Health News I Can Use

I would normally be skeptical of a news report from a conservative, Republican-leaning publisher like NewsMax.com. However, sometimes a news item just feels right, and one must trust that it is legitimate. Such is the case with the March 18 story, Beer Fights Cancer, by Sylvia Booth Hubbard.

According to unnamed researchers at an undisclosed location, the chemical compound xanthohumol, which occurs naturally in hops, has been shown to be toxic to several kinds of human cancer, including prostate, ovarian, breast, and colon. It is said that beers that contain the most hops, such as ale, stout, and porter -- the darker the beer, the better -- provide the most benefits.

Quite frankly, I'm not about to wait for hop-based herbal supplements to hit the local markets. I'm going to renew my prophylactic treatments right after work tonight -- the natural way, as god intended.

Spamalot

Pity the poor spammer who's trying to ply his trade to an increasingly jaded audience. Maybe it's time that they took a tip from pharmaceutical companies and began combining their products. Is the market ready for a Hoodia-Viagra combo drug? If you're going to lose all that weight, you may as well plan on doing something, right?

Dear Sir:

I have been requested by the Nigerian National Viagra Manufacturing Company to contact you for assistance in resolving a matter. The Nigerian National Viagra Manufacturing Company has recently concluded a large number of contracts for production facilities in the sub-Sahara region, where we've merged with the leading national Hoodia grower. The contracts have immediately produced moneys equalling US $40,000,000. The Nigerian National Viagra Manufacturing Company is desirous of selling our product in other parts of the world, however, because of certain regulations of the Nigerian Government, it is unable to move these funds to another region.

Your assistance is requested as a non-Nigerian citizen to assist the Nigerian National Viagra Manufacturing Company, and also the Central Bank of Nigeria, in moving this product out of Nigeria. If the funds can be transferred to your name, in your United States account, then you can forward the funds as directed by the Nigerian National Viagra Manufacturing Company. In exchange for your accomodating services, the Nigerian National Viagra Manufacturing Company would agree to allow you to retain 10%, or US $4 million of this amount (payment to be made in the form of our new combination drug, Hoodia Love).

However, to be a legitimate transferee of these moneys according to Nigerian law, you must presently be a depositor of at least US $100,000 in a Nigerian bank which is regulated by the Central Bank of Nigeria...

High up on the Mountain

An item cited on Yahoo! News, Moses was high on drugs: Israeli researcher, has an Israeli space cadet/professor of cognitive psychology saying that he's been there and done that himself -- talk to God, that is.

Benny Shanon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says that Moses was probably high when he saw the "burning bush." Citing his own experiences with South American psychotropics, Shanon thinks that Moses might have been drinking a concoction based on bark of the acacia tree, which is frequently mentioned in the Bible. It's also an ingredient in Fresca and Barq's Root Beer. Of course, smoking Acacia bark is also thought to keep demons and ghosts away, so God was not likely in his/her Holy Ghost incarnation. One variety of the plant is also good for treating premature ejaculation. Moses did have a thing with his staff, didn't he?

The Devil is in the Minutia

To see the devil in a grain of sand,
and to see heaven in a wildflower,
hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.

Apologies to William Blake

According to a recent survey of Americans' attitudes about nanotechnology, only 29.5 percent think that nanotechnology is morally acceptable. This amazing factoid is written up on ScienceDaily.com.

The godless European nations,

• United Kingdom: 54.1 percent
• Germany: 62.7 percent
• France: 72.1 percent

are much more enlightened, it seems.

In presenting his paper to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication, went on to say that Americans' concern about nanotechnology is not a matter of ignorance. The respondents are said to be well-informed about nanotechnology and its potential benefits.

"They still oppose it," he says. "They are rejecting it based on religious beliefs."

God help us.

A Night at the Firefox

(re: the weird title -- sorry, I don't use the Opera browser)

Or a short history of clicking

Appologies for the weirdness of titles, but it's Friday afternoon and I'm feeling puckish.

I subscribe to Daily Rotation, a site that tracks feeds from a host of technolgy sites on the web. It's user-customizable, and one of my monitoring choices is del.icio.us hotlist. That site in turn pointed me to a piece on CollegeDegree.com titled 60+ Killer Open Courseware Collections for Web Designers. Are you still with me? Good stuff there, which led me to looking around a bit more, when I noticed another one of their feature pieces, 99 Resources to Research & Mine the Invisible Web. More good stuff here, all worthy of a bookmark.

At this point, web page wanderlust kicked into gear, and I tried their link for Top 25 Strangest College Courses. What's amusing about this list is that it featured two items from Alfred University, my old Elmer Mater:

1. Tightwaddery, or The good life on a dollar a day: Alfred University's demonstratively anti-capitalist course attempts to debunk contemporary culture's popular myth: "Spend money and you’ll be happy." According to the official class description, "On a theoretical level, we will consider how living frugally benefits your mind, your body, your relationships, your community, and the environment. On a practical level, we will examine personal spending habits [and] sharpen bargain-hunting rip-off-detecting, and haggling skills." While they're at it, maybe they can help drive down gas prices?
2. Maple Syrup: The Real Thing: Alfred University makes this list twice with its now famous course, Maple Syrup: The Real Thing. The course description reads, "the method of producing maple syrup is one of the things in our society that has endured even in today's culture of constant change," which is why it deserves an entire semester of attention and dissection. Students mustn't worry though, as the course comes with a neat disclaimer: "No prior experience expected."

Wow! When I was there in the early part of the 70s, Alfred used to feature a mini-semester during the month of January, when more sensible people took extended winter breaks. These "Allenterms," as they were called, were required for two of your four (or more) years. My two Allenterms were

• a study of Lichens - running around in the dead of winter to collect and classify one of nature's strange and misunderstood life forms. "It's an algae. It's a fungus. No, it's both in one!"
  
• "Tolkein and the Medieval Fantasy" - a reading of J.R.R. Tolkein's seminal fantasy trilogy.

Ah, such a stroll down memory lane.

Yeah, it's a sign all right

Reality can be strange.

I'm still on as an adjunct with my old employer, Fairmont State College, so I continue to get faculty announcements. Yesterday's made me do a double-take:

---

Subject: Deaf GLBT

Hello Everyone,

Our department, Disability Office and the Gay-Straight Alliance organization are very excited to invite you to attend a presentation by Ray Luczak on “The Deaf GLBT Community: Then and Now.”

The link to the information: http://www.fairmontstate.edu/images/userImages/tchiba/Page_4345/rayluczak.

---

I suspect that this is a very small niche market for a small state university. No doubt, they could hold their meetings in a tiny room -- say a closet.

Yeah, it's a sign, all right - "Going out of business."
Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) in Ghostbusters.

Today's financial news

Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion