HAVE you finished your breakfast? Good. Then you鈥檒l be able to contemplate what might lie behind this early candidate for best paper title of the year: 鈥淎ntioxidant capacity of boar seminal plasma,鈥� by Marta Hernandez and colleagues and published in Reproduction, Fertility and Development.
And Ed Yong provides another contender from the Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps: 鈥淓ffects of nuclear weapons on the gastrointestinal system鈥� by D. A. Freshwater. Yong ventures that these may be large and mainly negative, and indeed the abstract begins 鈥淣uclear weapons have both blast injury and radiation effects on the gut鈥︹�� Despite having finished breakfast, Yong did not dare read the 鈥淢aterials and methods鈥� section, and neither do we.
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Meanwhile our colleague Laura Spinney offers this from Brain: 鈥淚mpaired recognition of scary music following unilateral temporal lobe excision鈥� by Nathalie Gosselin and colleagues. Not being neurologists, we鈥檇 have predicted that temporal lobe excision would lead to impaired recognition of, say, nearby nuclear explosions 鈥� or, indeed, of 鈥淧enile frostbite鈥�. This is the title of a letter by R. J. Waugh that Peter Cameran discovered in an ancient copy of The New England Journal of Medicine (vol 296, p 178). It explains that the condition is 鈥渁n unforeseen hazard of jogging鈥�.
Enjoy your lunch鈥�
MORE from the department of things you might not want to know. Marjolein Katsma was pleased to see that New 杏吧原创 mentioned the recent celebrations of 鈥減i day鈥� on 14 March, aka 3/14, these being the first three digits of 
(19 March, p 7).
She tells us of another celebration that recently took place the 鈥渕ill-one-ium鈥�, also known as the 鈥済eek millennium鈥�. In case you missed it, this historic moment occurred at 1:58:31 UTC on 18 March, exactly 1,111,111,111 seconds since the Unix epoch began at 00:00 UTC on 1 January, 1970. A large celebration was held on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) freenode channel ##1,111,111,111. According to Wikipedia, at its peak the channel averaged 24 messages a second.
Katsma says plans are already under way to celebrate 1,234,567,890. While the ##1,111,111,111 channel still exists for 鈥渁 little happy afterglow鈥�, forward-looking enthusiasts have already created a ##1,234,567,890 IRC channel.
RESPONDING to Wichor Bramer, whose girlfriend thought she was easily persuaded until he convinced her she wasn鈥檛 (Feedback, 12 March), G. H. Levy writes to tell us that he used to think he was indecisive, but now he鈥檚 not so sure.
Coordinating anti-social behaviour
READERS will be sorry to learn they have just missed the opportunity to apply for a job with Bury Metro Council in the north of England as an 鈥渁nti-social behaviour coordinator鈥�. As Carol Moores observes, 鈥淕ive me a few beers and I could do that.鈥�
ON 2 April, Feedback reported John Blyth鈥檚 news of his polyrepetitive banananas. 鈥淏eing curious, rather than bored鈥�, Joe Buchanan wondered whether his name had ever been misspelt as Buchananan on the internet. And indeed it has, yea unto 鈥淏uchanananananananan鈥濃��
PENULTIMATELY, here鈥檚 another nugget from our blitz on old files. Mike Trier wrote to us last year, noting that we have a penchant for coining new names for interesting categories of names. He went on to suggest three new categories that require naming.
鈥淎n advert on London鈥檚 underground promises that you can have 鈥渂eautiful vein-free legs鈥�. But how, Matthew Carse wonders, does the blood get back to the heart?鈥�
The first category is the coincidence of hearing a name for the first time and shortly afterwards hearing the same name again in a different context. This was prompted by Trier鈥檚 reading of what was then the most recent issue of New 杏吧原创 鈥� 16 鈥� October 2004 in which the name Finkbeiner appears twice. On page 11 of that issue one Donald Finkbeiner is interested in microwave radiation left over from the big bang, while on page 18 Steve Finkbeiner has been kept awake thinking about mutations in a protein called huntingtin.
Coming across the Finkbeiner effect then led Trier to wonder if there might also be a meta-category requiring a name: the category of categories of interesting names that have been named. And all that thinking finally led Trier to ponder whether there should be a name for people that enjoy naming categories of names?
Although Trier鈥檚 message has been buried in our files for all these months, we still haven鈥檛 come up with names for the categories he suggests. Which makes us wonder if perhaps there ought to be a name for people who resist the temptation to give names to categories of names?
FINALLY, a little puzzle for you. Take Susan Cartlidge, Tina Ricketts and Dawn Akers. What profession do you think they belong to? Are they greengrocers? Nuclear physicists? Swimming pool attendants? No. Surprise, surprise, they are all members of the McTimoney Chiropractic Association.