Impaired anal sphincter function in professional cyclists!!!??

Thanks to a good poop for this one!

Being a scientist with a recreational interest in cycling I could not help but make note of this incredibly important scientific finding!.

I just have the typical questions regarding this study. One, how exactly did these people recruit their subjects? Two, just how uncomfortable is it to have a balloon shoved up your rectum and inflated? Finally, were these mountain bike riders thinking that this may be bad but it's a whole lot better than being in the saddle and do they get a discount on any prophylactic devices developed?!

In conclusion, I am heading off to my LBS and demanding that they start stocking really really nice comfy shorts and underpants! There is nothing more embarrassing than having to say,"oops! I pooped myself" while on a group ride.

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why I'm not a vegetarian

I have very few useful skills. It's true. My one true strength is that I have the internet equivalent of ADHD. I am constantly peeking in some of the weirdest corners of the internet.

I recently came across some YouTube homemade videos of one of my most favorite Canadian groups, the Arrogant Worms. So many of their tunes are clever, funny and self-deprecating about being Canadian. This particular video is (I believe) and actual produced by them video of one of my favorite songs. Listen, and laugh. I know I do :)

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Too much of anything...

Below is the abstract of a recent article (discovered by a good poop) reporting a run on meditation induced psychosis!?

Yep.

Apparently relaxing too much is bad for you, especially if your doing this while engaging in exercise and training. To quote

"A 24-year-old Caucasian male artist was referred because of an acute sensation of being mentally split during a Hindustantype meditation. It was an unguided and intense session. The patient had recently trained extensively for a marathon, which resulted in a weight loss of 7 kg. In addition he was experiencing relationship problems and work-related stress"

I always knew there was something fishy about those relaxed, laidback types. They're trying to suck me into their dastardly plan to take over the earth and feed the proletariat to sheep, causing massive outbreaks of mad cow disease.... wait. I think I've been relaxing too much. I think I'll go get some coffee.

the entire report can be downloaded here for your edification and amusement.

Background: Meditation is a self-regulatory psychological
strategy that is frequently applied in Western as well as non-
Western countries for different purposes; little is known
about adverse events. Sampling and Methods: A male patient
is described who developed an acute and transient psychosis
with polymorphic symptomatology after meditating.
A literature search for psychotic states related to meditation
was carried out on PubMed, Embase and PsycInfo. Results:
In the case presented a diagnosis of acute polymorphic psychotic
disorder was made. Other case reports dealt with either
a relapse of a pre-existent psychotic disorder or with a
brief psychotic reaction in patients without a psychiatric history.
Conclusion: Meditation can act as a stressor in vulnerable
patients who may develop a transient psychosis with
polymorphic symptomatology. The syndrome is not culture
bound but sometimes classified in culture-bound taxonomies
like Qi-gong Psychotic Reaction.


Technorati Tags: psychosis, science, humor, mediation, research, scienceblogs

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Shut it

Hey, guess what. I have not blogged in over a month! For those few who regularly check my site I apologize. When I decided to get a little down time I quite literally unplugged and relaxed. Never the less, I'm back in the swing of things and after a hectic first month I'm able to squeeze out a few lines again.

What?, you say. You were relaxing but had a hectic month? How can that be? Well kids, it goes a little something like this...

Over the course of the previous semester, I had accumulated a vast number of holiday projects that I actually wanted to do. Things like: do some more training on my linux machine, get my videos into DVD format, hang some art that has been in storage since we moved into the house 2+ years ago. All things I actually wanted to do but could not justify when I was running like the red queen last semester.

There was also the issue of gift purchases for the little missus and family on Nova Scotia (a country quite difficult and expensive to send gifts to I might add - who knew).

Another hectic element came from my wife and I finally biting the bullet and deciding to stop using her 30+ year old bedroom furniture (click if interested) and become grown ups. We brought in the wife of a colleague who was an an interior designer and got her input on window treatments, bed coverings, reupholstery, wall colors, accent color, art, mirrors, chandeliers, ceiling fans.... have left anything out here? I have to say it was a serious of fun, exciting, mind bending, heart wrenching roller coaster decisions. Then came the estimates and our dreams took a little smack to the gut. That's a lot of $$ for some paint, that's a lot of $$ for window treatments.... It was a LOT of $$. So back we went, making adjustments, spreading the cost over several installments and stages. We've finalized on most everything an the painters are in the house every day making our house beautiful! We've lived in apartments pretty much our whole lives and we so tickled to see color, any color, that was not flat white!

Before:


After/inprogress:


What made it even better is the architecture of the house is such that it lends itself really well to a cool contemporary paint scheme but still homey and warm and cozy.

They've been in the house for 2 weeks now and we expect another 3 but man are we crazy about the job these guys are doing. We are really getting what we paid for. One guy literally, yes literally , was down on the floor with an artists brush doing fine detail work along the baseboard to make sure his lines were straight and there was no bleeding of colors! WOW.

So, that's the kind of relaxing home time I had. When the semester began again I had a whole new set of challenges. 4 courses, 2 subjects, one of which was a new prep and the other a complete revamp since many of the slides and material is over 3 years old. So, I've got ~160 students that I have to entertain and get excited about biological psychology and contemporary theories and methods for studying psychological disorders. This is not a problem for me, I'm Mr. nerd geek and love this stuff but it can be like pulling teeth at times, getting the kids involved. As an added challenge, the vast majority are regular, church goin' folks who don't have much time or inclination to accept evolution as the reason we are the way we are. It can make it a tad difficult to discuss physiology and the use of animal models as good test subjects for new psycho therapeutic compounds when the first response is... uh why would they use a rat? Humans aren't like rats.

Well this post is getting a little long winded so I'll leave my cycling woes for another post but as you can see if you quickly glance to the right, I have not been riding and I'm very edgy right now.. So SHUT IT and GET OFF MY CASE. I've been a little busy fer chrissakes :)

Technorati Tags: humor

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Air

Sat, Nov 24, 2007 - 30.07 mi [Cycling]
Below are the particulars of my ride Saturday but in all honesty the ride itself is not why I'm so stoked. A lot of things happened this week that (frankly) are new to me. First, I participated in a competition. I'm not a competitive person by nature and it really shows. When I've played sports like squash in the past and people beat me (not at all unusual) I just think to myself, "Good for you. You got a good workout and it was fun." I've never felt bad or less worthy or pathetic or lost my self esteem from losing. I just never bothered to get invested in winning. Who cares? As I told my distant past therapist,"My biggest competitor is myself", and not to put too fine a point on it, I did not have high expectations :).

Whatever it was, it was just a game. A meaningless contest that had little, if anything, relevant to real life and I was happy in who I was, how I viewed the world, how I interacted with the world, how I was part of the world. I had my few close friends and realistically had no expectation of fame or glory. I just wanted (and still do) to plod along and do my own thing and contribute my meme to the historical record. When I was in grad school I remember being approached by what would now be called and "evangelical" but at the time,to me, was just another person trying to convince others of the value of a particular perspective. He asked me about my belief in the after life and I expressed my belief (based on my scientific knowledge of the time - and it has not changed in case your wondering) that I fully expected to be worm food, my offspring - if any - would carry me to the future and my greatest contribution would be from my scientific contributions which have a long historical memory. Many a great philosopher/empiricist/writer/painter/poet... were not discovered in their time or their immediate impact fully appreciated. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying I'm the next Aristotle, or Einstein, I'm merely reflecting on the fact that I am content to make my contribution and move on.

Having said that, I ponied up an entrance fee to good cause for a weight loss competition and was just going to try and lose some weight to try and get below 200 lbs (yes I live in the US and am forced to use/understand non metric systems of measurements - gak). However, as you've figured out by now, I'm quite into cycling at the moment and the "prizes" were VERY alluring to me. So I decided to go balls to the wall. These were awesome pieces of technology, science and cycling. I came out in the top four which means I got a pair and I was shocked! With the exception on winning some BBQ equipment for placing a popsicle stick closest to a hidden nail under the sand when I was 12, I've never won anything in my life. Ever. This placing tickled me immensely.

As if that wasn't good enough, I also got my cholesterol tests back and for the first time since I've been getting these fuckers done, I'm in the healthy range. And if those two things do not make for a good week, I got myself a 30+ mile ride in for the first time, some of which included some single track. It was the second time on this particular single track and I had noticeable improvement. I was with some real pro's, but they were very cool and I noticed statistically significant improvement. I felt more comfortable descending on the track, got over some obstacles I did not the first time and the gang was very cool about hanging around for me - the weak link in the chain - as I struggled up some climbs or lost my footing. They were very encouraging (if you're reading: thanks Erica and Chris) you made my effort worthwhile and I felt good about the things I did better - though I do think Chris deliberately took a better endo just to get the best spill of the day :) ).

Finally, as if this was not enough excitement for anyone in 1 week. Very shortly after we began the group ride, I snapped my seat stem. A 1/4 inch bolt sheared in 2. I am of two minds here. First, I think it's kinda cool that my ass and legs had enough power over ~500 miles to knock this baby out. Second, I think this sucks because I can't go riding without a seat. We turn around (less than a mile from the shop) and I have the choice of buying a cheap seat post and taking the seat bolt (you can't just buy a bolt in case you're wondering) or buying a $45 carbon fiber seat post with better quality gear and.. well... it's a carbon fiber seat post! Of course I bought the carbon fiber seat post. $45. Wouldn't you? Hell yeah! Great ride. Great fun and Great week. I'm walking upon a dense mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide..... ok air......

The particulars of the ride are below:


30.07 mi in 02:56:19 hours at 10.23 mi/h on Trek 4100. [Cycling] Elevation is approximate since this was a single track day. It's also a combination of the commute to and from the start of the group ride. I just added the simple MOB to the home MOB home ride. Accomplished another major milestone for myself. I want to have 1 30+ ride before the end of November and today was the day YeeHaa!
Posted from My Cycling Log

MOB Salem lake standard trail

A Satisfying (?) day

I like to fancy myself a computer geek. When friends want to know how to do something on a computer they often ask me. When they have something go wrong I can usually find a work around, fix it at at least tell them what they need to do (i.e., your BIOS is fucked you need to flash the latest version).

One thing that I do have a problem with is locked down computers. My wife has one and it's a load of crap. The wireless card is not working (or so I thought) but I couldn't help because to access any logs or adjust any settings I needed admin privledges. Her computer is provided by her company and they tend not to give that kind 'o' information out.

We took the thing to the dept tech, swapped out her drive, and plopped in another to avoid her entire life from being ruined if we killed the drive and ..... the bloody wireless card worked. We plopped her hard drive into the laptop the good drive came from and it didn't work. Hmmmmm. Well that was not good.

Now I have to say here that my wife is an extremely busy person and her life is on that computer. To fix the thing she would have to drop it off at the IT dept and they would back up her info and do a fresh install which would be a day or two, which she does not have . So, for about 2-3 months now she's been back to dialup and it is killing her (and me) since I've set up a nice little wireless n with DSL Xtreme internet access. She is stuck with 5.6 Bps.

Then I remembered that I had a USB wireless G adapter from a while back and after screwing around trying to hack it so she had wireless again last Friday (remember that whole locked down admin thing? Grrrrrrr) I got it work! YEAH! I'm a hero! She blissfully surfed and surfed and I, like a little puppy dog, sat at her feet looking up at her with doleful brown eyes, basking in her ohh's and Ahh's.

The next day it stopped working again.

So, last night I had some time. I figure I'm going to solve this damn thing and make her happy again (I missed her little giggles of happiness). I hacked and hacked. I Installed, and uninstalled drivers, hardware. I altered network security. All the while having to work around this lack of admin privledges. I was like Stimpy when he was working in his lab from the Ren and Stimpy show.

Finally, I think I solve it. "I know, I'll alter the network settings to make her part of the home workgroup! That will work!." I quickly take her off the work domain and add her to the local workgroup and reboot. I call it a night.

The next morning, I eagerly await her gleeful laughter as she logs on and findout she has wireless again. The laughter did not come. No, not even a little bit. It seems that when I put on the local workgroup and off the work domain you need to log on as an administrator (Did I mention I don't have an admin password?). It's 8AM she has a 9AM meeting and nothing but meetings that require her computer. I am not hailed, I am hanged!

Fortunately, the dept tech can sort this out quick as a bunny and we all think the computer will be running in time for the meeting. uh oh! He doesn't know the password either. He calls a friend ,who also doesn't know, then calls the higher up IT dept. "Sorry, we can't give out that information. It will compromise our security. The computer will have to be brought in."

So, I truck the bloody thing over to IT. I have to say that while the manager may have made me a little pissed, the guy who worked on the machine was really great. He gets in, gets the computer back online and while doing this he notices a couple of annoying bugs. He slaps in a flash drive and voila! annoying bugs gone too!. "Awesome", I think to myself, "I wonder if he can get the wireless card up and running too?"

He gives it a go. He's hacking, slapping in flashdrives, CD's, downloading software updates (all the stuff I could have done if I had the admin password). He gets nowhere. His recommendation, backup her data and do a fresh install. HELLO Square One.

In the end, I was able to get the computer back to her in good shape, I learned I should not try to mess with the network domain settings and still haven't fixed the one thing that is knawing at me. Yep. A very satisfying day.

P.S. Did I mention I overheard the admin password and now can get in as an administrator..... maybe tonight I'll try again ........

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Technorati Tags: humor, irony, rambling, computer, networking