TIA MARIA GOSLINE, MARCH 31st 1994 - JAN 21 2008)
Oh oh how we love our pets. And oh how sad it is when they are gone. More than three years ago, Anne lost her best canine friend Lamont. Two years ago, Katie lost her favourite cat, Boots. Today my family lost our standard poodle Tia. She was almost 14 (more than half my life!) and in complete kidney failure and not really eating any more. For a dog to refuse roast beef, gravy, pork chops and her even her favourite curry, we knew something was very wrong. My parents and I sat around crying like a bunch of preschoolers, but there you have it. She is gone.

I could cite papers about pet bereavement, pet bereavement in children or the fact that an Ontario court actually awarded damages to some lady for emotional distress after her pet was killed by tainted food. I mean it’s all very interesting.

I guess we could even clone her. Hopefully they’d be able to edit out that part where she howls when left alone (with anyone other than Mom and Dad), or starts to pant and shake when Mom puts in her curlers (because that means she was going to be left alone ALL NIGHT). But really I am just sad. There is a hole where a big fluffy poodle face used to be.

I really should be going to bed right now, because my mom and I are waking up early to go to Seattle for a shopping weekend, but I am just not sleepy. It’s like my brain just turns ON at about 11pm. Oh so nocturnal, am I.

Anyways. The thought reminded me of a university psychology study experience. At the beginning of my intro psychology class at the University of Toronto, we all had to fill out this huge questionnaire. It was to be used by grad students when evaluating potential research subjects, as 3% of our grade was given by participating in them (they’ve since quit that practice, I think). Anyways. I got called for all of mine, instead of choosing to volunteer, as I must have turned up at the tails of some normal distributions for a bunch of traits. They never tell you what’s its about until after the experiment is over, so you don’t mess up their trials. They were fun.

One of the calls went a little something like this:

Psych Grad Student: Hello, is that Anna Gosline?
Me: Why yes, it is.
PGS: I am calling to ask for your participation in a psychology study for my thesis. Are you interested?
Me: Sure, dude.
PGS: Okay, could you come to Sidney Smith Hall Rm XXX at 8am on Wednesday morning?
Me: Urrrrr...do you have anything, like, later? (My earliest class was 10am. I awoke promptly at 9:54)
PGS: 8:15am?
Me: Urrrrr...later?
PGS: 8:30?
Me: Okay, (giving up) whatever. I’ll be there.

So I arrive, bleary eyed, totally uncaffeinated and more than a wee bit grumpy. I was placed in a tiny computer room where I was shown 10 sets of 10 vocabulary words. After each set, I had to recall as many as possible. At the end, I had to try and remember as many as I could from the whole 100. Did I mention the uncaffeinated part?

At the debrief, where they tell you what they were actually studying, as opposed to the sometimes misleading directions they give you at the start, the grad student revealed to me that she was studying how people’s “peak” time of the day changes with age. At which point I immediately recalled that on my questionnaire I had filled out: I am a night owl! My peak time of day is about 2am! I love to stay up late! Getting up before noon is hell!

Essentially, this chic had ripped me out of bed at my weakest moment on purpose to see how badly my memory would suck. Add some constantly dripping water on my forehead and I think you could almost call that torture. 

For all that we complain about gimmicky, stupid, science teaching tools (oh I haven’t, well I have in my head), I need to admit that I love what University of California, Santa Cruz statistician Herbie Lee has done with a chocolate chip cookie. By plotting the random distribution of chips throughout the cookie (which requires eating it..to see all the ones in the middle), he successfully demonstrated a Poisson distribution to his students. The PD is a distribution used to model the occurrence of events over time.

I mean do you all remember your stats class? I do. First term was Thursdays from 6-9pm. Oi. At half time break I used to get a latte so strong that my hand would sometime shake when I returned to class. I mean statistics are incredibly useful, an absolute must for those in most sciences and, I admit, I still use these skills nearly daily. But MAN OH MAN was it boring to learn. I think a cookie might have helped.

People, there’s something you have to know. 2008 is the International year of the Potato. That’s right. A whole YEAR of potato festivities. Talk about heaven.

Now this is especially concerning because we’ve already let 17 potential days of spud love pass us by. But that leaves a whole 348 days of potato festivities ahead of us. Truth be told, I don’t know how to go about celebrating a whole year of potatoes. So I went to the UN International Year of the Potato website to find out.

There, they’ve got a handy ”potato calendar” that flags all the good stuff. This February comes the International Potato Technology Expo. Then we’ve got a bunch of do-gooders meeting in Peru this March to convene and discuss the hot topic of “potato science for the poor.” Finally far off into the future in October don’t forget ”Potato week 2008” in Spain - which makes it Semana de la Patata (which begs the question, how does a potato week distinguish itself from a potato year? Are the two not redundant?). And finally, for those that will be sad to see the year of the potato go come December 31, 2008, never fear. The I7th World Potato Congress takes place in March 2009.

I’m personally puzzled as to why Mr. Potato Head isn’t making an appearance during the year of the potato (I mean seriously, it’s a golden opportunity). Also, I think some potato lore, poetry and proverbs wouldn’t go amiss. I stumbled upon this Irish one that my unimaginative head can’t quite process. It goes like this: “"It is easy to halve the potato where there’s love.” ...? As in, people who love are generous and share? They’re good at eying the irregular shape of spuds and cutting them perfectly in half? People in love are rich in potatoes? ?  ?

Moving along. May I also recommend the UN web page that explains the origins of the potato. In fact, the entire “Potato” subsection is a revelation. Did you know there are over 200 species of wild potato that grow in the Americas and over 5,000 varieties grown in the Andes alone. Don’t you want to each every single one!! Where are the potato tours? I want to taste the whole gamut of them. Yum yum. Now that’s an idea worth exploring; a potato eating tour of the Andes. I would SO go. 

A while back, we covered Eco-Balls, the lovely no-soap laundry gadget. I just found Dryer Balls, which cut down on drying time by 25% and therefore energy use by 25%.

Two thoughts. I lived in the UK for a couple of years and learned that I don’t really need to dry that much at all, except sheets and towels. Everything else is pretty good to go using the drying rack = ZERO energy drying. Second, couldn’t you use a tennis ball or something? 

I always wanted to be a veterinarian at a zoo. In fact, I still do, really. But let’s be honest and admit that probably have a child’s imaginary dream of what the job would be - a lot of cuddling with baby animals. Maybe feeding them, probably having to bring them home to sleep in my bed with me at night (please note: large, furry mammals are the only ones ever to appear in said fantasies).

I guess seeing a tiny tiny baby polar bear, Snowflake, having her butt milked and then cleansed by two keepers at the Nuremberg Zoo in Germany (what’s with the Germans and their polar bears, eh?) kind of ruins the fantasy.

Okay but THIS ONE is so cute, I nearly lost it - BABY POLAR BEAR SNORING. SNORING. Just don’t wake it up. That thing brays like a donkey. 

I’ve wanted this for ages and yet never really gotten around to buy it...you know how it is. Silly thing you don’t REALLY need, see it on the Internet, think huh. In a certain mood you’d buy it in a heart beat at an actual store, but some certain laziness takes you over..and...and...before you know it THEY’VE DISCONTINUED IT.

I guess that was the kick I needed cause I’ve finally ordered. Just shows that whole BUY NOW! ONLY 2 LEFT marketing psychology really works. I am so easy to manipulate.

Okay, but this one is pretty good, too. 

Remember Anne’s post about Popcorn Lung? Basically it is a damaging lung disease (bronchiolitis obliterans) caused by repeated exposure to diacetyl - a synthetic chemical that gives microwave popcorn its buttery flavor.

Creepy, yes, but likely only to affect those who actually work in an industrial setting that uses diacetyl. Until now. A massive labor union in the US, representing hotel, restaurant, and kitchen workers, has asked that butter and margarine manufacturers stop using diacetyl after an investigation by the The Seattle Post Intelligencer revealed that cooks using oils flavored by the chemical were exposed to levels similar or even higher than popcorn workers. Ew.

You’d think this meant DOOM for the likes of “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.” I mean Fabio wouldn’t be HALF as sexy with a persistent and aggravated cough, would he? The House of Reps in the US passed a bill last September that would limit workers exposure to diacetyl, but Bush said he’d veto it cause there wasn’t enough science to back up the claim. Cool.

The parasite - oh, noble class of beast. They continue to amaze me with their creative and disgusting life history patterns. One of my favorites is a species of liver fluke, called the Lancet fluke (or Dicrocoelium dendriticum) whose ultimate host is a sheep or other grazing animal, but it has to go through some of the juvenile stages inside a snail (see more info here).

It goes a little something like this: sheep has parasite in its liver and constsantly poops out fluke eggs. Snails eats eggy poop and the larvae hatch and reproduce inside the snail. Snail poops (well really extrudes) out the cysts in a “slime ball”, that slime ball is collected and eaten by ants, who like the juicy moisture. And here is the absolute BEST part. Once inside the ant, the fluke MANIPUTLATES THE ANT’S TINY BRAIN and makes it climb up to the tip top of grass blades where it is more likely to be eaten by a sheep (or other grazing animal) where the adult liver fluke lives happily producing eggs for the poop. I mean how cool is that? MIND CONTROL, people.

Anyways. Some researchers at Berkeley have found out that when a different kind of ant Cephalotes atratus gets infected with a type of nematode (round worm), the ant’s abdomen grows big, fat, round and red, resembling a berry. So birds will come along and eat the tasty looking berry ant, thereby spreading around the worm through their poop.

Note: while it might seem like parasites ALWAYS involved poop, this is simply not true. Parasitoids (the inspriation for the move Alien) such as parasitoid wasps often inject their eggs directly into the host. Once fully grown, the adult then bursts out of the host (often a caterpillar), exploding and killing it, but with no poop whatsoever. 

SMILE!! IT’S ALL NATURAL

I was just browsing the FDA newsroom site, cause I like to see what’s going on there. I like reading about all the recalls. I also enjoy marveling at the sheer amount of stuff that they approve each day, either drug, devices or medical tests. Anyways.

So I see this Jan 9 press release about bio-identical hormone replacement therapy or BHRT. In case you didn’t know, BHRT is hormone replacement therapy that uses naturally extracted or synthesized female sex hormones that are identical to the ones our bodies naturally produce. They increased in popularity following finding from several massive clinical trials that traditional HRT (synthesized molecules that are slightly different than our “natural” ones) can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, blood clots and breast cancer. For a good overview of the science, check out this page from the Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation. The FDA also has their own little BHRT: Fact and fiction page. It’s fun!

The FDA is basically putting the kibosh on the marketing ploys of certain pharmacies who claim that BHRT can fight Alzheimer’s and cancer. And of course it’s safe! because it is NATURAL. And NATURAL hormones won’t hurt you, because they are so NATURAL and all.

This, my friends, is complete bullshit. Maybe they are safer, maybe they aren’t. That depends on dosing, the compounds used, the individual’s profile and some ACTUAL CLINICAL TRIALS supporting this claim.  Seeing as there aren’t any good studies on BHRT, we just don’t know. This paper, from researchers at the Women’s Integrative Medicine Department, Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in Arizona suggest that BHRT is likely carries similar risks compared to the evil evil synthetic, patented, vicious criminal Big-Pharma stuff.

Why why WHY do people get sucked into the “natural MUST = safe + good.” I mean check out this study from 2001 that found a whole buncha college-educated women felt that natural hormones were more effective, had fewer or no risks and fewer side effects. Seriously?

I mean RICIN is natural, ain’t it? It’s just all natural bean mush that will slowly and painfully kill you over a couple of days.

I am not an anti-natural medicine nut. I use echinacea. I think home births can be effectively as safe as hospital births for a large percentage of the population. Raw milk is good for you (though it won’t do your taxes or fight Alzheimer’s or anything...and PS...part deux is coming soon, promise). A lot of pharmaceuticals are total crap and the business of conventional medicine is pretty geared towards treating you to within an inch of your life. Yes. Nevertheless, I really really really don’t like seeing the massive proliferation of health care half or untruths. It’s offensive and terrifying. Terrifying because people are BUYING it. Hook, line and bank account.

(PS. I have recently read, on a site that will go unnamed, that the root cause of all cancers, such as colon cancer, is actually unresolved emotional conflict. I shit you not).