Doctors Drop Their Pants on Everest

Irresistible title, huh? It sucked me in, too.

I have a day off today, and I have a to-do list that would take a week to do. So I'm just sitting here Web surfing and watching the snow come down. Yeah. I'm a slacker. I'm OK with it.

So the title comes from the Discover Magazine website, and it's about a group of doctors doing a study on how much oxygen deprivation a body can take before going down for a dirt nap. The dropping trou part comes in when they draw blood from their groin areas and hand the samples to the Sherpas to schlep down the mountain for testing. If you ask me, the big round of applause should always go to the Sherpas.

There is also a story there about how horny mosquitoes buzz in harmony to produce a perfect fifth with an overtone. This is much more interesting than I ever thought mosquitoes could be, but I still hate them.

And then you have your transgenic goats producing pharmaceutical milk ... self reassembling robots (Terminators, anyone?) ... and last but so not least, zombie animals and their mind-controlling parasites.

And it isn't even noon yet. I'm gonna need more cocoa.

The Kitchen of Mrs. Moreau

This just in from the AP: Do It Yourself DNA Amateurs Trying Genetic Engineering At Home.

There's a snapshot of a woman in jeans and a T-shirt, sitting in her spare room, puttering with equipment that includes a box of baggies, Tupperware, and a roll of toilet paper. Here's the caption:

"Meredith L. Patterson, a computer programmer by day, conducts an experiment in the dining room of her San Francisco apartment on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008. Patterson is among a new breed of techno rebels who want to put genetic engineering tools in the hands of anyone with a smart idea. Using homemade lab equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge available online, these hobbyists are trying to create new life forms through genetic engineering - a field long dominated by Ph.D.s toiling in university and corporate laboratories."

And you thought scrapbooking was cool.

Mr. Moreau: "Honey, I'm home."
Mrs. Moreau: "Hi--Wait! Don't step there."
Mr. Moreau, left foot frozen in midair, eyeing the floor in panic: "They got loose, didn't they. I knew it, I knew it... "
Mrs. Moreau: "Oh stop. It's just grape jelly."


Mrs. Moreau carefully lifts a test tube with barbecue tongs and heats it with a hair dryer. The contents begin to glow a faint blue.

Mr. Moreau, suspicious, stepping away from the jelly: "What are you working on?"
Mrs. Moreau: "It's a surprise."
Mr. Moreau groans, "That's the biofluorescent plaque-eating toothpaste bug, isn't it." Silence. "Isn't it!"
Mrs. Moreau, eyes fixed on her work: "Maybe."
Mr. Moreau: "Good God, woman, it ate the kids' teeth into points! They look like little sharks!"
Mrs. Moreau: "Relax. It's just baby teeth. They'll grow new ones. And on the plus side, the bullies at school are afraid of them now."

Mr. Moreau, slumping into a kitchen chair: "You have to quit this, Edna. You're going to kill us all."
Mrs. Moreau: "Nonsense. It's perfectly safe."
Mr. Moreau: "Who says that, Edna, who?"
Mrs. Moreau: "Scientists. Many scientists. And when I get this right, we'll be rich."
Mr. Moreau, brightening: "Oh. Well then. Carry on."

Best. Toy. Ever.

I've been avoiding the news lately, mostly because I dislike heart palpitations. They scare me and they make me cranky, much like the news itself.

The price I pay is missing stuff like this: Toy Hall of Fame Inducts the Stick.

Now that is funny, as in snorting-coffee-out-your-nose and laughing-until-you-pee. There's even a photo of the beaming curator holding the stick, proudly housed within another classic, The Cardboard Box. (I am so in the wrong job.)

Once I caught my breath, though, I began to remember my childhood, way back at the dawn of time, and the fun we used to have with the good ol' stick.

A neighbor had a row of trees that dropped loads of long, willowy, flexible switches. They became jockey whips, transforming our bikes into race horses. They were magic wands, and instruments of tickle torture; pointers for the teacher when we played school; probes for investigating the contents of mud puddles.

Best of all, they were forbidden. Parents assured us we'd put out an eye with them. They told us, in dire tones, the story of then-famous Andy Divine, a gravel-voiced actor who ruined his throat by running with a stick and falling on it. We could end up like Andy, croaking our way through life -- and blind to boot.

In reality, the stick was the least of our perils. We raced our bikes down the middle of the street, and nobody wore helmets. We rode them behind the DDT truck, in the cloud it made when it sprayed the alleyways to kill flies. We tunneled into sandbanks down by the river, with no thought of cave-ins. We fished in a chemical soup of a river. We trusted and obeyed adults, even strangers, just because they were adults. A broken thermometer was an occassion for fun with mercury. Cars didn't even have seat belts. Nobody gave any of that a thought. But sticks? Lethal. Certain death.

Now here we are in 2008, and the stick is vindicated. Exalted, even.

So now I know what to get for all the kids on my Christmas list. Yes, kids, Santa is bringing switches this year. And this is officially A Good Thing.

Dramatic lemur

Because... well. Just because.

Don't try this at home, kids

This is a clip of Gene Kelly tap dancing on roller skates that was featured recently on either a PBS or History Channel TV show, I forget which. I wouldn't have thought this was possible if I hadn't seen it myself. It made my evening, and I hope it gives you a smile.

Captain on the... uh... bridge

Well this is dumb.

How evil are you?

Angelic? Moi? Is that anything like Boring Beyond Belief? I found a link to this quiz over at Look at This and played along, mostly because it was short and I was already there. And this is what I got for my trouble.

Oh well. The main reason for this post was to move Valentines Day off the top slot, so ... Mission accomplished.

Write post. Hope for comments. Try again.

I'm sitting here with pneumonia. (Yeah, officially pneumonia.) It's the first day since Monday I've felt like being out of bed. From the looks of the back-issues of New York Times Online, I was better off unconscious. I am sorry I missed this from last week, though, at the Well blog there:

Seven-Word Wisdom: The Contest
How much advice can you distill down to seven words?

As it turns out, seven words is a surprisingly catchy way to deliver a message. Just ask writer Michael Pollan, whose book “In Defense of Food” is debuting at No. 1 on The New York Times best-seller list this weekend. (Read my recent interview with him here.) The popularity of the book is due in no small part to Mr. Pollan’s catchy seven-word edict: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.'’

My colleague Dwight Garner, over at the Paper Cuts blog, notes the slogan has a “haiku-like resonance'’ and offers his own versions of 2-3-2 word sequences. My favorite, “Have sex. Really quite often. With humans.” (For the rest, click here.)

Surely this warrants a competition?

It did indeed, so they ran one, and a fine time was had by all. Click here to see the winners.

So had you known about this exercise in time to compete, what wisdom would you have shared in that 2-3-2 form?