Did you know… Your cooties could keep you healthy?!

It’s true!

You have cooties!

In fact, the 100 trillion+ bugs on your body collectively weigh in between 2 – 6 pounds.

But… there’s a catch.

You need them!

Read on to learn why.

—

Microbe census maps out human body’s bacteria, viruses, other bugs

It gives scientists a reference point of what the microbial community looks like in healthy people, and they plan to use it to study how changes in a person’s microbiome can lead to illness.

By Rosie Mestel, Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2012, 5:20 p.m.

After five years of toil, a consortium of several hundred U.S. researchers has released a detailed census of the myriad bacteria, yeasts, virusesand amoebas that live, eat, excrete, reproduce and die in or on us.

An undated handout image provided by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) shows a clump of Staphylococcus epidermidis bacteria (green) in the extracellular matrix, which connects cells and tissue, taken with a scanning electron microscope, showing. At right, undated handout image provided by the Agriculture Department showing the bacterium, Enterococcus faecalis, which lives in the human gut, is just one type of microbe that will be studied as part of NIH’s Human Microbiome Project. They live on your skin, up your nose, in your gut _ enough bacteria, fungi and other microbes that collected together could weigh, amazingly, a few pounds. Now scientists have mapped just which critters normally live in or on us and where, calculating that healthy people can share their bodies with more than 10,000 species of microbes. (AP Photo/NIAID, Agriculture Department)

Described in two papers in Nature and a raft of reports in other journals, the data released Wednesday describe microbes of the skin, saliva, nostrils, guts and other areas of 242 adults in tiptop health.

The $170-million, federally funded Human Microbiome Project also cataloged the genes contained within this zoo of life. The results shed light on the hum of microbial activity inside us as nutrients are chopped and guzzled, gas and other wastes are expelled, and bugs send chemical messages to one another, jostling for supremacy or attracting new neighbors to help keep their community going.

The research is important because it gives scientists a reference point of what the microbial community looks like in healthy people, and they plan to use it to study how changes in a person’s microbiome can lead to illness. A spate of studies in the last few years has documented potential links to conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, asthma and obesity.

Each of us is home to about 100 trillion microscopic life forms — a figure that’s about 10 times higher than the number of cells in the human body. In a 200-pound adult, these organisms can weigh a combined 2 to 6 pounds.

The vast majority of our microscopic denizens appear to be bacteria; 10,000 types may choose to make Homo sapiens home, the scientists found.

Some spots on the body, such as the mouth, are rain-forest-like in their diversity, inhabited by a rich community of bacteria that is fairly similar from one person to the next.

Other locations, such as the vagina, are more like

Thinking about foot rubbing… and marriage

Who came up with this idea of marriage, anyway?

Read on, for a very thoughtfully expressed idea, from a non-religious perspective.

—

A thought experiment about marriage

A world in which sexual intimacy could not produce children would never have come up with the idea of marriage.

 In previous articles, I have asserted that if sex did not naturally lead to children, no one would ever have conceived the idea of marriage. My claim may be obvious to most people, but we live in a world in which people who never intend to have children get married; so, of course, do some people who want children but are infertile. In generations past, we felt compassion for those who married but did not have children, because it was presumed that they wanted children, since, after all, they married one another. No longer can we presume this. The era of contraception and surgical sterilization has altered the face, so to speak, of the childless couple, and consequently the face of the married couple.

The quest for same-sex marriage begins here. In a world where seeking marriage is seeking a community-endorsed way to have sex and bear children, the idea of same-sex marriage is like the idea of a square circle. The very idea of same-sex marriage is conceivable only in a world that is using the term “marriage” in a completely different way, to refer to something of a completely different nature.

Allow me, then, to make a case for my assertion about sex, children, and marriage through a “thought experiment”—a scenario in which human beings have no word for, no concept of, marriage.

Imagine a colony of young men who have no memory of ever having lived anywhere else. Properly speaking, the men do not even know that they are men, but only that they are different from all the other creatures they encounter. They hunt and gather. They are naturally social beings who care about each other, form friendships, try to please one another, generally

The ONLY digital camera that CANNOT shoot color is…

Huh?

You mean there’s a digital camera that CANNOT make color photographs?

Yup.

Not to worry.

You probably won’t buy it.

Besides… it’s nearly US$8000.

Unless you’re an artsy fartsy fancy schmancy pho-tograffer type… and in which case, you probably don’t have a lot of munny anyway. Fo-to-graffers don’t make a whole lot of munny.

You know… they’re the starving atisté kind.

But, on the upsid3… the REAL matter is the development of sensors, and how they perceive and are sensitive to light.

For all the bazillion-dollar cameras that can see in the dark, and blah, blah, blah… there has NEVER EVER been a camera that has EVER come close to the human eye.

Seriously.

Think about it.

Your $8000 Nikon or Canon, or Leica cannot in any way come close to accurately reproducing what your eye is capable of seeing.

Your eye can see detail in highlights AND in shadows… without PhotoShop.

Your Canon or Nikon or Leica cannot.

Try to take a “well-exposed” photograph in the dark.

Your camera needs a flash, doesn’t it?

Your eyes don’t.

Yeah, sure… digital cameras can see the infrared spectrum of light, whereas your eyes

On Marriage, Human Relations, and Society

At it’s core, marriage is a state of human affairs permitted and governed by the state.

In this context, the word “state” refers to governmental authority. Governmental authority in the United States is defined as being the will of the people as determined by the ballot.

Why does the state regulate human affairs?

It is because of an overriding sense of justice, an overwhelming sense of right and wrong. It is because to “do wrong by” another person is a transgression of an inherent social contract that occurs at the very core of humanity, one which is by its very nature unspoken, yet fully known in the human heart.

Why, for example, on any playground the world over, can we

Nutrition Professor’s “Twinkie diet” shows promise

‘As a healthcare professional licensed in…’

Yeah, that’s how blowhards might start writing this, but I’m gonna’ shoot it to you straight, no chaser… even though I am a licensed healthcare professional.

Here’s the “scoop” – which perhaps should be a scoop of ice cream. For 10 weeks, Mark D. Haub, Associate Professor, and Assistant Department Head of Human Nutrition at Kansas State University, consumed less than 1800 calories daily, and lost 27 pounds.

His body fat decreased from

You idiots! How long do I have to put up with your stupid shit?!

Behold the words of the Anointed One: “Jesus replied, “You unbelieving and corrupt generation! How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to me!“” (GWT)

The modern vernacular might be: “You bunch of idiots! How long do I have to put up with your stupid shit? Bring him here!”

I get a kick out of watching the variety of “Jesus” movies. You’ve probably seen ’em just as I have. They appear in their various forms on TBN and other religious channels on satellite teevee. Frequently, Jesus is heard speaking with a British accent. Blow me down, limeys! God save the queen!

It’s hilarious to watch the actors portraying the Son of God and walk around like He’s

Godly Social Values

You know, Jim, as I continue to reflect upon the issues about which we spoke this evening, I – being an ardent observer of

My conversation with Governor Riley’s assistant

When I called the guvnuh’s orifice a few weeks ago about the debacle of his $13,000,000 no-bid contract with Paragon whatever (which has no physical business address, no EIN, no website, no business license, no fax number, no general number or any other form of legitimate business presence), it was all I could to keep my Christian bearing, for the human female that barked at my questions…

Yup, barked… as in “woof, woof!”

Okay.

‘Nuff said.

You know, she became particularly irate when – in response to her statement, to which I patiently and attentively listened – I asked, “If this computer expert has some unique and special knowledge and ability as you suggest she does, that rather makes her like God, then, doesn’t it? No one else has either the ability or capacity to do what she has done.”

Yup.

She got mad at that question.

I don’t know why.

It’s rather simple.

And I’m not a media man.

And I told her so.

I just pay the guvnuh’s salary… and Troy’s salary too.

I guess that makes me their boss.

Yup.

I guess it does.