Apparently, you can’t keep a good idea down, or even a bad one. A couple of weeks ago, the Federal Aviation Administration published a long-awaited 880-page document on the final regulations for pilot training and operating requirements for “powered lift” vehicles, aka Flying Taxis. That means an aircraft designed to take off and land vertically, like a helicopter, but with fixed wings like a plane. Oh, there will be few of these vehicles used for cargo delivery or emergency rescue but make no mistake, the Yellow Cab Company is scouring the landscape looking for pilots. After our long and colorful history dealing with cabbies, we can only imagine what disasters await.
First of all, will there be traffic lanes? You can’t just have hundreds of crazed Armenians and Ethiopians dive-bombing one another willy-nilly, like in the streets of Manhattan. Stuff will fall down from the sky and flatten a few fedoras. What about traffic lights? Where will they put them? What about horns, cabbies can’t live without a prominent honker? How will a potential customer signal his taxi? How can a respectable cab robber be expected to ply his trade when there’s no means of escape short of a parachute? What if the cabbie doesn’t like his tip? It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, and we’re not getting a lot of answers.
On the other hand, of course, there are undeniable benefits from air taxi travel. You get to your destination in a flash, garbled conversations with your driver are brief and the scenery is to die for. Oh yeah, and one big one. Nobody ever hits you on the noggin with a hammer or pushes you onto the subway tracks. Show us the cloud, we’ll find you the silver lining.
In A Pig’s Eye
Ever since Wonder Wart Hog brought crime in Muthalode city to a screeching halt, humans have reconsidered their once-harsh evaluations of the porcine set. The Suidae family mammals, once social lepers, are now invited into human homes for quoits and the occasional Sunday brunch, allowed to play with the children and ride in the front of buses (this bus-riding, of course, has been going on for decades in more enlightened lands like Mexico and Bangladesh). One obeisant pig admirer in kinky Gainesville, Florida has even concocted a brilliant Flying Pig Parade each year just after Christmas. Now, however, comes the ultimate tribute; human beings are lining up at hospitals across the land in hopes of latching on to a valuable pig organ in a process called Xenotransplantation.
Inserting the heart of a pig into a human might seem like a sketchy idea at first. Folks worried about occasional oinking or heading for the trough at dinner time should understand, however, that this new medical procedure is seeing rapid progress and has the potential to revolutionize surgery. One of the most common procedures so far is the insertion of a pig’s heart into a human, which has successfully happened twice. The first patient lived for several months, the second is still alive and under observation in the hospital’s Sty Unit.
In pig surgeries, alas, the heart cannot be inserted into a human instantly. Prior gene-editing is required and certain genes need to be eliminated from the pig heart and human genes added to enhance factors like immune acceptance, prevention of excessive growth of heart tissue and sudden spates of rooting around the yard. Currently, these surgeries are risky and there is no guarantee of success. Surgeons involved in the science, however, feel that rapid progress is being made and we should see xenotransplants happening on a regular basis in the near future.
Obviously, all this piggery will result in a number of societal changes. Women who now insist that “men are pigs” will be forced to find a more accurate scapegoat, like a weasel. And what are we going to do about the use of now-popular porkers to insult police? It won’t work once the pigs become loveable. It doesn’t sound insulting enough to yell, “Cheese it, Salvatore, the muskrats are coming!” Ah well, every silver lining has its cloud.
Attention Vicki Bordeaux!
Airports, as we all know, can be hotbeds of emotional moments. When Aunt Sally gets out of state prison after 15 years and flies into Baltimore, the whole clan is certain to be there banging on drums and jumping up and down. Aviation authorities appreciate sentiment as much as the next guy but recently cases of wretched excess have begged for attention. There are even blossoming companies like airssist which will help you plan and organize your giant anything-goes airport welcomes. Looking to hire the Baja Marimba Band when Uncle Eddie gets back from Seabees training? Just call---our operators are standing by.
One New Zealand airport has had quite enough, thank you. The country’s Dunedin Airport in the town of Momona has recently posted signage alerting travelers to keep all hugs to a maximum, time of three minutes, which seems more than fair. “For fonder farewells, please use the car park,” they insist. The policy is meant to keep congestion at the drop-off to a minimum and discourage lewd demonstrations of affection. Megan Crawford, the airport’s business manager of general development told reporters “The odd signage is in line with our branding, which is to be a little bit quirky and fun but less than dry humping.”
Not all patrons have interpreted the messages as quirky and fun. Some visitors have expressed outrage that the airport would “try to govern love.” One snarly passenger carried his own sign which read, “You can’t put a time limit on hugs!” Another boisterously deemed it “curmudgeonry.” Several long-time travelers promised “a very large organized protest and hug-in, if necessary, until the airport authority mends its ways.” Meanwhile, the dazed American Association of Slimy Pickpockets bemoaned the coming unfavorable working conditions.
The typical passenger was more sanguine. “This got me to thinking,” remarked one of them. “Who the hell would I want to hug for more than three minutes, anyway? Any more than that, you’ve got boinking. There’s no boinking in airports.”
Ah, yes. As Tom Hanks told us so many years ago.
Whale Of A Tale
“Got a whale of a tale to tell ya, lads, a whale of a tale or two….”
So why do very large animals like elephants and whales, which have far more total cells, get cancer far less frequently than humans? This inconsistency is called Peto’s Paradox and has long puzzled scientists. Recently, however, researchers discovered a gene in elephants which seems to suppress tumors. Even better, this year scientists found two proteins in bowhead whales that could be linked to DNA repair, increasing the animals’ cancer resistance according to a paper published in bioRxiv in May.
Bowhead whales are the longest-lived mammals on Earth with a life span that can exceed 200 years. The research suggests the whales’ ability to repair DNA is one of the keys to their longevity. In the study, researchers severed both strands of the DNA molecule in cells from humans, cows. mice and bowhead whales. This kind of damage, called a “double-strand break” is known to increase cancer risk. More than twice as many whale cells were able to repair their DNA as the cells of other species, and the whale cells did a much better job of fixing the DNA accurately. The human, cow and mouse cells were often sloppy with repairs, making incorrect additions or deletions in the DNA sequence---mistakes which can raise the risk of cancer. The team found that proteins called CIRBP and RPA2 were much more common in bowhead whales and played a role in the gene repair. The scientists feel that regulating such proteins in humans could mitigate cancer damage in their DNA.
“We probably have the solution to cancer medicine out there in nature already,” says Orsolya Vincze, an evolutionary ecologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research. “It’s only a matter of time. And this is not a fish story.”
Cancer researchers. Always with the unbridled hilarity.
Toilet Talk
Every picture tells a story, don’t it? Like every bowel movement contains clues about your health, which is why doctors often ask patients for stool samples, preferably in sealed containers. Now just imagine the wonders that might be discovered if your bodily waste could be constantly monitored, tracked and analyzed, creating a more holistic look at your health. Some dreamer at Enter Toi Labs did that and came up with TrueLoo, an AI-powered toilet seat that optically scans your stool and urine for clues to worrisome changes. Ain’t that some shit?
TrueLoo, you’ll be thrilled to know, looks just like a normal toilet seat. It fits on your existing toilet and is quickly gaining in popularity, currently being used in over 50 major senior living facilities. Alerts and data are delivered directly to care personnel in such facilities in case Uncle Bernie suddenly comes down with worms or Ms. Marigold’s innards have been invaded by Shigella. Device inventor Vik Kashyap says, “I liken it to a team of doctors that can peer into your toilet bowel every day,” and isn’t that a dandy image?
“Edmonds, Jones, Smith and Hawkins, you’re on bowl duty today.” (Moans from the assemblage.) “But superintendent, there must be some mistake, I had bowl duty just last week,” complains one.
“That’s right, Hawkins, but you should be proud. Not everybody has a nose for the job, few are so discerning. Why just last week you were in here after hours, toiling away. You didn’t hear me when I passed but just as I was leaving the room, I could hear you talking to Edmonds and you were almost ecstatic. ‘Man, this is some really good shit,’ you said.”
All right, no need to call the literature police. We’ll go quietly.
That’s all, folks….
