Brunch Coffeeshop

Things People are Talking About…

Once hailed as ‘the Kiss of Life’, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation has been the method of choice for maintaining cardiac arrest victims until the medics arrive with bottled oxygen and other techno-wonders that save lives. Introduced to the world by Dr Peter Safar in the 1950s, the mouth-to-mouth technique was combined with chest compression techniques in the 1960s to form the modern method of CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation). Until now.

American Heart Association has announced that it no longer recommends mouth-to-mouth for CPR, but rather suggests that repeated rapid chest compressions (100 per minute) are equally effective. There goes the fantasies of many a young male who imagined encountering a Hollywood diva in the throes of a heart attack — just so they would have an excuse (and opportunity) to lip-lock them. Sorry guys. And remember, the chest compressions are at the center of the chest, watch those hands if you ever do witness a diva collapse.

Archaeologists have discovered the jaw-bone from a human-like ‘hominin’ (I rather preferred the old term, ‘hominid’ — it sounded less like ‘a word that sounds like another’). Found in Spain, it has been dated to 1.2 million years ago, making it the earliest hominin fossil from Europe. Researchers say it was from an individual 30 to 40 years old, but the sex has not been determined.

Dubbed Homo antecessor there have been a few other finds of this species, but not so old as this example. They appeared to have hunted large game, and used stone tools to remove the meat from the bones, and then to crack-open the large bones to get the marrow. They are not believed to be ancestral to Homo sapiens, but may have been ancestors of Homo neanderthalensis. Other research has suggested that modern man came out of Africa at a later date, and found Europe already occupied by Neandertals — a close cousin. Not close enough, however, for any significant interbreeding, according to recent DNA studies.

Is it worth your life? That’s the question someone should have asked Stephanie Kuleba, an 18 year old High-School Senior who died Saturday when she apparently had an adverse reaction to the anesthetics used in her breast-augmentation operation. Seems she had asymmetric breasts (i.e. one larger than the other … and who doesn’t?) and even an inverted areola, which might have caused some problem were she nursing a child, but is otherwise harmless.

Judging from the photos accompanying the news story she was a beautiful young woman. Certainly, she was too young to be undertaking any elective surgery for purely cosmetic purposes. Perfection is highly over-rated. What can be more shallow and un-fulfilling than relationships based on perceived perfection? If she were an actress, (or prostitute), then perhaps the decision might be justified by earnings potential — assuming one places a low monetary value on human life — but this young woman planned to become a doctor. Beauty at any cost — the concept can only lead to tragedy.

An Arlington County Virginia high school coach was bitten by a rattlesnake as he unpacked his bags after a trip to Summerton, South Carolina. Apparently he took his crew team down to Summerton for practice on Lake Marion — I guess it’s still a bit too cool up in Virginia for water sports. He was staying in a ‘rustic cabin’ that must have harbored the snake — unless one of his team decided to give him a present? No, of course not.

Had this occurred to a coach under an actual competitive situation, we could always blame the other team (or even more likely, one of their parents — we all know how whacko they go over their surrogate-sports events), but as this was just a practice run we will have to attribute the attack to old Mother Nature. She can be a bitch at times, which is probably why today’s youth spend more time in front of their TV and computer screens than out in her company. But face it, you aren’t even safe at home, as this story demonstrates. Luckily, it was only a small juvenile rattler, so the coach is expected to be OK.

In a bizarre freak accident, Judy Kay Zagorski of Michigan was killed when a spotted eagle ray leapt into the boat she was on, striking her in the face and knocking her down. Ms Zagorski struck her head when she fell, which appears to have caused the fatal injury since the ray’s stingers did not penetrate her. Or perhaps death was caused from the damage of the ray itself striking her; it weighed 75lb (34kg) — an autopsy report has not yet been completed.

Zagorski and family members were vacationing in Florida, and the accident occurred while they were boating in the Florida Keys, near the town of Marathon. This is the second sting-ray death, and third incident involving sting rays, reported in the past few years. The well-known Australian naturalist and TV personality Steve Irwin was killed while diving Australia’s Great Barrier Reef when a sting-ray barb pierced his heart in September 2006. In October of that same year an 81-year-old Florida man narrowly escaped death when a ray jumped into the boat he was in, and stung him in the chest.

Sir Arthur C Clarke, one of the founders of modern Science Fiction, died at the age of 90 in his home in Sri Lanka today. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 1998. Although he predicted the use of telecommunications satellites in 1945, most of his other technological foresights proved over-optimistic. He strongly believed that space exploration could turn human attention away from conflict and war, and unite humanity in an endeavor to reach the stars.

Born on Dec. 16, 1917, in the seaside town of Minehead, Somerset, England, Clarke had an early interest in scientific matters, but no advanced training in the field. He began writing Science Fiction in the late 1930s. His writing was interrupted by World War II, when he served in the Royal Air Force and actually had the opportunity to apply some of his scientific thinking. He helped develop the first radar-controlled system for landing airplanes in bad weather, and in 1945 published a technical paper describing the use of geo-stationary satellites as relays for terrestrial communication.

After the war Clarke began to publish Science Fiction stories and novels, the most famous being 2001: A Space Odyssey, which later was turned into a movie with Clarke’s collaboration. Another of his novels Childhood’s End is well known and highly regarded among Science Fiction fans.

Happy St Patty’s Day! In honor of St Patrick’s Day, I’m going to to pass on a few of the things I’ve learned (or think I’ve learned) about Ireland, after spending many years as a professional genealogist specializing in Irish Research:

St. Patrick was an Englishman.

St. Patrick’s day is a holy day — many Irish celebrate it by going to church.

The Irish don’t eat corned beef and cabbage — they’ve never heard of corned beef.

Ireland lost about half of its population to starvation and emigration during and soon after the Great Famine 1845-52 — it still has not recovered the population it reached in 1845. If there had been no Famine, and Irish population grew at the rate it was going in 1845, today the island would be twice as densely populated as Japan.

Ireland has more professional musicians per capita than any other country. (OK, I made that one up — but it is my impression, and may be true … I haven’t visited every country in the world — yet.)

There are a hundred really talented amateurs for each professional musician in Ireland.

Guinness really is food.

Green beer is an abomination regarded as just another example of American eccentricity by the Irish.

Irish ‘crack’ does not refer to a drug, but rather to witty conversation, a highly regarded skill in Ireland.

Palm trees grow in Wexford.

Ireland is further north than Vancouver, Canada — or any part of the U.S.A. other than Alaska.

So, raise a glass of Guinness to the Dear Old Sod, and Slàinte!

The Iranian-born architect and humanitarian Nader Khalili died of congestive heart failure March 5th, 2008. Best known as the founder of the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (Cal-Earth), he invented a green construction method he called Super Adobe, particularly for use as emergency housing, but also as an alternative construction method for third world communities. He also invented the Geltaftan Earth-and-Fire System known as Ceramic Houses, but energy costs and pollution concerns have made that method less popular than the Super Adobe.

In Super Adobe construction, walls are constructed from bags filled with damp soil, preferably soil with fairly high clay content. This is basically a variant on the tried and true sand-bag used by military and flood control agencies for the past 100 years or so. The difference is the bags are piled high — a feat enabled by strands of barbed-wire between each layer to keep the bags from slipping — then the damp soil is tampered down to form an adobe-like packed earth inside the bag. When covered with a layer of plaster the resulting walls are visually identical to brick structures, but the walls are much thicker, resulting in a high thermal mass that is ideal for sub-tropical and desert environments.

My only complaint with this construction method is the name — I mean if you fill sandbags with dirt instead of sand, don’t you have dirtbags?

It is hard to believe, but mucho-macho Mexico has passed legislation in the capitol city to protect women from the lascivious male. For the most part, this is much-needed reform that outlaws obscene language, unwanted touching and familiarity, and other unwanted expressions of a sexual nature.

In the ever-present Mexican tendency for excess, however, this law goes way too far. First, it only protects women, making it sexist and stereotypical itself. The real problem, however, is that it even makes it a crime to look at a woman lasciviously. When asked who was to judge if a look were ‘lascivious’ an official explained that if it made a woman feel uncomfortable that was enough to qualify.

So basically, if a woman thinks a man is looking at her lustfully, he can be arrested and jailed. Now, so far as I know, there is no scientific evidence that women can read minds — though I know many who think they can. Lasciviousness can not be read infallibly from a face — it is as much in the perception of the viewer as in the subject. So, not only can men be arrested for what they are thinking — but there is no way to prove their innocence — and Mexican law presumes guilt until innocence is proven. This has to be the most absurd law I have ever heard about.

Scientists have discovered that certain cyanobacteria (formerly called blue-green algae) use a different chemical process to extract energy from sunlight than that used by green plants. It seems that large areas of the oceans are too poor in iron to support large-scale photosynthesis, so these single-celled organisms have evolved a means of getting energy from the sun without using iron.

The down side to the discovery is that this alternate process does not absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, like normal photosynthesis. That means global models of oceanic carbon dioxide absorption are probably wrong, and so global-warming predictions are understated. This may provide part of the explanation for why things seem to be warming-up faster than was predicted.