A Someecards card AND a gift certificate??

Anonymous! Thank you so much for your generous gift! I have already used it; it contributed to the purchase of a SAD light that provides "natural relief for individuals suffering from the seasonal disorder known as the winter blues." If it works, you can take 27% of the credit for my not being as depressed as usual over the next few months.

I'm really hoping it works, because...blah.

Anyway, thanks again! XOXO

We're all gonna die...and impoverished, too

According to Medium, there are 33 things that we should all eat, drink, see or do in the next 50 years, before climate change ruins everything.  Writes Medium of their list, "think of it as your guide to the good life before climate change melts it away."

A selection of to-do items from the list:

Go see Joshua Trees at Joshua Tree national park.

The Joshua trees of Joshua Tree National Park need periods of cold temperatures before they can flower. Young trees are now rare in the park. Older trees are beginning to sag. Suggested rebranding for 2065: “Death Valley Annex.”

Check!

Go to Vegas, maybe? If that's your thing?

Seven U.S. States plus Mexico share the waters of the overstretched Colorado River, and Nevada’s legal share is tiniest of all: less than two percent of the flow. If the current drought continues to shrink Lake Mead, the reservoir on the Colorado that keeps Vegas alive, Sin City’s water could be gone before Britney is.

Been there, won that.

Eat some oysters

Warmer waters may mean poisonous shellfish. The most common cause of seafood-related stomach illness, the bacteria Vibrio parahaemolyticus, is at its most virulent in the Pacific Northwest. But health authorities on the East Coast and in northern Spain got a recent surprise when two of the worst strains appeared in the Atlantic Ocean.

Ate here once. Can't say "YUM" enough.

DRINK COFFEE, EAT CHOCOLATE.

A two-degree Celsius temperature rise in the coffee regions of Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, and Mexico, along with a projected five- to 10-percent decrease in rainfall, could lead to a nearly 40 percent decrease in land suitable for growing coffee crops in those countries. Your $10 latte is almost ready.

I hope I'm dead before I can't afford coffee

Steep projected declines in yields of maize, sorghum, and other staples portend a coming food crisis for parts of sub-Saharan Africa. But here’s what will probably get everyone’s attention in the developed world: Studies suggest cacao production will begin to decline in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the source of half of the world’s chocolate, by 2030.

I could probably live without chocolate as long as we still have plenty of sugar.

Visit these places on my bucket list: The Great Barrier Reef; Easter Island

The good news is that you’ll still be able to visit the Great Barrier Reef, even as warmer ocean temperatures hasten the coral die-off. The bad: If you step out of the water, you may get dengue fever. (The mosquito-borne disease is expanding its range dramatically as Australia warms.)

Most of the stone sentinels of [Easter Island's] Rapa Nui National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, stand perilously close to the water’s edge. On the upside, the island’s unpolluted waters are crystal clear—perfect for diving and snorkeling when the statues sink beneath the sea. 

I should just book my flight now, right?

There's more, but let me make things even more depressing with the following:

The American Southwest is probably in the middle of or on the cusp of a "megadrought."  Oh, and 82 percent of the state of California is apparently in "Extreme Drought."

You are not gonna want to ride the Subway in the future.

With global warming, poison ivy might become more common. (Super bad news for me, because I get rashes if I'm even NEAR the stuff.)

The Ebola outbreak is, in official terminology, "spiraling out of control" as we speak.

Family vacation is not quite relaxing but it is nice

Hello from Lake George, where I'm getting a taste of waking up at the crack of dawn with two little kids. My goodness, it is tiring...at least they are cute. And as a bonus, I've been able to see some purrty sunrises!

PS Blogging from my phone sucks 

Iceland

If the world does start going to hell in a hand basket, as I suspect it may, Iceland might be a nice refuge.  The country may have absolutely no sun during the winter (and no darkness during the summer), but it's beautiful and it has plenty of eco-friendly, renewable geothermal energy sources!*

*And sulfurous hot water, which mean there are lots of smelly egg showers.  But one would probably get used to that.

Some highlights from my trip last month:

View of Reykjavik from the spire of Hallgrímskirkja

Viðey, the largest island of the Kollafjörður Bay, just 5 minutes from Reykjavík

Geysir Geothermal Area

Gullfoss 

Near Vík somewhere

Jökulsárlón (glacial lagoon)

Near Lake Mývatn

Dettifoss

Hiking up to Grábrók crater

Way more pics here (abridged version here).



(Anon, this post was for you. Hope you enjoy.)

Hot and sticky

Evidently, America is going to get a lot more hot and sticky over the course of my lifetime, at least according to the economics research firm Rhodium Group and two of the country’s top climate scientists, Robert Kopp of Rutgers and Michael Mastrandrea of Stanford.

I stole the following charts, which probably come from the Rhodium report, though I wouldn't know because I haven't read it (yet?), from an article titled These Maps Show How Many Brutally Hot Days You Will Suffer When You’re Old.

Who wants to move to Northern Maine with me??

The chart below shows the number of days per year in 2100 and 2200 when climate scientists predict the heat and humidity will be too high for humans to be safely outside. Thank goodness I'll be dead before 2200...

It's already too hot and sticky right now for my taste, and it's not even close to 95 degrees. Thank goodness I'm flying to Iceland tonight! Can't wait for the 50 degree weather! :)

Sugar: More dangerous than Marijuana?

This interview with Robert Lustig, famous for his high-profile articles about sugar's toxicity (like this one), is worth a read, if only for this part:

Now, I will tell you that America doesn't trust its politicians. And we have a good reason for that: they suck. If you don't quote me, I will be upset. 

But the rest of it is equally as interesting, and it makes me want to try (yet again) to eliminate most of the added sugar from my diet. If you don't read it, I will be upset.

Do you consider sugar a drug?

Of course it's a drug. It's very simple: a drug is a substance that has effects on the body, and the effects have to be exclusive of calories.

So in order to qualify it as a drug, the negative effects of sugar have to be exclusive of its calories. Is 100 calories of sugar different from, say, 100 calories in broccoli? The answer is absolutely.

Can you name another substance of abuse for which the effect of the substance is more dangerous than the calories it harbors? Alcohol. Its calories are dangerous not because they're calories; they're dangerous because they're part of alcohol. Sugar is the same.

Sugar is the alcohol of a child. You would never let a child drink a can of Budweiser, but you would never think twice about a can of Coke. Yet what it does to the liver, what it does to the arteries, what it does to the heart is all the same. And that's why we have adolescents with type 2 diabetes.

Can you elaborate on that? Could you describe the precise negative biochemical effects sugar has on the body?

There are three.

One, fructose, the sweet molecule in sugar, is not metabolized like glucose. It's metabolized in the mitochondria, and it is metabolized in the liver to liver fat. That liver fat mucks up the workings of the liver and leads to a process called insulin resistance. That raises your insulin levels because your pancreas has to make more insulin. That drives all the chronic metabolic diseases we know about, plus it burns out the pancreas, leading to diabetes.

Two, cellular aging. When bananas ripen, they brown. The sugar in the bananas binds to proteins in the bananas nonenzymatically, even in dead tissue. That's called the cellular aging or Maillard reaction. That happens to everyone all the time, so we brown inside. You don't want to brown very fast, but we're all browning because that's how we age. But sugar makes us brown seven times faster; it basically kills our organs quicker.

Three, sugar is addictive. So a little makes you want more, because of the effect of the reward center of the brain.

Mmmm, but browning on the inside is so delicious...

On a related note, I highly recommend this book.

And on another related note, there is this.

Bad news all day, every day.

Friends: We are losing the use of antibiotics, giant pieces of ice are breaking off Antarctica, our fancy modern products are poisoning us/giving us disease/reducing our IQ, and society is probably going to collapse.

Like I said, bad news all day, every day.

**********************

WHO warns against 'post-antibiotic' era

The 'post-antibiotic' era is near, according to a report released today by the World Health Organization (WHO). The decreasing effectiveness of antibiotics and other antimicrobial agents is a global problem, and a surveillance system should be established to monitor it, the group says.

There is nothing hopeful in WHO's report, which pulls together data from 129 member states to show extensive resistance to antimicrobial agents in every region of the world. Overuse of antibiotics in agriculture — to promote livestock growth — and in hospitals quickly leads to proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria, which then spread via human travel and poor sanitation practices.

"A post-antibiotic era — in which common infections and minor injuries can kill — far from being an apocalyptic fantasy, is instead a very real possibility for the twenty-first century," writes Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general for health security, in a foreword to the report.

Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans as Antarctic Ice Melts

The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists reported Monday.

The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means that a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet may now be inevitable. The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so, the scientists said, but sometime after that it will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis.

The Scary New Evidence on BPA-Free Plastics

Scientists have tied BPA to ailments including asthma, cancer, infertility, low sperm count, genital deformity, heart disease, liver problems, and ADHD. "Pick a disease, literally pick a disease," says Frederick vom Saal, a biology professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia who studies BPA.
...
Today many plastic products, from sippy cups and blenders to Tupperware containers, are marketed as BPA-free. But [recent] findings—some of which have been confirmed by other scientists—suggest that many of these alternatives share the qualities that make BPA so potentially harmful.
...
George Bittner...recently coauthored a paper in the NIH journal Environmental Health Perspectives. It reported that "almost all" commercially available plastics that were tested leached synthetic estrogens—even when they weren't exposed to conditions known to unlock potentially harmful chemicals, such as the heat of a microwave, the steam of a dishwasher, or the sun's ultraviolet rays. According to Bittner's research, some BPA-free products actually released synthetic estrogens that were more potent than BPA.

The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains

Last month, more research brought concerns about chemical exposure and brain health to a heightened pitch. Philippe Grandjean, Bellinger’s Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a “silent pandemic” of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. The experts named 12 chemicals—substances found in both the environment and everyday items like furniture and clothing—that they believed to be causing not just lower IQs but ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Pesticides were among the toxins they identified.
...
It's surprising to learn how little evidence there is for the safety of chemicals all around us, in our walls and furniture, in our water and air. Many consumers assume there is a rigorous testing process before a new chemical is allowed to be a part of a consumer product. Or at least some process.

"We still don’t have any kind of decent law on the books that requires that chemicals be tested for safety before they come to market"...

Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?

Maybe, but "but the odds of avoiding collapse seem small."

New Blog Mascot?

Hat tip to Jessie for alerting me to Hello Kitty's new friend, an egg named Gudetama, who can be described thusly:

He's whiny, always has a face of despair, and according to the Sanrio release on the little guy, is "unmotivated." His attitude is related to the fact that he only exists to be eaten.

I wish I could read japanese. From what I have gathered, Gudetama is probably saying something like "please leave me alone."

I think I know what I'm going to be for Halloween this year...

Sadly not an April Fool's Day joke

Bags of Mountain Air Offered in Smog-Addled Chinese City

20 bright blue bags of air were shipped to Zhengzhou, capital of central China’s Henan province, as a special treat for residents. The air originated from Laojun Mountain, some 120 miles away from the city, and was brought as part of a promotional gimmick to show oxygen-deprived city residents what they’re missing.

China’s environmental ministry announced last week that Zhengzhou was among the country’s top 10 most-polluted cities. Its AQI on Monday was an unhealthy 158. By contrast, the Monday AQI forecast for Bakersfield, CA, the most polluted city in the U.S., was 45.

More here.

This is kind of getting to dystopian levels of crazy, don't you think? Add this to the report on climate change just released by the UN, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that we're all gonna die. Maybe sooner rather than later!

P.S. Hi, Anonymous!

We're all gonna die, but I'm probably gonna die alone and have no one notice for six years...

Woman dies and nobody notices for six years because of auto pay:

Nobody batted an eyelid. Bills were paid. And life went on as normal in the quiet neighborhood of Pontiac, Michigan.

Neighbors didn't notice anything unusual. The woman traveled a lot, they said, and kept to herself. One of them mowed her grass to keep things looking tidy.

At some point, her bank account ran dry. The bills stopped being paid.

After its warnings went unanswered, the bank holding the mortgage foreclosed on the house, a common occurrence in a region hit hard by economic woes.

Still, nobody noticed what had happened inside the house. Nobody wondered out loud what had become of the owner.

Not until this week, when a worker sent by the bank to repair a hole in the roof made a grisly discovery.

The woman's mummified body was sitting in the backseat of her car, parked in the garage. The key was halfway in the ignition.

Authorities say they believe the woman died at least six years ago. They're still trying to figure out what happened.

"I've been doing this 37 years. Never seen anything like this before," said Undersheriff Mike McCabe of Oakland County, Michigan, just outside Detroit.

Dr. Bernardino Pacris, the county deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, told the Detroit Free Press that the woman's skin was still intact, but that the internal organs had decomposed.

Thanks, Tiffani, for adding this to my list of fears. That's a sarcastic thanks, btw.

Hey, Anon...

Thanks for the book! That perked up my day. I'll add it to the to-read list.

In honor of my friends who are going to Australia on their honeymoon today

Came across this piece of news yesterday:

100,000 dead bats fall from the sky in Australia

A heat wave in the state of Queensland that has temperatures rising above 109 degrees Fahrenheit caused nearly 100,000 bats to just fall from the sky and forced some unfortunate reporter to write the following sentence:

"About 100,000 bats have fallen from the sky and died during a heatwave in Australia that has left the trees and earth littered with dead creatures."

Oh, and also this one:

"The stench from the rotting carcasses has begun to disturb residents of Brisbane and large towns. Authorities have dispatched rubbish collectors to pick up thousands of carcasses from populated areas."

Watch your head out there! Also: Do not eat.

Welcome to spinsterhood

You know what I learned yesterday? That I have an old lady name. Look at this graph of the number of babies named "Jessica" over the years:

This means that when I'm old, all the Jessicas in the country are also going to be old. Jessica is the new Gertrude! Egad!

I'd better start working on my "kids these days..." complaints.

This is going to give me nightmares

According to some website I've never heard of, this is the world's most dangerous trail. It's in China. It takes you up the tippy top of a mountain...to a teahouse. Tea sure seems worth risking death to me!

Even if it's not the most dangerous trail in the world, it certainly seems like a good contender:

La la la, no safety railing, no big deal.

Just hang on to the chain and hope your backpack doesn't bang into the side of the mountain, sending you off balance...you'll be fine.

Sandals are perfect footwear for this excursion.

Oh, and then there's the part where you climb straight up the side of the mountain.

I wonder how many people plunge to their deaths on this trail every year. When I visited the Grand Canyon as a teenager, and refused to hike down the trail from the rim, even for an hour, and consequently spent a few hours waiting in the gift shop for my group to finish their hike, I learned that 3-4 people fall of the Grand Canyon every year. And the path there is SO much wider.

From Wikipedia:

Huashan has historically been a place of retreat for hardy hermits, whether Daoist, Buddhist or other; access to the mountain was only deliberately available to the strong-willed, or those who had found "the way". With greater mobility and prosperity, Chinese, particularly students, began to test their mettle and visit in the 1980s. The inherent danger of many of the exposed, narrow pathways with precipitous drops gave the mountain a deserved reputation for danger. As tourism has boomed and the mountain's accessibility vastly improved with the installation of the cable car in the 1990s, visitor numbers surged. Despite the safety measures introduced by cutting deeper pathways and building up stone steps and wider paths, as well as adding railings, fatalities continued to occur. The local government has proceeded to open new tracks and created one-way routes on some more hair-raising parts, such that the mountain can be scaled without significant danger now, barring crowds and icy conditions. Some of the most precipitous tracks have actually been closed off. The former trail that led to the South Peak from the North Peak is on a cliff face, and it was known as being extremely dangerous; there is now a new and safer stone-built path to reach the South Peak temple, and on to the Peak itself.

Many Chinese still climb at nighttime, in order to reach the East Peak by dawn —though the mountain now has many hotels. This practice is a holdover from when it was considered safer to simply be unable to see the extreme danger of the tracks during the ascent, as well as to avoid meeting descending visitors at points where pathways have scarcely enough room for one visitor to pass through safely.

The year in books: 2013 edition

I'm going to just go ahead and ignore the fact that I haven't posted anything on this blog in 3 months (as well as the fact that I only have one reader left (Hi, Anon!)), and I'll launch right into my annual recap of the books I read over the past year. 2013 was a record year in book consumption for me, with 54 books read or listened to. Yes, you read that right: 54! (And I was all psyched when I reported reading 51 books in 2012. Pssh.) It seems that as I age I only get better, like a fine wine...except I don't really mellow out with age, I just read more and more and more, so maybe not like a fine wine at all. In any case, check this out--talk about (self-)improvement!*:

Sadly, aside from the raw numbers, 2013 wasn't a terrific year for me in terms of book selection. Would you believe I rated zero books 5 stars in 2013 (on a scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is best)? Usually I have at least one 5-star book, if not more, but nope, not in 2013, when the top rating I gave any book was 4.5 (though there were two of those). Another six books got 4 stars from me in 2013. Contrast that with 2012, when I gave one book 5 stars, three books 4.5 stars, and twelve books 4 stars. I'm gonna have to make some better choices in 2014!

Key: Books I loved = 4.5; Books I liked a lot = 4; Books I liked OK = 3;
Books I didn't like very much = 2.5 or lower

Over half of the books I consumed last year were Kindle books (59%). Just seven (10%) were real, honest-to-goodness, paper books. That's kind of sad, because I really, really love physical books. But damn if it isn't way more convenient to read books on my Kindle--or to read Kindle books on my iPad or my phone. No need to plan ahead or to lug big heavy blocks of paper around in my already-too-heavy bag. With the magic of Kindle, I'm never without my current reading material! If someone is late or if I have to wait in line, out pops the phone, and bam, I'm edjumucating (or edifying) myself! (Note to self: you sound like a Kindle infomercial. Note to Kindle: I am available to host an infomercial.)

The Kindle has virtually ruined my dream of having a room in my future
house stocked full of books that I have read (pun intended).

Speaking of edjumucating (or not), I didn't do terribly well in 2013 in terms of reading non-fiction. A paltry five of the 51 books I consumed were non-fiction (that's 9%, versus 22% of the books I read in 2012). Interestingly, though, three of the books I liked best during 2013 were non-fiction. This seems to be a trend with me--I mostly read fiction, but my favorite books of the past few years have been non-fiction (cf. here and here). And yet, I don't regret for an instant reading all those made up stories (I only wish I had read more non-made-up stories). Hm. I'll have to think about what that says about me.

Man. And two of the non-fiction books were about food, too,
which I already kinda know about.

I read a lot of medium-length books in 2013 (average page count for Kindle and paper books: 331; median page count: 320).

Chart shows page counts for Kindle and real books only.
Page counts are based on the print copy (paperback if available
at time of calculation, hardcover if not).

Similarly, I listened to a lot of medium-length audiobooks. Average audio length: 14.1 hours; median length: 12.9 hours. My audio books ranged in listening time from 8.1 hours (blessedly short, thank goodness, I didn't like that one**) to 32.5 hours (thankfully, I did (mostly) like that one). Interestingly, in their paper form my audio books tended to be longer than my kindle/real books (average page count for audio books: 416, median: 384).

This data surprises me, because I usually try to pick audiobooks
that are as long as possible. Apparently I couldn't find many long
books I was interested in. Oh god, what if I've listened to them all?

Perhaps because I didn't consume very many super long books, I finished almost all of my books in a month or less--and I finished half of them in less than 10.5 days (average length of time reading or listening: 14.5 days; median: 10.5 days). Surprisingly, my audiobooks tended to be consumed faster than my reading books (average length of time to consume audio books: 13.2, real books: 15.1 days)

If you're wondering how this math works, know that I always have
two to three books going at once.

More fun book trivia...but no graphs. I'm tired of making graphs.

• Average rating for all of my 2013 books: 3.0. Average rating for audio books: 3.2, for non-audio books: 3.0. I apparently do a better job picking my listening books than I do my reading books.
• My favorite books of the year: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves; This Is Not Your City. Though I wouldn't necessarily recommend either of them to other people; they are both best suited for particular tastes--especially the latter, which is depressing as hell.
• My least favorite books of the year: The Angel's Game (I will never read another Zafón); Every Contact Leaves a Trace (that will teach me to accept a suggestion from Audible.com); Promise Not to Tell (not even worth the bargain price I paid for it years ago)
• Books I might recommend to others: Going Clear (holy smokes fascinating); The Curfew (weird and wonderful); Salt Sugar Fat (also fascinating, but more I-kinda-already-knew-that fascinating versus holy smokes fascinating)
• Number of short story collections read: 6 (average rating for short story collections: 3.5, versus 3.0 for everything else--I guess I do okay picking out short story collections as well).
• Months I finished the most books: April and May (6 in each)
• Month I finished the fewest books: August (2)
• Book that took the longest to read: The Idiot (124 days -- started in October 2012, finally finished in January, 2013)
• Book I read fastest: Thousand Cranes (1 cross-country airplane ride)
• Shortest book: The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (134 pages)
• Longest book (in pages and in audio time): The Goldfinch (784 pages; 32.5 hours).
• Number of dystopian*** novels consumed: 11. Number of dystopian-esque novels consumed: 3.
• Favorite dystopian novel: Love Minus Eighty (though it was only slightly above average)
• Favorite dystopian-esque novel: The Curfew (this one I liked a lot).
• Oddest books consumed: The Curfew and The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil (tie for oddness, but I liked the former better than the latter)
• Number of books read for a book club: 2. Number of times I actually showed up at the book club: 1.
• Number of  books taking place in Spain that I read while on vacation in Spain: 2. Number of said books that I liked: 0. Chance that I will tailor my vacation book selection to the location of my next vacation: very low.
• Most common book length: 352 pages (n = 9. Nine! Wha???)
• Books I started in 2013 but which I am still reading: 2. 

And that's about it for my summary of the books I read last year. If you want to know more about my reading, you can (as always) visit my Goodreads page, and you can also peruse this Google spreadsheet I made, which includes my reading data from 2012 and 2013. Now: Bring on the books for 2014!

*Confession: if you look at the number of pages read each year, I seem to have peaked in 2011. But we won't talk about that; I'm not even sure how Goodreads calculates page counts.
**Which was really disappointing, because I read it after hearing about it on this awesome Radiolab Short and I had high hopes.
***Why does spell check want to turn "dystopia" into "utopia"? That's not at all what I'm trying to say!

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.