Starburst Galaxy!

Well, g'day to you, eh! Thanks for dropping out of cyberspace and right into my virtual cafe. I appreciate you spirilling by. Coffee's freshly perked and the array of virtual treats is only a tad less spectacular that the night sky. (Whoa! Find out what he's smokin' and get me some, eh!)

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the image of an unusual galaxy -- a beautiful, glittering swirl named, rather un-poetically, J125013.50+073441.5. (Now that's a mouthful!) A glowing haze of material seems to engulf the galaxy, stretching out into space in different directions and forming a fuzzy streak in this image. 

It is a starburst galaxy -- a name given to galaxies that show unusually high rates of star formation. The regions where new stars are being born are highlighted by sparkling bright blue regions along the galactic arms.

Studying starburst galaxies can tell us a lot about galactic evolution and star formation. These galaxies start off with huge amounts of gas, which is used to form new stars. This period of furious star formation is only a phase; once all the gas is used up, this star birth slows down. Other famous starbursts captured by Hubble include the Antennae Galaxies and Messier 82, the latter of which is forming new stars ten times faster than our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Some people find talking about space boring but to me it is the future of mankind so bear with my occasional references upward if you would. We're not alone out there. I'm convinced of that and each new discovery adds to the wonderment and mystery, don't you agree?  Yeah...uh, whatever, eh!

See ya. Have another VT!

Bob

Your Diet Can Affect Your Brain!

Hey there! Good to see you... virtually! Pour some java juice into your mug and feast on a yogourtly deliciousy virtual muffin. There're new and healthy! In fact, I'd take two because today's post is a little longer than usual...

UCLA researchers now have the first evidence that bacteria ingested in food can affect brain function in humans. In an early proof-of-concept study of healthy women, they found that women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria known as probiotics through yogurt showed altered brain function, both while in a resting state and in response to an emotion-recognition task.

The study, conducted by scientists with UCLA's Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress and the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA, appears in the June edition of the peer-reviewed journal Gastroenterology.

The discovery that changing the bacterial environment, or microbiota, in the gut can affect the brain carries significant implications for future research that could point the way toward dietary or drug interventions to improve brain function, the researchers said.

"Many of us have a container of yogurt in our refrigerator that we may eat for enjoyment, for calcium or because we think it might help our health in other ways," said Dr. Kirsten Tillisch, an associate professor of medicine at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "Our findings indicate that some of the contents of yogurt may actually change the way our brain responds to the environment. When we consider the implications of this work, the old sayings 'you are what you eat' and 'gut feelings' take on new meaning."

Researchers have known that the brain sends signals to the gut, which is why stress and other emotions can contribute to gastrointestinal symptoms. This study shows what has been suspected but until now had been proved only in animal studies: that signals travel the opposite way as well.

"Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut," Tillisch said. "Our study shows that the gut-brain connection is a two-way street."  The small study involved 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55. 

Researchers divided the women into three groups: one group ate a specific yogurt containing a mix of several probiotics -- bacteria thought to have a positive effect on the intestines -- twice a day for four weeks; another group consumed a dairy product that looked and tasted like the yogurt but contained no probiotics; and a third group ate no product at all.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans conducted both before and after the four-week study period looked at the women's brains in a state of rest and in response to an emotion-recognition task in which they viewed a series of pictures of people with angry or frightened faces and matched them to other faces showing the same emotions. This task, designed to measure the engagement of affective and cognitive brain regions in response to a visual stimulus, was chosen because previous research in animals had linked changes in gut flora to changes in affective behaviors.

The researchers found that, compared with the women who didn't consume the probiotic yogurt, those who did showed a decrease in activity in both the insula -- which processes and integrates internal body sensations, like those form the gut -- and the somatosensory cortex during the emotional reactivity task.

Further, in response to the task, these women had a decrease in the engagement of a widespread network in the brain that includes emotion-, cognition- and sensory-related areas. The women in the other two groups showed a stable or increased activity in this network.

During the resting brain scan, the women consuming probiotics showed greater connectivity between a key brainstem region known as the periaqueductal grey and cognition-associated areas of the prefrontal cortex. The women who ate no product at all, on the other hand, showed greater connectivity of the periaqueductal grey to emotion- and sensation-related regions, while the group consuming the non-probiotic dairy product showed results in between.

The researchers were surprised to find that the brain effects could be seen in many areas, including those involved in sensory processing and not merely those associated with emotion, Tillisch said.

The knowledge that signals are sent from the intestine to the brain and that they can be modulated by a dietary change is likely to lead to an expansion of research aimed at finding new strategies to prevent or treat digestive, mental and neurological disorders, said Dr. Emeran Mayer, a professor of medicine, physiology and psychiatry at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study's senior author.

"There are studies showing that what we eat can alter the composition and products of the gut flora -- in particular, that people with high-vegetable, fiber-based diets have a different composition of their microbiota, or gut environment, than people who eat the more typical Western diet that is high in fat and carbohydrates," Mayer said. "Now we know that this has an effect not only on the metabolism but also affects brain function."

The UCLA researchers are seeking to pinpoint particular chemicals produced by gut bacteria that may be triggering the signals to the brain. They also plan to study whether people with gastrointestinal symptoms such as bloating, abdominal pain and altered bowel movements have improvements in their digestive symptoms which correlate with changes in brain response.

Meanwhile, Mayer notes that other researchers are studying the potential benefits of certain probiotics in yogurts on mood symptoms such as anxiety. He said that other nutritional strategies may also be found to be beneficial.

By demonstrating the brain effects of probiotics, the study also raises the question of whether repeated courses of antibiotics can affect the brain, as some have speculated. Antibiotics are used extensively in neonatal intensive care units and in childhood respiratory tract infections, and such suppression of the normal microbiota may have longterm consequences on brain development.

Finally, as the complexity of the gut flora and its effect on the brain is better understood, researchers may find ways to manipulate the intestinal contents to treat chronic pain conditions or other brain related diseases, including, potentially, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and autism.

Answers will be easier to come by in the near future as the declining cost of profiling a person's microbiota renders such tests more routine, Mayer said.

The study was funded by Danone Research. Mayer has served on the company's scientific advisory board. Three of the study authors (Denis Guyonnet, Sophie Legrain-Raspaud and Beatrice Trotin) are employed by Danone Research and were involved in the planning and execution of the study (providing the products) but had no role in the analysis or interpretation of the results.

Well how about them apples, eh! I like yogourt and yes, we pretty well always have a container in the fridge. Occasionally, I'll have it on my oatmeal instead of low-fat milk. It's also a good baking substitute. Guess we'll pick up some probiotics next time we orbit by a supermarket.

See ya, eh!

Bob 

PS: Yogourt ? Yogurt? Yoghurt? Whatever, eh!

Lap Chickens?

Hi ya! How's she going, eh? Nice to see you. Help yourself to a mug of freshly roasted and brewed Arabica and a virtual treat. Try an egg tart, why don't'cha? Who came first...the chicken or the police telling you you couldn't keep chickens in the apartment? Obviously, in that case, the answer is the chicken. On the subject of chickens...

The US Department of Agriculture reported recently that in four of America's largest cities -- New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Denver -- nearly one home out of 100 keeps chickens either for a fresh egg supply or as pets, giving rise to chicken services such as Backyard Poultry magazine, MyPetChicken.com and Julie Baker's Pampered Poultry store. Not really surprising considering the ethnic population in each of those cities, eh.

Among the most popular products are strap-on cloth diapers for the occasions when owners bring their darlings indoors, i.e., cuddle their "lap chickens." Also popular are "saddles" for roosters, to spare hens mating injuries -- owing to roosters' brutal horniness, sometimes costing hens most or all of their back feathers from a single encounter. Sounds as though strap-on leather diapers would be a better bet, no? Kinky!

Hey, while we're talking product names, how about ... pet pampers...or chicken depends. Got any more suggestions? Let me her them! In Bangkok, I'd wager the chicken in the backyard ratio is a lot better than 1 to 100!

See ya, eh!

Bob

PS: Words of advice...never pick up your bubblegum from a chicken coop floor!

Better than Aspirin

Hi ya! Glad you could click by again today!  Got another interesting letter from my pal...Dr. Al. Fill your mug and wrestle one of those virtual apple Dutchies onto your place to enjoy while you read this...

Dear Bob,

Nearly every day, a patient asks me about aspirin and heart attacks and strokes. I usually respond with something like:

“Well, the TV commercials make aspirin prevention sound logical. But it’s not a vitamin or a nutrient. It’s a drug. Drugs are rarely health-enhancing. And taking aspirin regularly often causes a new set of unintended consequences.”

A study published in Lancet Neurology¹ found that strokes caused by high blood pressure dropped by 65 percent in the past 20 years. But in people over 75, so many more strokes occurred among patients taking blood-thinning drugs like aspirin and Warfarin that the overall rate of strokes remained the same.

What’s more, between the two periods studied, the proportion of stroke patients on blood-thinners increased from 4 percent to 40 percent. And the number of strokes associated with these drugs increased by a factor of seven!

In fact, the same researchers estimated that the increasing misuse of drugs like aspirin means that they may soon overtake high blood pressure as the leading cause of stroke in those over 75.

My advice continues to be, “avoid drugs whenever possible.” Daily aspirin appears to be no exception.

Instead, take steps to lower your homocysteine. What’s homocysteine? It’s an amino acid. You produce it naturally as a byproduct of metabolism.

It’s really a “toxic waste” product, something your cells dump into your bloodstream as they burn energy. Too much of it is a serious health risk.

You won’t hear it mentioned in the news stories about heart health. Big Pharma would prefer that you spend your money on expensive and dangerous cholesterol-lowering drugs like Lipitor and Zocor.

But the fact is, homocysteine levels are a better predictor of heart disease and stroke than cholesterol.

Homocysteine is not only a predictor, but also a cause of heart attacks. It irritates the lining of blood vessels. Excess homocysteine keeps your blood vessels from opening up, or “dilating,” properly. This decreases blood flow at critical times. Inadequate blood flow to the heart causes heart attacks. Inadequate blood flow to the brain causes strokes.

If you don’t know your homocysteine level, I recommend you have it checked. A simple blood test will give you an accurate reading.

A level above 10.4 mM/L is abnormally high. I generally shoot for a goal of below 7 with my patients.

You can easily lower your homocysteine levels. It’s as simple as taking a supplement. No harsh drugs are necessary. My bet is that if Merck or Pfizer made a drug for it, homocysteine would be a household word.

The easiest way to lower your homocysteine is with a B vitamin supplement.

Here’s what I recommend:

• Vitamin B6 – 75 mg daily.

• Vitamin B12 – 400 mcg daily.

• Folic Acid – 800 mcg daily.

To Your Good Health,
  Al Sears, MD

Glad someone's looking out for my health, eh!

See ya!

Bob

Is Caffeine What Your Hair Needs?

Well, there you are. I thought it was you flitting through cyberspace. Help yourself to a big mug of Arabica beans and chew your way through them along with a virtual treat while I tell you about yet another use for coffee...or at least caffeine.

Healthy hair and regular hair growth relies on a number of factors, including vitamins, minerals, and the presence of other nutrients. Medications, genetics, nutritional deficiencies, and underlying diseases and disorders can all negatively affect your hair. Caffeine, a naturally-occurring compound found in several plants, might have a beneficial effect on your hair follicles to promote healthy hair.

Caffeine has the ability to interact with your hair follicles, helping to guide your follicles' behavior and regulate hair growth. A study published in the "International Journal of Dermatology" in 2007 found that the presence of caffeine stimulated laboratory-cultured hair follicles, increasing hair growth. As a result, caffeine might help to restore hair growth, or prevent abnormal hair loss. However, the clinical effects of caffeine on promoting hair growth have not yet been thoroughly investigated.

Caffeine Absorption

There are several ways to expose your hair follicles to caffeine, to potentially stimulate hair growth. Caffeine consumed via food and beverages enters your bloodstream, and eventually reaches your hair follicles. In addition, your hair follicles can absorb caffeine directly via topical application of caffeine-enriched shampoo, according to a study published in "Skin Pharmacology and Physiology" in 2007. This might allow doctors to expose your hair follicles to a high dose of caffeine, without causing the side effects that can occur due to high-dose caffeine ingestion. As a result, hair products containing caffeine might represent treatments for hair loss, if caffeine eventually develops into a drug therapy for alopecia.

Possible Benefits in Cancer Therapy

Preliminary studies have identified caffeine as a possible treatment for hair loss, which might have implications in the treatment of other diseases. Many cancer patients receiving radiation therapy suffer hair loss, due to damage to the hair follicles by the radiation. A study published in the "Journal of Radiological Protection" in 2002 found that treating laboratory mice with caffeine helped reduce hair loss following radiation treatment. Although further research into the effect of caffeine on radiation therapy-induced hair loss in humans requires further investigation, caffeine might eventually help prevent hair loss due to some cancer therapies.

 
Recipe for Caffeine shampoo
Mix 4 teaspoons of caffeine powder in eight ounces of shampoo and suds up as usual. You can also mix the caffeine powder in a spray bottle with eight ounces of water, and spritz it on 10-15 minutes before showering.

You can use this treatment each time you shampoo, but don't use it more than once a day.  

Tip: If you start experiencing headaches, you're using too much spritz or shampoo. Stop for a few days (or up to a week), then try again using 2-3 teaspoons of caffeine powder instead.

Caffeine powder is available at most health and wellness stores, several retail stores, and at many shops online, including Amazon.

Nah...think I’ll just drink mine – minus the shampoo, of course.

See ya, eh!

Bob

Government in Action!

Hi ya! How're you doing? Having a taxing day? Aren't we all! As soon as you fill your mug with some delightfully perky coffee and manoeuver a virtual megamuffin onto your plate, I'll tell you about the latest tax in the State of Maryland in the US of A!

"Consider all the ways we're taxed," wrote Maryland's community Gazette in April -- when we're born, die, earn income, spend it, own property, sell it, attend entertainment venues, operate vehicles and pass wealth along after death, among others. 

Maryland has now added a tax on rain. To reduce stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay, the Environmental Protection Agency assessed the state $14.8 billion, which the state will collect starting in July by taxing "impervious surfaces" -- any land area in its 10 largest counties that cannot directly absorb rainwater, such as roofs, driveways, patios and sidewalks.

Holy Doodle! Next thing you know, they'll be taxing your...you know! 

See ya, eh!

Bob

A Game for Someone Sometime in the Future

Well, g'day to you, eh! How's things at your end? Your end of cyberspace, that is... Here the coffee's tantalizing aroma is wafting across the room right past the tray of scrumptilitous virtual treats so dig in! Today I want to tell you about a game that neither you nor I will ever play.

American Jason Roher has recently won a game design competition after creating a board game that no one is likely to play anytime in the near future, if ever. Called A Game for Someone, Roher’s game was made from titanium, to stand the test of time, and buried somewhere in the Nevada Desert, where it will probably be discovered by an advanced civilization, or zombies, thousands of years from now.

“I wanted to make a game that is not for right now, that I will never play,” Rohrer said, “and nobody now living would ever play.” Inspired by ancient board games like Mancala, as well as “the architects and builders who, over hundreds of years, constructed religious cathedrals that they themselves would never set foot in, never see completed in their lifetimes”, the designer set out to create a game that actually worked, without ever playing it himself. 

To do that, he first conceived it in computer form, by designing a set of rules that would be playtested not by a human, but by the computer. He told reporters he ended up plugging the game’s rules into a “black box”, and letting the artificial intelligence find imbalances, iterating new rules and repeating. 

Once the game was playable, he started manufacturing it. He couldn’t shape it from degradable materials like wood, glass or cardboard, so he ultimately decided on making the 18-inch by 18-inch game board and its piece out of 30 pounds of titanium.

Apart from that, I can't tell you anything about the game. No one can. We'll have to wait for a future life. Intriquing concept, though, eh? Reminds me of when I went to John Rennie High School in Pointe Claire, Quebec (a long time ago). I was one of the students in the first year the school opened and to commemorate the opening, later that year, they constructed this marble piece outside the front doors with a compartment inside it containing photos of all the students (uh huh, yours truly's pic is in there). The marble commemorative piece is not supposed to be opened for, I think it was 100 years. Do you know what? We are already in the second half of that time period.

See ya, eh!

Bob

Doggie Robots tell you when your feet stink!

Hey! Good to see you. Help yourself to a mugga and a virtual treat while I fill you in on what those inventive Japanese are up to now. 

CrazyLobo robots have much to say about your mouth and foot odor

Japanese company CrazyLobo has developed a humanoid resembling a female and a robotic dog which reports the level of unpleasant odors of their owner through vocal and behavioral responses.

The robotic dog named Shuntaro-kun does not give vocal responses with specific messages but responds in a behavioral way when rating the smell of a person’s feet. Good smelling feet will elicit a nuzzling reaction from the robotic dog, but a slightly bad feet odor will induce it to bark. Strong bad feet odor will make it fall down and growl. But a pair of extremely stinky feet will cause it to lose consciousness.

Japan is known for its polite and proprietary culture as well as for its advanced progress in technology. CrazyLobo integrates the two to come up with a solution to the ancient problem of letting someone know when they smell bad.

Now ain't that something, eh. Nong and I are on the lookout for a robot dog...not the foot-smelling type - just your average, run of the mill robot dog. Let me know if you see one in a store anywhere, eh. Don't have to feed it, walk it, get it shots, take it to the vet and it won't chew your shoes.

See ya, eh!

Bob

Human Snail Carries His Home Around!

Hey! Hey! Great to see you today! Wassup? Ready for coffee? Here...let me pour you one. Virtual doughnut? Muffin? Pastry? Chinese dumpling? Oops...how did that sneak in there? Ah...just a segue into our topic today. Imagine carrying your home on your back wherever you go...

38-year-old Liu Lingchao is a real-life human snail who carries his 60-kg-heavy house on his back wherever he goes. Made of bamboo poles and plastic sheets, the portable home provides shelter on Liu’s long travels through China.

Liu Lingchao makes a living selling plastic bottle and metal cans he picks up from the streets of various Chinese cities. The man from Rong’an, Guangdong Province, built his first mobile home five years ago, as a way to save money on his long journeys, and for protection against rain and cold weather. Liu found life as a snail to his liking, and has since then worn out three bamboo huts. 

His newest one is 1.5 meters wide and and 2.2 meters tall, offering him just enough room for a modest bedding and his travel necessities. Its 60 kg weight is not exactly easy for one man to carry, so Liu really is moving at the pace of a snail along China’s roads, but it beats having to look for shelter wherever he goes, and says the fact that he can settle down virtually anywhere he wants is worth the effort. 

The human snail left Wuzhou City several months ago, and is now just 20 miles away from completing an epic 270-mile walk and returning to his home town.

The world is full of bizarre happenings, oddities and people doing strange things. Not everyone is happy being crammed into society's normality, are they? 

See ya, eh!

Bob 

Grate Fishing in The Big Apple!

Hi ya! How're you doing today? Reeling them in? Good to here! Reel yourself in a mugful of coffee and a virtual treat. Nothing fishy about those beauties, I'll tell you! Say...here's a 'grate' way to supplement your income...

Eliel Santos fishes the grates of New York City seven days a week, reeling in enough bounty to sustain him for the last eight years, he told the New York Post in April. The "fishing line" Santos, 38, uses is dental floss, with electrician's tape and Blue-Touch mouse glue -- equipment that "he controls with the precision of an archer," the Post reported. 

His biggest catch ever was a $1,800 (pawned value) gold and diamond bracelet, but the most popular current items are iPhones, which texting-on-the-move pedestrians apparently have trouble hanging onto. 

I'm not surprised that people drop their cellphones down grates. You'd be amazed at how many get dropped in the toilet! Well, good fishing, Eliel! It takes a good eye and a steady hand. Probably a bottle of hand sanitizer, too, eh!

See ya!

Bob 

She's a Real Charmer!

Well hi there! How's it going? A little snaky today, are we? Well that fits right in with the topic of the day. Soon as you fill your mug and hoist a  virtual megamuffin onto your plate, I'll tell you about it.

The beauty pageant each April at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, requires traditional skills like interview poise, evening-gown fashion and talent, but also some ability and inclination to milk and skin rattlers. 

High school senior Kyndra Vaught won this year's Miss Snake Charmer, wearing jeweled boots one night for her country-western ballad, then Kevlar boots and camouflage chaps the next as she took on dozens of rattlers in the wooden snake pit. Vaught expertly held up one serpent, offered its tail-end rattles for a baby to touch, then helped hold, measure, milk and skin a buzzing, slithery serpent. 

A Los Angeles Times dispatch noted that Vaught hoped to be on her way soon to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Wonder if she'll take up the snake charmer's flute or recorder or whatever it is they claim to be able to charm snakes with. Whatever it is, it's a sham because snakes don't have ears. They don't sway back and forth to the music...they don't have the sense of hearing. It's the movement of the snake charmer that does it...but you knew that, right?

Good luck, Kendra. (Just don't piss her off, eh!)

See  ya!

Bob

A New Fashion Trend?

Hi ya! Great to see you today. Thanks for coming by. I appreciate it. It would be a lonely day without you, y'know. Coffee's just perked and there's a tray of delicious virtual treats next to the pot...coffeepot, that is...not the...oh, never mind! Hey, I thought I'd bring you what could be a new fashion trend. This one is from Papua New Guinea and it's making wigs out of your own hair!

The Huli Wigmen are a tribe that inhabit several villages in Papua New Guinea. They are known both as some of the most fierce warriors in the region and as masterful “hairstylists”who craft flamboyant wigs out of their own hair.

Not much is known about the origins of the Huli men’s tradition of crafting wigs from their own hair. When researchers discovered the tribe, they were already practicing the custom, and since they are believed to have lived in the area for at least 1,000 years, the tradition must have been developed sometime during this period. 

Males in their late teenage years and early 20′s leave their community behind and go to Bachelor school, where older man teach them all about manhood, including how to make beautiful wigs from their own hair. They are sequestered in the jungle for at least 18 months, after which they can return to their villages or stay a while longer to acquire more knowledge and improve their skills. The wig-making process starts with the trainees growing out their hair. 

When it’s big enough, the shaping of the wigs begins while the hair is still attached to their heads. Most of the shapes are saucer-like, so the men have to sleep with bricks and other objects under their heads to keep their heads off the ground and prevent the hair from getting flattened.

Hmmm...I think I've seen him in Walmart!

Send me a picture when you get yourself all wigged up...

See ya, eh!

Bob

Poutine Doughnuts? Why not!

Hey! Hey! You came back. I don't blame you since I promised I'd share a poutine doughnut recipe with you. Help yourself to a mug of coffee and a virtual treat. Hey! Great to see you, by the way.

This recipe comes from Ricardo - a little fun to turn a Quebec favourite into a creative doughnut treat...virtually, eh! The final product will appear to look like a delicious poutine creation, however, it's actually made from delectable doughnuts. Here's the recipe. Don't forget to upload me a couple!

Ingredients

Caramel sauce (gravy)
• 60 ml (1/4 cup) water
• 375 ml (1 1/2 cups) sugar
• 45 ml (3 tablespoons) corn syrup
• 250 ml (1 cup) 35% cream
• 180 ml (3/4 cup) semi-salted butter, cut into cubes
Crullers (fries)
• 430 ml (1 3/4 cups) milk
• 250 ml (1 cup) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 2.5 ml (1/2 teaspoon) salt
• 310 ml (1 1/4 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 5 eggs
• Vegetable oil for deep-frying
• 125 ml (1/2 cup) sugar
• 30 ml (2 tablespoons) ground cinnamon
Mock cheese curds
• Large marshmallows, torn into pieces

 

Preparation

Caramel sauce (gravy)

1.In a saucepan over medium heat, bring the water, sugar and corn syrup to a boil. Using a wet pastry brush, wash down any sugar crystals from the sides of the pan. Cook without stirring until the mixture turns golden.

2.Remove from the heat and add the cream gradually while stirring. Continue cooking over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture is smooth.

3.Whisk in the butter until the sauce is smooth. Let cool.

Crullers (fries)

4.Preheat the oil in the deep fryer to 190°C (375°F). Line a baking sheet with paper towels or set a cooling rack on it.

5.In a large saucepan over medium-high heat, bring the milk to a boil with the butter and salt. Remove from the heat. Add the flour all at once and stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until the dough forms a smooth ball.

6.Return the saucepan to the burner over low heat and stir until the dough pulls away from the sides of the saucepan, about 2 minutes.

7.Remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes. Add the eggs 1 at a time. After each addition, beat vigorously with a wooden spoon or electric mixer until the dough is smooth.

8.Using a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2-cm (1/4-inch) star tip, pipe 15-cm (6-inch) ribbons one at a time into the deep fryer. Fry about 8 crullers at a time, turning them halfway through cooking, until golden, 4 to 5 minutes. Drain on the baking sheet.

9.In a deep stainless steel mixing bowl, combine the sugar and cinnamon.

10.Dip the hot churros into the sugar mixture. Shake the bowl to coat well and shake off the excess sugar. Set churros aside on a baking sheet preheated to 100°C (212°F).

11.Repeat with the remaining dough.

Assembly

12.Pile the crullers in 8 bowls, drizzle with sauce and sprinkle with marshmallow pieces. Serve warm.

What a perfect complement to a Heart Attack burger eh!

Wouldn't surprise me a bit to see Tim Hortons adding these new delectable doughnuts to its ever-expanding offerings.

See ya, eh!

Bob

Poutine in a Bottle!

Well, hi there! Thanks for clicking by the ol' cyber cafe today. Nice to see you! Help yourself to a mugful of coffee and a virtual treat or two. Sorry...I haven't gotten around to trying to make poutine muffins yet.

Don't know what poutine is? A simple dish...a plate full of fries, topped with cheese curds and smothered in gravy. Hearty! It's a big favourite in Quebec and spills over into Ontario on the one side...New Brunswick on the other and possibly even New York State to the south.

Apparently a poutine doughnut was recently invented. But it looks like Jones Soda Co. has gone one step further with flavored soda pop that tastes like poutine.

This limited-edition flavour, brought to you by the popular Seattle-based pop company largely known for its root beer, cream sodas and lemonades, will be available in select cities across Canada and most notably in Quebec, where poutine was supposedly invented in the 1950s.

So there you go. Your education just went up to the next level of poutineness. If Seattle is getting into the act, holy doodle! That means poutine has spread itself across the prairies and right out to the west coast. A good gravy will do that!

See ya, eh!

Bob

PS: Tomorrow, I'm going to bring you a recipe so's you'll know how to make your own batch of poutine doughnuts, eh!

Get Ready for the Sixth Major Extinction

Ah good...you're still there! Me, too...but for how much longer, eh? Good to see you anyway. Got your world disaster shelter ready yet? Never mind - you should still have time. Before you get back at it, take time to pour yourself a perky mug of coffee and feast on a virtual muffin. Today's post is wrested from an email sent to me by Brian in Pattaya and was written (I won't say penned because nobody 'pens' things these days except pigs) by Bill Bonner. If you're into stocks and bonds, you'll know who he is and if you're not, you won't. He does write some intriguing stuff, though.

No need to ask those questions... not when human beings are disappearing down the rathole of history.

The last major extinction took out the dinosaurs; 76% of all species alive at the time died out. And that was nothing, compared with the one that came before it, known as the Great Dying – 185 million years earlier. That wiped out 95% of all species. Like a stock market crash, an extinction takes out the most successful, most ubiquitous species.

So far, the planet has suffered five major extinctions. Newsweek says we may already be into the sixth:

Over the past four years, bee colonies have undergone a disturbing transformation. As helpless beekeepers looked on, the machine-like efficiency of these communal insects devolved into inexplicable disorganization. Worker bees would fly away, never to return; adolescent bees wandered aimlessly in the hive; and the daily jobs in the colony were left undone until honey production stopped and eggs died of neglect. Colony collapse disorder, as it is known, has claimed roughly 30% of bee colonies every winter since 2007.

If bees go extinct, their loss will trigger an extinction domino effect, because crops from apples to broccoli rely on these insects for pollination. At the same time, over a third of the world's amphibian species are threatened with extinction, and Harvard evolutionary biologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson estimates that 27,000 species of all kinds go extinct per year.

Are we in the first act of a mass extinction that will end in the death of millions of plant and animal species across the planet, including us? Proponents of the "sixth extinction" theory believe the answer is yes...

The climate change that occurred during the Great Dying – most likely involving megavolcanoes that erupted for centuries in Siberia – was similar to the one our planet is undergoing right now. Regardless of whether humans are responsible, the sixth mass extinction on Earth is going to happen. We have ample evidence that Earth is headed for disaster, from elevated rates of extinction among birds and amphibians to superstorms and the recent Midwestern drought, corroborating the idea that we might be living through the early days of a new mass extinction.

Bummer. The bees are starting to act like Republicans: hopelessly disorganized... desperately short of ideas. And if they can't get their act together, we are all going to hell.

But it was bound to happen, wasn't it? Whenever there is a chart with a line that goes vertical... it invariably leads to a line that goes vertical in the opposite direction. What goes up must go down. What lives, dies. Bear markets follow bull markets. Busts follow booms. And ants follow picnics.

If it were up to us, it wouldn't work that way. Neither death nor taxes would be inevitable. But we're not the Decider. And whoever is the Decider seems to prefer symmetry over immortality. That's just the way it is.

As you can see below, when you look at a chart of the growth of the human population over the centuries, you see a long, nearly flat line stretching from about 1800 back to the beginning of time. But after 1800, the line suddenly goes vertical.

What gives? Better food, better medicine, indoor plumbing. People stopped dying the way they used to. And the number of humans on Earth multiplied. Even in our lifetimes – from 1950 to today – the population of the planet has doubled.

Now comes the blowback... the bust... the downswing. If we're lucky, 75-95% of the human population will die off. If we're unlucky, it will be 100%.

But seriously, this is another reason for staying out of the stock market. We wouldn't want to own a portfolio of growth stocks, not when a major extinction approaches. It would be embarrassing. (Regards, Bill Bonner)

(Thanks, Brian!)

Hope to see ya tomorra...assuming we're all still here, eh!

Bob

Sharkskin Designer Gloves Are a Real Pain to Take Off

Well, hi there! Thanks for clicking by today. Fill your mug and tempt yourself with a tasty virtual treat whilst I bend your ear a little. Remember those Indian Fakirs who liked to sleep on beds of nails? Well they've got nothing on the latest designer gloves.

If you’re looking for a pair of comfortable designer gloves, stay away from Sruli Recht’s pain-inducing mitts. The Australian designer used an inner lining made of basking shark skin, which features thousands of hook-like scales.

From the outside, Sruli Recht’s Lasting Impression looks like a nice and soft basking shark skin glove, but there’s a thorny surprise waiting inside for would-be wearers. The eccentric designer decided to fit the interior of his creation with thousands of sharp hook-like scales, all directed inward. That means the gloves are easy to put on, but literally a pain to take off. “Should you put your hand in, you will discover that the thorns, all directed to slant inward, will lock your hand in place in the manner of ten thousand fishhooks. Should you attempt to remove it, the thousands of thorns will bite into the skin. 

You can put the gloves on, but to remove them would mean to cut them off. Gloves for life, or for one wear – the ultimate and final commitment,” Recht writes on his website. Of course, you could always cut it off to avoid experiencing the excruciating pain, but then again, you would be throwing a good $950 right off the window. I say pull the hand out! Yes, you’ll probably faint from the pain, but you will have ripped off most of the spikes, and ended up with a nice, comfortable glove. Plus, you’ll feel like a real man…in a lot of pain! Has to be similar to a guy with four mothers-in-law, wouldn't ya say?

See ya, eh!

Bob

Postscript: I know a little about basking sharks having covered them in a science lesson some time ago. Basking sharks are the second largest fish in the sea after the whale shark. On average the adults measure 6-8m in length. According to Wikipedia, the largest basking shark ever recorded, 12.27 m, was also caught in a herring weir on the Bay of Fundy in 1851.Now that'd make a lot of gloves, wouldn't it?