Drinking Coffee Protects Rats From Alzheimer's Disease

A recent study carried out by researchers at the University of South Florida have found that a yet unknown component of coffee interacting with caffeine can have neuroprotective qualities. Previous studies had already shown that daily in-take of coffee in mid-life and in old age can prevent the onset of Alzheimer's disease and this was attributed to caffeine. However, researchers who have engineered rats to develop Alzheimer's disease and have found in those who drink coffee an important growth factor which decreases in people with the condition actually increases in those with caffeine in their diet. The growth factor called granuloycte colony stimulating factor (GCSF) appears to be be stimulated into production. The amount of coffee however, believed to be required to protect humans from Alzheimer's disease is 4-5 cups a day, far above the national average 1.5-2 cups a day. It is hoped that understanding the mechanism that produces the GCSF might allow for production of a drug to stimulate it in the same way as caffeine. 

The White Stripes Conversation

The aim of the game is to have a conversation using the titles of The White Stripes songs, here we go! Try it in the garden, at a party or on the stage. It's like Beckett on skittles:

Jack-Stop Breaking Down

Meg-One More Cup Of Coffee Please

Jack-Little Cream Soda, A Boy's Best Friend!

Meg-Apple Blossom?

Jack-I Can't Wait!

Meg-I Fell In Love With A Girl.

Jack-I Think I Smell a Rat. Let's Shake Hands.

Meg-Now Mary

Jack-Sister, Do You Know My Name?

Meg-Suzy Lee?

Jack-Sugar Never Tastes so Good. I'm Finding It Harder to Be a Gentleman

Meg-Jumble, Jumble. Offend in Every Way

Jack-Why Can't You Be Nicer to Me?

Meg-Who's A Big Baby? Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine

Jack-I'm Slowly Turning Into You

Meg-Hotel Yorbo

Jack-Broken Bricks?

Meg-Black Math. I can Learn.

Jack-Though I Hear You Calling, I Will Not Answer. Truth Doesn't Make a Noise

Meg-Wasting My Time, I Fought Piranhas

Jack-It's True That We Love One Another

Meg-Who's to Say In the Cold, Cold Night I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself

Jack-Take, Take, Take

Meg-I'm Bound to Pack It Up

Jack-The Same Boy You've Always Known

Meg-Effect and Cause

Have Fun Now with The White Stripes Conversation Game xx

Other Realities: Living in Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City

I have thought for some time now that the act of opening a novel and reading the first page should be marked by some spectacular and sensational act: a sonic boom, an explosion, or something audio/visual that wrestles the attention of the reader into the realisation that they are in the process of creating an alternative reality for themselves. Instead, we get nothing but the silent scratch-rustle of page-on-page friction.

Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City is more than an alternative reality - in fact it foregoes alt, immediately assuming itself to be worthy of the real. For the displaced, this work generates a nostalgia for the impossible. Oh, how I long to be a past-his-prime former child star with an astronaut girlfriend, with a discreet lover perpetually dressed in black, with a pop-culture guru friend with a dud eyeball, and a fiery mayoral aide for my comic relief! Lethem’s rich characterisation fools one into assuming intimate knowledge of these individuals, an illusion that the reader takes for granted: that these fictional friendships have been formed from a long line of anecdotes and worthy provenance. 

I have now lived in a parallel New York city, and have been privy to a peculiar network of complicated relationships, and nemeses, and acquaintanceships and so on. A New York city terrorised by fog, mechanical creatures, extreme weather warnings, lies, role playing, apathy and nihilism. 

“You’re leaving real culture behind!” 

That might be the exclamation of Perkus Tooth, the magnetic keystone in the world of Chronic City, a man obsessed with schemes and plots and hidden agendas in uncanny pop culture references: trying to get Marlon Brando in as city mayor;  pasting up culture-jamming broadsides around Manhattan; his fascination with chasing virtual artifacts through auctioneering cyberland E-Bay; not to mention dogs, cluster headaches, manic epiphanies and marijuana and coffee.

I also have collected stark memories of Chronic City when I realised that I wasn’t in fact some kind of omnipresent and eternally mute character within the book, but those other times, when I played the role of the reader. I will look back on the time fondly, yes that time when I was reading on the bus home, a chill wind outside but the nauseating dry-heat of a bus radiator system slightly turning my stomach, when the narrator’s voice discussed distraction from the act of reading - the realisation that you are in fact in the process of imagining - and urged me to look past the bounds of fiction, the edge of the page, and notice the presence of my own knee.

As dear as these recollections are, they are no match for the times I imagined myself as a silent voyeur with some or all of the old gang - Chase, Oona, Perkus, Richard and Georgina - at Perkus’ apartment smoking ICE, drinking Richard’s red wine, watching Chase fumble over Oona’s knife-edge retorts and Richard grasp at Georgina’s curvaceous form as she lay asleep on a tower of miscellaneous jackets and coats on the old sofa. The Jackson Hole will always make me salivate for those burgers I’ve never had, too. And that tiger: what a way to navigate a city. A peculiar force, a powerful suggestion against a wanderly situationist derive: no aimlessness, must check tiger watch and find the safest route to Perkus’ apartment so I’m not swallowed whole.

The astronaut: that’s how I had begun to feel as the weight of the book’s right half lessened and lessened. An astronaut orbiting the earth, my new reality of the chronic city, in isolation, watching the friends but unable to intercept. Investing my opinions, ideas, hopes, and forgiveness in these people proved to be an embarrassing realisation, particularly as I turned a page only to realise that, no, the one I have just read will be the last. 

If we can not have our significant event as we create our new world to live in, we should at least have fireworks when we tear this new reality apart by reaching the final full-stop. Yes, that’s it: every time somebody closes a back cover shut at the its conclusion, a single firework should automatically explode in a great burst of blue, or orange, or red, or green, in the empty sky right above the spot where back cover hit final page.

Dinner with Daniel Day-Lewis

I arrived early because I knew Daniel didn't like to be kept waiting. We were supposed to meet at 7.30, so when I turned up and saw him there already I was a little surprised, but contrary to my previous assumption he was just happy to see me and produced a warm and firm handshake. We took our seats in the restaurant who's name cannot be named and Daniel proceeded to order a bottle of red wine. It was a Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1869-  €170,000 ($230,000) a bottle and worth every cent in my opinion. Daniel was not impressed, he swirled, sniffed, sipped and spat rather than savouring every mouthful. The naked waiters rolled around on the floor desperately tried to absorb the wine on their hairless bodies. Eventually a short chef emerged and stuck his lips to the floor and vacuumed up the unwanted liquid.

Next Daniel ordered two tins of Almas caviar, served in a 24-karat gold tin, €18,250 ($25,000). The roe ran around my mouth like marbles, popping and oozing their salty embryos. Once again this delicacy failed to satisfy Daniel. Most of his caviar ended up on the diamond plate it had been served on, he was much more concerned with gnawing on the gold tin lid. He kept mangling the metal in his mouth and gauging whether or not it could fit back on the tin, finally it had been sufficiently mutilated and was unable to make a complete seal with the gold container. Now that Daniel was satisfied he made the next order.

Two 1-kg Wagyu steaks were ordered €2,500 ($3,350) along with a gigantic Italian White Alba truffle (€125,000-$160,406) and some Hop asparagus (€180-$250 per kg). The oily aromas and strong meaty flavours as well as the earthy and delicate tastes of the food made for a delectable main course. Daniel took his piece of steak and sat on it for about five minutes then he examined it closely, however, he didn't appear to be happy so he stuck it under the leg of his chair and turned from left to right. Finally when the steak had the right mix of fibres from the floor Daniel swallowed it whole.

Next we were served some cheese, moose cheese from three moose in Bjursholm in Sweden, €370 for a pound ($500). It had a very strong taste and each piece had a different texture and density. Daniel stuck most of his in his eyes or his ears before having his first taste which to my surprise he appeared to enjoy. Finally we were served some freshly defaceted Kopi Luwak coffee, the small Asian Civet joined us after his toileting and began to feast upon Daniel's scraps. Kopi Luwak coffee runs at about €40 a cup but the Civet made up for the lack of expense.

Daniel took the cheque and covered the tip and we said our farewells. I wonder has anyone else had a meal as expensive as this? €337,130, the tip was Daniel's little secret...