In any event, a number of my colleagues and I have been talking about acquiring an advanced microscope system for doing cell counts, brain mapping, and high-resolution imaging. So we figured it might be a good idea to use this opportunity to apply for these funds. That was on March 6, with the grant due on March 23. Not too onerous a deadline, unless one figures in that the proposal needed to be submitted to Research Administration in my institution one week before the NIH deadline.

Suffice it to say, I was able to put together a proposal in the time allotted, just in time for me to hop on the Limoliner to New York. As I sit here in my comfy leather chair taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi, I am enjoying the downtime to think about things other than proposals and driving my chairman crazy.

Tops on my list are the positive changes in the atmosphere for science that has occurred in the past couple of weeks, First, the dramatic short term change in funding for NIH. Obviously, I wouldn’t have written this proposal without the extra funding, and successful applicants will certainly help to keep equipment vendors afloat. Interestingly, this program has, if anything, somewhat of a negative impact on the finances of the scientists themselves because this type of grant (unlike most) doesn’t pay any overhead costs to the institution. Moreover, this institution is expected to kick in some money to help manage the machine. So even though we’d be really happy to be fortunate enough to acquire this piece of equipment, the institution’s attitude can best be summed up as “meh.”

To be sure, there is a good deal of stimulus money going toward investigator-initiated research, and many are working toward tailoring their proposals to fit the needs of the different institutes at NIH. Those of us with grants currently under review are hopeful that extra money in the coffers of NIH will increase the number of proposals that are funded.

Another good thing, of course, is the administration removing the restrictions on stem cell research. There are enormous potential benefits of this type of research, and I know that scientists are ecstatic that they will no longer have to set up walls between their NIH-funded and private foundation stem cell work.

There are two good takes on this. The first is a piece by Frank Rich in the New York Times. The second can be seen below.

I hesitate sharing this dream with my loyal readers. With the exception of two-hour slide shows of Aunt Phyllis’s grandchildren, there is perhaps nothing as annoying as hearing about someone else’s dreams. I am taking the bet that this is just so bizarre that you’ll power through just to see how it ends.

It starts off on a golf course, where I am playing in a foursome, although I can’t recall if they are my usual partners or just some guys. At about the 9th hole on this very lovely course, I tee off and when I get to my ball, I decide to take a nap before hitting my second shot. I climb up on a hill to the side of the fairway, and plop down in the grass.

I wake up some indeterminate time later, and start wandering up to the green, oblivious to the approach shots raining down upon me, in order to catch up with my playing partners. As I get to the green, I realize that it is occupied by another foursome, and that my group has already moved on to the next hole.

I amble over the next tee box, and my partners invite me to hit my drive. I realize that I don’t have my clubs with me, so I excuse myself to go find them. For some reason, they are now in the parking lot, which is, oddly, adjacent to the tee box.

I go over to the where my clubs are, but instead of a golf bag, they have morphed into a mountain bike. Not only has it been transfigured, but this mountain bike, which is tied up to a large SUV, has a Denver boot on it. I find this perplexing. Mind you, although I am apparently nonplussed by the transformation of my golf clubs into a mountain bike, the fact that the bike was parked illegally is getting me all hot and bothered.

Now things start getting bizarre. It turns out that as I am trying to extricate the bike from the boot, Reggie Jackson walks over to me and starts yelling. I had, it seems, indeed parked my bike on his car and he was obviously not pleased. Neither was I, because this was Reggie circa mid 1980s.

I somehow manage to escape from Reggie, and take my mountain bike back over the tee box. I take out my driver and get set to tee off. The only problem is that the tee box is now a parquet floor, not dissimilar from that in the old Garden. While quite fetching, this made it quite difficult to place my tee.

As it turns out, there were some convenient rivet holes in the parquet floor into which I could place the tee. Unfortunately, they were quite deep, so that the ball rested just millimeters above the floor. I tried a couple of drives, but it was impossible to hit the ball accurately. So one of my partners produced what can only be described as a tee extender, which attached to the embedded tee. The only problem was the that the extender was alive, and so the ball would move in unpredictable patterns, rendering my subsequent tee shots even more out of bounds than before.

It was at this point that I woke up.

As I said before, I generally don’t remember my dreams and despite my professional status as a trained “brain guy”, I am no expert in dream analysis. I fervently hope that my loyal readers will help me out here, and provide their insights. I will only point out a few things that might be helpful with your diagnosis. There are fearsome images in this dream that are obvious to even the untrained eye: Reggie Jackson is second only to Bucky F***ing Dent in Red Sox Nation’s pantheon of villains. And believe me when I tell you that there are few things in this world scarier than me with a driver in my hand and the ball on the tee.

So have it, dear reader. I await your insights full of hope and with more than a little trepidation.

In any event, being on my own, I decided to have a “me” day on Saturday. I got up early, went out for a brisk 25 mile bike ride, did some stretching, and then went to the gym for weight training. I got back, had some lunch, and did a little yoga for an hour or so, before going and doing some food shopping. Had a lovely dinner with an old friend that night, polishing off a tasty Barollo (2000 Parusso Barbera d’Alba Superiore Ornati) and went to bed early. All in all, it was a full day.

I got up on Sunday and was out the door for my usual 25-mile Dover bike ride by 7 AM. Being an observant fellow, I noticed that it seemed to take a long time to get warmed up. An exceedingly long time. Put simply, at no point on the loop did I feel strong, and was remarkably beat by the end of the ride. The only good news was that none of my tires deflated, and I was at least able to walk to and from the golf cart later that day.

I could have blamed this miserable performance on dehydration, but that didn’t fly because I drank about 1.5 liters of water with electrolytes in the 90 minutes it took me to finish the ride. I could try to blame nutrition, except that I had a homemade protein bar before I started. I came to the sad conclusion that I simply can’t expect at my age to be able to sandwich 2 moderately long bike rides between weight training (especially quad and other leg exercises). I reckoned that I didn’t have the same stamina that I had when I was 25.

But I was wrong. As I thought about it, I recalled the depressing fact that I was not in better shape when I was 25 than I am now. If anything, I am in much better physical condition now than I have been any other time in my adult life. This gave me some solace, I as realized that my difficult day on Sunday was not necessarily a sign of aging. But this reprieve was temporary as I realized that my inability to remember what a slug I was was perhaps an even more obvious sign of my rapidly diminishing capacity.

So in short, not being able to perform like you used to is a sign of aging. Not remembering how poorly you performed when you were young is a sign of aging.

I think I’ll just sign off.

This is the big one for me. For years, we’ve been ping-ponged back an forth with regard to what is healthy to eat. First we needed to eliminate fats, but then just saturated fats. Carbs were first a good substitute for too much meat, now carbs are, to put it simply, death. What do these strictures have in common? They were all based on meager (to be generous) data.

People who know me are sick of my harping on this, but ever 2000, when I read “The Soft Science of Dietary Fat,” I have approached much of these guidelines with a pillar of salt (I guess that is my Lot in life. Get it?). Anyhoo, follow the links in the Tierney’s article to see the latest research that once again fails to show any link between dietary fat and serum cholesterol.

2. Your car’s planet-destroying A/C

Once again, I am right. I have argued with my spouse for years about this issue. I have always contended that using air conditioning on the highway (with the windows closed) actually saves gas because it allows for a more aerodynamic trip. I was told that I was simply using this theory to justify my comfort. This may be true, but now there is at least data to support me.

3. Forbidden fruits from afar

Others have pointed out that shipping produce locally sometimes leaves a bigger carbon footprint than shipping from across the globe because longer distance shipping is mostly by boat, which is better than planes and trucks. Interesting, nonetheless.

4. Carcinogenic cellphones

Am I worried that some neurosurgeons are suggesting to the physicians in their department that they stop using cell phonees? I just got an iPhone. I’ll give you my iPhone when you pry it from my cold, dead ear.

5. Evil plastic bags

Apparently it takes more energy to produce paper, as opposed to plastic, bags. This is news to me. Although paper takes up more space in the landfill, I wonder if it still degrades faster than plastic. I seem to recall reading somewhere that most landfills are packed so tightly that nothing degrades.

6. Toxic plastic bottles

As they say down in Texas, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I know people who do. I guess it is OK that manufacturers are taking BPA out of their products, but I suspect that Tierney is right, and that this is yet another big scare that is based on weak data.

7. Deadly sharks

One fatal shark attack in the world last year. Enough said.

8. The Arctic’s missing ice

This was another surprise to me. I guess it is good news that the melt this year was not as great as expected, but the worry about the long term health of the planet is still probably worth considering.

9. The universe’s missing mass

I don’t know nothing ’bout birthin’ no universe.

10. Unmarked wormholes

I got nothing.

The remains of a woman have been found sitting in front of her TV – 42 years after she was reported missing.

Hedviga Golik, who was born in 1924, had apparently made herself a cup of tea before sitting in her favourite armchair in front of her black and white television.

Croatian police said she was last seen by neighbours in 1966, when she would have been 42 years old.

Her neighbours thought she had moved out of her flat in the capital, Zagreb.

But she was found by police and bailiffs who had broken in to help the authorities establish who owned the flat.

A police spokesman said: “So far, we have no idea how it is possible that someone officially reported missing so long ago was not found before in the same apartment she used to live in.

“When officers went there, they said it was like stepping into a place frozen in time.

“The cup she had been drinking tea from was still on a table next to the chair she had been sitting in and the house was full of things no one had seen for decades. Nothing had been disturbed for decades, even though there were more than a few cobwebs in there.”

Neighbours were shocked by the discovery.

Jadranka Markic was nine when Hedviga “vanished”.

She said: “I still remember her. She was a quiet woman who kept herself to herself but was polite. We all thought that she had just moved out and gone to live with relatives.”

I am generally not a cynical person, but I am skeptical. After all, that is what I get paid to do. So let’s just say that there are a number of bits here that make me a little suspicious about the veracity of the story.

1. That is one long lease

It’s been a while since I had dealings with a landlord, but I imagine someone patient enough to wait 42 years for a rent payment is a rare bird indeed.

On the other hand, I suppose she could have owned the apartment, and therefore didn’t have a landlord breathing down what was left of her neck. If that was the case, then it seems obvious that she would have real estate taxes that were way past due. Say what you will about the efficiency of bureaucracies, but one thing the all do well is collect taxes.

And don’t get me started with electric and other utility bills.

2. Contradictions

The police claim that there was a missing person report filed, and yet the neighbors just assumed she moved to Zagreb. If there was a missing person report, who made it? If it was family, and assuming they were too stupid to even look for her in her last known address, they surely would have gone back to clean out her place when she was formally declared dead, presumably sometime earlier than 42 years after the fact.

3. The smell

Not to put too fine a point on this, but decomposing bodies tend to be noticed by neighbors. The smell is pervasive and unforgettable. So we’re to believe that no one in the first month or so smelled anything amiss? I will concede that I don’t know anything about Croatian cuisine, so suppose it is possible that the odor might have mistaken for a pungent dinner. Then again, I suspect that “Decomposition Surprise” is not normal fare in that country.

In short, this story smells as bad as the subject of the story itself.

Thanks to Howard for the pointer.

Another instance of this type of underhanded scheme would come to the fore when one or the other kid would start their organ recitals: “My head hurts. My knee hurts. My toes hurt.” At this point, we would again go to our secret compartment and add a placebo to the children’s drinks. To be fair, we were totally honest with them. When they asked what we they were being given, we told them it was “a placebo.” Again, it took a shockingly long time before they finally understood exactly what a placebo was. When confronted with our deception, we simply pointed out that we never lied.

Today I read in the New York Times that some entrepreneurs are now cashing in on this idea, and are marketing placebo pills. There are a surprisingly large number of objections to this, some from the scientific side:

But some experts question the premise behind the tablets. “Placebos are unpredictable,” said Dr. Howard Brody, a medical ethicist and family physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “Each and every time you give a placebo you see a dramatic response among some people and no response in others.”

He added that there was no way to predict who would respond.

“The idea that we can use a placebo as a general treatment method,” Dr. Brody said, “strikes me as inappropriate.”

whereas other worry about the long term consequences:

Dr. Geller, the bioethicist, agrees that parents should not deceive their children. But she added that a parent who truly believed in the power of the placebo was not really being deceptive. “In principle,” she said, “I don’t have a problem with the thoughtful use of placebo. The starting premise and your own belief about what you’re doing matters a lot.”

As for me, I’m only angry that I didn’t think of marketing this first. Interestingly, they are calling the product Obecalp, which is placebo spelled backwards. Unless kids have gotten more clever in recent years (a possibility I am not willing to discount out of hand), this seems unnecessarily complicated.

I have signed up to ride the “Tour de Cure” sponsored by the American Diabetes Association. It is a 30 mile bike ride in Falmouth, Massachusetts taking place on April 27 to raise money for diabetes research. If you feel so moved, I would be most appreciative if would sponsor this ride. It is a good cause that is near and dear to my heart, not to mention my HbA1c levels. Just click here to go to my donation page.

Thanks!