In Dallas, they attribute this to luck. Still.

​San Francisco 49ers fans still in search or a silver lining, take heed: Rather than be blinded with science, embrace it!

Matt Lane, an S.F. native and alumnus of University High, is now a doctoral student in mathematics at UCLA. On his Math Goes Pop! blog, he recently pondered whether the 49ers were lucky this season, or good.

Lane's first analysis concerned the team's luck.

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Photo by Kimberly Sandie

Bay Area entomophagist Daniella Martin tucks into a scorpion

​In this week's cover story, "Bug Me," SF Weekly takes a look at the new generation of entomophagists, or insect-eaters, who are based in and around San Francisco. Much has been made in the press of entomophagists' sometimes extravagant claims about the ecological benefits of insects as a protein source for human consumption.

These claims are backed by logical arguments and are worth considering, and we devoted ample space in the story to examining them. But we were also interested in a more immediate question: Are bugs delicious?

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cosmosastro.com

What Harold Camping doesn't know

​There are times when science and religion can agree, like the fact that the planet will come to a fiery end. For instance, both NASA scientists and Harold Camping -- the Oakland Rapture predictor -- agree on this. But what they seem to differ on is the exact timing of the end of the world.

While Camping assures us that the Rapture will happen Oct. 21, 2011, NASA scientists argue otherwise, saying the planet still has some 500 million years of life to live -- not that even 1,000 more years would make a difference to us.

But if you are curious about how and when the world will crumbled to pieces, NASA planetologist Chris McKay will be a the Roxie Theater in San Francisco this weekend to explain the details.
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Big business?

​An Arcata woman is suing national reproductive-medicine groups, alleging that they and their member fertility clinics have engaged in a price-fixing scheme to underpay female donors for their eggs.

In her lawsuit, filed this week in San Francisco's federal courthouse, plaintiff Justine Levy alleges that the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology have essentially formed a cartel designed to suppress the amount of money paid to egg donors. The Society alone includes 395 clinics, or 85 percent of the U.S. market.

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Illustration by Doug Fraser

​A study of retired professional football players has found that they are more likely than nonathletes to suffer symptoms of cognitive impairment such as memory and speech problems -- a conclusion that that is sure to buttress the arguments of those who point to the risk of brain damage from the sport.

The study by the Loyola University Health System found that among 513 retired National Football League players surveyed, some 35 percent showed signs of cognitive impairment. Their average age was 61. In some cases, mild cognitive impairment is a precursor to Alzheimer's disease.

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​So much for bucking stereotypes. It appears that much-loved European canard about overweight Americans is, well... increasingly true. An annual obesity report has found that only one U.S. state -- Colorado -- has an obesity rate under 20 percent. (In 1995, according to the Associated Press, no state had a rate over 20 percent.)

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Philomena Falkner, a.k.a. the 'Galloping Cow,' an early S.F. slut

​General sluttiness is surely among the attributes preening liberals refer to when they bray about "San Francisco Values." From the Mission to the Marina, from the "soiled doves" who ruled the Barbary Coast to the present-day skank chain-smoking in front of Vertigo, we are a city of the lecherous, the depraved, and the polyamorous.

This open secret is confirmed in a new study commissioned by condom-maker Trojan, which found that among residents of the major U.S. cities surveyed, San Franciscans reported having had sex with the greatest number of people. We clocked in at an average of 30 partners. (Not all at once, mind you -- even San Franciscans face certain physical limitations.) At the bottom of the list were Chicagoans, who reported, on average, having had 11 partners.

Prudes.
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Richard Gardner, father of PAS

​A scientific task force evaluating psychological conditions for formal inclusion in the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders will recommend that the controversial theory known as "Parental Alienation Syndrome" (PAS) or "Parental Alienation" not be included in the manual, according to early reports.

Writing in Psychology Today, psychologist Paula J. Caplan states that she has received a letter from American Psychiatric Association DSM-5 Task Force chair David Kupfer and Task Force public representative James McNulty indicating that the disorder will not be recommended for inclusion:

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Get ready to trip balls

​Coffee, that glorious liquid stimulant without which most of the workaday world would be reduced to an army of yawning homunculi, has some well-known negative side effects. It can make you jittery; spur you to jabber annoyingly at your cubicle mates; and perhaps encourage greater productivity than your boss actually expects. But a new study out of Australia asserts that caffeine intake could have bad consequences of an entirely different order.

Researchers at La Trobe University are claiming that even modest levels of caffeinated-coffee consumption can induce auditory hallucinations.

"There is a link between high levels of stress and psychosis, and caffeine was found to correlate with hallucination proneness. The combination of caffeine and stress affect the likelihood of an individual experiencing a psychosis-like symptom," says Professor Simon Crowe.

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If the death rays don't get you, the talcum powder will.

​Paranoid San Franciscans who have long sought affirmation that radio waves threaten public health finally got a hat tip from the World Health Organization, which now says cellphones are "possibly carcinogenic."

But before you throw your iPhone out the window, note that WHO's "possibly carcinogenic" category also includes everyday items such as coffee, talcum powder, suntan lotion, bicycle tires, pickled vegetables, oil from orange peels or coconuts, asphalt, blue dye, red dye, and orange dye, along with a few hundred other things we encounter in our daily lives.

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