Anti-Anti-Bacterial

Using anti-bacterial soap at your house is a good thing, right? It sounds good. And anti-bacterial products fill the cleaning aisle at your local grocery store.

However, these products have a significant negative impact that is similar to the problem that overuse of antibiotics cause: bacterial mutation and decreased natural immunities.

Anti-bacterial soap typically uses Triclosen, which penetrates the cell wall of bacteria and kills something inside of it. The more often this occurs, the more likely that bacteria will adapt to resist this, which could reduce the effectiveness of many things that are supposed to kill bacteria when you really need to kill bacteria.

Remember in history class when you read about the Native Americans and how many were killed by diseases the Europeans brought? The locals had no immunity because they'd never been exposed to those diseases. We can recreate that effect to some extent by constantly disinfecting our surroundings and reducing our immunities while potentially strengthening the local bacteria.

Moral of the story: don't get all OCD with the Lysol and Purel. You were intelligently designed to resist the other elements in your environment long before convenient hand and counter-top sanitizers were invented. We should probably be more concerned about breathing the gases released by your car interior or the lead content in Fisher Price toys than the bacteria that 's hanging out on your doorknobs, toilet seats and counter-tops.

(read a study about this)

Now, excuse me. It's time for me to go feed Nora some dirt.

Get Rich Quick Scheme #3,654

A quick departure from baby pics for a geeky post:

Are you a slacker? Have you ever wanted to get rich quick but don't like to work for it? Let local children work for you!

Google has just released their Business Referral Program. Here's the summary of the program: Google is trying to increase their business listings on their Maps and Adwords properties with their obviously deep pockets. They will pay you $2 for each business in your local community that you provide information (such as hours and payment methods) about. You also must take a digital photo of the business. They send a postcard to the business asking them to confirm the data. If the business confirms the information you get another $8. So, you can potentially gain $10 per business listing that you supply.

Here's an equation I came up with to describe your potential riches (remember highschool math?):
d = ((n*p)*10) + ((n*(1-p))*2)
where n = business info collected
where d = desired earnings
where p = percentage business response

Here's how you leverage it. Recruit a few hundred kids from your local youth group or school. Create a treasure hunt contest where teams of a few kids go from street to street filling out a form and taking a photo with mommy's digital camera. The kids get one week to get as many sheets filled out as possible. Sheets can be turned in any time during the week. Any duplicate businesses only count on the first sheet to be handed in. Kids do not have to stay in their community. Create a few cheesy prizes based on total business sheets collected to give them a reason to compete.

Entering the data should only take a minute per sheet if you have decent typing skills.

Buy yourself something nice with the resulting treasure. Remember Jump Rope For Heart or those Magazine Subscription deals that elementary schools always sucker parents into? This is like that only you get rich :)


obligatory baby pic:

Write Your Own Caption

Kristy shot this while Nora was in mid yawn. Turned out pretty funny. She looks real mad like.

I'm sure you visitors can come up with some funny captions in the comments section.

Videorific

(If you do not see a video window above this text you may need to install the latest version of macromedia flash)
Here's the first video of Nora. One Week old...sorry about the bad color quality. My video camera doesn't auto-adjust color very well and compression compounds the problem (I can give you a technical explanation of compression resampling if you really want it).

Nora Settles In

Here are a few more pictures of our new little treasure. We are being discharged from the hospital today. It's a good thing because we were both getting a little stir-crazy in this little hospital room.

I almost went back to work today but we have a lot of stuff to cart home and get settled. I plan on heading back to work tomorrow. I could take this whole week off but it's hard for me to go a whole week without working when I'm two minutes away from my job. Makes me antsy. Plus, we're hoping to take a trip to visit Wifey's family before the end of the year...gotta save a little vacation.

We had several visitors while we were in the hospital. Thanks to everyone who came and visited. Thanks also for cards, gifts and warm wishes. If anyone is wondering if there's anything we need, yes there is: experience! You should see me trying to figure out how to clean the plumbing on something that's squirming, kicking and (sometimes) crying. Dressing the little squirmer is also a challenge.

Visitors are welcome, let us know you're coming and you don't need to bring anything!