Rotundus.com

When EPA-funded scientists at the University of Colorado studied fish in a pristine mountain stream known as Boulder Creek two years ago, they were shocked. Randomly netting 123 trout and other fish downstream from the city’s sewer plant, they found that 101 were female, 12 were male, and 10 were strange “intersex” fish with male and female features.

It’s "the first thing that I’ve seen as a scientist that really scared me," said then 59-year-old University of Colorado biologist John Woodling, speaking to the Denver Post in 2005.

They studied the fish and decided the main culprits were estrogens and other steroid hormones from birth control pills and patches, excreted in urine into the city’s sewage system and then into the creek.

- Excerpted from: the National Catholic Register

See also a similarly-themed research paper focusing on a Canadian water supply.

Might want to watch this series then:

Not bad. Not spectacular. Enough of a medieval theme to keep me watching.

The last while I think that I've been a bit burnt out the last while, so work last evening devolved into a little housecleaning. I've started going through quite a bit of yeast since I started baking my own bread, but I had a couple of packets of instant yeast (and basically all my bread baking is done with regular yeast). Add to that a package of icing sugar that I'd never opened, and the remains of a bag of brown sugar. In short, I was indeed cleaning out my cupboards, but with the hope of more delicious results than such chores involve.

I may no longer be a subscriber to the Food Network, but that doesn't mean that I can't read their blog - more specifically this week's cooking challenge: cinnamon buns.

Above is the dough post-rise. It's been a while since I've made a dough recipe that required any kneading, but this dough seemed more awkward to knead than any I'd previously done - perhaps that's because I've flipped to the no-knead approach to bread-making (the healthier sequel to that book also recently arrived in my mailbox). I think that if I do this again I'll have to first look for a no-knead variety - I'd been debating tossing out the dough, but decided post-rise that it seemed reasonable enough.

The beer in the background of the first shot, wasn't an attempt to drink enough to have something useable as a rolling pin - I do in fact own one. I've been meaning to go the pie-making route - hence why I bought it - but I haven't gotten to that yet.

Above are the slightly sketchy looking cinnamon rolls prior to rise #2. I used the largest baking pan that I had 11"x11", but that still seemed a bit tight.

It's also a tight fit in my excuse-for-an-oven (which makes a convenient excuse if things go wrong). I did decrease the baking time, as some of the commentators on the Food Network post suggested, to around 20 minutes (with convection fan on).

Above is the final result with which the folks at church got tortured with this morning; I've been trying to outsource my junk-food-eating. (Per the commentators, the vanilla in the glaze was decreased to 1 tsp from 1 tbsp).

Eventually ballistics testing should determine this, but it's interesting just how much publicity was derived from the gender of the shooter. (Of course, whether or not she managed to take out the gunman she does still deserve kudos for courage.)

Shortly after the massacre at Fort Hood, newspaper accounts were full of the heroism of Sgt. Kimberly Munley who, so they said, had taken on the alleged shooter almost single-handedly, was injured by him, but immobilized him with a shot to the torso. I reported on what looked like accurate descriptions of the incident.

The results of ballistics tests are not yet in, and they will definitively tell whose shot it was that took down Nidal Malik Hasan. But it now looks like the military was having us on...again. Read about it here (New York Times, 11/12/09).

In earlier reports, Sgt. Mark Todd was mentioned, but only as a sort of backup to Sgt. Munley. Now it's beginning to look like it was he who shot Hasan. Todd has been interviewed and, with Munley, appeared on Oprah Winfrey's television show to give his account of what happened. More important, his account is corroborated by that of an eye witness to the shooting.

... If it turns out to have been Sgt. Todd, this case of military disinformation will still not be as egregious as it was in the Jessica Lynch case. There they concocted an entire Rambo scenario in which Lynch fearlessly fought off Iraqi attackers before succumbing to serious injuries. The truth turned out to be that she had been injured in a motor vehicle accident and had never fired her weapon. Her care at the Iraqi hospital was so good it included a nurse singing to her. Lynch herself criticized the military for its fraudulent invention of her heroism.

- Source: Glenn Sacks blog