Microbes Contribute to Obesity

Research at Washington University’s Center for Genome Sciences indicats that the bacteria in your gut affects your caloric intake from the food you consume.

It's an interesting article and, believe me, I would love to just increase a certain type of bacteria in my gut to help lose weight, but it was this excerpt that has me irked:

In a study of a dozen dieting people, the results also were dramatic.

Before dieting, about 3 percent of the gut bacteria in the obese participants was Bacteroidetes. But after dieting, the now normal-sized people had much higher levels of Bacteroidetes — close to 15 percent, Gordon said.

“I think that gut bacteria affects body weight,” said Virginia Commonwealth University pathology professor Richard Atkinson, who wasn’t part of the research team and is president of Obetech Obesity Research Center in Richmond. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that and they showed that.”

Who else here reads this as weight affecting gut bacteria and not as gut bacteria affecting weight?  Is it just me?

Songs from The Capeman

Sometimes when I find an album that I really like, I obsess over it, listening to it over and over until the music seeps into my bones. This is such an album.

The album, by Paul Simon, is based on a true story, about Salvador Agron, perpetrator of the Capeman murders in 1959.

There is a song on the album called "Can I Forgive Him?" that is sung by the mothers of the murdered boys as well as the mother of Salvador Agron. At one point, one of the mothers sings:

My religion
Asks me to pray for the murderer's soul
But I think you'd have to be
Jesus on the cross
To open your heart after such a loss
Can I forgive him?
Can I forgive him?
No, I cannot

This touches me in an indescribable way every time I hear it.