Category Archives: Wacky and Weird

It’s a thing (in theatres Friday): Poop Talk

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We were ahead of the curve on mass blogging about barf, we had Don’t Eat Poop T-shirts in four languages (Bill Murray got the Chinese one), but never had the resources to pull off a movie.

Carly Mallenbaum of USA Today asks, should humans be uncomfortable talking about something that everyone does, regardless of age, race, religion, income or gender?.

At least that’s what director Aaron Feldman hopes you do while watching his documentary, Poop Talk (in select theaters Friday in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and other cities, and on demand), which opens a dialogue about doo-doo with the help of dozens of scientists and comedians.

Guests include Dr. Drew Pinsky (who explains that being grossed out by feces has evolutionary purposes), a skittish Eric Stonestreet (the Modern Family actor says he can’t poop in a public restroom), a candid Nicole Byer (she talks about using a plane toilet while eating a burger), a wise Rob Corddry (he owns a tricked-out bidet) and the affable Kumail Nanjiani.

Yes, that’s the same Nanjiani who recently earned an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay for his personal love story, The Big Sick.

The critically acclaimed comedy contains it’s own poop scene, as Kumail tries to figure out why his girlfriend, Emily (played by Zoe Kazan), wants to go to a diner at 3 a.m. for, she says, “a cup of coffee.”

 “Why are you being so weird?” Kumail asks a shifty Emily, who finally reveals her hidden motive: “I have to take a huge (freaking) dookie!”

In Poop Talk, Nanjiani says there are plenty more scatological stories where that one came from.

There’s the joke his dad used to tell about how swallowing gum would make your poop become “a yo-yo.” Nanjiani hated that line, especially because as a child he avoided pooping at all costs.

“I figured (that poop is) all the stuff your body doesn’t need. So if I could figure out the formula and just eat what my body needs, it would all get absorbed into me and then I would never have to poop, right?” he says.

The comedian also recalls a time when he was eight years old. He was talking to another kid at a party, “and I noticed he had (pooped) himself,” Nanjiani says. “He looked me dead in the eyes and said, ‘That’s not poo; it’s party cream.’ “

Hosts on a viral planet: Ancient virus could be the reason humans can think

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An ancient virus could be responsible for human consciousness, giving you the ability to think for yourself.

Researchers in the Dept. of Neurobiology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School have linked a human gene responsible for conscious thought to a virus that was spread in the early days of humanity.

Two papers published in the journal Cell discuss the origins of the Arc gene, which packages up genetic information and sends it around nerve cells in little virus-style capsules.

Sean Keach of the New York Post writes these packages of information are believed to be critical to how our nerves communicate and could be responsible for our thoughts.

Elissa D. Pastuzyn, who authored one of the studies, said: “Evolutionary analysis indicates that Arc is derived from a vertebrate lineage of Ty3/gypsy retrotransposons, which are also ancestors to retroviruses.”

It’s believed that between 40 percent and 80 percent of the human genome was developed thanks to ancient viruses.

Viruses make active changes to your cells, injecting their own genetic code.

This can often be entirely useless — and sometimes causes harm, including the reproduction of more viruses — but occasionally we end up with useful modifications.

And it seems an ancient virus may have given rise to all human thought — thanks to the Arc gene.

Pastuzyn said that the virus was “repurposed during evolution, to mediate intercellular communication in the nervous system.”

James Ashley, who authored one of the studies, said: “The neuronal gene Arc is essential for long-lasting information storage in the mammalian brain, mediates various forms of synaptic plasticity and has been implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders.”

He added that mutations in the gene have been “linked to autism and schizophrenia,” which suggests that Arc has a pivotal role to play in how we perceive and react to the world around us.

Retrovirus-like Gag Protein Arc1 Binds RNA and Traffics across Synaptic Boutons

 Cell Volume 172, Issues 1-2, p262–274.e11

Arc/Arg3.1 is required for synaptic plasticity and cognition, and mutations in this gene are linked to autism and schizophrenia. Arc bears a domain resembling retroviral/retrotransposon Gag-like proteins, which multimerize into a capsid that packages viral RNA. The significance of such a domain in a plasticity molecule is uncertain. Here, we report that the Drosophila Arc1 protein forms capsid-like structures that bind darc1 mRNA in neurons and is loaded into extracellular vesicles that are transferred from motorneurons to muscles. This loading and transfer depends on the darc1-mRNA 3′ untranslated region, which contains retrotransposon-like sequences. Disrupting transfer blocks synaptic plasticity, suggesting that transfer of dArc1 complexed with its mRNA is required for this function. Notably, cultured cells also release extracellular vesicles containing the Gag region of the Copia retrotransposon complexed with its own mRNA. Taken together, our results point to a trans-synaptic mRNA transport mechanism involving retrovirus-like capsids and extracellular vesicles.

Australian student who sold monkey skull to ‘people from Pirates of the Caribbean’ fined

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A few years ago, one of those Johnny-Depp-pirate movies — it may have been 5 — was filming down the highway at the Gold Coast.

The set was plagued by drama when it was discovered Depp and then wife Amber Heard had illegally brought two dogs into the country.

This prompted deputy premier Banaby-the-bloody-carp Joyce (right, not exactly as shown) to question Depp’s acting ability after the couple apologized, which shows how small Australia is because now Joyce is embroiled in his own scandalous activities, involving humans, not pets.

Behind the sideshow of movie making, divorce and apologies, a Canberra university student was on Thursday fined for illegally possessing and importing exotic animal remains into Australia, in a case that has shed some light on the shadowy world of wildlife trade.

Alexandra Back of the Canberra Times reports that for years, avid collector Brent Philip Counsell, 28, dealt in what a magistrate described as a “macabre” trade of skulls and animal specimens, once selling a primate skull to the people making the Pirates of the Caribbean movie in Brisbane.

In 2016 authorities from the department of environment raided Counsell’s home in Deakin where they found and seized about 100 animal specimens from the living room and bedroom.

Australian environment law makes it illegal to either possess or import protected exotic animal specimens without a permit.

Over several years, Counsell either illegally imported or possessed a small primate skull threaded on a necklace, the skulls of a brown bear and a gibbon, a taxidermy buzzard, water monitor lizard, and teeth from a bear and a hippopotamus tooth.

When he spoke to investigators, Counsell admitted possessing and selling species from his website wulfe.com.au, which he had since shut down.

One of the charges stemmed from an admission Counsell made to authorities after they had searched his home, that he had sold a primate skull to the “people” behind the Pirates of the Caribbean movie that was filming in Brisbane.

He tried to avoid detection, and prosecutors found on his phone articles that offered tips about how to send skulls overseas without being noticed by customs.

Rabies (maybe) from bats living in a sorority house, Indiana, 2017

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In February 2017, the Indiana State Department of Health (ISDH) was notified of bat exposures at a university sorority house. The initial complaint was made to ISDH because of concerns for food sanitation. Bats had been routinely sighted in shared living areas and hallways. ISDH, in consultation with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, collaborated with the university and sorority to assess residents and staff members for potential rabies risk. In 2016, 4.3% of all bats tested in Indiana were positive for rabies. The longest incubation period recorded for indigenously acquired bat rabies is 270 days (1); therefore, out of an abundance of caution, ISDH conducted interviews with 140 students and eight employees who resided or worked in the sorority house during the preceding 12 months, all of whom were considered to have possibly been exposed. A web-based survey was administered in February to collect information about bat exposures, which was used to categorize all respondents into having a low, medium, or high risk for rabies exposure per CDC guidance (2).

Persons who reported a bite, scratch, or direct skin contact with a bat were categorized as having a high risk. Persons were categorized as having moderate risk if they reported waking and finding a bat in the same room where they were sleeping. Persons who reported no bat exposure were categorized as having a low risk. Respondents categorized as having a high or moderate risk had follow-up interviews in person or by telephone.

Among the 148 possibly exposed persons, 100 (68%) responded to the questionnaire, including 92 (66%) students and all eight employees; 94 respondents reported ever having seen a bat in the sorority house. Among those 94 persons, 70 (74%) reported having seen a bat within the previous 12 months, and 34 (36%) reported seeing a bat ≤1 month ago. Among respondents who reported ever having seen a bat in the sorority house, 13 (14%) were identified as having a moderate or high risk for rabies exposure, including 11 sorority members, one university employee, and one nonsorority member student. After follow-up interviews, nine of these 13 persons were reclassified as having a low risk for rabies exposure. The remaining four persons were considered to have a high (three persons) or a moderate (one) risk. All four persons received a recommendation for postexposure prophylaxis (PEP), which consists of human rabies immune globulin and a series of 4 doses of rabies vaccine. Two persons completed the PEP series during March 20–April 18, and two declined PEP because of a perceived lack of risk. No respondent had developed clinical rabies as of February 2018.

ISDH learned that bats had been roosting in the building for approximately 30 years. Commercial wildlife operators conducted an environmental investigation in March and identified multiple small openings between the house’s exterior wall and doorframe, which can serve as points of ingress or egress for bats. In addition, certain students reported hearing scratching behind a wall inside the house’s common space. This wall was scheduled to be removed as part of a house remodel during summer 2017. A commercial wildlife control operator repaired the openings and completed building remediation during this time. Students returned to the house in August 2017. No bat sightings have been reported since students returned.

This is the first reported instance of a mass bat exposure in a fraternity or sorority house. Multiple high-risk rabies exposures occurred in this sorority house, attributable to bat colonization of the building. The initial complaint to ISDH related to concerns for food sanitation, rather than rabies, is consistent with previous reports indicating an underappreciation of the health risks associated with indoor bat exposures (3). ISDH communicated the risk for rabies exposure at meetings with students and university housing directors. All bat exposure events should be reported immediately to public health officials, who can provide advice about rabies risk assessments and determination of the need for PEP.

Notes from the Field: Assessment of Rabies Exposure Risk Among Residents of a University Sorority House — Indiana, February 2017

Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report; February 9, 2018; 67(5);166

Betsy Schroeder, DVM; Alex Boland, MPH; Emily G. Pieracci, DVM; Jesse D. Blanton, PhD; Brett Peterson, MD; Jennifer Brown, DVM

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6705a4.htm?s_cid=mm6705a4_e

Corresponding author: Betsy Schroeder, BSchroeder@cdc.gov, 814-248-5774.

1Epidemic Intelligence Service, CDC; 2Indiana State Department of Health; 3Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, CDC.

References

De Serres G, Dallaire F, Côte M, Skowronski DM. Bat rabies in the United States and Canada from 1950 through 2007: human cases with and without bat contact. Clin Infect Dis 2008;46:1329–37. CrossRef PubMed

CDC. Assessment of risk for exposure to bats in sleeping quarters before and during remediation—Kentucky, 2012. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2013;62:382–4. PubMed

DeMent J, Trevino-Garrison I. Investigation of potential rabies exposure while attending a camp, Barton County, June 2010. Topeka, KS: Kansas Department of Health and Environment; 2010. http://www.kdheks.gov/epi/download/Bats_at_Camp_Final_Report.pdf

Can the Internet help make a better person?

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I don’t like myself.

Never have.

I’ve been going to shrinks now for a few years, and while I like the group activity – like the original Bob Newhart show – it’s not really going anywhere, so I thought I’d enlist the help of the collective barfblog.com brain.

I really love Amy, but my level of self-loathing is affecting our relationship.

Any tips and tidbits, please pass along, if it works we can write a book.

UK cops say suspect has refused to poop for 3 weeks

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I poop about three times a day.

Probably not the image you wanted, but it affects my ability to go for a morning run, and dates back to working construction 40 years ago (corn silks can be versatile).

Essex Police in the UK are on #poowatch and tweeting about it. This after a suspected drug dealer believed to have drugs hidden in his body has now for 21 days refused to poop. The BBC reports the 24-year-old was arrested Jan. 17 and has been under supervision since then, with the department’s Operation Raptor team that arrested him providing updates like this one, tweeted Wednesday: “Day 21/3 weeks for our man on #poowatch still no movements/items to report, he will remain with us until Friday when we are back at court where we will be requesting a further 8 days should he not produce anything before that hearing.”

Last Friday they tweeted that the man is being watched by doctors and was in fine health at the time. Per the BBC, police decided to keep the public informed of the man’s bowel movements in an effort to quash any illusions that drug dealing is “glamorous.”

Internet: Freedom’s just another word

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Irony can be ironic sometimes.

This morning I was e-mail chatting with a friend, talking about how I took Madelynn, who is now 30-years-old, to a Grateful Dead concert north of Toronto when she was six-weeks -old.

Later today, word came that Dead songwriter and Internet activist John Perry Barlow had passed at the age of 70.

I was fortunate enough to have met Barlow three or four times in the early 1990s, when he was creating a stir about Internet freedom – even before Al Gore had invented it – at the SIGGRAPH annual meetings.

That’s Special Interest Group – Graphics, which now dominate Western media and culture.

I got to hang out with the Pixar execs, knew why shadows from a lamp named Luxo were special, and have a beverage or two with Barlow.

With a broken heart I have to announce that EFF’s founder, visionary, and our ongoing inspiration, passed away quietly in his sleep this morning. We will miss Barlow and his wisdom for decades to come, and he will always be an integral part of EFF.

It is no exaggeration to say that major parts of the Internet we all know and love today exist and thrive because of Barlow’s vision and leadership. He always saw the Internet as a fundamental place of freedom, where voices long silenced can find an audience and people can connect with others regardless of physical distance.

Barlow was sometimes held up as a straw man for a kind of naive techno-utopianism that believed that the Internet could solve all of humanity’s problems without causing any more. As someone who spent the past 27 years working with him at EFF, I can say that nothing could be further from the truth. Barlow knew that new technology could create and empower evil as much as it could create and empower good. He made a conscious decision to focus on the latter: “I knew it’s also true that a good way to invent the future is to predict it. So I predicted Utopia, hoping to give Liberty a running start before the laws of Moore and Metcalfe delivered up what Ed Snowden now correctly calls ‘turn-key totalitarianism.’”

Barlow’s lasting legacy is that he devoted his life to making the Internet into “a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth . . . a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”

In the days and weeks to come, we will be talking and writing more about what an extraordinary role Barlow played for the Internet and the world. And as always, we will continue the work to fulfill his dream.

Bonhomme Carnival: Pee wee hockey in Quebec

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About 45 years ago, I got to play in the pee wee tournament at the Quebec winter carnival.

In 1974, as a pee wee (ice) hockey goaltender, I boarded a train, with my parents, from Brantford, Ontario to Quebec City.
Today, I’m reading the messages of Australian parents who have sent their Ice Crocs to the same pee wee tournament in Quebec City, as part of the winter carnival, or as the French prof would say, Bonhomme Carnaval, or I would say, Quebec Winter Carnival (and not by train, it would sink).
The pee wee hockey tournament has been a cornerstone of the Quebec Winter Carnival for, forever.

Coming from the town of Gretzky, great expectations were thrust upon the kids from Brantford, and about 10,000 people showed up in the arena where the Nordique used to play (it was probably 500, but great storytelling sometimes requires great imagination).

I let in 4 goals in two periods and was yanked.

My friend Mike (who I used to fear as a better goalie, but now we’re facebook friends) went in for the third and let in two goals.

We lost 6-0.

I have tried to bring these humble homilies to my years of coaching, teaching, and whatever else.

The experience though, was fantastic, hanging out with our host family, walking around in -20C weather, and awestruck by the 30-foot snow piles at the end of driveways.

We lost the game, but learned so much.

This is my way of telling hockey parents — especially the Australian ones —  chill out.

My parents were and are awesome, driving me to the rink, going to Quebec City, getting on a plane when I needed them.