodles exercising to music.
benign towel
A Japanese man who had a tumor removed found that the tumor was a towel that had been left after surgery 25 years before.
“The towel was greenish blue although we are not sure about its original colour,” the Asahi General Hospital spokesman said, adding it had been crumpled to the size of a softball.
The Unhealthiest Drink in America
Baskin Robbin’s Large Heath Bar Shake (32 oz)
2,310 calories
266 g sugar
108 g fat (64 g saturated)
Should I eat 60 slices of bacon or get a Heath Shake? I can’t decide.
What’s Your Poo Telling You?
this witty, illustrated description of over two dozen dookies (each with a medical explanation written by a doctor) details what one can learn about health and well-being by studying what’s in the bowl.
The Luke arm
Via Dylan
Nevada Test Site Oral History Project
Courtesy of the National Nuclear Security Administration/Nevada Site Office.
In December 1950, President Harry S. Truman approved the establishment of a continental nuclear proving ground 65 miles north of Las Vegas, Nevada. Between 1951 and 1992, 1021 nuclear detonations took place at the Nevada Test Site — one hundred explosions were in the atmosphere and 921 were underground. It is estimated that the test site employed 125,000 during the Cold War. The photograph [above] shows the De Baca test, detonated on October 26, 1958. Five days later the U.S. and U.S.S.R. agreed to a nuclear testing moratorium which stayed in effect until the Soviets resumed testing in 1961. In 1992, a second nuclear testing moratorium went into effect. Subcritical tests and other national security programs are ongoing at the 1375-square-mile Nevada Test Site.
it’s only — a year — a-way!
Y’all. We’re a year away from clusterflockstock.
fat bottomed girls
Turns out subcutaneous fat, a type of fat that accumulates around the thighs and buttocks, offers some protection against diabetes. Oh, and I get to post this picture.
The Case of the Androgynous Pharaoh
An article on Akhenaten, an Egyptian pharaoh with a feminine form, led me to the work of Dr. Irwin Braverman, a Yale University physician who trains students (and police) in observational skills by having them look at, and describe in detail, works of art. He also, as in the case of the Pharaoh, diagnoses historical figures based on their appearance in paintings, statues, and carvings:
The female form was due to a genetic mutation that caused the pharaoh’s body to convert more male hormones to female hormones than needed, Braverman believes. And Akhenaten’s head was misshapen because of a condition in which skull bones fuse at an early age.
hubris and nemesis; the economy of food
On March 11 a new documentary was aired on French television. It is a documentary most Americans will never see, explaining how the gigantic biotech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.
For millennia, farmers have saved seeds from season to season. But when Monsanto developed GM seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, Monsanto patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented. But in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court allowed for seed patents in a five-to-four decision, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply.
more here about the seed gestapo
Gene Replacement Therapy for Blindness
Gene replacement therapy has been used successfully in restoring partial sight to people with Leber’s congenital amaurosis.
Some vision was restored in four of the six young people who got the treatment, teams of researchers in the United States and Britain reported Sunday. Two of the volunteers who could only see hand motions were able to read a few lines of an eye chart within weeks.
Gene therapy replaces faulty genes with a normal version and has been practiced with limited success for over fifteen years.
The field suffered a setback with the 1999 death of Jesse Gelsinger, 18, in an experiment for a liver disorder at Penn. And some children treated for an immune disorder called the “bubble boy disease” later developed leukemia.
The early results of the eye experiments should give the field a boost, some experts said.
The Coat Hanger Project
Some hospitals refuse to treat women for abortion-related illnesses like profuse bleeding because, as one health official put it, “they look at these women as sinners.” In a few instances, according to women’s groups, doctors have performed post abortion dilation and curettage without anaesthesia as a punishment for these women.
From International Herald Tribune
The 50-year-old grandmother has lost count of the number of pregnancies she has terminated in this largely Roman Catholic country where abortion is illegal and strictly taboo, but where about half a million women end their pregnancies every year.
The backstreet abortions performed by healers like Minda may become more common as a United States government aid program plans to stop distributing contraceptives in the Philippines in 2008. This will leave birth control up to the government which under the influence of Catholic bishops advocates unreliable natural birth control methods rather than the pill and condoms.
More at The Coat Hanger Project