Auntie BlueJaysGirl's blog: "meanderings :)"

http://cheezburger.com/239365 - this made me laugh so much I nearly spit out my water :)

This article is from NPR:

Many of us will happily eat a gummy bear or cookie after it falls on the floor, as long as we snatch it up quickly. Say, five seconds or less, right? Well, science just gave us another excuse to continue this food-saving habit, especially when it comes to carpet-dusted snacks.

Biology students at the Aston University in Birmingham, U.K., measured how quickly two common bacteria hop aboard foods dropped on tiles, linoleum and carpet. Their findings support the idea that there really is such a thing as the five-second rule for moist snacks, such as wet pasta and sticky gummy bears. For dry foods, like cookies and toast, waiting a full 30 seconds didn't make much of a difference in the number of critters that jumped on, microbiologist Anthony Hilton and his students reported this week on the university's website. 

The team hasn't published the data yet. So the findings are still preliminary and need to be confirmed. But the conclusions make sense: If you snatch up a wet gummy bear three seconds after it hits a tile or laminate floor, it will pick up much fewer microbes than if you wait 30 seconds — at least for the two bacteria examined, E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus.  And for carpet, you've got an even longer grace period. It didn't matter whether the food was wet or dry, the surface spread the least germs, even over the full 30 seconds, the team found.

"We have found evidence that transfer from indoor flooring surfaces is incredibly poor, with carpet actually posing the lowest risk of bacterial transfer onto dropped food," Hilton said in a statement.

With carpet, of course, your sticky candy will pick up much more than bacteria, especially when you have furry family members. But that doesn't seem to deter many folks from sampling off the floor. Hilton and his students surveyed about 500 people and found that 87 percent of them said they eat dropped snacks. And about three-quarters of these people use the five-second rule.

Not everyone agrees that this is such a good idea. The guys over at Smithsonian.com recently reminded us that whether or not you get sick from floor-tainted food depends on which particular critters are hanging out on your linoleum — and not necessarily on the total amount of microbes.  

"Eating food off the floor is a bit like playing Russian roulette with your gut," molecular biologist Eric Schulze says in a video on Smithsonian's website. "We track harmful agents like fecal bacteria on the soles of our shoes all the time. So no floor surface is guaranteed to be a safe bet," he adds.

Although Hilton and his team didn't find any fecal bacteria on the indoor floors they examined, it only takes a few of the wrong microbes to make you really sick.

So the conclusion? Sampling food from the floor comes with a risk, especially if you don't know how clean that tile is. But grabbing it quickly could make a difference for sticky snacks.

Hi gang,

Today marked the end of 3 months that I have been on FU.  I have no idea how many people might read this blog entry but I thought I would mark the occasion by telling you a little bit about why I came on this site and what my thoughts were.

I had never even heard of FU until I dated this guy who had been on here for many years and he told me about it. He told me that it is all about the lounges and getting people naked and NSFW and salutes and I thought to myself UGH that is really NOT the kind of place for me.

However, one of the main reasons it did not work out with him was because I absolutely could not trust that he was being faithful to me.  Faithful means different things to different people of course, but to me, if someone tells me I am the love of their life and that they want to get married and have a family, I shouldn't be hearing that he is telling other women the same stuff or flirting with others at that point.  However, I am not the kind of woman who tries to change a guy or tell him what to do, so in the end I told him I'm not going to stop him from doing whatever the heck he wants with these other women but I just can't be a part of it.  I am leaving out a lot of details here that are really not important to the story but if you want to hear more about it just ask me privately.

Anyway, once I saw that he couldn't be trusted (for example, he made a bet with a girl I used to be friends with and she lost and got topless for him) I decided I should check out the site.  I decided to join as a bit of a social experiment for myself.  I love the idea of a game with levels.  That kind of challenge of completing tasks, etc (I think I wrote that in my about me section actually.)  But I decided I want to see how I fare against people who use their bodies to get men to buy them stuff.  First off, no one needs to be looking at my body, secondly I think it makes a person cheap to use their nudity as a means to earn credits and blings.  I know people think I am boring and old fashioned for believing this, but I really believe my body is special and should only be seen by someone who wants to be with me, not just online.  I don't really care if that is not normal for this day and age, cuz the right guy would absolutely respect that about me :)

So to make a long story longer, that is what I have tried to do.  I have been myself, completely.  Yes in the short span of 3 months my feelings have been hurt by my naivety but I would still rather be me than change who I am.  But in terms of the game itself, I am so happy to have met some wonderful people that I consider my friends and I would stand by them through thick and thin, on here or otherwise.  I am excited to see what will happen in the next 3 months and beyond.  And in terms of the game as a standalone, I think I got pretty far being my boring ole vanilla self :D

To the people who have taken the time to get to know me so far, you hold a special place in my heart for spending your valuable time with me (h)

OK that's enough rambling for tonight, so, please leave a comment for me if you read this, and sweet dreams!

Love and hugs,
Debbie xoxo