Where is Today Going?

I don’t know what it is about today. Some days poke along, some days move quickly, some days alternate between the two. There are some days that you expect to gallop, but they don’t, and some days you think they’re going to stroll, and then you look at the clock and are amazed at how fast it went. But you can account for the time. But for me, today was freaky. It was like it was being sucked into itself. One second, I’d look at the clock and it would be 1:00, and seemingly the next second, it was 2:30! What the hell? Time shouldn’t just go missing like that. If I was a little loopy, I’d wonder if I’d been abducted by aliens.

What was the Point of This?

I read this in the Guelph Mercury the other day, and all I could think at the end was, “What a waste!” That and “we’ve learned exactly what from this waste?” I’d link to it, but the only way to see this particular article is by subscribing to the paper, so I can’t.

Recreated 1918 virus triggered overwhelming immune response

WINNIPEG (Jan 18, 2007)

The virus that caused the 1918 influenza pandemic triggered an overwhelming immune response that swamped the lungs of macaque monkeys — the first primates deliberately infected with the Spanish flu virus, Canadian and American scientists reported yesterday.

The research, done in part at the Public Health Agency of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, supports the notion the virulent flu virus turned the body’s immune system against itself.

Scientists believe that theory explains how the devastating influenza strain managed to mow down unprecedented numbers of healthy people in the prime of life.

Previous work, done by some of the same scientists, showed mice infected with the virus also experienced this hyper immune response, a so-called cytokine storm. (Cytokines are one of the proteins the immune system makes to fight infection.)

“There was an uncontrolled or aberrant inflammatory response,” one of the authors, Dr. Michael Katze of the University of Washington in Seattle, explained in a telephone briefing.

“One possibility (is) . . . instead of protecting the individuals that were infected with the highly pathogenic virus, the immune response is actually contributing to the lethality of the virus.”

But a scientist not involved in the work cautioned this theory is still not proven. Adolfo Garcia-Sastre said he believes the extensive damage seen in the lungs of infected animals may have been caused by the virus itself, which grew to extraordinary levels quickly after infection and remained at high levels for days after regular flu strains start to abate.

“You cannot exclude that actually most of the high levels of cytokines that one sees are simply due to high levels of virus loads,” said Garcia-Sastre, a microbiologist at New York’s Mt. Sinai Medical Center who collaborated with Katze on the earlier mouse study.

This work is the furthest any researchers have gone toward discovering how the Spanish flu, an H1N1 virus, killed an estimated 50 million people around the globe.

“Now we can really dissect what’s happening and we can understand why animals, humans died due to 1918 virus infection,” said principal investigator Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a highly prolific influenza scientist who splits his time between the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Tokyo.

But the research shouldn’t be seen as an exercise in archeological microbiology. Cracking the mysteries of highly virulent flu strains could help the world prepare to battle the next bad influenza pandemic, said Darwyn Kobasa, a research scientist with the Winnipeg lab and the first author on the paper.

“Not only is the study of interest to understand what happened in 1918 but it’s also very relevant today as we possibly prepare for a new influenza pandemic caused by an avian H5N1 virus,” said Kobasa, referring to the highly pathogenic flu strain that for more than three years has been decimating poultry flocks in parts of Asia and which has killed over 160 people.

“The H5N1 virus can also cause very serious disease and it appears to do this in a way that’s quite similar to the 1918 virus. We think that a greater understanding of the viruses that caused past pandemics will help us predict what might be expected and how to plan to use our knowledge and resources to reduce the impact of a new pandemic.”

The study, published in the journal Nature, reports on an ambitious project to painstakingly recreate the 1918 virus — only the second time this feat has been achieved. In 2005 scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control made history by becoming the first team to recreate the virus.

The effort that led to this research began a short time later. Working under Kawaoka, researchers at the University of Wisconsin built each of the virus’s eight genes from scratch, using genetic blueprints available from an open access database.

Kawaoka then gave the plasmids — the pieces of DNA in which the genes were inserted — to scientists in Winnipeg. They then transferred or “transfected” the genes into cell culture, allowing them to reassemble and grow in a process called virus “rescue.”

The recreated virus was then used to infect seven macaques housed in a Level 4 laboratory in Winnipeg — the highest level of biosecurity available. The monkeys became so ill they were euthanized after eight days, at which point lung and other tissues were analyzed to chart the damage done.

I wish the media wouldn’t pounce on studies so fast. It’s like as soon as someone’s put something out, no matter how inconclusive it is, the media has to be all over it, trying to simplify it for the masses, and probably misinterpreting it. Hell, they can’t even get quotes right some of the time. I don’t know if it’s so good to throw statistical studies at some of them.

This is the way I took those findings. They rebuilt the Spanish flu that killed a whole pile of people, and injected it into seven poor unfortunate monkeys. Then they watched them get sicker and sicker, finally killed them, hacked them open, and found…something that could be taken one of two ways. Either the virus made the monkeys’ bodies attack themselves, or it was just one hell of a virus and too much for their immune systems. This leaves them…in the exact same place as before, except now, seven monkeys are dead and they’re scratching their heads and thinking of what could be. Thanks guys. That was great.

I know that science works in small steps and you have to amass large amounts of data before you can even support a hypothesis. I know that it can’t be easy getting to the bottom of a mystery like this. I know that every study can be contradicted. But this one seemed like such a waste! They just let them die, which they knew was the inevitable end to that story, and then couldn’t really find anything that was proof for one side or the other. That’s like repeatedly setting buildings on fire and then going, “Well, what do ya know, another one is gone. Hmm. I wonder what exactly made it burn? I dunno, let’s try again.”

If you’re going to go to the trouble of recreating an old deadly virus, I would think you’d have something in mind to try and cure it, especially since they seem to think the clock is ticking down on our next pandemic. Even if the cure doesn’t work, at least you can say they tried, and they can learn something from it. What have they learned from this? The way it was described, exactly nothing.

Maybe I’m misinterpreting a potential misinterpretation of research. I guess the only real way to know is to read the actual study. But that’s what I got out of it, correct me if I’m wrong. I really really really really hope I am.

A Big Basket of Confusion

Lately I’ve been seeing this commercial on TV. It started appearing in December, and it persists now. It plays Jingle Bells and a British woman who is apparently plump tells you that you should discover the magic of a Chrisco Christmas hamper, and for as low as $3.75 a week, you can get a hamper full of products you trust.

I saw that commercial last year, and I saw it again this year, and that confused me to no end. Did the company who sells oil and other lard-related products own a bunch of other brand name companies? How did that happen? Creepy, but not impossible. And then, why would you pay weekly for one hamper? How many hampers do you get? Finally, I couldn’t figure out why the Jinglebell-singing commercial wouldn’t jinglebell rock its way off my TV after Christmas this year. It did last year. So I did some research, because I’m an overly curious, nosey geek and this is what I found.

The first thing I found was that I started barking up the wrong tree. When I googled “Crisco Christmas hamper” thinking they were referring to the company Crisco who makes shortening and oil and stuff, all I could find were forums, and several notes saying that the hamper people were called Chrisco (c h r i s c o) not Crisco (c r i s c o). When I found that out, I thought, someone needs to go and wake up Crisco’s sleeping lawyer and see if they can sue this company for having almost the exact same name. Or can they not be sued because of the h?

Then, I noticed that these forums didn’t have a lot of good things to say about the hamper folks. There were lots of complaints of false advertising, deliveries in which some food was either missing or spoiled, deliveries not happening at all, price-gouging, and generally unhappy customers spanning from here to Australia.

I eventually found my way to the ChriscoCanada site and started trying to figure out how this was supposed to work. Basically, this company has been doing this hamper thing since 1978. They started off in the UK, and now I guess they’re in Canada, Australia and New zealand, but they’ve only been in Canada since 2002 or 2003. . How it’s supposed to work is you can decide to either get a hamper full of goodies at Christmas or in June before the kids’ summer holidays I guess. There are a whole bunch of different hampers, and I got exhausted just reading about one of them. Anyway, you pay weekly all year round, and then the hamper is supposed to arrive and suddenly you’ll have all this spare money in your pocket because you won’t have to buy massive amounts of food at once.

Um, I hate to break it to the folks at Chrisco, but you won’t have the spare money because you’ve been slowly leaking it out all year! And, from what I saw, you will have paid nearly double for the same stuff that you can go and buy at the store. One hamper was going to cost approximately $20 a week for 50 weeks. Do the math. *opens calculator so I can see how much you’re getting taken for* that’s $1000! Who in the world needs $1000 worth of food at Christmas? I know it’s expensive, but good lord! Maybe if you have a big family, but even that’s a bit of a stretch. And look at the contents of that hamper. What an assload of garbage! There’s hardly anything good in there! So, on top of paying bloated prices, unless you think that’s worth a thousand bucks, you’ll have to buy, ya know, the good stuff.

I especially loved the FAQ section, and one particularly defensive response to why their stuff costs more.

Q5.How do Chrisco prices compare with Supermarkets?

The price you pay includes the cost of collecting your payments (charged to us by our bank), special packing, delivery, GST and is fixed for the year. We do charge a bit more than some supermarkets because of all the extra costs, but thousands of existing customers think that Chrisco is good value and tell us they wouldn’t be able to manage without our help. You save yourself the hassles of queuing in crowded stores, carrying shopping home and having to find the extra money at Christmas time. Chrisco can really help you save for a great Christmas and leave you with spare cash to spend on presents. Our summer deliveries offer the same excellent services, helping you save for a sensational summer.

Well, at least they tell you straight up, “dude, we’re soakin’ ya here.” But good god, how much are people willing to pay for that convenience? We are turning into slabs of stone, unthinking slabs of stone I tell ya!

Even worse is what I read on that Australian forum where the lady didn’t get her hamper for days and days and days. I read that they’re worse at delivering to rural folks than urban folks. Think about it. Who is going to, in theory, be more likely to appreciate not trucking into town to load up on groceries? Rural people! People who might be, I don’t know, snowed in and unable to get to town for one reason or another. People who might find groceries a bit more of a chore than the dude who only has to drive a few blocks. But then again, rural people do more work doing the daily tasks than lots of people in cities, hell, they have to take their garbage *to* the dump. So I guess that blows that theory. But purely from a logical standpoint, wouldn’t you want to do more to get your packages to the rural customers?

I think it’s funny that the thing that started me on this quest for knowledge was a commercial that was annoying me. Well, they succeeded in getting my attention. Now, I’ve learned more than I ever planned to know about Chrisco, and added to the negative publicity. Talk about an ad backfiring.

A Big Heap of…Stuff

Woohoo, random post time. I don’t know if this one will amount to much, but oh well, hopefully we’ll have fun while it lasts.

I think I heard the coolest virus name ever. Oh god I’m declaring my supreme geekiness by saying that I think some virus names are cool. But some just sound neat. come on. You can’t tell me that klez didn’t sound like a swarm of pesky mosquitos. Well maybe you can, but I still think it was kind of cool. And bugbear? what’s that. But today, I’ve received a couple variants of…wait for it…the fuclip virus. I don’t care if it doesn’t have a k. I think the mind can put it in the appropriate spot. It sounds like either a nasty STD that you’d want to whisper to your doctor, or the coolest new nickname for people who piss me off. For example, “Spammers are all fuclips.” or, “I got stuck on the phone with a fuclip of a telemarketer.” I love it! And the best part is the people who made this gem probably are from some foreign country where English isn’t the official language, so they don’t even realize the hillarity of what they just called it. I can’t seem to find out what the Fuclip virus does, but it seems to be pretty new. So do the rest of the internet a favour and don’t develop a case of fuclips, will ya?

Attention all people who work in stores and can’t speak English: When I ask you to double-bag my milk and pop so I can walk home and not have my bag break, that doesn’t mean take my pop out and put it in a separate bag from my milk. I meant put the bag inside another bag. The way it is now, I have one more bag to carry! Thanks much. And can someone please tell me the best way to play Charades with someone who doesn’t speak the language well to illustrate that I would like to buy some Cuppa Soup? I was lucky today that a nice customer was able to walk over, grab what I wanted, and hand it to the poor befuddled woman who was trying her level best to understand me. but it would be nice to have some tips.

I saw in the E-bulletin that I get from the River Run Centre here in town that a comedy hypnotist, you know, a guy that hypnotizes people and then gets them to do funny things on command, is coming to the centre. This made me think about something that’s been spinning around in my head for years. I wonder if I can be hypnotized. I know that you have to be hypnotizable, subject to suggestion I guess you’d say. But then there’s the blink factor. I can see shadows though, so maybe they can get me to watch zee watch and it would work. But I wonder if people who are totally blind can be hypnotized with rhythmic music or something. Has anyone seen it done? As much as I’m curious about it, I can’t see myself forking over $20 to find out if I can be made to look like a complete tool in a trance, so I guess I’ll keep wondering. Plus, why would I want to be made to look like a tool in front of who knows who? With my luck, I’d be way too hypnotizable and they wouldn’t be able to break the trance and I’d be saying stupid things forever. I wonder how many people are thinking, “So…not much different than the way things are now, then?”

And a scary thought came to me a while ago. A lot of really famous, almost legendary, people are getting old. Because I’m a geek, I went and looke dup how old some people are on Wikipedia, and discovered that:

  1. Regis Philbin is a few months shy of his 76th birthday.
  2. Lloyd Robertson just turned 73.
  3. George Carlin is going to be 70 this year.
  4. and

  5. Ray Bradbury is almost 87.

Isn’t that scary? A lot of big names are getting up there, and I’m sure there are a ton more that I haven’t even thought of that are skidding down the hill of life on a toboggan and soon might hit that big tree with a loud crunch. And an even scarier thought is, can you think of anyone out there who is coming up to replace them, or better yet, create something to rival what they did? Is there anyone else who is becoming a household name like they are? I really can’t think of anyone. Can you? Isn’t that a sad statement?

And speaking of hitting trees with a loud crunch, I think this post just did. Hope the sudden stop didn’t hurt too much.

Cool! a New Fan!

I stumbled across Ann’s Blog through Thordora’s blog, liked it, and said hello. I guess she popped over here, and seems to like our stuff. So Yea woo to that. So I just wanted to say a quick hello to her and say I’m putting her in the links zone down there. Have a look at her blog, it’s pretty interesting. I don’t know how she has the energy to do all she does. All I know is if I had half of it, I’d be singin’!

>Something Goofy from the Inbox of Dorfus Chickenbutt

>Jen sent me this, it made me chuckle, and I thought it might generate some wacky comments, so up it goes. I love the magical place that is my inbox as Steve would put it.

The following is an excerpt from a children’s book, Captain Underpants And the Perilous Plot Professor Poopypants, by Dave Pilkey, in which the evil Professor forces everyone to assume new names…So:-

1. Use the third letter of your first name to determine your New first name:

a = snickle
b = doombah
c = goober
d = cheesey
e = crusty
f = greasy
g = dumbo
h = farcus
i = dorky
j = doofus
k = funky
l = boobie
m = sleezy
n = sloopy
o = fluffy
p = stinky
q = slimy
r = dorfus
s = snooty
t = tootsie
u = dipsy
v = sneezy
w = liver
x = skippy
y = dinky
z = zippy

> 2. Use the second letter of your last name to determine the first half of your new last name:

a = dippin
b = feather
c = batty
d = burger
e = chicken
f = barffy
g = lizard
h = waffle
i = farkle
j = monkey
k = flippin
l = fricken
m = bubble
n = rhino
o = potty
p = hamster
q = buckle
r = gizzard
s = lickin
t = snickle
u = chuckle
v = pickle
w = hubble
x = dingle
y = gorilla
z = girdle

3. Use the third letter of your last name to determine the second half of
> your new last name:

a = butt
b = boob
c = face
d = nose
e = hump
f = breath
g = pants
h = shorts
i = lips
j = honker
k = head
l = tush
m = chunks
n = dunkin
o = brains
p = biscuits
q = toes
r = doodle
s = fanny
t = sniffer
u = sprinkles
v = frack
w = squirt
x = humperdinck
y = hiney
z = juice

I love the fact that George W. Bush’s name according to this is Fluffy chucklefanny. How fitting. Have fun with this. I know I did. It’s nice to know I share a blog with Crusty chickensniffer and Tootsie Pottyboob.

Ooo! I Hit a Nerve!

Wow! People read us for other reasons than a stop on their journey for the holy grail that is Randy Orton’s penis! I got chomped in the comments section under my post about MADD, and I think it needs addressing up here. So here it is, from Lisa.

I work for MADD and you seem to have your information wrong. Our name is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, but we are NOT all mothers. We are concerned citizens made up of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. that want to make a difference in our communities and end the violent crime of drunk driving. Our founders name that started MADD in 1980 was Candy Lightner. You should check out the website @ www.madd.org and get the facts correct. And you should think about becoming involved instead of pointing fingers. MADD’s mission is to stop drunk driving, support the victims of this violent crime and prevent underage drinking.

Allrighty, let’s begin with a clarification. I was referring to MADD Canada in that post. If you go to their site’s history section, you will indeed find that it was co-founded by a man named Jhon Bates, just like I said, aman who was kicked from his post in disgrace for the squandering of over half of each fund-raising dollar. I like the work they do, I just don’t appreciate that after it is known to be the no. 1 charity for fund-raising, I find out that only $0.44 of every dollar actually goes to that good work. The rest goes to either administrative costs or back to the people who might have called me during dinner or pounded on my door to guilt me into giving some money for this good work. I’m glad to give it, I just want to know it *is* going where it’s supposed to. Maybe MADD U.S. doesn’t have this problem, but MADD Canada sure does.

Second, if it’s supposed to be concerned citizens, why don’t you call yourselves something that reflects that? That was all I was saying in my wacky post. Last time I checked, Steve or John was never someone’s mom. If they want to be a concerned citizen, totally cool. Go Steve and John, go!

And finally, now you’ve angered me. Do *not* tell me that I should get more involved. I think volunteering at 3 charitable organizations and donating to additional causes is quite enough community involvement thank you. I’m not asking for a medal, but if I’m not supposed to “point fingers,” maybe you shouldn’t either.

Thanks for the comment. It made me correct an error. And thanks for reading. I like a little debate now and then.

This is Great!

Jen sent me this, and I love it! I love making fun of chain letters and virus hoaxes, and this email manages to make fun of them both simultaneously. So here it is.

If you receive an email entitled “Bedtimes” delete it IMMEDIATELY. Do not open it . Apparently this one is pretty nasty. It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer. It demagnetizes the stripes on ALL of your credit cards. It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up the tracking on your VCR, and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD’s you attempt to play. It will program your phone auto dial to call only 1-900 numbers. This virus will mix antifreeze into your fish tank. IT WILL CAUSE YOUR TOILET TO FLUSH WHILE YOU ARE SHOWERING. It will drink ALL your beer.

FOR GOD’S SAKE, ARE YOU LISTENING??

It will leave dirty underwear on the coffee table when you are expecting company. It will replace your shampoo with Nair (hair remover) and your Nair with Rogaine (hair growth) . If the “Bedtimes” message opened in a Windows 95/98 environment, it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub. It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk.

***
WARN AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN. *** And if you don’t send this to 5000 people in 20 seconds, you’ll fart so hard that your right leg will spasm and shoot straight out in front of you, sending sparks that will ignite the person nearest you.
Send this warning to everyone!!!
THERE’S A LOT OF SADNESS IN THE WORLD!
Right now, as you read this, 17 Million people are having SEX!!!
And look at you, – You’re on the bloody computer!!!!

I love all the ridiculous details, right down to the dire warnings and mention of all the sadness in the world. And these things still go around. Aside from the newbs who don’t know better, why do they keep making the rounds? Come on people, see the pattern!

Comments Are Working Again

Whatever issues the commenting system was having seem to be all cleared up now, so feel free to use it again. But if you’d rather email, that’s fine too. Sometimes email is better anyway, especially if you’ve got something that you really don’t want us to miss, like an update to something we’ve written about, things you think we might like to check out and possibly put up here, or even poorly typed hatemail that will probably end up on the main page with some added mentions of your impaired mental abilities.

So to sum up, comments are great, but if you want to yell at a specific person, you can find the correct address at the end of each post. Or if you’d rather yell at all of us at once to save time, just click on our names, which you can find near the top of each page.

Have a great day, and always remember that humans really aren’t all that different from any other animal on the planet. The only thing that really separates us from them is that we have recipes and they don’t.