Day: March 17, 2010

Ask Dr. Snee: Got any Irish in you?

Today is St. Patrick’s Day.

And when I think of St. Patrick’s, I think of not pulling out during my annual night of leprechaun-themed sex. (There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for love, unlike certain Meat Loafs.)

Based on your letters, though, most of you think about drinking. Is St. Patrick’s a drinking holiday? I’ve been known tip a keg back for Bastille Day, but imbibing alcohol on a religious day? You people are weird.

Nevertheless, it is my doctorly duty to never turn away a patient until their insurance company says it’s OK. So, let’s get to your questions.
Continue reading Ask Dr. Snee: Got any Irish in you?

Purell to become newest crime tool

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences theorizes that it may be possible to identify individuals using their bacterial trace.

You see, everyone’s covered with bacteria, not just skanky people. Over 100 species worth are all over you right now, spreading to everything you touch. Scientists refuse to call this “the Human Slug Trail,” despite all of our letters. And just like snowflakes, only 13 percent of any person’s contamination field is identical to any other person’s.

So, imagine you’re a writer for CSI or work in the much smaller field of actual crime scene forensics. The Icy-Hot Killer has struck another orphanage, but has left no fingerprints. (And, no, there isn’t any semen.) But say they left their calling card: a single can of Icy-Hot. It may be print-free, but unless they wiped it with Chlorox wipes, there should be a bacteria sample.

(Duh-duh!)

That’s no moon

We’ve always assumed our sun was the only star in our solar system, but maybe not. We could be in a binary system, with a brown dwarf hiding in the Oort cloud. And it could be bombing us with comets. Or a green laser beam. Welcome to your tax dollars at work.

The star, referred to as Nemesis, or “The Death Star,” has been theorized for a while. But now NASA’s new satellite, WISE, could be able to prove its existence for the first time. The theory was developed to explain the waves of mass extinctions on Earth, every 26 million years for the past 250 million years.

Our solar system is surrounded by a vast collection of icy bodies called the Oort Cloud. If our Sun were part of a binary system in which two gravitationally-bound stars orbit a common center of mass, this interaction could disturb the Oort Cloud on a periodic basis, sending comets whizzing towards us.

An asteroid impact is famously responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, but large comet impacts may be equally deadly. A comet may have been the cause of the Tunguska event in Russia in 1908. That explosion had about a thousand times the power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and it flattened an estimated 80 million trees over an 830 square mile area.

So if we’re able to prove that Nemesis does exist, and its irregular orbit around our own sun is causing regular comet attacks, then the next thing will be for our greatest scientific minds to come up with a plan to neutralize it. Our only hope? A race of people that are only vaguely squid-like in name only.

Arguably the best food-chasing holiday

Yes, it might be St. Patrick’s Day, but I’m sad, folks. I’m sad because the Gloucester, England Whitsun cheese rolling has been canceled this year due to safety concerns. Can you imagine?

What can be deemed unsafe about chasing a 7-lb. wheel of cheese down a steep hill? It’s a 200-year-old tradition in England, like the running of the bulls, the only difference is that the cheese doesn’t have horns. Apparently, a bunch of dudes running and falling and rolling end over end down a hill is dangerous.

WHERE IS YOUR SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE NOW?