richardcahill.net

Ig Nobility

9/22/2014

The Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded last week. The Igs, unlike the Darwin Awards, are awarded to real scientists engaged in real research into really unimportant topics. The Darwin awards are mostly urban legends, which account for them being marginally funnier. The Igs teach us that hard work, careful record-keeping and meticulous attention to detail can reap astonishingly meager rewards. That is a valuable lesson for those of us who are eager to avoid any of the above.

China snagged the Physics Prize, by establishing that banana peels really are quite slippery. Few had delved into the banana peel question since the pioneer researchers in the field, the Three Stooges, went to that Big Physics Lab in the Sky. Rumor has it the Chinese are also exploring how to avoid a double eye-poke by holding one's hand parallel to the length of one's nose, and how to use fellow sleepers' faces as steps when ascending a three-tiered bunk bed.

Italy was awarded the Art prize. Three of its top researchers spent the year shooting people with powerful lasers while they were looking at paintings. The actual point of the project was lost on me, but it had to be fun.

The Czech Republic proved it was no slouch in the science field by demonstrating that dogs align themselves with the earth's magnetic field when they defecate. You thought your dog was just trying to make you late for work with all that turning and sniffing before getting the job done. No, Spot is just making himself right with the planet's magnetic field. Obviously, other powerful sources of electromagnetism can interfere with Fido's perception of the planetary magnetosphere, so when you hear someone shouting "WOULD YOU TURN OFF THAT GODDAMN GIANT SCREEN TV? MY DOG IS TRYING TO POOP!" you are not dealing with a random, aluminum-foil hat wearing crazy but with someone who is admirably abreast of the latest in scientific thought.

China had to team up with Canada to win the Neuroscience Prize, which was an effort to understand why people insist on seeing images of Jesus in pieces of toast instead of just gobbling down their buttery goodness with jam. For those of you interested in doing supplementary research on this subject, I recommend the Shroud o' Turin Toaster Oven, available on this web site.

The USA and India cooperated to prove you could stop nosebleeds by packing your nostrils with bacon. Try it. It works.

Spain snagged the nutrition prize by adding baby poo to sausage, figuring that baby intestinal bacteria would make the sausage nice and probiotic. I suppose they deserve the kudos, but I am proud to note that this column has been concerned with interesting medical uses for human waste since the dawn of the fecal transplant era. Successes in the field led me to being the first to point out that when you tell some a-hole who has cut you off in traffic to "Eat sh*t!" you are in fact giving him sound medical advice. Adding diaper droppings to sausage may prove to be a valuable medical as well as culinary advance, especially if no one bothers to read really far down on the ingredients list.

Finally, the English-speaking world (the US, the UK and Australia) united to prove that:

"People who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning."

This explains a lot to me, as an early riser. It explains why I am always the one walking the dog and emptying out the dishwasher. My Significant Other is a chronic stay-up-later, meaning, like many other people's mates, that she is a manipulative psychopath who hogs the mirror.

I already knew that about her, but, hey, you're never going to be in love with somebody perfect.

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Fake Poop--Not Just for Parties Anymore

1/14/2013

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Regular fake poo still only costs $2

In yet another explosive leap forward for American medical technology, researchers at the University of Guelph have developed fake poop.

"What are you talking about?" you may ask. "Fake poop has been around for years. Why, I still giggle when I remember leaving a lump of plastic crap in the nave of the church my cousin Caroline was getting married in. The pastor spotted it right before the I-do's and had a mild heart attack right on the spot. He had to finish the ceremony strapped to an oxygen tank. Caroline hasn't spoken to me since. Best dollar-ninety-eight I ever spent."

No, not that kind of fake poop. This is fake poop with serious medical uses. Once again, it has to do with fecal transplant technology, which admittedly this column follows with scatological intensity. A fecal transplant, which consists of the patient consuming the feces of a healthy individual, restores the patient's intestinal function by replacing bacteria that the patient lacks in his own colon. Patients have been brought back from near-death by diarrhea by the technique.

The fact that this works brilliantly threatens the entire gastroenterological medical field. Extremely expensive drugs and complicated medical procedures were used to treat these patients prior to the discovery of the fecal transplant, but the patients sickened and sometimes died anyway. Now, after a quick snort of liquefied crap, they are up eating chili dogs and engaging in farting contests in no time.

American medical scientists quickly located the critical problem with fecal transplants—they couldn't make much money from them. Patients could be injected with crap in a simple office procedure and the therapeutic substance was free and abundant. From a certain point of view, the existence of the entire animal kingdom can be seen as a united effort to cover the earth with poop, from great whales gushing waste into the tranquil seas to a fruit fly speckling that apple you plan to have after lunch. Sources of human waste suitable for transplanting are equally plentiful, from your brother-in-law to your attorney to giant bloviating factories of poop like Rush Limbaugh or Kanye West. The cure for all intestinal disorders could be had on the cheap.

To the rescue come the researchers at Guelph University (coincidentally, "guelph" is the exact noise your throat wants to make if you think about their work very hard). They have cultured fake poop in an artificial colon. Their poop, they say, smells and tastes better than real poop. Not that they claim it smells and tastes good—minty fresh poop is still in the distant future, apparently. And manufacturing a substance that smells and tastes better than feces is not that much of an accomplishment anyway.

But the main thing is they can charge you for it. These artificial logs come with a serious price tag. Thus is the natural balance of American medicine restored—you give all your money to doctors, pharmacists and insurance companies and you get better, sometimes. You can't just indulge in freelance crap consumption and get well on the cheap. What are we, a bunch of German Shepherds?

I don't mean to make fun of these people that are seriously ill. I wish them well. When their dysenteric bowels are finally cured and they sit without worry on the toilets of America and produce their own flawless fecal specimens again, no one will be happier than I.

I just want to warn them—when that happens, there may be a co-pay.

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We're All Full of Germs and Crap

11/7/2012

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Germs or crap--you decide

A recent New Yorker article, stepping far out on the leading edge of science, recently informed me that humans, as a species, far from being nicely made in the image of God, or even evolved from sturdy Cro-Magnon ancestors, are mere bloated bags of bacteria. Each of our bodies loyally supports about a hundred trillion microbes, comprising thousands of varieties, like an extremely large and needy family. The weight of the bacteria in an average human body is about three pounds.

"Well," you say, "Why can't modern science kill these things off? Sounds like an easy way to lose three pounds to me." We can't do that. These germs are not just one-celled freeloaders enjoying our mammalian ability to keep a constant body temperature. We need these boys. They help us digest our food, maintain our muscles and even affect brain chemistry.

Yes, I said brain chemistry. Even those of you who have maintained all along that the Tea Party is a contagious, mindless plague may be startled to discover you were exactly right.

Like anything else nature has designed and left in perfect balance, we human beings have managed to screw up our own personal germ collections, or microbiomes. We do this by taking antibiotics. The New Yorker steps rather delicately around this issue, acknowledging that antibiotics have saved many lives. Besides that, however, they are helping us breed super bacteria that will kill us all eventually, and in the meantime they are wreaking havoc on the nice pioneer germs we need to survive. Antibiotics may screw up our microorganismatic buddies enough that we eventually suffer from obesity, diabetes, ulcers and many other uncomfortable diseases, mostly centered in the gut.

That is the theory behind all that yogurty, probiotic stuff they advertise and you don't pay any attention to. "Eat this," the probiotic people say. "It's full of germs. It'll make you feel better."

If gobbling store-bought germs doesn't help and you are still deathly ill from a lack of bacteria in your system, don't just go out and start licking the handles of supermarket carts. No, there is something even more disgusting that medical science can do for you. That is the notorious fecal transplant. This is not quite what it sounds like. No surgery is involved. You, the sick person, merely need to consume the feces of a healthy Individual. What, you say? Like my dog does when I take him to the dog park? I hope I at least get to lick face afterwards like he does.

No. Medicine has ways of getting the good feces inside of you while bypassing your taste buds. You just have to get over the fact that your dog is more scientifically advanced than you.

Also, when the health benefits of fecal transplants become better known, inviting a person whom one finds disagreeable, like a poor driver or a fan of a rival sports team, to consume feces may become passé. You might as well scream "Salud!" at the individual who has offended you.

I predict an entire industry will spring up around the discovery of the beneficial effects of crap consumption, as the American way of doing things is always to overdo them. Capsules containing poop will be promoted as a necessary part of our daily diet and in the spirit of capitalist competitiveness, their manufacturers will talk sh*t about each other's sh*t. Cheap poop pills will be sold at Walmart, whereas boutique vitamin shops will advertise "100 % Organic Genuine Bantu Bush Sh*t from Mother Africa."

And if someone near and dear to you is critically ill, you can say to them, without risk of criticism, "No, you can't have one of my kidneys. But I'll certainly let you have some of my…"

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Approval of Fecal Transplant Procedure Means Useful Life Possible for Rush Limbaugh

4/9/2012

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With the news that a Canadian man cured himself of a painful, potentially fatal gastrointestinal bacterial infection by a self-administered fecal transplant this past week, fecal transplants are once again in the headlines.

The procedure, in which donor feces are ingested through an enema or nasal tube by the patient, has a 90% cure rate in the treatment of dangerous c. difficile infections.

Immediately American medical scientists pointed to Rush Limbaugh as a nearly unlimited reservoir of transplantable matter. The Canadian specialist whose patient performed the procedure on himself, Dr. Baroudi Fashir, was questioned about the medical usefulness of Limbaugh's personal output. Dr. Fashir, being Canadian, was not at first familiar with the talk radio host, but after being acquainted with several Limbaugh statements, such as any woman who uses birth control should be considered a slut, and that Mexicans who enter the United States looking for work are unwilling to work, Dr. Fashir grew quite excited.

"This man is obviously full of life-saving feces," he said. When told that Limbaugh also has said that people who exercise regularly are the ones putting the most strain on the US healthcare system, Dr. Fashir was gape-mouthed with awe. "This American Limbaugh could be some kind of universal donor!" He added jealously, "We Canadians do not have access to such vast bloated bags of human waste, otherwise we could wipe out C.D. infections in our lifetimes! I blame our socialist medical system."

When told that Limbaugh would no doubt agree with him, Dr. Fashir nodded happily. "It just keeps oozing out of him, doesn't it? Access to Limbaugh means a constant supply of therapeutic ordure. There's no need to maintain transplant lists and no possibility of losing patients before a suitable donor can be found."

When told that Limbaugh's crap is already consumed by millions of Americans without ill effect, however, Dr. Fashir looked doubtful. "I don't recommend anyone try Limbaugh without a doctor in attendance. Absent medical supervision, the fecal transplant procedure is not without its risks," he said. "The nasal tube can rupture, causing the transplant to fill the brain cavity instead of the intestines. Then you end up with a bunch of shitheads."