June 24, 2005
Breast effect
Heh, over 800 visitors to this site today already, and it's not even noon yet. Tara Reid's breasts are apparently still a hot commodity on the Internet today.
June 23, 2005
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Farts, But You Were Laughing Too Hard To Ask
This is from an e-mail received from my sister-in-law, Jody, so I can in no way claim credit for any of this material. It's good information though. Very useful.
#1 - What makes farts stink?
The odor of farts comes from small amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas and mercaptans in the mixture. These compounds contain sulfur. Nitrogen-rich compounds such as skatole and indole also add to the stench of farts. The more sulfur-rich your diet, the more sulfides and mercaptans will be produced by the bacteria in your guts, and the more your farts will stink. Foods such as cauliflower, eggs and meat are notorious for producing smelly farts, whereas beans produce large amounts of not particularly stinky farts.
#2 - Why are stinky farts generally warmer and quieter than regular farts?
Most fart gas comes from swallowed air and consists largely of nitrogen and carbon dioxide, the oxygen having been absorbed by the time it reaches the anal opening. These gases are odorless, although they often pick up other (and more odiferous) components on the way through the bowel. They emerge from the anus in fairly large bubbles at body temperature. A person can often achieve a good sound with these voluminous farts, but they are commonly (but not always!) mundane with respect to odor, and don't feel particularly warm.
Another major source of fart gas is bacterial action. Bacterial fermentation and digestion processes produce heat as a byproduct as well as various pungent gases. The resulting bubbles of gas tend to be small, hot, and concentrated with stinky bacterial metabolic products. These emerge as the notorious, warm, SBD (Silent-But-Deadly), often in amounts too small to produce a good sound, but excelling in stench.
#3- How much gas does a normal person pass per day?
On average, a person produces about half a liter of fart gas per day, distributed over an average of about fourteen daily farts. Whereas it may be difficult for you to determine your daily flatus volume, you can certainly keep track of your daily numerical fart count. You might try this as a science fair project: Keep a journal of everything you eat and a count of your farts. You might make a note of the potency of their odor as well. See if you can discover a relationship between what you eat, how much you fart, and how much they smell.
#4 - How long does it take fart gas to travel to someone else's nose?
Fart travel time depends on atmospheric conditions such as humidity, temperature and wind speed and direction, the molecular weight of the fart particles, and the distance between the fart transmitter and the fart receiver. Farts also disperse (spread out) as they leave the source, and their potency diminishes with dilution. Generally, if the fart is not detected within a few seconds, it will be too dilute for perception and will be lost into the atmosphere forever. Exceptional conditions exist when the fart is released into a small enclosed area such as an elevator, a small room, or a car. These conditions limit the amount of dilution possible, and the fart may remain in a smellable concentration for a long period of time, until it condenses on the walls.
#5 - Why is there a 13 to 20 second delay between farting and the time it starts to smell?
Actually, the fart stinks immediately upon emergence, but it takes several seconds for the odor to travel to the farter's nostrils. If farts could travel at the speed of sound, we would smell them almost instantly, at the same time we hear them.
#6 - Is it true that some people never fart?
No, not if they're alive. People even fart shortly after death.
#7 - Why are beans so notorious for making people fart?
Beans contain sugars that we humans cannot digest. When these sugars reach our intestines, the bacteria go wild, have a big feast, and make lots of gas! Other notorious fart-producing foods include corn, bell peppers, cabbage, milk, and raisins. A friend of mine had a dog who was exceptionally fond of apples and turnips. The dog would eat these things and then get prodigious gas. A dog's digestive system is not equipped to handle such vegetable matter, so the dog's bacteria worked overtime to produce remarkable flatulence.
#8 - What things other than diet can make a person fart more than usual?
People who swallow a lot of air fart more than people who don't. This can be cured somewhat by chewing with your mouth closed. Nervous people with fast moving bowels will fart more because less air is absorbed out of the intestines. Some disease conditions can cause excess flatulence. And going up in an airplane or other low-pressure environment can cause the gas inside you to expand and emerge as flatulence.
#9 - Is a fart really just a burp that comes out the wrong end?
No, a burp emerges from the stomach and has a different chemical composition from a fart. Farts have less atmospheric gas content and more bacterial gas content than burps.
#10 - Is it harmful to hold in farts?
There are differences in opinion on this one. Certainly, people have believed for centuries that retaining flatulence is bad for the health. Emperor Claudius even passed a law legalizing farting at banquets out of concern for people's health. There was a widespread belief that a person could be poisoned or catch a disease by retaining farts. Doctors I have spoken to recently have told me that there is no particular harm holding in farts. Farts will not poison you; they are a natural component of your intestinal contents. The worst thing that can happen is that you may get a stomach ache from the gas pressure. But one doctor suggested that pathological distention of the bowel could result if a person holds in farts too much.
#11 - How long would it be possible to not fart?
A captive fart can escape as soon as the person relaxes. This means that a lot of people who assiduously refrain from farting during the day do so at great length as soon as they fall asleep. Having been on a great many overnight field trips, long bus trips, and trans- Pacific flights, I can personally vouch for the fact that lots of people do fart voluminously as they doze off. So the answer to the question would be, you can refrain from farting as long as you can stay awake!
#12 - Do all people fart in their sleep?
The gas accumulates in the night and they vent it upon awakening.
#13 - Where do farts go when you hold them in?
The doctors agree that the fart is neither released nor absorbed. It simply migrates back upward into the intestine and comes out later. It is reassuring to know that such farts aren't really lost, just delayed.
#14 - How can one cover up a fart?
There is a company called Fartypants that sells underwear designed to absorb the odor of farts If you should be caught without your Fartypants, another ploy is to blame the dog or cat, if one should be present, or complain about how the wind must be blowing from the direction of the paper mill. As for the sound... if you are in a large group of people, act oblivious and innocent, or glance quickly at the person next to you, as if you think he/she did it. Other strategies include coughing or suddenly moving your chair so that people think that they misheard the fart. If you are with one other person, you can act as if nothing happened, and the other person may believe he was mistaken in thinking he heard a fart. Another strategy is not to cover it up, but to proudly proclaim the fart as your own grand accomplishment and to issue a challenge to the others to outdo that one if they think they can.
#15 - Is it really possible to ignite farts?
The answer to that is yes! However, you should be aware that people get injured igniting flatulence. Not only can the flame back up into your colon, but your clothing or other surroundings may catch on fire. A survey done by Fartcloud (the site, alas! is no more) indicates that about a quarter of the people who ignited their farts got burned doing it. Ignition of flatulence is a hazardous practice. However, if you want to try it, and you don't have a friend to light your fart for you, might find it easier to accomplish the job using the Fartlighter. There have also been cases in which intestinal gases with a higher than normal oxygen content have exploded during surgery when electric cautery was used by the surgeon.
#16 - Why is it possible to burn farts?
Farts burn because they contain methane (usually) and hydrogen, both of which are flammable gases. (Hydrogen was the same gas that was used in the ill fated Hindenburg dirigible.) Farts tend to burn with a blue or yellow flame.
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June 22, 2005
Avoiding The Language Barrier
I've never been comfortable when it comes to confronting language barriers, a minor phobia that stems, I believe, from living the first 17 years of my life pretty much fully immersed in a purely English-speaking small town community.
Therefore, when I went to live in Tokyo in 1992, I was genuinely unprepared for the culture shock inherent in suddenly living amongst over 20 million people for whom English was a secondary language. Those darned Japan natives seemed intent on speaking. . . Japanese. Who would've thunk it?
Over the first few weeks, I experienced any number of language barrier surprises. For example, I bought a Game Boy cartridge, which I thought was a super awesome good deal, until I fired up the game and realized that all the text was in. . . wait for it. . . Japanese. From a culinary standpoint, the language barrier led to all sorts of distasteful mistakes, most notably the pastry I purchased one morning, which was quite good, until I hit the cream filling, which turned out to be bean paste. And, just a quick note about bean paste: BARF!
Given all the surprises I encountered early on during my Japanese living experience, I think it's understandable that I started developing language barrier avoidance mechanisms to ensure I didn't squander money needlessly, or end up with a mouthful of bean paste, or cow tongue, or both.
One thing you quickly learn upon living in Japan is that you build up a collection of spare change, or Yen, rather fast. This is because, in Japan, the lowest denomination paper money is the U.S. equivalent of a $10 bill. Everything lower than that comes in coin form. So, you start accumulating spare change almost immediately. And, it's not like the pennies and nickles you squirrel away here in the States. In Japan, spare change can mean real money, what with all those coins worth $1 and $5 floating around.
The obvious solution to all this spare change is to go to a bank and have it tallied up and converted into bills. Obvious though such a solution was, I was firmly in the throes of language barrier avoidance syndrome. For some reason, I thought that if I went into a bank with a Folger's can full of coins, I'd come out of said bank with the deed to a scooter or something. When it came to my money in Japan, I had become almost pathological in trying to protect it. I had spent it foolishly too many times thanks to language misunderstandings.
Well, one day, I was purchasing a soda from one of the city's omnipresent vending machines. I was using a handful of 10 Yen coins to buy a Coke that cost 110 Yen. For you math whizzes out there, that equals 11 coins. Unfortunately, the machine was out of Coke, so I pushed the coin return lever, and out popped a 100 Yen coin and a 10 Yen coin. I had magically gone from a pocket-heavy load of 11 coins, to just two. Out of curiousity, I put in five 100 Yen coins, and pushed the coin return lever, and out plopped a 500 Yen coin.
See if you can guess where I'm going with this.
Inspired by my discovery, I raced home and grabbed my Folger's can full of Yen, and returned to the magic vending machine, and I started a most laborous process of inserting Yen until the coin load equaled 500 Yen, at which point I'd pull the coin return lever and retrieve a 500 Yen coin. As you might imagine, this was a fairly time-consuming process, but I was avoiding any language barrier faux pas, so I was immensely pleased.
However, I also realized, deep down, that my actions were somewhat odd, so any time I saw someone approaching, I'd quickly gather up my Folger's can, and walk around the block. I didn't want anyone actually witnessing my eccentric behavior, after all. All told, when it came to repeatedly feeding coins into a vending machine, and the occasional walk around the block, it took me over an hour to convert my Folger's can of coins into 500 Yen tokens.
As the year progressed, I performed this odd routine a few dozen times, whenever my Folger's can started overflowing. I even had a mental map in my head as to which vending machines functioned properly when it came to dispensing 500 Yen coins. I knew where they were located, what goods they dispensed, and how secluded they were. I became so proficient, in fact, I brought my overall time down to about 40 minutes per Folger's can.
Overall, it was a harmless activity, but I often wondered what the vending machine maintenance people thought when they found their machines depleted of 500 Yen coins, while overflowing with every other coin denomination. That, and my classmates often wondered why I carried so many 500 Yen coins around with me.
If they kept asking me, however, I'd just threaten to buy them some bean paste. That usually silenced them.
June 21, 2005
June 20, 2005
Helping Out The Boss
Doug says: Can you minimize the cold air coming into my office?
Ryan says: I'll have to sacrifice a chicken, and coat your doorway with its blood, if you have the stomach for that.
Buyer's Remorse
I bought one of these on Saturday.
It was an impulse buy. It was an open item on sale at Best Buy that was about $500 below the usual price. I have 30 days to decide whether I want to keep it. It's huge. Thing is, I can't shake the thought that "hey, that money could've gone towards remodeling the basement."
But what fun is that?
