#370 Mysteries of Science

So the October issue of Discover had some interesting little science factoids. One was that cultures that have cats as pets are more neurotic. I’m not sure how they measure neurotic, maybe by the amount of Prozac consumed, but one of its causes they attribute to good old toxoplasmosis. Kitty feces disease. Cat scat fever. Apparently people that change kitty litter—it sounds so small and innocuous when you say it that way—and come into direct contact with cat feces have a greater incidence of toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis can be fatal to newborns—one more reason, if you need one, not to let the baby play in the litter box. In any event, researchers have concluded that the cat stuff could be causing societies to have mass personality changes. Then again, maybe the researchers themselves have spent too much time around cats. Paranoia is a neurosis, isn’t it?
Another factoid is that scientists found cancer-fighting fungi growing in contaminated waters at the nation’s largest superfund site in Butte Montana. See? Pollution is a good idea after all. Destroy the land, fill it up with toxic waste and voila, cancer-fighting fungi. I wonder if they’re actually mushrooms. There’s something so cool about the idea of mushrooms fighting cancer. Maybe that’s why hard core drugees, even though they inhale enough carcinogens from pot smoking to lose a lung, manage to emerge relatively unscathed if they leaven their abuse with an occasional ‘shroom trip. Sorry officer, they’re medicine dude. What are you, cat lover?
And this just in, astronomers have pushed back the Big Bang two billion years and the universe, get this, is 15% larger than they thought. So imagine if you will that there are 16 billion grains of sand in your litter box and your task is to remove them one grain at a time with a pair of tweezers. Now add 2 billion more grains and make the litter box 15% larger. Feel any different? Me neither.
And finally, Yale neurologists have concluded that ultrasound alters developing brains in rats and recommends the procedure not be used for non-medical purposes. Um. Isn’t that where it’s used the most—for medical purposes on developing fetuses? Or is that fet-i? I mean, last time I looked there wasn’t a family board game that incorporated an ultrasound machine. Oh Bobby, you rolled a four, that means we have to ultrasound your liver. Has ultrasound replaced Bunco in the houses of the suburban bored? The point is, if ultrasound harms developing brains, then the precise place to not use it is medical. Don’t tell me, tell the freakin doctors! I mean, it’s not like I’m going to invest a ton of money in a home ultrasound device and use it like radar to find suspicious lumps in my kitty litter box. That why God invented all-purpose spatulas.
America, ya gotta love it.