">My Big World Of Crap

I’m not talking just about me, but the world in general.  As of now, the world has not been sucked into a black hole, created by the CERN experiment that commenced operations in Switzerland a few days ago.  One of the fears held by some people was that the experiments using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which basically fires beams of atoms around in opposite directions and smashes them into each other with the aim being to see what comes out of the atomic particles when they are smashed, would generate so much energy that mini black holes would be formed which might suck the Earth into them.

Well, that hasn’t happened so far.  But that didn’t help a girl in India who apparently committed suicide due to fears about the world ending.  She jumped the gun, so to speak …. should have waited to see what happened first.  Also, as posed by this article, why would she choose to die painfully by drinking pesticide, versus being painlessly vapourised in a black hole.

As for what the LHC is, and what it is supposed to prove for its price tag of $10 billion, here is a useful summary.

Apparently athletes are using drugs like Viagra and Cialis to improve their performance - and I don’t mean their horizontal dance performance.

Drug testers say they are regularly turning up traces of the drugs in urine samples they examine, but the drugs are not on the sports list of banned substances. It is thought the drug helps the delivery of oxygen to muscles. Some experts believe it could help in events requiring spurts of power, like sprinting. Others think it might help endurance athletes, especially at altitude.

At least in the male athletes this will be easy to detect, no drug tests needed.

Dr Don Catlin, an American anti-doping expert, said:

“There has actually been a study in mountaineers, people climbing at high altitude on or off of Viagra, showing that it does produce marginal improvements,”

Not only that, it gives them an extra piton to use if they get in trouble during the climb, perhaps another brake bar on their rappel rack?

Technorati Tags: Viagra, Cialis, drug cheats, anti-doping

Scientists have found that watermelon has effects similar to Viagra. It contains an ingredient called citrulline that can trigger production of a compound that helps relax the body’s blood vessels, similar to what happens when a man takes Viagra, said scientists in Texas.

Found in the flesh and rind of watermelons, citrulline reacts with the body’s enzymes when consumed in large quantities and is changed into arginine, which boosts nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, the same basic effect that Viagra has. According to Bhimu Patel, one of the researchers:

“Watermelon may not be as organ-specific as Viagra, but it’s a great way to relax blood vessels without any drug side effects.”

The nitric oxide can also help with angina, high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems, according to the study, which was paid for by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Only one slight problem: you would need to eat about six cups of watermelon to get enough citrulline to boost the body’s arginine level.

I can see a few downsides in using watermelon as a natural substitute for Viagra:

• having to munch through a large hunk of watermelon might kill the mood
• its a lot messier than taking a small tablet
• shipping watermelons by mail order is much harder than pills
• storing a decent supply of watermelons could be tricky
• I don’t want to be hassled at the markets by dodgy characters trying to sell me black market watermelons.

Technorati Tags: watermelon, viagra, arginine, citrulline

Internet addiction is a “common” mental disorder that should be recognised by health officials. The American Journal of Psychiatry published an editorial claiming that internet addiction met the criterion for a mental disorder and called on the American Psychiatric Association to officially list it as such.

According to the editorial, internet addiction consists of three particular subtypes: excessive gambling, sexual preoccupations and email or text messaging.

Phew!!! That seems to rule out blogging … unless of course you’re blogging about gambling, sex or email and text messaging (although I suppose you could say those latter ones and reading and posting on blogs are very similar).

Believe it or not!

Some men should have sex every day to maximise the chances of getting their partner pregnant, researchers say.

Actually, this is not just stating the obvious, nor is it some guys making shit up to get more sex,

It is known for couples with fertility problems to abstain from sex for several days to boost sperm numbers before trying to conceive.  However, researchers have found this might result in poorer quality sperm.  Dr Allan Pacey, the secretary of the British Fertility Society, said that while not having sex allowed the numbers of sperm to build up, there was a “trade-off” between quality and quantity.

“This research shows that when you put people on a daily ejaculation regime, it reduces the figure for DNA damage.”

The conclusion of the researchers was that if a couple was initially trying to get pregnant, an interval of two to three days was probably advisable - whereas a man with high DNA damage and a “decent” sperm count should try more often.