Like the old commercials for Fruit Loops, a Kelloggs' breakfast cereal , would say: "A nose, it always knows". While that commercial was referring to Toucan Sam, I'm just using this as a lead in to talk about how sensitive dog noses are and how they can be used, perhaps, to detect cancer. There have been a number of mentions of this in the media recently. Here's two items from CBC news this year. One story that ran on 60 Minutes and another from the Early Show . Both of these stories refer to a study run by Dr. Bob Gordon of the Scripts Clinic in La Jolla which used urine samples of cancer patients and healthy people to determine how well dogs could detect differences in odor between the two. That study resulted in the conclusion that a trained dog could detect cancer to a degree that was 3 times greater than could be accounted for by mere chance. Pretty good but not great. A much more interesting study has been just released: In the small world of people who tra...
I mentioned a few days ago that I'd purchased off of Craig's List an exercise machine. A Nitroflex, to be more specific, for the grand sum of $75. The boxes you see to the left were bought by the seller as discontinued merchandise over a year ago and stored in his back yard storage shed. You might be able to see some of the bugs and such that had made their homes on these boxes. I left them out on my deck for a few days before opening them to allow the insects to leave gracefully or die in the sun. The picture to the left is the pieces from the box, unboxed, and up in one of my upstairs bedrooms. For the most part it wasn't difficult to move it around though two pieces were heavy and a number of them were kinda long and bulky to be wandering about the house with. Surprisingly, this kit didn't require any extra tools. There were two allen keys and one combo wrench included in the boxes and that was all it took to put it together. The whole thing only took about half an h...
I spent Thanksgiving at my girlfriend's parents' house. It was just the four of us and her brother & sister-in-law. Oh, and Barney. T hat's him over there on the left. I took a few pictures of him but the best two are represented here. Which one do you like better? Ears up or down? LOL W omen can be really funny about how their hair looks but Barney seemed pretty willing to have his ears do anything they pleased. If only women were so compliant... I'd have some VERY interesting pictures since hair can be even funnier than ears. I f you're wondering why Barney looks so vigilent, it was partially due to the strong scent of turkey and pork in the air--and of course because he's a very friendly fellow and always willing to put on a show for a little attention. And man can that dog jump! H e looks a lot more serious with his ears down, doesn't he? And those serious soulful eyes!
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