Watermelons and Sex
The next time you want to make sexy time with your woman, consider watermelon instead of Viagra or Cialis:
A cold slice of watermelon has long been a Fourth of July holiday staple. But according to recent studies, the juicy fruit may be better suited for Valentine’s Day. That’s because scientists say watermelon has ingredients that deliver Viagra-like effects to the body’s blood vessels and may even increase libido.
Hot. Imagine the games you can play with the seeds.
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)
have i mentioned, i love coffee…
An article at BBC NEWS says coffee will protect the brain:
“Caffeine appears to block several of the disruptive effects of cholesterol that make the blood-brain barrier leaky,” said Dr Jonathan Geiger, who led the study.
“High levels of cholesterol are a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, perhaps by compromising the protective nature of the blood brain barrier.
“Caffeine is a safe and readily available drug and its ability to stabilise the blood brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders.
via Daring Fireball
mmm…heart attack
The Worst Artery Cloggers in America. Doesn’t this look wonderfully delicious?
PatientsLikeMe
PatientsLikeMe according to the NYT:
But PatientsLikeMe seeks to go a mile deeper than health-information sites like WebMD or online support groups like Daily Strength. The members of PatientsLikeMe don’t just share their experiences anecdotally; they quantify them, breaking down their symptoms and treatments into hard data. They note what hurts, where and for how long. They list their drugs and dosages and score how well they alleviate their symptoms. All this gets compiled over time, aggregated and crunched into tidy bar graphs and progress curves by the software behind the site. And it’s all open for comparison and analysis. By telling so much, the members of PatientsLikeMe are creating a rich database of disease treatment and patient experience.
It asks the standard web 2.0 question: “can we democratize “x” while maintaining quality service and/or subverting experts?” (A question which, from either side, I have never heard a sufficient or even interesting answer to.) But, nevertheless, still provides some interesting fodder for subway readers in NYC who know little about social networks and online data..
Update: I should be fair. The article is more of a profile than “a nature of social websites” article. I just hate throw away questions in legitimate journalism. It seems lazy.
Hair of the Dog
The origin of the phrase is literal, and comes from an erroneous method of treatment of a rabid dog bite by placing hair from the dog in the bite wound.[1] The use of the phrase as a metaphor for a hangover treatment dates back to the time of William Shakespeare. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer writes in the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898): “In Scotland it is a popular belief that a few hairs of the dog that bit you applied to the wound will prevent evil consequences. Applied to drinks, it means, if overnight you have indulged too freely, take a glass of the same wine next morning to soothe the nerves. ‘If this dog do you bite, soon as out of your bed, take a hair of the tail in the morning.’” He also cites two apocryphal poems containing the phrase, one of which is attributed to Aristophanes.
“Taking Prozac for depression is mostly a waste of time”
A review of clinical trials found that they worked no better than a dummy pill for mildly depressed patients and for most people suffering severe depression.
Am I the only person who finds this article wonderfully vague?
