Death By DNA

Scientists have been studying the extinction of the woolly mammoth — those colossal, fur-covered, elephantine creatures that thrived during the last Ice Age.  And, specifically, the studies have been looking at the role genetics played in the demise of the shaggy giants with the huge, curved tusks.

The last woolly mammoths died surprisingly recently — about 4,000 years ago, during the Old Kingdom period in Egypt.  By that time, the mammoths had vanished from the European and Asian continents due to habitat change due to global warming and the efforts of human hunters.  The last of the species lived, and died, on Wrangel Island, in the Arctic Ocean north of Russia.

According to scientists, declining numbers put the mammoths on a death spiral caused by inbreeding and genetic mutations that the population was too small to overcome.  With a shrinking pool of mates, and a lack of genetic diversity, the harmful mutations multiplied, affecting male fertility, the mammoths’ sense of smell, and other important functions.  Scientists confirmed this by taking mammoth genes from the Wrangel Island population and placing them in the cells of the mammoths’ nearest living relative, the Asian elephant, to see how they performed.  The tests showed that the mammoth genes were pitiful and failing.  The scientists also compared the genes of the last mammoths with genes from mammoths that existed thousands of years earlier, when vast herds of mammoths thrived during the height of the Ice Age.  The comparison showed that the last mammoths had an “accumulation of detrimental mutations … consistent with genomic meltdown.”

We can’t do anything for the last mammoths that perished on the frozen wastes of Wrangel Island, but their fate shows what happens when the population of a species simply becomes too small to overcome genetic mutations.  It’s a cautionary tale to keep in mind as we look to identify, and protect, the endangered species currently inhabiting planet Earth.

The Supreme Challenge

Everyone has something they can’t resist. Maybe it’s Hershey’s kisses, or honey-roasted peanuts — but we all have some weakness that we are powerless to defy.

For me, it’s Frosted Flakes. They’ve been my favorite cereal since I was a kid — at least, since Quisp and Quake crossed the Rainbow Bridge to Cereal Heaven. On a Saturday mornings I would fix heaping mixing bowls of Frosted Flakes and spoon them down while watching cartoons. And, even today, if there is a box of Frosted Flakes around I know I will eat it all, and probably in one sugar-frosted orgy of cereal and whole milk gluttony that will leave me feeling scarred and guilty for weeks. As a result, Frosted Flakes have been permanently banned from the house.

However, I stupidly mentioned my terrible secret to a friend recently, and when we had friends over last night she brought this box as a gift. So now I’ve got Tony the Tiger staring me in the face, posing the supreme challenge: how long can I go before I inevitably succumb to temptation and gobble down the whole box?

Gummed Up

Let me begin by saying that I am not a “gum person.” Even as a kid, I didn’t particularly like the gum experience, except for the blowing bubbles part. I would inevitably end up sawing away at an increasingly tasteless wad — and then the unsightly disposal issue would arise, where no underside of a school desk was safe.

However, as someone who knows some members of the Gum Nation, and who walks through convenience stores from time to time, it’s hard for me not to notice the Gum Renaissance that is currently underway. Gone are the days when choices were limited to Wrigley’s, Beeman’s, Dubble Bubble, Chiclets, Bazooka, and those long cellophane wrappers with garishly colored (and horribly artificially flavored) gum balls. Now there are entire aisles and point of purchase displays devoted to all things gum. New brands like Mentos and Icebreakers have entered the market, along with artisanal gums, sugar-free options, and “natural” gums — and I suspect if I looked carefully enough I’d find vegan, lactose-intolerant, and gluten-free offerings. It’s as if the same competitive processes that broke the Budweiser/Pabst/Miller High Life dominance in the beer market have turned their attention to chewing gum. Are there “craft gum” competitions out there?

And gum is so popular that media-savvy companies like Disney are associating with it. One of the gum packages pictured above features a Frozen II character and is for a flavor called “Arctic Grape” — which seems a bit oxymoronic, by the way. And speaking of packaging, we’ve definitely moved away from the slim, white rectangles that slid easily into the pocket of your jeans. Now gum comes in bulky, bright plastic receptacles that clatter and clearly aren’t pocket friendly. Today’s gum demands attention and a special storage spot.

Yes, it’s truly a Gum Nation these days. Those of us who don’t partake just live in it. And school desks probably aren’t happy about it.

The Random Restaurant Tour — XXXVII

Yesterday the Soprano Litigator and I went across the street to Due Amici for lunch.  Due is one of the cornerstone restaurants in the food corridor that makes Gay Street the coolest street in downtown Columbus.  It’s a more high-end lunch spot than some of its Gay Street brethren and, come cocktail hour and dinner time, is a place to see and be seen.

I normally don’t have pizza for lunch, but yesterday pizza sounded like just what the doctor ordered.  I opted for the sausage and onion pizza, whereas the Soprano Litigator went with the veal meatball and pasta — which also looked very tasty, indeed.  When my pizza came, it was great, with a flavorful sauce, big chunks of sausage that had a snap when you bit into them, and a golden brown, crunchy crust.  I attacked it with gusto (and with knife and fork, incidentally, so as to avoid unsightly spotting on my suit, white shirt, and tie).

But here’s the thing:  the pizza is just too big for lunch.  Even for someone who is hungry, as I was, a pie with eight pieces is a lot.  Long after the SL had finished her meal I was still carving away at the remaining pieces until my plate was empty.  I suppose I could have asked for a to-go box, but I don’t like lugging them around.  In my view, when you order lunch you should receive a meal that is reasonably consumable by one reasonably hungry person over the noon hour.  In short, careful portion control is key.  Due’s pizza stretches the outer boundaries and is geared more to someone with the appetite of a truck driver rather than one of a nearby office worker.  Perhaps the name Due Amici — “two friends” in Italian — means the portions are intended to be shared.

Due isn’t alone in this.  How often have you gone to a restaurant and received a plate that is groaning with two much food — typically, an oversized mound of french fries to accompany an already sizable cheeseburger?  Even those of us who proudly boast of being charter members of the Clean Plate Club can’t possibly down so much food.  We leave some on the plate and then feel guilty about it, knowing the food will be wasted.  It’s an area where I think the great restaurants in Columbus could become even better.

Medical Marijuana Buzzes Ahead

It’s flown a bit under the radar, but the medical marijuana business in Ohio is moving ahead, slowly but surely.  The Ohio State Medical Board has been meeting to determine which conditions can properly be the subject of a medical marijuana recommendation.  People have been registering to participate in the program.  Medical marijuana dispensaries are open and operating, and the Ohio Board of Pharmacy has been issuing licenses to dispensary employees.  And new jobs have been created, too.

Let’s start with the jobs.  One website looked at reports from the Ohio Department of Commerce and other state regulators and determined that, in the year since medical marijuana dispensaries first opened, 4,275 new jobs have been created.  That number includes 951 state-licensed dispensary employees, as well as 1,686 people working for cultivators, testing labs, and processors.

There are now 49 regulated medical marijuana dispensaries found at different locations across the state, including a number in Columbus.  (If you are over 21, you can see the list here.).  More than 70,000 Ohioans are registered with the state’s medical marijuana program, and the average person who uses the products is more than 55 years old.  Many apparently use the products to deal with chronic pain.  Reports indicate that nearly 56,000 Ohioans have bought more than $50 million in medical marijuana products at the dispensaries, and prices have come down as more dispensaries open and more product becomes available.

In the meantime, the State Medical Board has been meeting to consider the conditions that may appropriately qualify for a medical marijuana recommendation from a doctor.  Only this week, the Medical Board denied a request by long-suffering fans of the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals to qualify their fanship as a disease that can be treated with marijuana to ease the pain of constant losses, but also voted to move anxiety and autism forward as potentially qualifying conditions.

Ohio tends to be a cautious place, and it took a cautious approach to medical marijuana.  So far, at least, the cautious approach seems to be working.

Post-Apocalyptic Brewskis

Back in the 1950s, when American scientists and military advisors were regularly test-detonating new nuclear devices to see whether they should be added to America’s nuclear arsenal, scientists decided it made sense to conduct a special experiment — and “Operation Teapot” was born.  Its purpose was to determine the “civil effects” of an atomic blast on commercially packaged food items, including bottled and canned beer.

The Operation Teapot researchers reasoned that, if the United States and the Soviet Union started hurling nuclear bombs at each other, the American water supply would quickly become contaminated by fallout, and determining an alternative source for fluids therefore was important.  The report on Operation Teapot explained:  “Consideration of the problems of food supply show the needs of humans for water, especially under disaster conditions, could be immediate and urgent.”  The report added:  “At various times some consideration has been given to special packaging of potable water, but since packaged beverages, both beer and soft drinks, are so ubiquitous and already uniformly available in urban areas, it is obvious that they could serve as important sources of fluids.”  In short, since American households already had ample supplies of beer and Coke, why not see if the U.S. could rely on those to supply post-bomb blast refreshment?

So, in 1955, researchers at the Nevada Proving Grounds put bottled and canned beer and soda at three locations, ranging from 0.2 to 2 miles from ground zero, and then set off a bomb.  Some of the bottles and cans at the location closest to the blast were obliterated, but others survived and, after testing, were found to be largely unaffected in the taste department and “within the permissible limits for emergency use” from a radiation standpoint.  The canned and bottled beers that were positioned farther away from the blast site showed no signs of change whatsoever and even retained their carbonation and airtight seal.

Some of the two-fisted scientists working on Operation Teapot, no doubt thirsty after witnessing the blast, apparently cracked open some of the beers and soft drinks and downed a few swigs to conduct an “immediate taste test.”  The report on Operation Teapot noted:  “Immediate taste tests indicated that the beverages, both beer and soft drinks, were still of commercial quality, although there was evidence of a slight flavour change in some of the products exposed at 1270 ft from GZ [Ground Zero]. Those farther away showed no change.”  The remaining bottles and cans were sent to several commercial laboratories for further taste testing, and the consensus was that the beer could unquestionably be used as an emergency source of potable beverages.

So there you have it!  After following “duck and cover” techniques to weather the initial atomic blast, Americans of the ’50s would be able to crack open a cold bottle of suds and quaff a few without concern about their beer supply going flat or having a skunky taste.  It would make the post-apocalyptic landscape and the clumps of hair falling out of your scalp a little bit easier to take.

Weather (App) Envy

In Subterranean Homesick Blues, Bob Dylan wrote:  “You don’t need a weatherman to tell you which way the wind blows.”

If The Voice of His Generation were writing that song in today’s smartphone era, he would have said you don’t need a weather app, either.  You can always stick your hand out the window to see if its raining, or open the door and receive an arctic blast to assess just how freaking cold it is.  And if you live in Columbus, Ohio in the winter months, you don’t really need to check the weather at all — you can just presume that it’s in the 30s, totally overcast, and drizzling a “wintry mix,” and you’ll be right more than 90 percent of the time.

I’m convinced that the real use of weather apps isn’t checking the weather or getting the forecast for your present location.  If that were the case, the apps would just trigger a GPS function, determine where you are, and then tell you the weather . . . but that’s not how they work.  Instead, you can input lots of different locations.  And therein lies the true purpose of weather apps.  They’re not an electronic Wally Kinnan the Weather Man, they’re designed to allow you to provoke your sense of weather envy and then adjust your reaction to the weather in your area by comparing it to other locations.

Check your phone’s weather app, and see how many locations are currently shown on it.  My app has about eight, so if I go to the app home page I immediately get a smorgasbord of different weather realities.  I can see that it’s a lot warmer in Florida, Texas and Arizona, and if I really want to torture myself I can click on one of the locations and get appalling details about just how bright and sunny and warm it is in comparison to damp, cold, gray Columbus.  And then I’ll inevitably go in the opposite direction and see just how cold it is up in Stonington, with maybe a brisk wind blowing in off the bay and some leaden, snow-laden fog to chill the bones even more, which helps to get me back to a state of reluctant Columbus weather acceptance.  And once I’ve achieved an acceptable weather equilibrium, I’m ready to bundle up and face the music.

It works in the opposite direction in the summer, of course.  If it’s hot and sticky and miserable here, it’s always going to be hotter and even more miserable in Florida or Texas — while in Stonington the weather is a delightful 76 degrees with lots of sunshine.

The real purpose of weather apps is to tell you that the weather is always better somewhere else.