3 Dunsmores
For all you garden enthusiasts who live in the GTA here is the information to the May 13 Charity plant sale.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Plant Sale!
3 Dunsmores
For all you garden enthusiasts who live in the GTA here is the information to the May 13 Charity plant sale.
Scottish money at work!
3 Dunsmores
I was wondering what I could do a next post on and while reading the paper this morning on the second page was this the article (I have pasted below). In case you don't have time to read/choose not to, it's about a new pamphlet being distributed in Scotland to doctors offices about the right way to deficate(the medical way to explain pooping!). This is all based on a research done on penguins(the research winning a Nobel prize), turns out slouching is wrong and opening the mouth is in.
How do penguins go without ever leaving?
Scottish health pamphlet offers tips on the art of doing your business
Joseph Brean
National Post
Thursday, May 04, 2006
LONDON - On a visit to Antarctica in 1993, two biologists hunkered down behind a Chinstrap penguin, placed a ruler by its rectum and measured how far it squirted its feces.
By testing several birds this way, they came to a rough estimate of the birds' defecation pressure, which at 60 kilopascals is considerably less than that of a fully inflated bicycle tire, but still high enough that, barring the effects of wind, a penguin can expel waste from its nest without actually leaving it.
That remarkable conclusion, which earned the scientists an Ig Nobel Prize when it was published last year, was back in the news this week when a National Health Service trust in Dundee, Scotland, endorsed the practice of defecating with an open mouth.
In a four-page pamphlet titled "Good Defecation Dynamics" and distributed to clinics and doctors' offices, the NHS trust describes the art of voidance, complete with diagrams.
In this delicate system, the mouth plays the role of abdominal pressure valve. To avoid hernias, the trust says, this valve should always be open.
The now-famous Antarctica experiment proved that penguins have developed a high-powered pressure-wash style of defecation (their feces have roughly the viscosity of olive oil) that succeeds in keeping their nests clean.
And humans? Sometimes we get a bit of reading done. But other than that, we usually just sit back and let gravity do the heavy lifting, giving no thought to our aim and trusting the plumbing to wash it away.
Even at the best of times, most humans couldn't hit the side of a barn with their feces, given that our normal abdominal pressure is about one-sixth that of a full-up penguin. Perhaps we do need some advice.
The Scottish approach is mostly uncontroversial -- feet apart, back straight, hands on the lower stomach for support.
"Do not slump down but keep the normal curve in your back," the pamphlet reads. It even suggests using a small stool as a footrest.
But the dictum to "Keep your mouth open as you bulge and widen" seemed to fly in the face of experience.
"Perhaps it is to guard against a potentially damaging build-up of pressure that might blow off one or other end of the digestive tract," The Times of London wondered, while suggesting the very need for such a pamphlet revealed "a gaping cultural black hole in a well-populated part of eastern Scotland."
Such wisecracks are unfair.
"One in three people suffers from bowel and bladder dysfunction, and this can be extremely debilitating and distressing for individuals," an NHS spokeswoman told the newspaper.
"These patient information leaflets contain advice for those people who suffer from this condition, and are based on national guidance from the Association for Continence Advice."
© National Post 2006
I was wondering what I could do a next post on and while reading the paper this morning on the second page was this the article (I have pasted below). In case you don't have time to read/choose not to, it's about a new pamphlet being distributed in Scotland to doctors offices about the right way to deficate(the medical way to explain pooping!). This is all based on a research done on penguins(the research winning a Nobel prize), turns out slouching is wrong and opening the mouth is in.
How do penguins go without ever leaving?
Scottish health pamphlet offers tips on the art of doing your business
Joseph Brean
National Post
Thursday, May 04, 2006
LONDON - On a visit to Antarctica in 1993, two biologists hunkered down behind a Chinstrap penguin, placed a ruler by its rectum and measured how far it squirted its feces.
By testing several birds this way, they came to a rough estimate of the birds' defecation pressure, which at 60 kilopascals is considerably less than that of a fully inflated bicycle tire, but still high enough that, barring the effects of wind, a penguin can expel waste from its nest without actually leaving it.
That remarkable conclusion, which earned the scientists an Ig Nobel Prize when it was published last year, was back in the news this week when a National Health Service trust in Dundee, Scotland, endorsed the practice of defecating with an open mouth.
In a four-page pamphlet titled "Good Defecation Dynamics" and distributed to clinics and doctors' offices, the NHS trust describes the art of voidance, complete with diagrams.
In this delicate system, the mouth plays the role of abdominal pressure valve. To avoid hernias, the trust says, this valve should always be open.
The now-famous Antarctica experiment proved that penguins have developed a high-powered pressure-wash style of defecation (their feces have roughly the viscosity of olive oil) that succeeds in keeping their nests clean.
And humans? Sometimes we get a bit of reading done. But other than that, we usually just sit back and let gravity do the heavy lifting, giving no thought to our aim and trusting the plumbing to wash it away.
Even at the best of times, most humans couldn't hit the side of a barn with their feces, given that our normal abdominal pressure is about one-sixth that of a full-up penguin. Perhaps we do need some advice.
The Scottish approach is mostly uncontroversial -- feet apart, back straight, hands on the lower stomach for support.
"Do not slump down but keep the normal curve in your back," the pamphlet reads. It even suggests using a small stool as a footrest.
But the dictum to "Keep your mouth open as you bulge and widen" seemed to fly in the face of experience.
"Perhaps it is to guard against a potentially damaging build-up of pressure that might blow off one or other end of the digestive tract," The Times of London wondered, while suggesting the very need for such a pamphlet revealed "a gaping cultural black hole in a well-populated part of eastern Scotland."
Such wisecracks are unfair.
"One in three people suffers from bowel and bladder dysfunction, and this can be extremely debilitating and distressing for individuals," an NHS spokeswoman told the newspaper.
"These patient information leaflets contain advice for those people who suffer from this condition, and are based on national guidance from the Association for Continence Advice."
© National Post 2006
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