The title of this post really says it all, and I could just leave it at that. Pooping does make you smarter.

What? You want an explanation?

Alright, for those of you who think I am crazy, here is why I believe that.

Most men… scrap that… all men read while they, well, poop. At least I know I do. I live in British Columbia, and the Province sends out a free health guide with answers to common health questions. For some reason our health guide wound up in the bathroom, and, naturally, I decided to read a bit of it every time I – well, you know.

I joked with my wife that I was learning to be a doctor, and during the next several “sessions” I actually found my self learning things about various medical issues that I had not known before. Would I have ever read that medical guide otherwise? Probably not, unless I needed it to look up a specific rash or something.

I am also a big fan of Discover Magazine. The magazine is far more technical than my brain can digest, but I still manage to learn things every time I take the throne – and yes, that’s pretty much the only place I read it. I learn something every time. It’s no wonder many people call it the library.

So you can see, that by my own personal experience, I have proven that pooping does in fact make you smarter! You simply don’t need any more proof than that.

Earlier today a friend of mine sent me a news story, which sparked this entire article. In the story a specific company was mentioned. Normally I would have never heard about them, but I recalled the exact moment I read of their existence. I was reading a magazine, while, you guessed it, doing my business. In that instance I was away on a short holiday and was staying in a hotel, but for some reason, the name of that business, and how I heard of it stuck with me. Apparently there must be a connection between pooping and memory as well.

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If you have never checked out TED.com, you should do so. There are presentations from professionals on nearly all topics, and most are extremely interesting.

The latest one I saw that I found very interesting was Dan Buettner, How to live to be 100+.

Here’s the video:

The Loch Ness Monster has been found!

If you take a look at Google Earth (57°12?52.13?N, 4°34?14.16?W) and scroll down a bit, you’ll see that this could be the discovery of the Loch Ness Monster! (To the left of the boat).

It could also be nothing. I am guessing nothing. But it could be the real thing too.

What are your thoughts? How would you explain this?

Earlier this year it was thought that Google Earth had uncovered the lost city of Atlantis.

A reminder to everyone living in places where daylight savings is in effect. It is now March, and in one week it will be time to turn your clocks back 1 hour!

On the wee hours of Sunday March 8, 2009, its time to gain that extra hour, so don’t forget, or you will end up going to work Monday morning an hour early!

If you are interested in a bit of history behind Daylight Savings, check out my post from back in October: “Daylight Savings Explained“.

A few weeks back I wrote a little post about Chimeras. A Chimera is a person who is born with two different sets of DNA. The DNA may be split up throughout different parts of the body and can result in patches of different colored skin, internal organs with entirely different DNA, or even in some cases can result in hermaphrodites (people born with both male and female sex organs). In a conversation I had with my wife last week I got to thinking about this.

If a person has split DNA, one of a male, and one of a female, I had to wonder if this is what could lead to homosexuality. If the part of the brain that determines sexual orientation had the DNA of a Woman, but the rest of the person had the DNA of a man, would this make the man gay?

People who have two sets of DNA (Chimeras) are a relatively recent discovery, and because the different set of DNA can be hidden pretty much anywhere, it would be very difficult to prove. They suspect this phenomenon to be rare, but seeing as how so few people go through DNA testing, and that it would be virtually impossible to test every part of ones body and internal organs this is something that could be far more common than we could ever know.

Political Correctness
For the record, I am not sure if the word “homosexuality” is politically correct, and for that matter I am not even sure if we are supposed to say “gay” any more. All I know is that what I have written here is not meant to be offensive in any way. Let’s face it, homosexuality is not “normal”, at least at the most basic levels of nature. The meaning of life as I see it is about reproduction and a same sex relationship does not result in the spawn of offspring. As a result, in order for someone to be gay would there not have to be something different about the inner workings of their brain? The whole “Chimera” thing, at least to me, seems like a plausible answer as to what makes a person gay.

I am not saying that there is anything wrong with women dating women, and men dating men – if that’s your preference, all the power to you, I support same-sex marriage etc – everyone is equal and should have the same equal rights. I am just saying that when it comes to the fundamentals of life, being attracted to the same sex is not “normal” and as such there must be some answer as to why this happens.

(If you are offended by anything I have said here, drop me a comment on this post and let me know your view – I am curious to see how other people feel about this)

DNA is a scary thing. Law enforcement and the legal system use’s it for proving just about everything. On one hand it’s an amazing tool in identifying criminals, but it is not foolproof.

Recently my wife and I were watching the Discovery channel and they were talking about people who are “Chimeras”. You can research the details of this yourself, but in essence it is someone who is born with two different sets of DNA caused by the fusing of twins at the very early stages of pregnancy.

The two sets of DNA can be found just about anywhere. In one example a woman’s gallbladder had separate DNA from the rest of her body.

The show went on to discuss the case of one woman who was having her kids taken away from her by the courts. They claimed that they were not her kids, and DNA testing proved that they were not a match, but in fact, they were actually her kids.

After a lengthy court battle and several DNA tests, they ultimately found her to be a chimera, and as such, the DNA they could test, blood, hair, etc, was not a match for her kids, but that there was DNA hidden within her that was a match.

DNA, which seems like concrete evidence, has its holes, and our legal system relying so heavily on it to prove cases is scary – If you are actually innocent, but DNA tests somehow come up showing you as guilty, how on earth can you fight that?

I saw a crazy video today. I have heard about this before, but watching the video makes it all that much cooler.

Apparently if you toss boiling water into the air at a temperature of -34 F, the water will instantly turn to snow.

I would love to try this myself, but the coldest it gets around my part of the world is about -15 C, or 5 F. Not long ago I lived in Dease Lake, and it definitely gets cold enough there, but unfortunately I didn’t know about this at the time. Oh well.

2008 was already a leap year, and now, you can tack on an extra second to your clocks, making it officially the longest year since 1992.

At 6:59:59 pm be sure to set your clocks ahead by 1 second to 7:00:00. Mind you unless you can adjust your clock at warp speed, you’ll miss the time change all together.

The extra second being added to our lives will go unnoticed by almost all of society, but for those scientists making precise calculations about stuff, I am sure it will be a very significant factor requiring days and weeks of additional math.

I had never heard of this before, but the addition of “leap seconds” is apparently old news. Since 1972 the world’s time keepers have been adding seconds to our years, sometimes as often as twice a year. This upcoming adjustment will be the first since Dec 31 2008.

The Earth is apparently slowing down ever so slowly and the addition of this second is required by time keepers to keep everything in sync.

I guess that makes me several seconds older than I thought I was. I feel like I have been robbed of a big part of my life. Who can I sue? Can I get paid for all those seconds worked in the past? Maybe I might get lucky and get an extra penny or two for all those unpaid seconds. If not I just may need to make an appearance on Judge Judy.

I had a weird dream last night. I remember next to nothing about it, other than two parts. #1 – It was really weird and #2 – I had the power to rid the world of all disease. Not sure where the power came from, or what I did with it, just that I had it.

When I woke up I thought “that would be cool”. Then I started to wonder – but would it? Most of us (probably all of us), have been affected by some disease – whether it’s cancer, diabetes, MS, MD, Aids, ALS, or any one of the countless disease out there – so on the surface, curing everything seems like a great idea.

But is it? Is it really? Earth is suffering from a horrible virus called humans. We’re killing this planet – sort of. In the long run, Earth will survive long after humans are gone, but we’re not doing it any favors. Perhaps disease is simply Earth’s way, to try and fight this horrible human virus. But let’s forget about that for a moment, what about what’s best for us?

Humans as a whole are dealing with overpopulation, and in many areas there simply isn’t enough food or clean water to keep us going – so how would riding disease help – I’m not sure it would – ridding disease would mean an even faster population growth on this planet, and more people without food and water.

As of November 2008, the world population was an estimated 6.72 billion. By 2050 it’s predicted that we will be closing in on 9 billion people (according to a page on Wikipedia).

To see if curing all disease would be a good thing, I wanted to know how many people die each year as a result of disease alone. Good luck finding that statistic! I did find a stat that noted roughly 56,000,000 people die each year. I couldn’t find any figures however, on how that number breaks down…

So here we go – I am not a scientist, the numbers represented in this blog are not official in any way – I am going to take a totally rough guess as to what percentage I think that number may represent in terms of death by disease. Lets say… hmm… 25%. Too low? Too High? I dunno. It’s a guess. Leave me a comment if you think I’m way off – I’m listening.

Let’s assume for a moment that my figure is correct, cause, well, it probably is perfect, after all I chose it. That would mean that roughly 14,000,000 people die each year from disease. If we go 42 years into the future, and assume that this rate stays the same – that means that between now and 2050, the population could be 588 million people denser (assuming none of these people die of old age)

Hmm… In some super rare off-chance that my figures are 100% perfect, that’s really not that big of a difference – I suspected the figure to be in the billions before I wrote this blog post. This of course doesn’t factor in the natural death of old age, or other tragic accidents, nor does it factor in a lot of other stuff – its just an incredibly rough, uneducated guess, but if in fact my numbers are even remotely close to anything representing reality, then I guess, curing all disease, wouldn’t really be a bad thing for humanity after all.

If disease is nature’s penicillin to rid the world of humans, then it needs to get a stronger dose, assuming that my figures are even in the ball park (which they may very well not be).

A story on Fox News Wednesday caught my attention. A tiny primate known as a “pygmy tarsier” has been thought to be extinct as they have not been spotted in more than 85 years.

Back in 2000, scientists trapping rats believed they had accidentally trapped and killed one of these small 2oz creatures. This drove Sharon Gursky-Doyen from Texas A&M University to go and search for the small primate.

This past summer they were able to catch and fit three of the animals with radio collars. Gursky-Doyen was bitten by one, which later was eaten by a hawk – rough life for the little guy.

Funded by the National Geographic Society, researchers are learning more about these rare and mysterious nocturnal creatures.

They also make the perfect gift for Christmas, so be sure to buy one for your cat today.