Where Can I Get Me A Gun?

Today marks a real milestone in this bear's life. Today, I had my first up close, personal experience with The United States Postal Service. Faarrrqque! It makes me want to move to America just so I can buy a gun and go and shoot someone there. Seriously. What a bunch of bloody useless pencil necked bozos. I mean, we have some inept government agencies here in Oz, but NONE of them even come close to the uselessness I experienced today.

Here's the problem...

We have a number of US suppliers who send us stuff. The trouble is, via UPS or FedEx, sometimes it costs more to send than it does to buy it. USPS International Priority Mail costs less than half, so we went to the USPS website and set up an account.

The account creation form let us create an account at our address, right here in Australia. It even let us enter our credit card details, with the card holder's address right here in Australia.

If you've ever used Click'n'Pay before, you'll know that you create a label, then print it out to stick on your package, and on the way, you pay for it.

And that's where my evening got interesting.

You see, their stupid credit card form, like credit card validation forms on just about every website you buy stuff from, asks for the card holder's address, and when you get to "State", up pops a list of 50 familiar states, none of which are here in Australia... and that's that. You can't go any further.

"Must be me", I thought, so I picked up the phone and called the USPS "Customer Service" 800 number. "Customer Service"? Not.

First, I had to negotiate my way through one of those bloody infuriating automated call routing systems. "No, I DO NOT want to hear about your bloody new postage rates."

When I finally got to talk to an operator, she was clueless. More than capable, I'm sure, if I'd had a question about the new postage rates, but as for my issue, clueless. She transferred me to the Internation Package Tracking Desk. This operator was even more clueless, if that's possible, in that she didn't even know there were new rates, and the best suggestion she could make was to give me the numebr of the USPS Post Office nearest the pick-up address for the package we're trying to ship.

My second call got off to a better start, once I'd negotiated the automated call router. "No, I DO NOT want to hear about your bloody new postage rates." The operator still couldn't help, and did offer to discuss the new postal rates before she finally transferred me to "Technical Support".

"Yay!", I stupidly thought. Finally, someone who can help.

He listened to my problem, and then said "I'm sorry sir, you can not send packages to the United States. The USPS can only be used to send packages FROM the United States."

"No, you IDIOT. You're not bloody listening. I am NOT trying to send a package to the United States, I'm trying to send one FROM the United States." Of course, I didn't actually say that... but I desperately wanted to.

I explained the story again, and he then said accounts could not be created from outside the United States, which he stuck with until I explained, for the fourth time, that the account creation page specifically allowed non-US accounts.

In the end, he told me to make other arrangements.

I am not easily defeated. "I'll email someone." I went back to the USPS website and clicked "email us". I filled in the form to the best of my ability, and just about the only personal imformation they didn't ask for was a Social Security Number.

There was a teeny weeny little space to "type my question", which should probably have been "Are you people serious?" because that's just about all the space was big enough for. Then I had to select the subject from a list. My subject wasn't there. I picked another subject, and then had to pick a sub-subject from another list. Not surprisingly, my sub-subject wasn't there either. No problem. Send. My email was rejected.

Perhaps I should have selected "Tell Me About The New Postage Rates" from the subject box.

ADDENDUM

I sent them an email. They wrote back saying something to the effect that the internet is a wild and evil place, full of foreign bad guys out to do harm to every American, and that they only accept US Credit Cards to "protect their customers from fraud". I wrote back asking them how a foreign credit card might expose their customers to fraud, but there has been no reply. I hope they're thinking about it. I desperately wanted to write back that the foreign bad guys weren't out to do harm to every American at all... just USPS workers, and in that, they're joined by most Americans. Fortunately, I didn't. Instead, I'm writing to Jack Potter.

No Limits To Stupidity

Do these look the same to you? I hope not. The one on the left is a sheep, yes? And the one on the right? Come on, you know this... that's right, it's a poodle.

Not, apparently, in Japan, where an enterprising company called Pets as Poodles has been selling the left hand side animals, passing them off as the animals on the right hand side... at $1,600 each!

They were caught out when one of the buyers, Japanese film star Maiko Kawamaki took her new poodle on a TV talk-show and wondered why the animal didn't bark or eat dog food.

She was shattered when she was told it wasn't actually a poodle, that it was, in fact, a sheep. Not embarrassed, or ashamed... but very upset.

Once the dog was off the leash, more women began calling police complaining that they, too, had been delivered the ovine substitute. According to the story, in News Ltd's on line site today, one couple was distraught when they took their "poodle" to the vet to have its claws clipped and were told they weren't claws, they were hooves. "Distraught". Really?

Seriously Icky

I learned new stuff today...

There are about 100 trillion living cells in the human body.

90% of them are NOT human.

Those cells belong to all of the symbiotic or parasitic organisms that live in/on us.

For instance, there's a little critter who lives on the edge of your eyelid. That's his world, and his job is to keep the the base of your eyelashes clean. No-one has the slightest clue how he got there, but there he is.

There's another one, a bacteria, that lives inside your mitochondria. That's the little battery inside every (human) cell in your body. His job is to repair your DNA when it gets broken by free radicals.

Your gut hosts 490 known species of "good bacteria", which makes the one or two they stick in yoghurt look a bit lame. Their job is to help you break down your food. The problem is, they're at war with the "bad bacteria" who just want to come along for the ride, and in most of us, it's a war the good guys always lose.

One of those good guys is responsible for the production of lactase. That's an enzyme the body needs to break down lactose. Without those particular good guys, you'll be lactose intolerant.

There's another couple implicated in your propensity to get fat or stay thin. A coroner somewhere in the Excited States spent 20 years taking samples from the guts of each autopsy he did, and he correlated species with the weight of the individual. He found that naturally thin people have lots of one kind, while obese people have lots of another kind.

Another of those bad gut guys secretes an enzyme that some scientists think is a neurotoxin, and if you have enough of them, that toxin starts making symptoms that look remarkable like MS.

And if there aren't enough good guys in your small intestine, it can get overgrown with Candida, and THAT's bad, because the shape of the intestine wall means the fungus makes holes allowing partly digested food to leak into your bloodstream.

One parasite has been shown to make girls promiscuous, and men stupid. I thought that was what beer was for.

Personally, I find the whole idea a bit icky, and it makes me ask... if 90% of me is not really me, then who am I? Ugh! It makes my head spin!

Stunning

With a tear in my eye, I've just watched the last of the stunning ten part mini series, Band Of Brothers.

For those who haven't seen it, it's a dramatisation of the true story of Easy Company, a unit of the 101st Airborne in WWII, from their training camp in England, through the Normandie landings, Operation Market Garden and the Siege of Bastonge, and then all the way to the end of the war.

This film is a moving tribute to a small group of men... men without whom our world would have been a very different place... so much so that at the end, I found myself spontaneously standing in ovation, as much for the 'real' men of Easy Company, who are interviewed at the beginning and end of each episode, as for the brilliance of Speilberg and Hanks who co-produced the series.

It's not so much a war story as it is the story of extraordinary cammeraderie and bravery, of human tragedy, survival and the senselessness of war. It conveys an unpaletable truth, that sometimes war is an horrific, necessary evil.

If you haven't seen Band of Brothers, put it on your 'must see' list.

Vegetarian Goose

We were at the Chinese Reataurant near my parents' place the other day, and I spotted this dish...

Maybe it says something different in Chinese.

Kittens

This is the hyperactive Scooter, top, in a rare moment when she was still enough to pose for a pic, and above, this evening, after a very long day.

This is tiny little Mini. She's actually spending the night in hospital tonight... four out of the five kittens from her litter have all come down with some mystery bug. She's eating, drinking and generally comfortable, but it is a bit of a worry.

I did try to take one of the two of them together. Not possible I'm afraid.

And here's one way you can identify someone who's just acquired a kitten or two... this cut was inflicted when we first cuddled Scooter at the Pet Store. Sharpest claws I've ever felt, and probably just as well the pic's blurry.

A Damned Good Book

I've taken a bit of time out over the last few days, to re-read The Walled Orchard by Tom Holt.

There's something about books written in the first person... I loved Interview with A Vampire and The Seventh Scroll, so The Walled Orchard is a real pleasure.

It's a narrative set in the glory days of ancient Athens, a funny, very human portrayal that's more personality than event. It probably helps that I did a little Ancient History in high school, but don't be deterred if you didn't. Walled Orchard is a bloody good read. Witty, sophisticated, sarcastic and a lot of fun. It gets four paws up from this bear and if you spot it in your local bookstore or library, you're in for a treat.

Kitten Shopping

I know it's only been a few weeks, but Dr J has been an empty shell without a furry animal in her life, so yesterday I managed to bundle her in the car and take her out to Windsor, which is about 50km away on the fringe of Sydney, to visit a cat rescue shelter. It was an idea with noble intent... in that we could rescue a little pussy cat that otherwise wouldn't have had a great life.

The trouble is, the cats at the shelter were all fully grown, and part of the bonding process between humans and their animal friends is being there through the formative years so they can properly take on all of your neuroses.

Sadly, the cats at the shelter, beautiful as they were, were a bit too grown up. I'd actually expected that, and the purpose of the drive wasn't necessarily to find some new friends (Dr J had decided she wanted two), but more to try to ease her into the idea that a new animal is never going to replace Sooty, but will, nevertheless provide companionship and a whole new personality to boss her around, as cats do.

We set off for home, but decided that the 500m we spent on the new tollway wasn't worth the toll so we'd take the alternate route.

...which is where the plan seriously came off the rails.

About a kilometre down Windsor Road past for fork where it joins Old Windsor Road and the freeway, we passed a pet megastore.

We'd just had the discussion about kittens v adolescents, so we thought "let's just wander in and see if they have any kittens. That way we'll have something to compare the cats we've just seen with."

I should have understood how dangerous that might be. Kittens, you see, are irresistable. They're tiny, fluffy, and extremely cute, with huge round eyes and tiny little squeaks when they're trying to meow. And, of course, the very first thing we saw, right at the entrance to the store, was the giant cage with about a dozen of the fluffy buggers in it, climbing all over each other vying for either our attention or the food and water bowls.

"Aaaawww, look! Kittens", we both said.

"They're Bermans, or Berman crosses", said the young shop assistant. "Except for that one." She pointed to a kitten slightly larger than the others, with light in her eyes, an over abundance of legendary feline curiosity, and an athletic ability of Olympic standard. "Just a domestic", she said with classist disdain, as though the lack of one or other parent with the right 'papers' somehow made her inferior. That probably sealed it there and then, and it's just a shame the store assistant didn't understand the psychological manipulation.

Ah well... I guess that's how Dr J eneded up adopting (which is a nice way of saying we paid what seemed like way too much money) the domestic, Scooter, and one of the Berman crosses, Mini, a tiny little thing who seemed the most curious of the other kittens in the enclosure.

And then we got them home.

Oh dear!

Scooter has ADHD. Really. She does... actual, real, attention defitic hyperactivity disorder... which is how she got her name... every few seconds she'd scoot across the loungeroom, or up the stairs, or back down the stairs, or in and out of any one of the dozens of little hidey holes modern decorating can create. Her attention on any one thing in the loungeroom could not be sustained for more than about 5 seconds before something else caught her eye. She approached the task of soaking up the her new surroundings with more enthusiasm than is possible for any human without the assistance of very powerful recreational drugs.

Mini tried ever so hard to keep up, but she's a couple of weeks younger, in cat terms, a very long time, and after an hour or so she was content to just curl up on Dr J and go to sleep, waking every fifteen minutes or so to have another crack at tagging Scooter.

Scooter, in return, would give Mini hell, probably because dear little Min is that week or two younger, and just a little smaller than Miss Scooter, so she's fairly easy pickings. Dr J's Idea was to have this 'happy family', but I suspect she's forgotten that she didn't actually get on much with her brothers and sisters either.

For a few hours last night, the place was chaos. Mini would hide, not hide, attack, roll over in submission, or curl up. Scooter would just do what, we suspect, Scooter will always do, which is to explore, chase, run about, jump on Mini, tackle Mini, stalk Mini, and generally go beserk. Later in the night, she couldn't decide whether to keep running around or curl up and have a sleep, so she draped herself over the arm of the lounge, positioned just right so that she could observe the room, yet comfy enough to doze off every now and then. She only settled when I dimmed the lights, which was a beautiful thing because by bedtime, Dr J could just plonk her in her igloo bed in the laundry with Mini (who'd retired at a much more civilised hour).

This morning, they were curled up together, oblivious to the routine of mornings, but once they were up, the chaos started all over again, only this time, it was daylight outside so they could actually see what was on the other side of the glass. Birds. Given Scooter's hunting practice, I suspect their days of leisurely flying into the courtyard are numbered. That's Ok. They're African Minor Birds, not welcome in our country at all.

I'm not going to get obsessive about writing up their formitive years, but I will post a pic or two of Scooter and Mini in the next couple of days.

Evil Dihydrogen Monoxide

Thanks to my former global travelling work colleague, Si for sending this to me this morning.

What more can one say?

Spare A Thought...

I don't know why, but the story of Titanic has always had a very special place in my heart. No... not the Cate and Leo version... the real story, and it's been that way for as long as I can remember.

I'm a little better now, but there was a time when I'd just have to see a photo of the ship and I'd burst into tears. I will admit that I sobbed through Cameron's movie, from the moment the ship appeared on the screen, right through to the very end.

So spare a thought then... for today, 95 years ago, the unsinkable Titanic stood perpendicular with her stern facing the stars then slowly, deliberately, plunged forever into the deep of the Atlantic.

1503 people lost their lives. Maybe I was there.

2.10am, April 15, 1912.

Oops! Damned Decimal Places!

Ok. I promise that this is my last rant for a while about global warming and carbon emissions, but I need to give you some stats, because there's some confusion about exactly how much CO2 25 billions tonnes is, and I might have put a decimal in the wrong place last week.

So I whipped out the trusty Excel spreadsheet, and this time, I figured it out as a proportion of the total of the world's atmosphere. I did this because a)I was bored, b)I need to get out more, and c)I was filling in for Amanda, our brilliant retail manager, on a day when nothing much else was happening.

Whatever. I'm sure there could have been a more productive use of the energy consumed by my braincells, so I'm sorry, Al Gore, if all that thought energy has contributed to global warming on Titan.

Ok... here it is... for anyone remotely interested, and get ready for some numbers so big they're incomprehensible...

The total weight of the world's atmosphere is around five million billion tonnes, which is the number 5 with fifteen zeros on the end. Of course, you already knew that, didn't you?

Depending on what part of the world you're in, I think you can call it five thousand trillion tonnes, of five quadrillion tonnes. Or not. Let's just call it "a lot". You can work it out by multiplying the surface area of the earth, which is 510 million sq km, by the air pressure (which is the weight of the air, 1kg per sq cm (14.7lb/sq in), or 10,000 tonnes per sq km.).

Which means the total man made CO2 going into the atmosphere every year (if you were paying attention, you'll remember that as 25 billion tonnes a year) is 0.0003%, or 3 thousandths of one percent of the total volume.

This is about 3% of the total CO2 pouring into the atmosphere from all sources, which means natural CO2 accounts for 97%.

Here are some more stupid meaningless comparisons...

If I wanted to show it on a graph, the line would stretch from Sydney to LA, and the man made CO2 would be the first 40cm (about 15.5") of that line.

If it was a proportion of total Government spending in 2007, it would run whatever country you live in for about a hundred and three seconds out of the year.

People, these numbers are about as easy to understand as your mobile phone plan.

Here's a thought though... breathing by every human on earth produces about 1kg of CO2 a day each, which, given our population of five billion people, accounts for a staggering 7% of the total man made CO2 emission around the world...

...so if we could just get rid of some people... now wouldn't THAT be an inconvenient truth!

Oh Pewk! Bloody Al Gore Again?

This Bear is really starting to get worried about Global Warming. No, I'm not worried about carbon emissions, or heat sinks, or greenhouses. I'm worried about "Global Warming - The Issue".

This, people, is something spinning out of control, whipped up by ignorant journalists and opportunistic politicians, and backed by pseudo science of the very worst kind.

I've been saying for a while now that, even though we've treated our environment and resources with reckless disregard, and there is the strongest of arguments for changing our ways, this "Humans Did It" Global Warming thing is at best, total bullshit, and at worst, an attempt to manipulate and control us for some as yet unknown political end.

Today I discover that the ultra hypocrite and champion of inconvenient truths, Al Gore, has organised "Live Earth", 7 simultaneous rock concerts around the world to "raise the awareness of global warming". It's called 7/7/7 (that's the date), and a bunch of so-called celebrities get yet anotehr stage from which they can lecture us on something else they know little to nothing about. Maybe, if they really wanted to save energy and cut down on carbon emissions, they'd turn down the power on those amplifiers.

Sharp perspective time people...

FACT: The world's climate is NOT stable, has never been stable, and never will be stable. It gets hotter, it gets colder, it gets hotter again. Ice sheets form. Ice sheets melt. Ice sheets form again. Coral reefs grow. Coral reefs die. Oceans rise. Oceans fall. Boo bloody hoo... it's just part of a natural cycle.

FACT: Climate change has happened before, and it will happen long after humans are extinct fossil remains in the bedrock.

FACT: A miniscule immeasurable increase in solar radiation... that is... the heat from the sun... is going to do more to heat up the world than we ever could.

FACT: All of the other planets in the solar system are currently experiencing global warming. Um... wow... I didn't know we had the technology to get to any of them, let alone cause global warming on them. Maybe Star Trek really is a documentary.

FACT: The other major contributor to global warming is an accelleration of tectonic plate movement. A what? You know... I've talked about this before... the plates move apart at the bottoms of the oceans, spewing the molten innards of the earth out into the sea. Plates that, 20 years ago, were moving apart at a rate of 5cm a year are now moving at 15cm a year. Why? It's probably because in 1974, the earth's rotation got the wobbles. For 30 years before '74, the world was cooling down... so much so that scientists were warning of a coming catastrophic ice age. Since '74, we've been heating up again mostly thanks to a change in our aspect to the sun. Damn. That wasn't in Al's film... how did he miss that?

FACT: The total increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the last hundred years is measured in double digit parts per million... that is, an almost undetectable 50 or 60 parts per million. And, of course, there's still argument about this, because the measured increase might be partly, or even entirely due to an improvement in measuring technology.

FACT: And here's the bit Al Gore et al inconveniently ignore most... human CO2 output is a TINY fraction of the total CO2 output around the world. The vast majority of CO2 entering the atmosphere does so by "natural geological release", that is, it seeps out of rocks, or is released by seismic or volcanic activity. Humans and their CO2 emissions could vanish from this world, and the planet wouldn't notice.

Do you really want to know how much carbon dioxide we're pumping into the atmosphere? Ok... stick with me through some very scratchy arithmetic here... The total amount of carbon dioxide output by humans is around twenty five billion tonnes a year. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it? 25 with more zeros than Pearl Harbour. It's a bigger number than most of us can comprehend, but how much is that, really?

This might put it in perspective for you... a cubic metre of the stuff at 25degC at sea level weighs about one and a half kilos. Through the magic of some really shonky rough cut maths, I will tell you that if you scooped it all up and put it in one place, it would make make a cube of gas around 2.5km on all sides.

You think that sounds REALLY big, don't you? Actually, as a proportion of the total of the world, it's so tiny you'd have trouble seeing it from space without a good spy satellite. It would be a dot that wouldn't stretch from the The Sydney Harbour Bridge to Darling Harbour, or from Battery Park to the Statue of Liberty, or from St Pauls Cathedral to the Houses of Parliament. It isn't even three quarters of the length of the runway at LAX. To understand how staggeringly small this is, go to google earth, zoom in on any one of the landmarks I've just mentioned, and then zoom out again. You have to zoom out a long way before you can see the whole world.

Real scientists are speaking up though. Professor Ian Plimer is Dean of Geology at Adelaide University. He gave a lecture yesterday that wasn't widely reported, in which he described the total contribution of humans to global warming as "miniscule" and "insiginificant". Geologists have a much better handle on this whole thing than climatologists could ever have. That's because geologists have seen it all before, and Plimer added his considerable voice to the chorus of real, but largely ignored scientists who are challenging the merchants of panic by trying to bring some sense and science into the debate.

Just to finish off, here's some more useless information for you...
If you could gather all of the fossil fuels consumed in the world and dump them in one place, they would bury greater Los Angeles to a depth of about 70cm, or, in the old money, 27 inches. That sludge is barely over knee height for an average out-of-work actor, and there are many who might think that there is no more fitting a dump for this stuff than LA.

Ok... so we've got 27". Now I want you to put that in perspective... burn it. Go on. Imagine a huge fire covering all of Los Angeles (which, as you'll have seen from google earth, really is just a tiny dot on the globe). That's a 12,000sq km fire that has to burn through 70cm of fuel. And it has a whole year to do it. The 2003 Victorian bushfire consumed more than 56,000 sq km, four times the area of Los Angeles, and it did it in two months, consuming a fuel density far greater than 70cm.

Oh... and I nearly forgot to mention... wildfires in the USA burn an area slightly less than the size of Los Angeles every year, pumping... yes, you guessed it, nearly the same amount of CO2 into the atmosphere as all of the activities of human fossil fuel burning world wide. That's just fires in the USA. Bushfires in Australia consume around 5 times that each year, generating 5 times the amount of CO2 as the burning of fossil fuels. And I haven't even mentioned fires in Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, and everywhere else.

Finally, here's Al Gore's most inconvenient truth (and thanks to CAW for this)...
That 20 room mansion of his consumes 20 times more energy than the average American home. It's only 5 times larger than the average American home, but it's so poorly designed that it's an energy guzzler. "Do as I say", says Al, "not as I do."

Are you getting the picture yet?

Day Off

Bliss! I've just spent an entire day NOT working. No email. No internet. No reports. No sales. No work at all.

I didn't actually think it was possible and I really wasn't sure how I was going to get through the day but rescue came in the shape of Henry, Dr J's newphew and a pro golfer.

Henry's down in Sydney from his home in Brisneyland, lining up for a couple of minor tournaments in the next few days. As a part of his preparation, he took us out to the Castle Hill Country Club to scope out the course.

I'm no golfer, but it was interesting to spend a few hours out in the fresh air and sunshine with a pro, checking greens, fairways, hazards and treelines. Henry even has this very cool little range finder... just point it at the flag, press a button and it will tell you how far away it is, how many degrees elevation it is, and what that means to the distance of the shot. To explain... let's say the flag is 120 metres from the tee, but it's at a 5 degree down angle. That means it's a 110m shot away. For me, that's not going to make the slightest difference... the last time I played a round, the course marshall came up to me on the fourth hole and asked me if I was sure I had enough balls. (Bastard!)

I got to putt on some of Australia's best kept greens too, and I'll tell you, it's quite a bit different to trying to get the ball in the hole in the side of the Pyramid at King Tut's Mini Golf.

And I got to drive the golf cart, mostly because everyone thinks my Smart Car is just a cart on steroids anyway.

By the way... in his spare time, Henry's an amazing magician, AND the world master of trick shots (he holds world records for things like bouncing a ball off a club, and spinning a ball on a putter head). If you're interested, his website is HERE.

Say A Prayer For Sooty

I don't know if you believe in this sort of thing, but if you do, please say a prayer for Sooty, Dr J's wonderful cat and faithful companion for the last 17 and a half years.

We took Sooty to the vet this morning. He was having difficulty breathing, and I'm afraid the diagnosis couldn't have been worse. He has lung cancer, and may not last through the night. It's amazing that we've seen few symptoms until now, but that's how it is with cats, apparently. They're masters of masking, and just two days ago this guy was seemingly in perfect health.

He's back with Dr J now, trying to sleep at the end of her bed, but his breathing is laboured and the fire's gone out of his eyes. I suspect the Doc and I will spend the Easter long weekend remembering a wonderful friend, one who's stuck by her, who's been there for her, though the good times and the bad for more than half her adult life.

Fat Mouse, Thin Mouse

Our little pilot store and physical office are closed on Mondays, mainly because we run a mostly virtual company anyway, and the store's open the other six days of the week. That also means Monday is supposed to be my "day off", but I find myself sitting here at the office waiting for a delivery. Bloody tedious.

So I'm wrestling with being productive or not, and right now 'not' is winning so I thought I'd share this little piece of advice with you...

It's not so much what you eat that makes you fat, as when you eat it.

The basic proposition is that you can eat whatever you like during the daytime and not gain weight. It's got something to do with the way the body decides what to do with the food you eat.

People who need to get out more figured it out by looking at shift workers. That's because workers transferred to shiftwork inexplicably gain weight, even though neither the type, quality nor quanity of food they eat changes.

To test the proposition, a researcher in Japan ran an amazing experiment with little white mice.

He divided them into two groups, one fed during the day time, and the other fed at night. In every other respect, the mice were the same... the same activity level, the same amount of sleep, the same food, same little mouse exercise wheel... the only thing that was different was the time they ate.

And after just 3 days (not 30 days, or 3 weeks... THREE DAYS), he weighed the mice. The little daytime mice weighed in at a healthy 35g each. That's normal weight for these fellas. But the night fed mice weighed 40g each, an incredible 15% more than their day-fed cousins. In just 3 days.

Then they ran some blood tests and isolated a hormone that we all secrete at night that sends a signal to your body's insulin and fat receptors to tell them to store excess nutrients as fat (because without that message, those excess nutrients just get filtered back out of your system). When they switched that hormone off and repeated the experiment on a new batch of mice, there was no difference between them.

It makes some sense. In a time when food was not plentiful, there would be a real survival advantage for any animal that was able to store away whatever nutrients it hadn't used by the end of the day. That's great, unless you live in a rich western country like Australia, the USA, Canada or most of Europe where food is plentiful, cheap and easy to get.

So the moral of the story is... next time you head for the fridge at 2am, just remember where that slice of cold pizza’s going to end up.