humor – Page 3 – The Department of Lateral Thinking

Craggy Island Calculus Problem

Posted on November 5, 2015December 11, 2017 by George Gillson

For the sake of argument, say that you happen to be standing on the edge of a beach off the coast of Ireland, directly facing a little island called Craggy Island. Fans of the British television series “Father Ted” will be getting excited at this point, since Father Ted and his fellow renegade priests were exiled to Craggy Island due to some unspecified but nevertheless unsavory behaviour. But more on that some other time.

Where was I? Oh yes! For some inexplicable reason, you have been seized by a powerful urge to kayak to the island, but you don’t know how far away it is. Assume you’ve never seen “Jaws”. How could you determine the length of your impending voyage?

Personally speaking, I would just call the Craggy Island Department of Tourism and Limpets (1-877-LIMPETS), and ask them how far it is to their island. But maybe there’s no answer when you call and maybe you just don’t like taking the easy way out. So now what?

Well…if you happen to know how fast the lighthouse beacon is rotating, and if you happen to know how fast the beam is sweeping toward you when it hits the (eerily-straight) shore 1/2 kM north of where you’re standing, you could say to yourself: “This sounds like a related-rate problem! I might be able to use Calculus to solve it!”

Since you have nothing better to do, you resist the urge to start paddling, so you fly home and spend the next few nights covering page after page with chicken scratch, basically re-deriving Calculus from first principles, since you haven’t taken it for 38 years or so. (The picture which should pop into your head at this point is that of a large beetle flipped over onto its carapace in front of a blackboard, feebly waving a piece of chalk clutched in its foreclaw.)

Finally, your son (who oddly enough happens to be taking Calculus at school) takes pity on you after witnessing your struggle and says, “Dad, why don’t you just Google it?”

Since you were born well before Al Gore invented the Internet, you look at him with a dumbfounded expression and reply, “What the heck would I Google?”

He regards you with a sorrowful expression and says,

“I dunno. Google is pretty clever. Try typing: ‘Calculus Lighthouse Problem.’ ”

You dutifully follow this directive and to your undying amazement, this search phrase returns a long string of hits, and one of them even refers to Craggy Island!

From there it’s just a short hop to a YouTube video clip (Calculus tutorial) made by an endearing fellow named Bart Snapp who solves your exact problem right before your very eyes! You really should watch this clip, mostly because I took the trouble to transcribe the intro almost word-for-word, but also because you will find yourself swept away by Bart’s patently obvious love of teaching in general, and Calculus in particular, and also because this guy is great at reading out loud. I quote:

“Hello there! Now we’re going to do a problem (waves hands energetically) about a beacon in the ocean, also known as a lighthouse of sorts. But we’re going to call it a beacon. All right?

“All right! Let’s see the problem! (Reads problem enthusiastically and eloquently.)

“All right. So we have our problem and now we have to… (he pauses for dramatic effect)…Draw a picture! (Bart starts sketching rapidly on a whiteboard)

“All right. So we have a, we have the shore here, and the shore’s supposed to be straight. (Draws more-or-less straight line)

“Well. Well that’s straight enough I guess. Here’s point A. (Draws the beacon on a line perpendicular to point A, and presses on)…the beacon has some light that is shining and let’s see…(adds some more notations like dϴ/dt and dx/dt to his diagram).

“What else?…Aha!

“And the water…This is all supposed to be water here. (Draws blue squiggles.) That’s great.”

And really, it is great because at that point you see that the beacon, the place where you’re standing directly opposite the lighthouse, and the point where the beam hits the shore 1/2 kM north of you, form a triangle, and you can relate the rotational speed of the beacon (in radians/sec of course) to the sweep rate of the beam along the shore, through trigonometry!

From there it’s only a matter of a couple more days of calculations until you figure out the lighthouse is 1 kM straight out from where you’re standing. You can easily handle a 1 kM paddle but then you find out that the last person who tried it was eaten by sharks. What should you do?

The first thing you should do is ask yourself whether this whole eaten-by-ravenous-sharks while-attempting-to-paddle-to-Craggy Island thing is true or is it an urban legend? And does Craggy Island even exist, or is it the product of the imagination of a couple of half-baked Irish writers named Arthur Matthews and Graham Linehan?

This is important because urban legends are everywhere these days, thanks to Al Gore, and you just can’t be too careful. Consider the story I read recently about an intoxicated Marine in the state of Kansas who was arrested after a failed attempt to foil his car ignition interlock by having a raccoon breathe into it.

Right away you have to be suspicious that this is an urban legend because there are no raccoons (or Marines for that matter) in the state of Kansas. Actually, I’m lying. I made up the Kansas part, and if you consult Google, you will discover that Kansas is literally teeming with raccoons. I quote from the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism website: “Highly intelligent and adaptable, the raccoon (Procyon lotor) is one of our most abundant furbearers. “ But all that aside, your first clue that the story is b.s. is that everyone knows Marines don’t drink.

Anyway, the point is that you have to be careful not to waste your time on drivel like the story of The Raccoon and The Breathalyzer. Instead I want you to recall The Owl and The Pussycat, a poem by British artist, illustrator, musician, cookbook author and all-around oddball Edward Lear (1812-1888) and then check out the poem I just wrote.

With apologies to all the people of Britain, except Prince Charles:

The Owl and the Pussycat did some maths, with the aid of Barton Snapp
They related dtheta to dx (by dt) but they found themselves in a trap
They set forth for the Isle but in a short while, the water began to boil
Attacked by a shark, in the cold and the dark, off shuffled their mortal coil(s).

Well, it’s time to shut this thing down. I’m going to heat up a plate of leftover limpets and then get ready for my paddle to Craggy Island first thing in the morning. But just one nagging thought remains:

I think I’m going to need a bigger boat.

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Toilet Seat Lore

Posted on September 24, 2015January 25, 2021 by George Gillson

Well, it looks like I’m cranking these things out somewhat less often than I’d like to, but echoing the immortal words of John Cusack explaining to his prof why he was late to class in The Sure Thing (1985): “Well you see there was this problem and I’m late because of it.”

The problem is that a few weeks ago we woke up one morning and decided to adopt a seven year old border collie named Mickey. Everything you read about border collies says they need to have a job, so Mickey’s job is to play fetch 23 hours a day and look at me reproachfully the rest of the time.

So between Mickey and the treadmill, there’s not a lot of spare time these days. Plus, I didn’t have anything worth writing about until last week when we had visitors from head office, aka The Mothership. For the sake of argument, I’ll call one of the visitors Lisa Kearns (not her real name). “Lisa” was relaying to one of the people I share an office with what a great stay she had had in the Hotel Elan (otherwise known as the Hotel Elan), “a unique, business-friendly boutique hotel in Calgary, located uptown just off vibrant 17th Avenue SW.”

I wasn’t sure what a boutique hotel is so I Googled it.

A boutique hotel is “a small stylish hotel, typically situated in a fashionable urban location.” I read a few more entries and found a pearl of wisdom from Kobrun Vidisdottir, of Reykjavík, Iceland.

According to her, a boutique hotel is “an accommodation that makes their guests feel happy and contented while staying there, makes them feel extraordinary, makes them to realize that they should revert soon and makes them to recognize that this hotel is worth discussing with others.”

I followed most of what Kobrun was trying to say, but I got stuck at the part where she started talking about reverting. Reverting to what? Her maiden name? Windows 7? Human form? Then I figured out she meant return soon. Which reminds me, I should return to the theme of this column, which is supposed to be about toilets. But remind me to tell you a little bit more about Reykjavík in a minute.

Anyway, “Lisa” was going on about the heated and lighted toilet seat in her hotel room, which in her words “changed my life.” I asked her if her life routinely involved sitting on ice-cold toilet seats and she said no, the heated seat was just a particularly pleasant experience. Plus the underside of the seat was ringed with LEDs, which emitted a pleasing blue light.

Now this is important because everyone knows that if you wake up in the middle of the night and turn on a yellow or orange light, it will immediately shut down your melatonin. Everyone also knows that the last thing you want to do is sit on an ice-cold toilet seat and shut down your melatonin when all you really want to do is take a pee and go back to sleep. But I guess it’s this kind of thing that separates a normal hotel from a boutique hotel. It’s still sort of surreal though, like going to the bathroom in 2176 AD.

Speaking of going to the bathroom in 2176 AD, Calgary happens to have a few choice, futuristic, public washrooms strategically located about the city. I had the chance to use one a few years ago, but to refresh my memory about the entire experience, I paid a visit to one near my house, at the Tuscany LRT station. (My house is not at the Tuscany LRT station; the futuristic public washroom is at the Tuscany LRT station.)

For starters, it’s pretty futuristic-looking. You approach the door, push a button, the door slides open and you find yourself in a little room with a lot of stainless steel including a stainless-steel toilet, with no toilet seat.

You push another button (“Toilet Seat”) which triggers a bunch of disturbing mechanical noises. A panel in the wall slides open and a toilet seat deploys from behind the panel, spraying liquid in the process. (I am not making any of this up.) You half-expect that some robot arms with metallic claws will appear, seize your eyelids and pry them open, like in “A Clockwork Orange.” A mellifluous robotic voice guides you through the whole process, accompanied by a stirring rendition of “The Ride of the Valkryies.” (kidding)

You go to the bathroom, and if you can’t figure out how to flush, there are instructions to help. Once you wash your hands, the toilet seat folds back into its nook, the panel slides back down and you’re good to go. (I thought you went.)

But say you’re still sitting down or just remaining immobile for some reason (shock probably). The mellifluous robotic voice comes back on and tells you that you have about 20 seconds until the cubicle door opens, unless you start moving around soon. If you don’t move around, the voice starts counting down. Seriously.

I actually filmed this whole thing and you can check it out here:

(Futuristic Public Washroom video clip)

My son Ty got quite panicky once, when the mellifluous robotic voice announced the countdown while he was still working on Step 2 or whatever. He leaped up from his perch and began waving his arms madly, until he gained the precious seconds he needed to finish his business.

The whole setup is just so weird that I fully expected to emerge from that washroom to find myself catapulted two or three centuries past 2176 AD and face to face with a Dalek or else “Robot” from Lost in Space. “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”

There is another high-end toilet (intended for household use although I’m sure a boutique hotel somewhere has one), which automatically deploys a menacing-looking probe from somewhere in the bowels (pun intended) of the toilet bowl. The probe emits a gentle spray of water which you direct with a complicated remote control. But since I can barely use my TV remote, I probably won’t buy one of those washing probe-equipped commodes, even if I could afford one. I’m saving up for a time machine.

Last but not least, if you happen to have to go potty in O’Hare Airport in Chicago, brace yourself. When you’re in the cubicle, you press a button on an apparatus situated on the back of the toilet. You hear mechanical noises and then a protective plastic sleeve shoots out and envelopes the toilet seat. You do what you went in for, then get up and after more mechanical whirring noises, the sleeve disappears into the apparatus behind the toilet seat.

My only question is: what happens to the sleeve you sat on? Do they just toss it, or is it sent back around for the next unsuspecting victim? I know, I probably shouldn’t worry about these things, but I just can’t help it. Call me a Luddite, but I just think things are getting way too complicated here in 2015.

I think I’ll move to Reykjavík. Quoting here from Randburg.com (whatever that is) about the downtown area: “The old city center is atmospheric and relaxed. Many excellent cafes, bars and restaurants are located there and there are also many shops, including stores specializing in traditional souvenirs and stocking a good selection of merchandise, including crafts, replicas of Viking artifacts, ceramics, jewelry, playing cards, books, calendars, sheepskin products – and Iceland’s famous wool products. “

Sounds great. I’m fresh out of Viking artifacts, so I’ll definitely check it out. But I bet the toilet seats are freezing.

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Corpus Callosum

Posted on August 13, 2015December 11, 2017 by George Gillson

I know, I know. Every columnist on earth has written about the differences between men and women, but I still feel the need to dip my oar into this particular literary pond. But don’t blame me; blame Downton Abbey.

Alert readers (all three of you) will recall that awhile ago, I ditched my office chair and started standing up at work. This catapulted me into watching House of Cards Season III every night when I came home, in order to recover from standing all the time. This foray into standing all day was followed by working on a treadmill all day but then I had to watch Season III of Nashville every night to recover from walking all the time. I’m still walking on that treadmill, but a few weeks ago I was faced with the problem of how to maintain my recovery strategy once Nashville Season III ended. (Damned Netflix!)

Happily, Signals catalogue came to the rescue. Over the past several years, every time I leafed through Signals catalogue I would see all this Downton Abbey paraphernalia such as T-shirts, snuff boxes, Keep Calm and Get a PhD in Neuroanatomy coffee mugs, and gold-embossed toilet paper. I kept thinking to myself: “What’s up with all this Downton Abbey paraphernalia?” So finally, out of sheer curiosity, my wife and I started watching Downton Abbey every night, which is probably why this column is overdue.

For those of you who just emerged after 62 years in an underground nuclear fallout shelter, Downton Abbey is an award-winning British television series which chronicles the saga of the nobility and the servants thereof, who inhabit a gigantic English manor house called Downton Abbey. The series starts circa 1912 but I don’t know when it ends because Netflix only goes up to Season IV.

Now my point in all this is that back in 1912, especially in England, men and women were still regarded as fundamentally different species, with drastically different proclivities, voting rights and sleeping quarters. So in order to get to the bottom of this polarization, researchers at that time started peering at human brains (after the owners died) in order to decipher whether any of it had to do with brain structure.

Speaking of brains, I can’t resist putting this in:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?

WITNESS: No.

ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?

WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.

ATTORNEY: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?

WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.
Where was I? Well, as we all know, the brain has two halves or hemispheres. The right hemisphere, conveniently located in the right side of your skull, is more concerned with verbal skills and intuition, e.g. the right brain might think to itself: “I have a hunch that my lawyer speaks Norwegian.” The left hemisphere, cozily ensconced in the left side of your skull, has more to do with logical thinking, but also football, so the left brain might think to itself: “I just can’t deduce, why in Heaven’s name, the Patriots underinflated all those footballs in the AFC Championship game.”

In addition to the “upstairs” brain in your head, some people including Michael Gershon MD think that the enteric nervous system or ENS, a collection of nervous tissue conveniently located in your midsection, qualifies as a sort of “downstairs” brain. By the way, this has nothing to do with that other British TV series called “Upstairs Downstairs” which also dealt with the goings-on between British nobility and their servants. I guess this just goes to show you that there’s nothing new under the stairs, so to speak.

I don’t have a lot of space here to get into it, but the enteric nervous system is thought to be responsible for helping the colonic flora (aka microbiome) decide whether or not to have a second helping of dessert, and the ENS helps decide whether the 16-mega-roll Chamomile-scented pack of Charmin toilet paper is a better deal than the 48-roll pack of unscented steerage-class toilet paper. I guess it all depends on whether or not you like Chamomile and possibly whether or not you’re out of sandpaper.

But let’s get back to when researchers started peering at the “upstairs” brain in earnest. A long time ago, somebody decided that it was probably a good idea if information could pass efficiently between the right and left halves of the brain, so the corpus callosum was invented. The corpus callosum (Latin for “tough body”) is a tough, wide, flat bundle or body of nerve fibres (several hundred million if you’re counting) which connects the two hemispheres, sort of like an I-80 for nerve impulses. I-80 is actually a great choice for a simile because it runs East-West across the United States. (All East-West interstates end in even numbers whereas all North-South interstates end in odd numbers, in case you were wondering. Speaking strictly on my own behalf, I would really like to know who decides these things.)

After a bit of peering at brains, these researchers managed to convince themselves that the corpus callosum in women is bigger than the corpus callosum in people who aren’t women. So for decades the corpus callosum shouldered a lot of the blame for silly stereotypes such as how women are supposedly better at multi-tasking, communicating with other human beings, and devising ever more complicated schemes for sorting laundry, whereas men are supposedly better at giving intense focus to tasks like fixing the adaptive optics on the Gemini Planet Imager telescope out in the Atacamba desert in Chile. (That is, when they aren’t hiding out in their man-caves, thinking about nothing in particular, especially not how they feel.)

In 1992 the noted astronomer John Gray PhD wrote an entire book about male-female behaviour differences and their relationship to brain structure entitled “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.” This book generated a storm of interest, and even spawned a line of MarsVenus dietary supplements. Then in 1997, Dave Barry PhD, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, astronomer and musician wrote a book entitled “Dave Barry is From Mars And Venus.” He did not, to my knowledge, develop a line of dietary supplements, but you never know.

Unfortunately, we will probably have to wait until the Mars Mission slated for sometime in the 2030’s to figure out exactly who is from what planet, but meanwhile, we’re starting to get a better grip on our neuroanatomy.

The results of recent well-designed research, involving detailed magnetic resonance imaging of the brains of large numbers of (living) males and females of all ages is taking some heat off the corpus callosum. Turns out there are definite gender differences in the shape of the darned thing but these differences may not mean a whole lot. Instead we’re starting to look at general brain wiring patterns: how much traffic is on I-80 (left-to-right) and how much is on I-75 (front to back if you’re facing north), regardless of gender. Turns out we’re all different: some people have more cross-brain wiring and some people are wired for more communication within each hemisphere. Any given man or woman can have a unique blend of both “wiring diagrams” which may have more to do with early experience, genetics and what sign of the Zodiac you were born under. (I may have made this last bit up.)

I could go on at length here, but I’m tired of writing about this topic, and even if I wasn’t tired of it, I can’t really think of anything else to say. I’m also feeling a bit jumpy: I can’t decide if I should walk on the treadmill some more, sort some laundry, or fix the adaptive optics in my telescope.

Satchel Paige, the immortal Major League baseball pitcher (or possibly it was Winnie the Pooh) once said:

“Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”

I think I’ll just sit and stare blankly into space (pun intended) for a while. Or maybe I’ll make a spot of tea. I hear they do that a lot at Downton Abbey.

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Treadmill Desks

Posted on July 2, 2015December 11, 2017 by George Gillson

This column is a little overdue because it took me longer than anticipated to get those pesky RFID chips (mentioned last column) out of my distal colon. But that’s all behind (!) me now and it’s time to move on and talk about moving in general and treadmill desks in particular.

One day a few months ago I was sitting at my desk at the office when I was seized by an uncontrollable urge to start standing up all day. This wasn’t a random obsession like some other random obsessions I’ve had, but was actually driven by my having just read a book by Dr. James Levine MD PhD entitled: “Get Up! Why your chair is killing you and what you can do about it.”

Just so we’re clear on this, I need to point out that Dr. Levine is not part of some nefarious plot by agents of The Department of Trying to Put IKEA Out of Business. But he is an endocrinologist and an obesity researcher and Director of the Mayo Clinic/Arizona State University Solutions Initiative. One of the key messages in Dr. Levine’s book is basically that humans weren’t meant to sit down all day, and regular workouts can’t compensate for the amount of time we spend in our chairs.

Now I’ve noticed that there have been some weird sayings going around lately including “Orange is the New Black”, “Trading Insults is the New Form of Political Debate” and “Stuffed Burrowing Owls are the New Furbies”.

Maybe I made some of that up, but I didn’t make up the fact that Dr. Levine is also noted for coining the phrase “Sitting is the New Smoking.”

The rationale for why sitting is bad for you revolves around explaining why standing is good for you. When you are standing up, the large muscles in your legs are more active (unless you are duct-taped to a tree or lamp-post) and will draw more glucose (sugar) out of your blood. Standing also increases your basal metabolic rate. Conversely, when you are sitting around all the time, your basal metabolic rate is lower, it’s more difficult for your body to clear glucose out of your blood, and you have to produce more insulin to compensate. Over-production of insulin can lead to things like diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

Disposing of glucose simply by standing is called NEAT or Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis, and not that it matters, but NEAT can easily be rearranged to ETNA, meaning maybe your insurance premium will go down next year but don’t bet on it. (I shamelessly borrowed here from Dave Barry’s lexicon of literary devices which include rearranging normal acronyms to make funnier, or at least more interesting ones, and I also state for the record, that Dave Barry can be rearranged to spell “Braver Day”.)

Anyway, more NEAT means your pancreas doesn’t have to make as much insulin, and the insulin you do make will work better. This will reduce your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, but the jury is still out regarding its effect on other degenerative conditions such as birdwatching and reselling stuff you bought at garage sales on eBay.

Long story short, standing at least intermittently throughout the day is much better for you than sitting for 8 hours straight, so I started standing at work a few months ago. I’m in pretty good shape, but I have to admit that for the first week, I came home every night completely bagged, and had to compensate by binge-watching all of House of Cards Season III. I also got low-grade sniffles and was constantly fighting the urge to go outside and nibble grass for some reason.

Fortunately that all passed, and then about two months ago I was seized by another uncontrollable urge which involved converting my desk into a treadmill desk. (A treadmill desk is exactly like an ordinary desk, except it is higher and has a treadmill under it.) Levine says walking slowly on a treadmill is a great way to increase NEAT.

He is widely credited as the inventor of treadmill desks, but that distinction likely should belong to Nathan Edelson, who patented a design for a portable desk intended to be used with a treadmill back in 1993. Dr. Levine does get credit though, for helping to popularize working while walking on a treadmill via Get UP!, and also via his other book: These Boots are Made for Walking: Why Newton’s First Law of Motion Doesn’t Apply to You or Nancy Sinatra.

Either way, I was just so busy watching House of Cards and fighting the urge to nibble grass that I sort of forgot about the whole treadmill thing for awhile, but eventually I finished House of Cards, bought a used treadmill , stripped it down to just the deck, slid it under my desk, built a platform for my phone, computer, stuffed Burrowing Owl, etc, and off I went. Levine is quoted here cautioning the neophyte treadmilling office worker, saying: “There’s a tendency to want to jump on the treadmill and walk for hours and hours a day. Don’t do that. Certainly, at the absolute maximum, do half-hour on, half an hour off, for two to three hours a day.” He also suggests a speed of 0.5 to1.5 mph.

So naturally, being the possessor of a Y chromosome (trillions, actually), I began walking for 8 hours straight, on Day One, which happened to be a Monday, and by Thursday afternoon I was happily clocking along at 2.5 mph and by Friday afternoon, I had acute pain and tenderness in my lateral left lower extremity, six inches above the ankle, and could barely walk.

But several weeks later, after I got off the crutches, I was back at it and settled into a steady 1.5 mph, still fighting the urge to nibble grass and stopping only to go to the bathroom. Typing and mousing took awhile to master, and it took a few weeks for my feet to adapt, despite good footwear.

Here I am a few months later. My FitBit keeps flashing the “Full” symbol, but I’m a few pounds lighter and my belt is several notches tighter. Tracy, one of the two people I share my office with, goes around with a hunted look in her eyes most of the time, and has taken to muttering and wearing earplugs. Martin, my other office-mate, is pretty blasé about the whole thing. He thinks that the electrically-grounded, foil-lined skullcap I’m wearing (to prevent static buildup) is a bit weird, but otherwise he’s cool with the incessant low-grade droning of the treadmill.

Levine was certainly right about the thermogenesis bit. I had to install a couple of fans to train on my head and torso, once summer arrived. I haven’t checked any of my metabolic parameters since I started, but one of these days I will. I just have to amble on over to the nearest blood drawing station for our local lab. It’s 14.3 miles one way, but somehow I think I’m up to the walk.

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Topology for Beginners

Posted on June 9, 2015January 7, 2018 by George Gillson

One day in June 2015, my wife Jeanette and I found ourselves sitting in an outdoor bar in downtown Austin, Texas, sharing a table with two very nice people named Tom and Kathleen. Tom is a triathlete (among other things) and his wife Kathleen is a Pilates instructor. Austin on the other hand, is well known for the large number of free-tailed bats which spend part of each year living under the Congress Avenue bridge downtown, and having a lot of babies, most of them bats.

For the record, bats are not “flying mice.” They’re actually part of the Chiroptera order which is related to primates including lemurs, monkeys, apes and humans. Flying monkeys might be closer to the mark. I might have more to say about these bats later, but right now I want to point out that the four of us humans yakked for about two hours that night, covering a wide range of topics. A good bit of the conversation revolved around the burgeoning field of Microbiomes.

According to Wikipedia, a Microbiome is the collective genome or assemblage of DNA of the microorganisms that reside in an environmental niche, although most folks don’t distinguish between the DNA, and the actual critters (microbiota) that live in the niche. A lot of researchers these days are particularly interested in the various human microbiomes, and are busy peering intently into places like your nostrils, ear canals, mouth and other nooks and crannies, to see what lives there.

One of the nooks and crannies receiving major airtime is the large intestine or colon, in particular the distal colon or the end closest to your Nethermost Bodily Aperture (NBA). The distal colon happens to be home to a thriving community of bacteria, fungi, bacteriophages (viruses which prey on bacteria) and worms, not to mention tiny Radiofrequency Identification or RFID chips implanted in all of us by agents of The Department of Environmental Niches. It is estimated that there are at least 100-trillion bacterial cells down there amongst the RFID chips.

To put this into the proper perspective, you need to know that the average adult only has about 10- trillion bodily or somatic cells. That brings up the question of exactly who is the host and who is the colonizer. So while you’re pondering THAT, this is as good a place as any to also think briefly about Topology.

Topology is the branch of Mathematics concerned with “the study of geometric properties and spatial relations unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size of figures” and it comes in handy when you need to answer riddles like “What do a doughnut and a coffee cup have in common?” Well, if you have a doughnut made of Play Doh^TM and you take a graduate-level course in Topology, you eventually can figure out that you can squish and deform the doughnut into a coffee cup, as long as you don’t mess around too much with the hole. (A cardinal rule of Topology!) Or you could just ask any three-year-old and they would set you straight after giggling a bit and looking at you like you suddenly grew two more heads.

This is all relevant, since a human being is essentially a long tunnel (with a few side branches) extending from the mouth to the NBA, surrounded by 10-trillion somatic cells. So all of us, including agents of The Department of Environmental Niches, are basically topologically equivalent to a 10-trillion-cell doughnut covered by a layer of icing made up of 30-or-so-trillion bacterial cells. This is a highly disturbing thought and actually I don’t even know why I brought it up.

Turns out that this thriving 30-to-40-trillion-cell colony of organisms seems to be involved in pretty much every aspect of our existence including, but not limited to: energy harvesting, clearance of toxins, immune function, mood, political preference, favorite animal and so on, although the details of how this happens are still being sorted out.

The thing a rational person is going to ask themselves at this point is: what happens if you take a sample of bacteria from the colon of one person and transplant it into the colon of another person? That is a great question, and you wouldn’t be the first person to ask it. Turns out that these fecal transplants, as they are called, have been carried out to cure intractable diarrhea in people suffering from an overgrowth of a rogue bacterium known as Clostridium Difficile.

An even more interesting question you could ask yourself is: what happens if you take some bacteria from the distal colon of a skinny person and transplant them into the distal colon of a not-so-skinny person? This has already been done in mice and the not-so-skinny mice lost weight without doing anything different such as eating Paleo or taking up kickboxing.

I don’t recommend that you try this at home just yet, although you probably could, using just a few common household implements such as a blender and a turkey baster. Who knows where all this is headed? Maybe people will start having fecal-transplant parties, sort of like Tupperware parties, or those parties from the 1950’s all the Moms brought their kids to so they (the kids) could get chickenpox at the same time.

If you decide to go ahead with this, you should probably try to find a donor who is a triathlete and looks like he is 30 even though he is actually 83, or maybe someone who is a Pilates instructor who can eat anything she wants for her entire life without gaining a microgram, thereby earning the undying hatred of most of the women on this planet, and maybe even women from other planets.

But if you want to restrict your search for a donor to this planet, Austin might be a great place to start. Just watch out for the flying monkeys.

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