A snap of the cap for the cat with the...

Of the efforts of one entrepreneur to do for ketchup what Grey Poupon did for mustard.

"Isn't the ketchup business today exactly where mustard was thirty years ago? There is Heinz and, far behind, Hunt's and Del Monte and a handful of private-label brands."

I remember my father brought home a mushroom ketchup jar once. The jar claimed it was English. I think he bought it because it said it was English, and he rightfully trusted the English where condiments are concerned. We finished the jar and never had any more. I always wondered why.

Science proves that Dan = Awesome

Recent Blogging Heads "Science Saturday" discussion gets into a subject that has become somewhat sore for me over the last month. John Horgan cites a story by NYT writer Gina Kolata about the increased infectiousness of influenza during winter.

Our office is currently involved in a simmering argument over whether or not we should use the ac/heater to bring up the heat. I, Andrew and Laura have all come out strongly on the "Let's not be cold" side, asking for the heater to be on. Heba and Amer believe that the drop in body temperature that presumably occurs when one leaves a comfortably warm area like the office and enters a cooler one like the hall will dampen our immune systems to the point where we are more likely to become sick of the flu or cold. We should therefore spend the chilly months of the year with no heater and often with the windows wide open. Tamim seems conflicted — perhaps he enjoys the warmth but still believes it will make him sick. Perhaps he doesn't care becaues he wears a suit coat.

I patronizingly believe (and have circumstantially 'proven' by random polling of Egyptian acquaintances) that this "sit in the cold so you don't catch a cold" theory is an absurd old-wives' tale in which a good portion of Egyptians (including doctors, as was pointed out during one office flare-up) believe. As it turns out, I'm right.

Horgan explains that in the Kolata piece — experiments with guinea pigs exposed to flu viruses at different temperatures and humidities showed that the colder and drier it gets, the more infectious the disease gets. As the piece states, "[The virus] is more stable and stays in the air longer when air is cold and dry, the exact conditions for much of the flu season." The flu virus is optimal at 41 degrees (or 5 degrees Celcius) 20% humidity.

The flu virus itself doesn't much care if I was warm before or not, it just cares that I'm cold now.

So sitting all winter exposed to the elements is not the way to keep from getting sick. Who would have thought?

Oh yeah. Me. I would have thought that.

The Jamiroquai - Fugu Connection

Today's Achewood features a book by Ray Smcukles entitled "Are you there, God? It's Me, Jamiroquai."

A quick check of the book's ISBN code reveals that it belongs to a book called "Year of Eating Dangerously: A Global Adventure In Search of Culinary Extremes."

The publisher tells that author Tom Parker Bowle's* "adventures ranged from the potentially lethal… to the outright disgusting to the merely gluttonous." I have no doubt that Achewood artist Chris Onstead owns and respects this book.

*Yep

Ooh! Look at me! Embedding.