We're all gonna die...of liver failure caused by acetaminophen overdose.

Last weekend, This American Life aired a special on acetaminophen, which turned out to be both informative and terrifying. I *highly* recommend listening to the episode.

If you're lazy, let me give you the message that I took home from it: The margin between a safe dosage of acetaminophen and a dosage that can cause liver failure is extremely slim, and it's unpredictable, i.e. different for every person. That means that even if you take just a leeeeetle bit more than recommended, or accidentally take the recommended dose of two products that contain acetaminophen, at the same time (Tylenol PM and NyQuil, let's say, to use an example that may or may not be drawn from personal experience), you could end up with liver failure. And/or death.

The link in the above paragraph is to a ProPublica article, which has a lot of the same information as the TAL podcast, but also additional info as well; ProPublica contributed a lot of the investigative reporting in the TAL piece. The article and its associated features are worth a perusal. But again, if you're lazy, ProPublica has come up with a list of five key takeaways that I'll cut and paste here:

1. About 150 Americans die a year by accidentally taking too much acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, federal data from the CDC shows.

2. Acetaminophen has a narrow safety margin: the dose that helps is close to the dose that can cause serious harm, according to the FDA.

3. The FDA has long been aware of studies showing the risks of acetaminophen. So has the maker of Tylenol, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson.

4. Over more than 30 years, the FDA has delayed or failed to adopt measures designed to reduce deaths and injuries from acetaminophen. The agency began a comprehensive review to set safety rules for acetaminophen in the 1970s, but still has not finished.

5. McNeil, the maker of Tylenol, has taken steps to protect consumers. But over more than three decades, the company has repeatedly opposed safety warnings, dosage restrictions and other measures meant to safeguard users of the drug.

A surprisingly large number of people have died from accidental acetaminophen overdose in the past decade (and even more have died of purposeful overdose, but that's a different beast altogether). By contrast, almost nobody has died of naproxen or ibuprofen overdose, though it is true that many naproxen and ibuprofen takers have had stomach bleeding as a result of their usage. Still, if I'm going to pick my poison, I'd rather have a stomach ulcer than a grave.

US deaths by accidental acetaminophen overdoseSource: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Multiple Cause of Death database

I don't take much Tylenol as it is, but I'm certainly going to be wary of my acetaminophen dosing from here on out!

---------

In completely unrelated news, I want to go to there.

HOW DO I GET ME SOME OF THIS

There's apparently some disease called "Auto-brewery syndrome." If you have this disease, you can brew beer in your belly and get yourself good and drunk...without drinking a drop of alcohol!

According to NPR:

A 61-year-old man — with a history of home-brewing — stumbled into a Texas emergency room complaining of dizziness. Nurses ran a Breathalyzer test. And sure enough, the man's blood alcohol concentration was a whopping 0.37 percent, or almost five times the legal limit for driving in Texas.

There was just one hitch: The man said that he hadn't touched a drop of alcohol that day.

"He would get drunk out of the blue — on a Sunday morning after being at church, or really, just anytime," says Barabara Cordell, the dean of nursing at Panola College in Carthage, Texas. "His wife was so dismayed about it that she even bought a Breathalyzer."

Other medical professionals chalked up the man's problem to "closet drinking." But Cordell and Dr. Justin McCarthy, a gastroenterologist in Lubbock, wanted to figure out what was really going on.

So the team searched the man's belongings for liquor and then isolated him in a hospital room for 24 hours. Throughout the day, he ate carbohydrate-rich foods, and the doctors periodically checked his blood for alcohol. At one point, it rose 0.12 percent.

Eventually, McCarthy and Cordell pinpointed the culprit: an overabundance of brewer's yeast in his gut.

That's right, folks. According to Cordell and McCarthy, the man's intestinal tract was acting like his own internal brewery.

The patient had an infection with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Cordell says. So when he ate or drank a bunch of starch — a bagel, pasta or even a soda — the yeast fermented the sugars into ethanol, and he would get drunk. Essentially, he was brewing beer in his own gut. Cordell and McCarthy reported the case of "auto-brewery syndrome" a few months ago in the International Journal of Clinical Medicine.

Kind of awesome, huh? Kind of horrifying, too, but still awesome.

If enough college freshmen get wind of this, we may have a Saccharomyces cerevisiae pandemic on our hands.

This is a test

Got the blogger app for my phone. Checking it out. Here's a picture.

(For the record, I didn't break that mirror. But I do wish I had had more time to take pictures of it before a lady came out of a nearby house and gave me a what's-that-hoodlum-doing look that sent me on my way.)

This mobile blogging thing seems pretty cool. Maybe I'll blog more if I can do it on the fly. Mayyyybe.

Daaaaaaaaaaang

I'm sure you've heard by now, but Yosemite/its environs is on fire.

Seriously, guys. It's on fire.

Are dolphins smart?

Not particularly.

They can't even actually communicate with any sophistication:

A disproportionate amount of dolphin research time has been devoted to teasing out any potential for language – the science-fictional myth of dolphinese – from their vocalizations. If dolphins had language, we would almost certainly have found it by now. When their vocalizations turned out to be rote and inflexible, “I’m scared!” “I’m mating!” “I see food!” pretty much covers it, the research turned to echolocation clicks. Perhaps dolphins were sending each other 3D holographic messages encoded in their clicks. Nope.

They do have signature whistles that identify the dolphin as an individual, but that’s the most referential thing about their communication system. In contrast, ground squirrels have an amazingly semantically-rich signaling system. Nothing about the dolphin whistle repertoire would prevent it from being used as a discrete combinatorial system to convey unlimited meaning, it’s just that dolphins don’t use it for that.

Also, they are jerks:

Adult male dolphins routinely kill porpoises, not for food — or even out of competition for food – but because the porpoise is similar in size to a dolphin calf. The killings serve as practice for their regular infanticidal behaviour, a sure way to ready mothers for mating.

Interesting review/summary of a book that's coming out in a few months.

Friday

Tomorrow's Saturday.

Yay, weekend?

Diversions

I'm tired and grumpy today, in need of diversions from a swirling morass of headache and morose thoughts.

That's why I'm glad Jessie forwarded me a link to this blog yesterday, which is awesome. I'm just sad that I didn't think of that idea first. "The bacon was hot, the kiwi was cold and the pasta was vinegary." I can't wait to read more.

Also there is this from McSweeny's:

I WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO YOU LIKE IN THE MOVIES.

I want to go at it under the sheets no matter how hot it is. Our feet will extend past the end of the bed, even though you get no leverage that way. We will not notice any unexpected moles or embarrassing tattoos. Everything that happens will be sexy. There won’t be any gross sounds or sights. Just like in the movies, our sex will be tasteless and odorless. I will not kiss your neck and get a mouthful of perfume and then you’re like what’s wrong and I’ll be like nothing and you’ll get all distant and I’ll be like sorry it’s the taste of your perfume, and you’ll be sad because you only wore it because I said I liked it one time and then all of a sudden you’re not in the mood and I think about sneaking off to the bathroom to furtively masturbate but I don’t and I just hold you limply until you fall asleep then I check Twitter for like an hour. That doesn’t happen.

I’ll lay out rose petals across the bed, and they won’t get in our butts, though it seems some of them logically would. I’ll rub an ice cube all over you, and you won’t burst out giggling, causing me to grow self-conscious and lose my erection. I’ll drip wax on you, which will be erotic and not at all like the other times you’ve burnt yourself on something hot, which have not been erotic at all. We’ll eat dessert off of each other’s nude bodies like that’s not the grossest thing two people could do to their sheets and skin. “Can’t we just have those strawberries later? I’m going to get all sticky,” is something you won’t say, in this paradise of physical pleasure.

And:

Great job! You’ve succeeded at nothing. But you voted. Here’s a sticker!

Is today over yet?

Gasp

Holy cannoli. Put these on the list of contraptions you will never, ever find me on.

60+-year-old aerial tramway in Chiatura, Georgia

The mining town of Chiatura, Georgia, surrounded by steep cliffs, is criss-crossed by a network of aging Soviet-era aerial tramways that are still in use today. In the early 20th century, after the U.S.S.R. annexed Georgia, Soviet authorities were intent on extracting the vast manganese deposits beneath Chiatura. In the 1950s, planners began work on what locals call the "Kanatnaya Doroga," or "rope road," that still connects almost every corner of the town. Today, while some of the cars have rusted away, 17 of the aging tramways remain in service.

...

The cabins run without a braking system; if the haulage cable snaps, the cabins will roll straight back down the track cable. This happened to a tramway in Georgia's capital Tbilisi in 1990, killing twenty people.

...

In 2008 the hauling rope of [a] tramway snapped with 12 passengers inside. Ramaz Khipshidze, the director of the Aerial Tramway Network says the automatic braking system worked "thanks to God." Chiatura didn't have the equipment needed to rescue the people inside. For 12 hours the passengers dangled above the town until a team from Tbilisi arrived with a rescue cabin.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

Man, blogging every day got real old, real fast. I guess I failed at my personal challenge of blogging every day for 30 days, but at least I learned a valuable lesson: blogging every day for 30 days isn't fun at all. It's kind of a stupid thing to try to do. (For me, anyway.)

But fear not, I'll give you some food for thought for today: The entire concept of tipping sucks.

Tipping is a repugnant custom. It’s bad for consumers and terrible for workers. It perpetuates racism. Tipping isn't even good for restaurants, because the legal morass surrounding gratuities results in scores of expensive lawsuits.

Plus, it's just plain annoying. I rather resent having to tip people as a standard matter of course. Why can't we just pay servers a living wage and eliminate this socially awkward custom once and for all? I am willing to absorb the cost in another way, and I bet at least some other people are too. Besides, getting rid of tipping might even make restaurant service--and food--better.

On a completely unrelated note, this made me laugh.

Snakes: Maybe creepier than fish

Oh holy lord. Decapitated snakes CAN STILL BITE.



As if I weren't skeeved out by snakes enough...

A floss a day keeps the cancer away, apparently

A kind of bacteria commonly found in the mouth, which is often the culprit in gum disease, also spurs the formation of tumors in colon cancer, researchers report today.

Apparently, the mouth bacteria "stimulates tumors" by "by blocking the expression of a gene that inhibits tumor growth." Well isn't that just terrific.

I bet one way to minimize the damage of my mouth bacteria is flossing. I hate flossing. But I guess I hate cancer more. Get ready to bleed, gums!

"They bite because they're hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth"

Fish are creepy as hell.

Exhibit A: The Pacu, a piranha relative, which can grow up to 55 pounds and which has huge human-like teeth that love to crunch on small, round objects. Like...testicles.

The Pacu is making the rounds of the internet today because somebody in Sweden caught one in the Øresund Sound, prompting the Natural History Museum of Denmark to put out a warming to men to "Keep your swimwear on if you're bathing in the Sound these days." Which is hilarious, of course. I'd cover the story too, if I were a journalist.

To tell you more about the Pacu, which really does sound a bit frightening, I'd like to quote the delightful Henrik Carl, "fish expert" at the Danish museum:

[Pacus] are almost identical to the piranha, you couldn't even tell from the outside. It's just that they have different teeth. Flatter and stronger, perfect for crushing....The pacu is not normally dangerous to people but it has quite a serious bite, there have been incidents in other countries, such as Papua New Guinea where some men have had their testicles bitten off....They bite because they're hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth...and its mouth is not so big, so of course it normally eats nuts, fruit, and small fish, but human testicles are just a natural target. It's not normal to get your testicles bitten off, of course, but it can happen, especially now in Sweden.

Then, helpfully, after terrifying everyone in both Sweden and Denmark, my buddy Henrik adds that the museum's warning was meant "as a bit of fun," and the discovery of the Pacu is really no big deal. Quoth he: "There's nothing to worry about... you're more likely to drown that get your nuts bitten off."

Alright. So, Pacus AND drowning. Lots to fear in Sweden!

Pacus have also been found in Illinois. So...cross that off the list of places I'll ever swim.

Cue the nighmares

--------------
Hat tip to Anonymous for sending this article to me. I was feeling very blog-uninspired today, and Anonymous saved Posting Day 7 with this delightful story.

Sinkholes: Your new #1 fear

Well, I made it five days before I fell off the posting wagon. But even the Judeo-Christian God had a rest on Sunday.

(Yes, I guess I did just equate myself with the Judeo-Christian God. I'll let it stand.)

Speaking of acts of God, have you heard about the sinkholes in Florida? No? Well, they are terrifying. Especially if they open up underneath the resort villa you are staying in:



And they're even more terrifying if you're living in a house with your brother and a sinkhole opens beneath it in the middle of the night, and you hear your brother screaming for help but you can't help him in time and he gets sucked into the ground.

Florida is hereby crossed off the list of places I might potentially live. Not that it was really on the list (humidity, gators, hurricanes, swamps), but now it's definitely off.

So good.

"These guys aren't shucking around." Ha!

I heart public broadcasting. So much. This reminds me that I need to donate to my local station.

The internet is ruining the environment?

All my music, email, pictures, blog posts, etc. are stored in "the cloud" these days, and before I read the article below, I never really thought much about it. Turns out that "the cloud" is a giant blight on the environment.

Power, Pollution and the Internet

Most data centers [aka the physical homes of "the cloud"], by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner...Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand. As a result, data centers can waste 90 percent or more of the electricity they pull off the grid...To guard against a power failure, they further rely on banks of generators that emit diesel exhaust. The pollution from data centers has increasingly been cited by the authorities for violating clean air regulations, documents show. In Silicon Valley, many data centers appear on the state government’s Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory, a roster of the area’s top stationary diesel polluters. Worldwide, the digital warehouses use about 30 billion watts of electricity, roughly equivalent to the output of 30 nuclear power plants, [and]...data centers in the United States account for one-quarter to one-third of that load, the estimates show.

Energy efficiency varies widely from company to company. But at the request of The Times, the consulting firm McKinsey & Company analyzed energy use by data centers and found that, on average, they were using only 6 percent to 12 percent of the electricity powering their servers to perform computations. The rest was essentially used to keep servers idling and ready in case of a surge in activity that could slow or crash their operations.

Even running electricity at full throttle has not been enough to satisfy the industry. In addition to generators, most large data centers contain banks of huge, spinning flywheels or thousands of lead-acid batteries — many of them similar to automobile batteries — to power the computers in case of a grid failure as brief as a few hundredths of a second, an interruption that could crash the servers. 

So like, the more I blog, the more we all die? That's...not good at all. Sorry about that, folks!

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Day 4: complete. It's Friday. Yay.

We're all gonna die...of formerly curable diseases

It will come as no surprise, that I have been, and remain, pretty concerned about is antibiotic-resistant diseases. Fueling my fear, it seems almost every week I trip across yet another story describing a virulent strain of some disease that no longer responds to antibiotics, or that has shown a drastic uptick in the number of antibiotic-resistant cases. Being a person who loves to share what she has, even if it's bad news, I thought I'd share two stories I've come across lately. Here goes.

1. E. Coli That Cause Urinary Tract Infections are Now Resistant to Antibiotics

In examining more than 12 million urine analyses from [2000 to 2010], [a set of researchers at George Washington University] found that cases caused by E. coli resistant to ciprofloxacin grew five-fold, from 3% to 17.1% of cases. And E. coli resistant to the drug trimethoprim-sulfame-thoxazole jumped from 17.9% to 24.2%. These are two of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics used to treat UTIs. When they are not effective, doctors must turn to more toxic drugs, and the more those drugs are used, the less effective they in turn become. When those drugs stop working, doctors will be left with a drastically reduced toolkit with which to fight infection.

People suffered from UTIs long before antibiotics were discovered in the early twentieth century, of course. Should these drugs cease to be effective, we’ll have to go back to what we were doing before. The truth is, though, before antibiotics we had no real treatment. ...[At some points in time], as a last-ditch effort, [doctors] operated to drain puss from the infected kidneys and hoped the patient would survive.  (Source; all emphasis mine.)

Untreated UTIs can lead to kidney infections, kidney failure, and blood poisoning. As someone who had a kidney infection five or six years ago (though not one caused by a UTI), I can assure you that such infections are really no fun at all, as they involve sustained periods of intense fevers (upwards of 106 degrees), and  may require you to take yourself to the hospital emergency room, where you will need intravenous antibiotics, which will make you woozy, so they'll give you something else for that, and then because of the anti-wooze medicine, they won't let you drive your car home, so if you parked in the wrong parking structure you will end up having a parking ticket when you come back for your car the next day. Like I said: No fun at all. So it certainly doesn't warm my heart that UTIs are becoming meaner.

Here's the full article about the antibiotic-resistant UTI E. Coli on PubMed.

2. Tuberculoses (TB) has been making headlines for a while because of the virulent multi-drug-resistant strains that are going around. Not only does there exist a whole wikipedia article about "Multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis," but there's also one for "Extensively drug resistant tuberculosis" AND one for "Totally drug-resistant tuberculosis," which just proves how big a deal drug-resistant TB is becoming. When NPR did a whole thing about TB last month, I was convinced right-quick that I should run far, far away from anybody who might have TB. Or who has a cough. Or who has been near anyone with a cough. Because if you happen catch one of the nasty TB strains, your treatment will involve 28 MONTHS of pills and shots (13,664 pills, 244 shots), which come with side effects such as "permanent hearing loss, permanent dizziness, kidney damage, psychosis, liver failure, nausea, rashes"--one or more of which 33 percent of patients allegedly suffer. And after all that, only about 50 percent of people recover! And don't rest high and mighty thinking this is a disease that only people in other countries get. Just last month NPR reported on an outbreak of multiple-drug-resistant TB in Wisconsin. So there.

Want to know more? You probably don't. But just in case you do, the WHO is keeping a close eye on the everybody's-gonna-die-from-TB situation and has a ton of info about it. Based on very cursory perusal, I've learned that if you want to avoid people with TB, you'll probably want to avoid all the countries in darker greens on the map below, which have the most people with drug-resistant TB (in terms of absolute numbers):

Click to go to a map with interactivity!

And you'll REALLY want to avoid Khazakstan, Belarus, Moldova, and South Africa, which have the highest incidence of multiple-drug resistant TB.

The above travel tip will end Day 3 of my 30 days of content. I've got to be off to drink margaritas and eat tacos. Ole!

"I was skimming this article and made me think about your conspiracy theory/'how we are all going to die' blog"

One of my favorite things about having this blog, even though I basically stopped posting anything on it for a very long time*, is that my friends periodically forward me articles that they think I might find interesting. In pretty much every case, the forwards are exactly the type of thing I'm interested in, and also the type of thing I would blog about, if I ever blogged.

WELL. Here I am blogging for 30 straight days, so what better time to highlight some of the articles people have sent my way? This should hopefully encourage people to keep sending me stuff, because even though I don't always respond, I do always read the messages and the articles and I always appreciate the thought. (And just as an FYI, I'm happy to return the favor and send out dire news via email as well, if you're into that sort of thing. I've got over 200 articles bookmarked to read/blog about someday, so if you let me know what kind of bad news you like, boy oh boy can I forward you some stuff about it!)

But I digress. Without further ado, let me start makin' my favorite thing--a list!

---------

1. From my favorite undergrad worker bee/research assistant I've received several interesting articles in emails all appropriately titled "for your blog." For example:

I was skimming this article and made me think about your conspiracy theory/"how we are all going to die" blog. 

(He hasn't read a word of this blog, but he's already decided I'm crazy, apparently!) Shortly after the above link, he also sent along, with no comments whatsoever (apparently my interest for the article speaks for itself):

NYTimes: Tea, Sugar and Death: Cafe Groups Ponder the End - An informal group discusses philosophical thoughts on dying at a monthly gathering in New York called Death Cafe, one of many such get-togethers around the country.

After I received that first link he sent along, I read the whole article and then went out and bought the book that the article was based on. I enjoyed the book immensely, but I have to say, if you read the article in full you basically get the main gist of the book, and with a lot less repetition to boot. When I told the worker bee I was reading the book, and that it was making me think about what "food" really is, he sent me back this pithy remark: "Food is a scary thing. And yet I just keep on eating all of it." Isn't he so cute.**

2. My friend Tiffani also often sends me amusing emails with dire links, and since I know Tiffani reads this blog, I want to say directly to her: Thank you, I do dearly love all the emails you send me. Recently, there was the gem of an email with the subject line: "Good news on the flu front!", which then went on to say

just kidding. why would i send good news about the flu? and is there even such a thing?
(Link)

That article that she forwarded along was suuper terrifying (so I obviously highly recommend reading it). Basically, it describes how average sanitary habits are NOT SUFFICIENT to stop the spread of norovirus, which "is the most common cause of acute gastroenteritis -- stomach upset -- in the United States," as well as "the most common cause of foodborne-disease outbreaks." How do you get norovirus, and how do we seem to not be able to get rid of it? I'm glad you asked:

Hand-washed dishes are especially likely to carry the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says in its website -- which could be one reason norovirus causes so many outbreaks on cruise ships. “You cannot get the water hot enough if you wash by hand,” says Aiello.

Norovirus is spread fecally -- in the poop -- and that means it can get into laundry. Studies show that fecal matter spreads even in ordinary laundry, so if someone is sick, it’s important to use very hot water and bleach to destroy virus that could be on any clothing, sheets or towels.

And regular cleaner won’t get the virus off surfaces. CDC recommends using bleach, including chlorine bleach or hydrogen peroxide.

Complicating the problem, most restaurant workers don’t get paid sick leave, so if they miss work, they don’t get paid. This means many workers come in sick, and they can spread the virus to hundreds of customers. Food handlers, dishwashers, even staff who bus and clear tables, all can spread the germ.

The problem extends to the home, too. There, Aiello said, several factors make it hard to keep one sick family member from infecting others. "It could be the door handle. It could be the toilet tank cover. Some studies show it can be aerosolized. If you throw up and then flush the toilet, how much of the spray gets into the air?" she asked. One study last year showed how the virus spread on a plastic bag that had been in a bathroom where a norovirus patient threw up.

Ugh. But hey, speaking of getting sick on cruise ships, there was another message Tiffani sent me recently, which exclaimed:

First, calamities took cruises away from me... now they are taking hot air balloon rides?! What is going to be left? Sitting on grass and hoping you don't get hit by a meteor? (Link)

Thankfully, I'm happy to report that Tiffani's last resort--sitting on grass and hoping you don't get hit by a meteor--is no longer something we have to worry about. That's because of what I'm about to describe, which comes courtesy of a coworker who I probably ill-advisedly told about this blog.

3. There is something called "DoomsDay Dwellings." In June, my coworker sent me an email pointing me to maybe the best site on the internet, which promotes the Dwellings, and she noted:

Why buy a used house when you can build one of these and be prepared for the apocalypse?   Designed to withstand fire, social unrest, shrapnel, governmental collapse, and earthquakes (optional). http://www.doomsdaydwellings.com/
The "Genisis" model comes with a "Civilization Generator".

The website for these Dwellings is very much worth a perusal. If you don't want to click away from my blog and get lost in the epicness of DoomsDay Dwellings though, I'll list just some of the things that the fanciest Dwelling (GENISIS: 6 Adults and 9 Children  - 10 years of indoor food, air, water, power  + Civilization Generator) allegedly protects you against:

• Double Dip Recession / Depression  [Huh? Does the house come with its own economy?]

• Gas Shortage / Peak Oil 
• Drought / Famine 
• Cyber Warfare that Destroys the Grid
• Social Unrest / Large Scale Riots
• Government Collapse [In your DoomsDay Dwelling, the government will never collapse!]
• EMP Burst / Solar Flare
• Pandemic
• Earthquake (Optional)
• Volcanic Disruption [Is that different from a volcanic eruption?]
• Minor Climate Change - Excluding Major Flood Zones [Aren't major flood zones like, the first places that might need a DoomsDay Dwelling?]
• Magnetic Field Rotation [????]
• NBC Explosion < 1 Mile Away [not really sure what an NBC explosion is; I'm assuming it doesn't involve the TV network]
• Total Environmental Collapse [but only "minor" climate change...]
• Non-direct Meteorite Impact 
• WWIII - Nuclear War [Only if the nuclear bombs do not have a "direct" impact, I assume]
• The end of the Civilization as we know it [Don't worry, the genesis model comes with that handy Civilization Generator, so humanity won't die out on your watch]

Truthfully, I would totally like to own one of those DoomsDay Dwellings, just in case things spiral out of control out there. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure that I do not have (and never will have) nearly enough money to afford my own self-burying bunker. Based on the research I've been doing lately, the amount of money I have available to purchase a dwelling in the area in which I currently live seems to be able to get me approximately two bedrooms, one bathroom, and no special doomsday protection whatsoever. Alas alack.

4. Finally, I would be remiss if I did not give a hat tip to Jessie, who's sent me too many links to even remember. Recently, she notified me that "Everything is trying to kill us," and she sent along this link, which totally made me sad, since I really really want a treadmill desk. But more interestingly, she also sent along this article about Greek Yogurt, which is quite interesting. It was the second thing I'd read about how hard it is to get rid of the whey that's produced as Greek yogurt is strained (there's whey too much of it!***), and it was the final straw that made me stop eating Greek Yogurt. Of course, the first straw that made me stop eating Greek Yogurt was the realization that I just don't like it very much. I prefer a runnier, more sour yogurt (like the kind they have in Bulgaria. In case you care...).

I suppose I could go on and on with this list, but lucky for you I'm running out of time. I've got to be off to my tennis lesson! I can't wait to go smash balls for 90 minutes. Hopefully those two Russian chicks from last week show up and shriek just as much as last time when I hit the ball to them...that was fun.

Day 2, complete!

---------------------------
*Not intentionally, it just kept (not) happening.
**I am not coming on to him. I mean cute in a precious kind of way. Not that this kid reads my blog. We just talk about it sometimes.
***Ba-dum ching!

Are you ready for some content?

Hello friends! I've decided I'm going to blog every day for the next 30 days. It's a tall order, and I don't know if it'll actually happen, but it's a challenge I know I will enjoy taking on. And it's going to start...now!

In this first post of my 30 day challenge, I want to recommend a book I just finished reading*, called Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. I've always had a fascination** with new American religions, their history, their beliefs, and their adherents***, and this book did not disappoint me in the slightest. I found it dispassionate, well-researched (as best I can tell), and admirably balanced in terms of looking at Scientology from many lenses (not all of which are critical)--although representatives of the Church of Scientology seem to disagree on all of the above counts. Indeed, they charge author Lawrence Wright with having "no interest in the facts, only the lies and exaggerations being fed to him by angry, bitter sources with agendas based on hatred and revenge," and they call the book "a biased work, more fiction than fact" (source). It is worth reading the three rather long letters that the Church/its lawyers sent to CNN when asked to comment on a story about the book, one of which ends:

Mr. Wright's book is full of many mistakes, unfounded statements, and utterly false facts. It is infused with religious bigotry--we caution CNN against broadcasting his hateful, and in many cases, actionable statements. [Meaning: "shit we will sue you over"]

The Church of Scientology has a well-known reputation of suing anybody who does anything they don't like (there's a whole Wikipedia article about it!), so I commend Lawrence Wright for being a total and utter badass in publishing this book.

In brief, the book covers the following:

1. Story of the life and times of L. Ron Hubbard, who was maybe crazy, or maybe brilliant, or maybe both, and who certainly lead a fascinating life
2. Story of Paul Haggis, a famous screenwriter (apparently; he's new to me), who left the church rather publicly in 2009
3. Story of David Miscavige, current leader of the church, and how he rose to power/maintains power
4. Stories of many members of the "Sea Org" who have chosen to leave the church, and how that has played out for them
5. And throughout, explanations of what exactly Scientologists believe

Why am I recommending this book here? On the surface, Going Clear is not really related to the subject of this blog, since it's not like Scientology is going to take over and destroy the world (or at least, I'm not worried that it will).**** But there are a lot of examples in this book of how people can and do wield power (and money, oodles of money) to get what they want, no matter what, and no matter what is actually morally right, manipulating masses of people and government agencies along the way. Such issues do fall under my set of concerns about the society we live in, because I fervently believe we should live in a society in which informed reasonableness, and not money/religion, rules policy and practice. Sadly, we do not, and this book was yet another reminder that such a society is a utopian dream we will likely never achieve.

If you're not into reading an incredibly long book about Scientology (even though you should be, it's really good), let me recommend these shorter pieces, which will give you a good flavor of the tome:

• Probably the genesis for the book: New Yorker article about Paul Haggis that got me interested in learning more about Scientology.
• Fascinating NPR story of how the Church of Scientology responded to fact-checking requests from the New Yorker
• Steven Colbert on Scientology, and interviewing Lawrence Wright
• NPR interview with Lawrence Wright about Going Clear
• And of course, this South Park episode (or just this clip, if you're impatient) 

Thus ends my first blog entry of the 30 day challenge.

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*In the interest of full disclosure, I actually listened to the book during my epic 18+ hours of driving over this past week/weekend*****, but I think that's as good as reading.
**It's rubbernecking, really.
***In this vein, I highly recommend Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer.
****And although I personally believe Scientology is more than a little crazy, and that for some members it is probably more of a cult than a religion, I also believe that all organized religions are more than a little bit crazy, and I don't want to single out Scientology just because it's more socially acceptable to do so.
*****One of the places I visited was Ithaca, where I got to hang out with my 2-year-old nephew and 3-month-old niece, who are seriously adorable.

My life. Maybe yours.

Title: A perpetual motion (well, until you die) machine. By Indexed. 

Ain't nothing you can do about this one but worry

In my senior year high school yearbook, there was a section in the back, doubtlessly mass-produced in many other yearbooks of vintage 1999, in which notable events and news stories from the past year were described. While I'm sure there were many important things in there, the only one I remember (and I remember it vividly) was a mouse with what looked like* a human ear growing out of its back.**

At the time, I was fascinated and repelled by the mouse with the ear on its back. Revisiting it now, I find I still am, so much so that I will decline from posting a picture, though there are plenty on the web if you Google it or click some of the links on this page. I mean, I know the intention was to see if we could grow parts for human transplant on mice, which is nice and all, but the resulting creature is quite grotesque. Okay, totally grotesque.

Which is all to say that I'm super glad I don't (to my knowledge) have any errant parts (human or otherwise) growing where they don't belong. You may think it's silly to be glad about such a thing, but once I tell you about what I discovered yesterday you'll think yourself the silly one.

Here's what I discovered: Humans, after they are fully formed and growing up and living normally, sometimes GROW EXTRA BITS WHERE THEY DON'T BELONG. And I'm not talking about cancer. I'm talking about actual body parts. How terrifying is that!?

From a blog at National Geographic:

One of the most common examples of misplaced cells seems to be livers. They grow all over the place. The first reported case, in 1922, described a liver growing on a gallbladder. Since then doctors have found other livers in gallbladders...as well as in the thoracic cavity, pancreas, esophagus, and on adrenal glands sitting atop the kidneys. A recent review finds 74 so-called ectopic livers reported in the medical literature, and offers no explanation.

Then there are the errant bones. Take a 2005 report of an 85-year-old woman in the U.K. who went to the doctor for bowel troubles. For a month, she had experienced alternating diarrhea and constipation. The doctors had no idea what it could be, so they peered inside her large intestine. They found a 1.5-centimeter pale brown polyp and sent it to the lab for testing. And what was that polyp? A piece of bone. In her colon. Why was it there? Unclear. Similarly, last year, researchers from India described a 16-year-old girl who couldn’t see out of her right eye. The vision loss had started six years earlier, when she suffered “accidental trauma by fist of hand.” Surgeons removed the eye and, a few weeks later, gave her an artificial one. When they analyzed the damaged eye in the lab, they found pieces of adult bone, with marrow and all.

Just one more...In 2007, researchers from Japan reported the case of an 11-year-old girl with a brain tumor. She had had the mass since birth and her doctors had been watching it closely throughout her childhood. By age 11, she needed surgery to remove it. Later, researchers analyzed the dissected tissue. And it was totally weird. As one study put it: “The initial histological analysis demonstrated a tumor growing out of what appeared to be nearly normal looking pancreas.” Pancreas. In her brain.

ACK. I wish I could un-learn all of that! Since I can't, I figure the second best thing is to share the horror.

I had a nightmare last night in which a femur grew out of my eye. I think the internet might be bad for my health.

*****

Bonus: here's two low-quality pictures from my high school days, stolen from someone on Facebook:

The good ol' basement, and its plaid couch.

Disco party! Definitely not a sausage fest.

*Turns out it wasn't an actual human ear, but rather some cow cartilage shaped to look like an ear. But I didn't know that until...right now.
**Wikipedia says this ear mouse ("Vacanti mouse") was unveiled in 1997, so I'm not really sure what it was doing in my yearbook. Did that section include highlights from my whole high school career, perhaps?

Australia is hereby crossed off the list of places I would consider living

Imagine walking into your charity store to find a hole in the ceiling, vomit on the floor, and all kinds of things messed up. You'd probably conclude a burglar broke in, vomited everywhere, made a mess, and left, right? Only...why didn't the burglar take anything?

Oh, it's because it's not a burglar. It's a 19-FOOT PYTHON. Which lay undetected in the charity store for a whole day after the break-in.

That's something that apparently happens in Australia, according to NPR/The AP:

Australian police were mystified by a chaotic crime scene including a hole in the ceiling and a smelly pool of vomit-like liquid — until they found the culprit was a 5.7-meter (19-foot) python.

The massive snake weighing in at 17 kilograms (37 pounds) was captured a day after a suspected burglary was reported at a charity store in Queensland in northeastern Australia.

"Its head was the size of a small dog," Police Sgt. Don Auld said Wednesday.

Before they found the python, investigators' working theory was that a human burglar with an appetite for destruction — and a serious illness — had gone on a rampage inside the St. Vincent de Paul store in the small town of Ingham.

"We thought a person had fallen through the ceiling because the roof panel was cut in half," Auld said. "When they've hit the floor, they've vomited and then staggered and fallen over. That's what we thought anyway."

Police now suspect the python entered the store through the roof, which was damaged in a cyclone two years ago.

The animal then plummeted through the ceiling, knocking over dishes, clothes and other items, before relieving itself on the floor. It somehow managed to hide from officials until staff spotted it lying alongside a wall the next day.

Can I just repeat what happened? A 37-pound 19-foot-long snake apparently lived in the roof of a building for some period of time, then fell through the ceiling, "vomiting"* everywhere, and then HID FOR A WHOLE DAY. I don't even want to GO to Australia anymore**, lest I wander into a place with a giant snake hiding out! I have the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.

Dear god.

*The "vomit" turned out to be "snake urine and feces," by the way.
**Lies. I totally do. I need to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef before it's dead!

Speaking of the Great Barrier Reef...

Sigh. Ever since I did my 6th grade Endangered Species Report on the Galapagos Penguin, I've wanted to go to the Galapagos Islands. And now I learn that tourists are ruining the island...what a conundrum!

Via

Time to book a trip to the Great Barrier Reef

RIP Coral Reefs.

All Coral Reefs Could Die by Century’s End

Every coral reef in the world will probably die off by the end of this century unless the production of carbon dioxide is curtailed severely, researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science report. Accelerated carbon dioxide production is making the oceans more acidic, thus preventing the basic skeletons of coral reefs from being made.

Better get on that dream to snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef!*

Lighthouse Reef, Belize - Photograph by Brian Skerry, National Geographic

*...Although, maybe not. Are there starfish there? Starfish really creep me out.

Ugggggh, so creepy. Via.

The torpid brain...has grown too weak for sustained thought

I guess I'm not the only one overwhelmed by the pace of "modern" day life.

So busy!

I should probably blog more...but you know, life.

Not dead, just restin'

Hello, friends and strangers. It was recently brought to my attention that I haven't been doomsday prophesying very much at all this year. Rest assured I haven't stopped reading about horrible things; I've just stopped writing about them. Things are busy, you know. I got promoted at work, my car got covered in tar, and to get it off I had to coat the entire thing with peanut butter and then rinse it off (which took even longer than you might expect), I've joined a bunch of "sports" leagues, as well as a wine tasting club, and now I'm thinking about moving, or maybe even buying a place. But those are all excuses and distractions from the real meat of this post, which is supposed to be a bunch of links to articles that recently caught my attention.

As I'm sure the world is clamoring for more of my overreactions to things that I read, I won't make any further ado.

1. The bees are still dying in droves. It might be due to pesticides. You should worry because we need the bees to pollinate our food!

Annual bee losses of 5 percent to 10 percent once were the norm for beekeepers. But after colony collapse disorder surfaced around 2005, the losses approached one-third of all bees, despite beekeepers’ best efforts to ensure their health.Nor is the impact limited to beekeepers. The Agriculture Department says a quarter of the American diet, from apples to cherries to watermelons to onions, depends on pollination by honeybees. Fewer bees means smaller harvests and higher food prices.

Related: Beekeepers are suing the EPA over insecticides.

A year after groups formally petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), four beekeepers and five environmental and consumer groups filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court against the agency for its failure to protect pollinators from dangerous pesticides.  The coalition, represented by attorneys for the Center for Food Safety (CFS), seeks suspension of the registrations of insecticides that have repeatedly been identified as highly toxic to honey bees, clear causes of major bee kills and significant contributors to the devastating ongoing mortality of bees known as colony collapse disorder (CCD).  The suit challenges EPA’s ongoing handling of the pesticides as well as the agency’s practice of “conditional registration” and labeling deficiencies.

2. Speaking of modern farming ruining everything, toxic algae bloomed like crazy all over Lake Erie in 2011 because the lake was overloaded with phosphorous and other nutrients from fertilizer and other agricultural runoff. Apparently, we can expect similar events in the future if farming practices aren't changed.

In 2011, Lake Erie experienced the largest algae bloom in its recorded history. At its peak in October, the mat of green scum on the lake’s surface was nearly four inches thick and covered an area of almost 2,000 square miles. That’s three times larger than any other bloom in the lake, ever. Plus it was toxic. Now research shows that such an event may become increasingly common.

3. A vial containing a virus that can cause hemorrhagic fever has gone missing from a research facility in Galveston. Let me repeat that: a vial containing a virus that can cause hemorrhagic fever has gone missing from a research facility in Galveston. Oh hey, where'd I put that hemorrhagic fever? I hope it's not at the bottom of my purse with my car keys.

4. Oh man, did you know that Visine, if swallowed, acts as a neurotoxin?

Used as directed, [eyedrops] may indeed give you that clear-eyed look but that’s mostly due to the constriction of blood vessels in the eye. Internally they also induce vasoconstriction (as Toxnet calls it).  The resulting symptoms...include rapid heart beat, nausea, blurred vision, drowsiness, convulsions. The Toxnet entry, based partly on cases of children who  swallowed a bottle of eyedrops or nosedrops left carelessly on a table or counter,  notes that “drowsiness and mild coma” often alternate with periods of thrashing and hyperactivity.

Remind me to keep eyedrops out of the reach of anyone who might be mad at me.

5. "Just because shit is depressing or horrible, doesn’t mean you can’t laugh about it with blood in your mouth." Natalie Dee is awesome.

6. Cow pee spreads antibiotic resistance through the soil. Chew on that. Or don't.

7. Venice flooded like crazy late last year. Is this a portent for the world to come? Survey (of me only) says yes.

8. No more letting Timmy chew on the dirt! Seems like lead is getting into kids' blood, from the soil.

While homeowners have learned over the years how to better manage old, peeling lead paint, the lead that was in gasoline was deposited on the ground and is still scattered throughout soils in many postindustrial U.S. cities. Kids still play in that dirt, and little kids may even eat it on occasion.

In a February paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, McElmurry and a team of economists and urban health specialists argue that the seasonal fluctuation of children's blood lead levels seen in industrial cities like Detroit indicate that kids are exposed to lead from contaminated soil that turns into airborne dust in the summertime.

Boston was mentioned in the article, so I'm especially alarmed at this one. I'm glad I don't have a kid...I'd be terrified about him or her breathing the air during summer!

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It's Friday, yay.

My kind of people

Of course, the first thing the HR guy did when he came to greet me was shake my hand.



(Later, he apologized for not shaking my hand as I was leaving, because he was feeling sick. I told him it was too late, so he offered me some hand sanitizer.)

Holy crap and a half

Have you guys heard about Cordyceps? It's a parasitic fungus that invades insects, hijacks their brain, and then uses their bodies to reproduce. It's freaky as hell, and yet I can't look away:

(See also.)

Don't be lulled into a false sense of security that something like this can't happen to you just because you're not an insect. Humans too can be invaded and have their brains hijacked (long article, but totally worth a read).

All Men are Mortal, and All Fruit Flies Are Boozers

Well, I'm sorry to say I haven't particularly cheered up as of late...I even flew myself all the way to California in the hopes that a change of pace (and some friend time) would make me feel better, and I continued to mope while I was there because everything is terrible and we're all gonna die and I'm gonna die alone and I am the worst. But I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to make life a little more enjoyable and I guess a good start is some edjumucation. I do like learning me some new things! Like these random tidbits I've stumbled across lately:

• Fruit flies seek fermenting fruit to keep wasps away.
• There is a contest for Oddest Book Title, and one of the books on the shortlist this year is God's Doodle, and I'll let you click on that link to find out what "God's doodle" is.
• Crying in space is hard to do.
• Thomas Edison invented LOLCats?
• The world is in need of portable fish authenticity tests...beware your sushi!
• Oh god, prairie dogs have the black death.
• Dolphins might call each other by name. Amazing.
• Holy moly look at these giant bird nests! I wouldn't want to stand under any of those...
• Note to self: do not store your gun magazine (should you ever be in possession of one) in the oven.
• OMG the world's soil is running out.
• And the pièce de résistance: Can you eat your own poop? Spoiler alert: Yep. Second spoiler alert: there is a word meaning "eating poop" and this word is "coprophagy." 

In some more existential crisis news, I recently read All Men are Mortal, by Simon de Beauvoir. It was an odd book that I don't particularly recommend, but I mention it because it was more or less a meditation on immortality, and therefore on mortality, and on what makes a life meaningful. The main message I took from the novel is that individual lives are relatively meaningless and can make little impact (even immortal ones) and in the aggregate humans are constantly repeating their errors...but at least humans are mortal and get to die. So let this serve as a note to self: life might be pointless, but at least you'll die some day!

And hey look, this is topical:

As is this (from one of my favorite new (to me) blogs).

And this:

Via

Finally, to finish this long ramble, I can't wait to teach my nephew about what goats actually sound like:


1:24 is obviously the best part of this compilation.

Existential Crisis

Something I've been pondering lately: How, in the absence of religion, partner, kids, or any particular desire to do community service, does one add meaning or purpose to ones life? I've been feeling very purposeless recently, and it's not good for my mental health. All day every day, all I do is wonder: what is the point of anything (or everything)? Am I just supposed to get up, go to work, go home, sleep, repeat...forever?* I can't see any particular alternative at the moment.

Speaking of existential crisis, this guy at Oxford thinks we are underestimating the risk of humanity's self-destruction. He also says a lot of stuff I don't fully understand. But I understood this:

Q: What technology, or potential technology, worries you the most?

A: I can mention a few. In the nearer term I think various developments in biotechnology and synthetic biology are quite disconcerting. We are gaining the ability to create designer pathogens and there are these blueprints of various disease organisms that are in the public domain---you can download the gene sequence for smallpox or the 1918 flu virus from the Internet. So far the ordinary person will only have a digital representation of it on their computer screen, but we're also developing better and better DNA synthesis machines, which are machines that can take one of these digital blueprints as an input, and then print out the actual RNA string or DNA string. Soon they will become powerful enough that they can actually print out these kinds of viruses. So already there you have a kind of predictable risk, and then once you can start modifying these organisms in certain kinds of ways, there is a whole additional frontier of danger that you can foresee.

In the longer run, I think artificial intelligence---once it gains human and then superhuman capabilities---will present us with a major risk area. There are also different kinds of population control that worry me, things like surveillance and psychological manipulation pharmaceuticals.

Oh crap, Wikipedia says existential crises are incurable.

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*Except today, when I get up, go to work, and then go downtown to throw balls at people in a confined space. Dodgeball is great for getting the aggression out! Rawr!

755 out of 500!

Have you guys seen the news out of Beijing lately? No? That's probably because it got trapped in the crazy smog that is shrouding the city. Over the course of January, Beijing (along with its environs) has been repeatedly shrouded in a giant cloud of smog, which has degraded the air quality to a startling extent. A few weeks ago, the U.S. Embassy recorded an Air Quality Index of 755, on a scale of 0 to 500, where 500 is Hella Bad (my words), and above 500 is not even defined. The EPA calls any AQI above 301 "hazardous," as in "don't go outside; breathing is bad for you out there." According to The Atlantic, things got even more off-the-charts bad later in the month:

At the height of recent pollution, Beijing authorities said readings for PM2.5 -- particles small enough deeply to penetrate the lungs -- hit 993 micrograms per cubic metre, almost 40 times the World Health Organization's safe limit.

At least 19 days in January featured hazardous air, and on January 29, thick smog covered almost one seventh of China. This, as you can imagine, caused major traffic chaos on highways and severe disruptions in air traffic. The smog got so bad that the Chinese media actually started reporting on it, an occurrence that itself was so newsworthy that the New York Times wrote a whole article about it. Hospital admissions for respiratory conditions have spiked dramatically.

The Atlantic published a series of startling photographs today of the smog, some of which show the same exact area of Beijing on a normal day and a smoggy day. My jaw dropped when I saw some of the pictures. No wonder The Atlantic called the series "China's Toxic Sky".

Captions mine

And I thought driving in LA was bad...

This plane ACTUALLY TOOK OFF

Perhaps not surprisingly, air purifiers in Beijing are apparently going for about $2000 a pop. That's communism for you!

***

Want to know where in the world the worst air pollution in the world is? This slightly out-of-date chart from NASA should help. Hint: It's China.

As if I needed *another* reason to be scared of the ocean

Man. Have you guys heard about cookie-cutter sharks?  I read an article about them last week and I think I'm going to have nightmares forever. "Cookie-cutter" sharks may sound adorable (who doesn't love cookies, after all), but don't be fooled--these buggers are terrifying little hell-raisers that attack things like great white sharks, dolphins, tuna, Orcas,...AND PEOPLE.* They're so awful that one shark expert (the alliteratively named Stewart Springer) apparently called  them "demon whale-biters," though he later popularized the "cookie cutter" moniker...maybe because he felt bad for calling them names? Personally, I think he over-corrected.

The primary thing that makes cookie cutter sharks so scary is their teeth, which are basically serrated saw blades (all connected together in one menacing piece), and the way that they use said teeth to attack things. Here's how a blogger at NatGeo described the animal:

It looks like a demonic cigar. It’s a small cat-sized animal with chocolate-coloured skin, a rounded snout, and large green eyes. Beneath the bizarre head, its lower jaw contains what looks like a saw—a row of huge, serrated teeth, all connected at their bases.

When the cookie-cutter finds a victim, it latches on with its large fleshy lips and bites down with its saw blade. With twisting motions, it scoops out a chunk of flesh, leaving behind circular craters...These are serious injuries—the biggest craters ever recorded were 5 centimetres wide and 7 centimetres deep. (These chunks are conical, so the cookie-cutter metaphor isn’t quite right; “Ice cream scoop shark” or “watermelon baller shark” are more accurate, if less catchy.)

Apparently, cookie cutter sharks have the biggest
teeth of any shark, in relation to their jaws.

Terrifying, right??? If you were ever unlucky enough to be attacked by a cookie cutter shark (which you probably won't be, as they only come out at night, and who in their right mind swims in the ocean at night?!), the main problem you would have is that your wound CAN'T HEAL. To quote someone who appears to have no medical training, but who LiveScience talked to about cookie cutter shark bites nonetheless,

Not only is [a cookie cutter shark bite] painful, but it presents a difficult circumstance for recovery in the sense that there has to be plastic surgery to close the wound and you have permanent tissue loss.

Oh, no biggie, I just had some flesh scooped out of me by a demon whale biter. 

*Shudder*. Mark this as reason #2 why I plan never again to swim in the ocean. (Reason #1 is accidental paralysis, as described here.)

Now, I'd better get to something less horrible. You're welcome for this cheerful Monday pick-me-up!




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*And Submarines! According to Wikipedia:

During the 1970s, several U.S. Navy submarines were forced back to base for repairs by cookiecutter shark bites to the neoprene boots of their AN/BQR-19 sonar domes, which caused the sound-transmitting oil inside to leak and impaired navigation. An unknown enemy weapon was initially feared, before this shark was identified as the culprit, and the problem was solved by installing fiberglass covers around the domes.In the 1980s, some thirty U.S. Navy submarines were damaged by cookiecutter shark bites, mostly to the rubber-sheathed electric cable leading to the sounding probe used to ensure safety when surfacing in shipping zones. Again, the solution was to apply a fiberglass coating.