The X-Ray

The Spiked Drink Testing Wand

Are you constantly worried that someone is trying to incapacitate you? And you wish there was some way to carry with you at all time a device that "resemeble[s] a straw or stirrer" that you could dip in your drink periodically to test for drugs? And it would "light up or a part of it will rotate or maybe it will send a message to your cell phone" if something is afoot?

Did your great idea testing rod rotate as you read this?

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Japanese Women Live 10 Years Longer Than American Men

Is this good or bad?

These findings come in the wake of last week's revelation that science has almost cured aging, wherein it was claimed that the first person to live to be 1000 years old will likely be born within the next 20 years. So current life expectancies are moot, really. Once we cure aging, everyone will die of accidents and injuries. Then you'll at least have interesting things to read about when you're 950, sitting around, waiting for something to fall on you.

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CΦExi$t

It's like, we should be tolerant and respectful of everyone's beliefs, whatever they are. Just so long as you believe in a cataract month.

Cataracts are more common than glaucoma, macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy combined. Be aware: don't get them.

Things to avoid if you don't want cataracts:

family history of cataracts
smoking
UV rays
serious eye injury
steroids

Were you thinking of sustaining serious eye injury this month?

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The Tooth Fairy Rots Your Brain

"Children's beliefs in the reality of fantastic phenomena [may] give rise to genuine constructive memory errors in line with their fantasies."

“To examine how children’s fantasy beliefs can affect memory for their experiences, 5- and 6-year-olds with differing levels of belief in the reality of the Tooth Fairy were prompted to recall their most recent primary tooth loss in either a truthful or fun manner. Many of the children who fully believed in the existence of the Tooth Fairy reported supernatural experiences consistent with the myth..., whereas those who realized the fictionality of the myth recalled mainly realistic experiences."

Define "supernatural" and "realistic," science.

If you're looking to purchase children's drawings of the tooth fairy, consider this one, available in 5 x 7 for $7.49 plus shipping.

Keep in mind, you're buying a print, not the original.

If you're looking for the original, hand-drawn kid tooth fairy drawings, stained with the tears shed as the they watched their parents sell them, talk to me.

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Classic Bait And Stitch

Daily Mail does a segment called Me and my operation, wherein a patient describes what surgery they had done, and then the surgeon describes what surgery they did. This way the patient can use words like "gullet" and phrases like "I used to eat a couple curries every week," and the doctor can say things like "involves cracking the chest open" and "the oesophagus is a tube," and no one seems condescending at all. (Oesophagus is the British esophagus. It's a tube.) Then, at the end, you find out the patient is actually a doctor trying to pretend like he doesn't really understand. Also the doctor is an airline pilot trying to pretend like he does understand. But then they just laugh and are glad everything went okay.

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In 1946 There Were 7,250 Female MD's

Time has this interesting gallery of vintage cigarette ads. "Try Camels on your T-zone," this one suggests. Okay, that sounds fun. But first, what do you mean?

T-zone: "That's T for taste and T for throat."

You also get full credit if you guessed tumor. If you're considering taking up smoking, talk to a physician first. I don't know a lot of doctors who smoke nowadays, but of the ones that do, almost all of them swear by Camel brand cigarettes. Their rich, nutty flavor and nuanced, sophisticated aroma speak for themselves. And yes, they all smoke 'em directly through their T-zones.

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We're Taking Your Shoes

Did you know you can return your TOMS shoes? Which means the kids in Africa... get their shoes taken back?

Also, these wedges! Meanwhile, in Africa: "Son, we've got good news and bad news."

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Be Cool

It's going to be 98 degrees in Chicago today!

That's really hot, especially if you're like me and you've had your pores cauterized. It's important to stay cool so your body and mind don't become a mess. Here are some tips for beating the hotness:

Don't go outside. Stay inside in your air conditioned house or workplace. Don't go outside.

If you do have to go outside, come inside again, right away. Don't go out there again. Why did you - just, ugh, just stay inside.

Eat garlic, mint, and spicy foods. They actually cool you down. Eat them inside, though, not on your balcony or rooftop.

Ice bath, take an ice bath. Turn your water to cold, all the way, until ice starts coming out. Or just pour all of the ice from your freezer into your bathtub. Then bathe in it. Run it over your arms and the back of your neck. Listen to soft music loudly and say "oh yes" a lot. Also take a real shower, because the ice won't get you very clean.

Don't -- hey, why are you going so close to the door!

Icicles - think about them. Try and make one with your mind.

Don't go indoor tanning, at a salon. Don't go to a tanning salon today.

Sun hat with face protection. "Ponytail slot in back."

Enjoy the day!

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Your Brain Doesn't Like Human-Looking Robots As Much As You Thought

Remember when you were little and you went to Disneyland and those little robots sang "It's a small world after all," and you felt sort of happy, but also like there might not be a tomorrow? Seeing humanoid robots activates different parts of the brain than seeing real humans or stereotypical robots, as demonstrated in a new functional MRI study. There's discontinuity between the human form and nonhuman qualities, and we get that "I don't know how to feel about you" vibe. That's how we know we're supposed to attack them.

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Your Body And The Internet: How Many People Have You Talked To Today?

Functional dysphonia is a rare condition in which people become unable to talk but we don’t exactly know why. We can’t find anything mechanically wrong with their sound-making parts, and if you startle or tickle them, they still shriek or laugh. You shouldn’t go out of your way to tickle these people, but, just, that’s what would happen. When they try to speak, though: silence. Sometimes whispers. Nothing is identifiably wrong with the language parts of their brains, either. They can write and interact nonverbally without a problem.

So it's a diagnosis that's felt to be related to anxiety and "psychosomatic factors," which is what we say to mean “I don’t know - your brain is affecting your body somehow - I don’t know, it’s weird. Ahh, I wish I could help you. Anti-depressants?”

A new study from the journal Otolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery says that people with functional dysphonia have increased rates of perfectionism. That makes sense, since both are probably rooted in anxiety. It suggests that there's an element, albeit subconscious, of thinking it'd be better not to talk at all than to risk saying something wrong.

If you don't talk, you can't misspeak. You’d probably offend fewer people, too, as long as you’re cordial with your winks, nods, and curtseys, and assuming you don’t do weird stuff like constantly lick your lips. You might even come off as elegant and intriguing. Maybe it wouldn’t be completely terrible? But, on a voluntary basis, how long do you think you could actually go without talking?

I tried it one time when I was a kid, and I lasted fifteen months, but I was very focused.

Red Wine Keeps Muscles Big

"Exercise in a bottle?" Well, not in a bottle, but somewhere. And if you can't exercise, you can drink red wine because it has this thing they just discovered called resveratrol in it, which may counteract the effects of a sedentary lifestyle. Specifically, rats in weightlessness preserved their muscle mass and bone density when they got resveratrol, whereas those who didn't take it showed atrophy and early diabetes.

So, this is good for astronauts. And what's good for the astronauts, is good for America.

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Classified Bad Guy Tells

The TSA Security Director at Logan Airport on NPR this morning discusses how they spot "a bad guy planning to do bad things":

"The movement of the eyes, perspiring in a cool environment, the Adam's apple movement. I can't be more specific because they are somewhat classified."

So: shifty eyes, sweating, and gulping. Among other somewhat classified things.

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"It makes life easier for girls at festivals"

"Pollee is an open air, touch-free urinal made for a semi-squat position. It can handle four women at a time compared with a traditional toilet's inefficient quantity of one. It also features the clean, rounded lines of contemporary Danish design.”

This is part of Danish company UiWE's Peebetter campaign. So, so much better.

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It's An Eye. You Have To Kind Of Squint, But, Yeah, It Is.

Huge news in the journal Nature, researchers in Japan were able to create a retina out of embryonic stem cells. That’s a great step towards a treatment for many types of blindness, not to mention a step towards synthesizing all kinds of organs that many people desperately need.

Every time the lady stem cell looked over to that corner of the bar, there he was, peering at her suggestively. She waited all night, but the guy stem cell never came over to her, so finally she went to him.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he said.

“Are you making eyes at me?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “We’re making them together.”

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Clean Your Ears Regularly!

Instead of using a Q-tip or finger, you should clean your ears by putting four or five drops of vinegar water in them once a week. That way, recommends Dr. Weil, you don't risk breaking your eardrums.

How do you clean your ears? With a Q-tip? On an airplane, in turbulence? Does the Q-tip sometimes go all the way in, an you need tweezers to get it out?

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The Real-Life Like Button

What compels us to share things on Facebook/Twitter/etc? A study at Penn tells us that when an article evokes a "high arousal" emotion (anxiety, amusement), we're more likely to share it. That's not too surprising, right, but the cooler part to me was the corollary study in which people read a neutral article while either sitting or running on a treadmill. The people who were running when they read the article ended up being more likely to share it.

So we should all be running all the time? Because running elevates your mood and you're more likely to share when you're happy? Or just people who run are more likely to be disoriented and lightheaded, clicking buttons to and fro?

I think there should be actual "Like" buttons on physical things out in the world. Big, blue, glowing things that make pleasing noises when you push them. They could read your fingerprints and synch to your account. And when you're at a certain store, you can just hit this giant Like button on the wall. Or if you like a certain kind of car, you can hit the button on that car. If you see a famous person, you can like them on their forehead.

I don't know, but then maybe the runners would go around liking/sharing tons of stuff while they're out and about, and Mark Zuckerberg could get rich. Then he would issue everyone free blue running shoes in the mail, and on and on and on.

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Swimsuit Confidence & You

Wellness Coach Ellen Goldman over at Spark People has some hot tips for summer:

i.e., Don't [bare it all]. But still:

That one belongs on pretty much every list for this summer. How to look your best at a barbecue, how to ride a summer bus, how to win friends and influence people on sunny days, etc. Also in other seasons, pay attention to your grooming. Unless, of course, grooming makes you unhappy. Because "we are at our best when we are engaged in experiences that make us happy."

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How To Be 100 And Live To Answer Surveys

Don't you really want to live to be 100? The New York Times tells us how easy it is. A study of 477 ninety-five-year-old Jewish people that found they actually didn't have better health habits than their friends who died younger. They didn't exercise more, smoke or drink less, weigh less, or even have more positive attitudes. So why'd they get to live so long?

Basically, the only variable they identified was that they had long-lived family members. So, get a good family!

If you don't have the money or likable characteristics necessary to get a good family, but you still want to be 100 (95) years old, do these things I just made up:

-Walk very slowly and cautiously, all the time. Look twice each way before you exit any room.

-Keep your eyes moving. Never not moving with the eyes.

-Love with a moderate, safe amount of passion.

-Don't cut your fingernails too short.

-Don't let your fingernails grow so long they get infected.

-Don't eat anything you don't have to.

-DO not cling to life. Don't smother it. Give it space.

Anything else working for anyone out there? What's keeping you alive?

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Rebuff!

Guidelines from the British Medical Association recommend that physicians "politely refuse" Facebook friend "overtures" [requests] from patients.

But, BMA, guys, where are you going! Politely! How ?

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Dermatology v. Insect Bites

The American Academy of Dermatology disheartens us with their update on insect bites being: don't get insect bites. But then after that:

“Maggots hate to have the hole in the skin covered, so the best way to get them out is to slap a piece of pork fat or meat over the affected area of the skin for a few hours,” said Dr. Rapini. “The maggot is naturally drawn to the meat and will come out from under the skin and attach itself to the meat instead.” While not painful, Dr. Rapini added that a maggot holed up beneath the skin can be uncomfortable and should be removed.

Did you catch that last part? If you have maggots, yes, remove them.

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