Even more interesting than the results of this study on glucosamine and chondroitin for arthritis pain is the spin on the reporting. Here are the numbers:

Sixty percent who took the dummy medication had reduced pain compared with 64 percent who took glucosamine, 65 percent who took chondroitin and 67 percent who took the combo pills...

The drug Celebrex did reduce pain - 70 percent reported improvement - affirming the study's validity...

Of the 354 people with moderate to severe pain, 79 percent who took both supplements reported relief compared with 54 percent who took the dummy pills and 69 percent who took Celebrex.

Somewhere along the way, I picked up the idea that polycarbonate plastic was safer to use in beverage and food containers than plastics like PET, that it didn't leach toxic chemicals.

Oops.

Polycarbonate plastic molecules are made up of strings of Bisphenol A (BPA), which was originally created as a synthetic hormone. As polycarbonate ages, wears, or is exposed to heat, acids, or bases, BPA leaches out.

Reuters reports on a test project to turn dog feces into fuel.

It could be fed into a "digester" to obtain methane. The article states that dogs and cats in the United States produce about 10 million tons of waste a year...might as well use it for something productive.

I was quite impressed with San Francisco's aggressive recycling plan when I visited last year - in addition to bottles, cans, and paper they even have curbside collection for compostable kitchen scraps.

Signed up for one of those "MySpace" accounts - why not? www.myspace.com/tomswiss. Don't expect to put much content up there but might help people find my various enterprises.

Sharing a note I sent to Robin:

Hi Robin!

I see you did the Kerouac re-tattoo - outstanding!

I've started my nihongo class at the community college (AACC)...visions of hiragana dancing in my head.

It's a little strange being in a class with everyone else so much younger...and then the dialogs in the textbook are all college-y, "What's your major?" (Senmon wa nan desu ka?) and "What year are you?" (Nannensei desu ka?) sort of stuff.

A few interesting bits about the brain that I've seen the past few weeks...

First, contrary to long-held popular belief, adult brain cells do keep growing. So you can teach an old brain new tricks. Furthermore, it seems that a marijuana-like drug can accelerate neurogenesis, and may have anti-anxiety and anti-depressive effects. (Despite what the SSRI-pushers claim, the anti-depressant effects of drugs like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil apparently have more to do with neurogenesis than with correcting some "chemical imbalance".)

Secondly, new brain cells follow the flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). This should be very interesting to people who practice craniosacral therapy.

I've put up a new page for my music over at infamous.net.

(Why two sites, infamous.net and unreasonable.org? Partly historical reasons, my original intent years ago was to separate my professional from my personal/political site; but now infamous.net is my more static site, whereas I post ongoing updates and pointers to news stories here.)

The past few months my musical endeavors have started to pick up steam again, with a regular gig at Leadbetter's, and work starting on a CD of my original music - I go into the studio Friday.

BrowserCam is a very cool service that allows you to obtain screenshots of web sites in a number of different browsers, so you can see what your site looks like to people using IE, Safari, Firefox, or Opera on different platforms. It is, however, on the spendy side - one day's access is $19.95. But, a year's access for a group of 10 people is $399.95 - this is originally intended for a company, but if you get 10 people together you can get a year's access for the price of one day.

People have been using Fundable.org to co-ordinate such group purchases. Here's one that I've joined.

Just one line, seen on the net today:

"We were half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold." -- Hunter S. Tolkien

Now that's funny.

Happy birthday!

His "problem child", lysergic acid diethylamide-25, will be 68 this year; it was first synthesized in 1938, but its remarkable effects were not discovered until Hofmann accidently absorbed some through his fingertips five years later.