iraq v1.0

digging through drawers last night, i found a major dick...

can bar soap get dirty?

occasionally, this question comes to mind. is seems wholly possible for bar, and liquid for that matter, soap to become dirty itself. how then do you clean dirty soap... with more soap?

i found one article that explained a bit of the resolve to this inquiry:

"according to a series of tests conducted in the early 1980s, bars of soap are often covered with bacteria and carry a higher load than you'd find inside a liquid dispenser. But no one knows for sure whether this dirty soap will actually transfer its germs to your hands during a wash. in fact, what little clinical evidence there is suggests that dirty soap isn't so bad. a study from 1965 and another from 1988 used similar methodologies: researchers coated bars of soap in the lab with e. coli and other nasty bacteria, and then gave them to test subjects for a vigorous hand-wash. both teams found no transfer of contamination from the dirty soap. however, both studies were tainted by potential conflicts of interest: the first was conducted by proctor and gamble, and the second came from the dial corp. still, there's no good evidence to contradict these studies, and it's likely that the bacteria on a dirty bar would just wash off when you rinsed your hands. in other words, you'd be cleaning the soap as you cleaned your hands."

very interesting. the study from 1988 can be found here.

the article continues and notes that "recent hand-hygiene studies in the developing world have found that washing with soap and water reduces infections even when the water supply might be contaminated. dirty water, like dirty soap, might not make washing less effective. even under the best conditions, washing your hands can actually increase the number of microorganisms present on your hands, thanks to contaminated surfaces near the sink, splashes of contaminated water, or improperly dried hands. (in general, it's safer to leave your hands unwashed than to leave them wet.)"

i find this fascinating and disturbing all the same.

changes

there seems to be a pattern of threes in my life: flat tires on the bike, meals in a day, and major life events...

our first fictitious release

shortly after college, bohnsack, rossi, and i formed a fictitious band. our long awaited first release...

kinetic jumping machine

this was the most fantastic thing that we saw at artscape last weekend.

without question, artscape (the u.s.'s largest free public arts festival) is high on the list of reasons why baltimore is cool.

i used to have dreams about jumping 15 feet in the air much like this guy. i hope to have a go on such an apparatus someday.

yummy gooey

in the past few years, i have come to relish this part of the growing season for a couple of different reasons.

1) tomatoes are starting to come in

2) you can still find some darn good berries

3) here come the plums, and

4) okra hits the farmer's market stands

i love to slice up about a half pound of the little green gems and toss them in a pan with some cayenne, apple cider vinegar, and a pinch of salt for about one minute on med-high heat. the result never fails to satisfy my spice and texture cravings. okra is ok by me.

the ugly

"recently consumers have had a crash course in the hazards of imported products, especially those from china: pet food and pig and chicken feed contaminated with melamine; counterfeit toothpaste with diethylene glycol; fish contaminated with antibiotics and a suspected cancer-causing agent; the use of carbon monoxide to make decomposed fish look fresh."

"despite headlines about these imports, the f.d.a. intends to close 7 of its 13 laboratories that test for these problems."

new york times, 7/18

too much leftover cake

i have made myself sick on vegan chocolate cake 4x in the past week. today, i polished off the last bits for breakfast and the guilt of gluttony lingers with me as the echo of the sugar-high resounds through my veins. no, i will never learn.