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Quigmans ♦ By Buddy Hickerson looouT/ \' Y CotfFS Ttfe l~~ PdoNt. CoW>anj! Seymour found he could get especially good distance with his unpaid bills. Thp Familv Monster bv Josh ^haif»k "Iryiitj ovt fte \ •Id d«WS|rt3? ) ^TkI I’d lilt to sWf q Collection of VvtiM dreqMS Tviqf wqy> «f I'm ever q«qlyi«<i 6r wiled v °n H give q speedi, I'll W,ve drew sHnes “p0* wWcl> f> <jn*j. <gjg£%>Jg) '(ou don’t find it ♦Jronj CwsqWiSe % fnv<ik tWdts of others This stupid S+idt- ViqSn’f le4 me +5 flnyHvinj Y€r, s« +M-'s reqlly <"’> ecqdemic i yis\\<*^s A monster darkly: www.joshshalek.com ktd_shay@joshshalek.com ftafa CWus .fowsr 'Domestic Abuse* an** I IBased on the traditional form of Japanese poetry - count tlw syllables www.ha9utctrcus.com ■ RULE Continued from page 11 — or your family’s — if you grab that chocolate chip cookie off the tile floor? Two years ago, during a pre college summer stint in a microbiology lab at the University of Illinois, Jillian Clarke decided to find out. In a survey of 100 people at the university, she found that 63 percent had heard of the five second rule. The majority of those admitted to applying the tenet, most often to dropped cookies and candy. And women slightly outpaced men in their willingness to eat off the floor. “A lot of people were really honest,” said Clarke, who had just finished her junior year of high school when she did the summer research. Clarke and her mentor, Meredith Agle, then a food microbiology doctoral student at the university, scoured the campus for dirty floors on which to drop their test morsels. They scraped high-traffic areas in cafeterias, dorms, bathrooms and libraries with cotton swabs and transferred the material onto agar plates. But hardly anything grew, indicating the floors were virtually microbe-free. “It was surprising how clean they were,” Agle said. Credit the campus janitors or this basic microbial truth: “Big, bad bacteria need moisture to survive,” said Clarke, reasoning that public floors are generally dry. Because they couldn’t test the five-second rule on the university’s pristine floors, Clarke and Agle had to engineer their own soiled surfaces. So they spread lab-grown bacterial cultures onto smooth and rough 2-inch square tiles bought at a local hardware store. Onto these dirty tiles went 25-gram samples of gummy bears or fudge-striped cookies — for pfifcisely five seconds. In every case, this was enough time to transfer gobs of bacteria onto the goodies — about 10,000 colony-forming units per gram of food. Larry Beuchat, a University of Georgia food microbiologist who hadn’t heard of the five-second rule, summed things up rather matter-of-factly. “Those who believe in this rule are not aware that contact of the food with the pathogen would occur instantaneously,” he said. “It wouldn’t matter how many seconds the food was in contact with the floor.” Then the key, it would seem, is knowing how clean your floors are. “I wouldn’t eat anything that fell on the floor in our office area at the lab,” Agle said. Yet she’ll “pick up food off the floor at home and eat it all the time. I work with some pretty bad pathogens, so I figure my immune system is decent.” from ner doctoral researcn on food-borne microbes, Agle knows that a single gram of lettuce harbors more than a million colonies of bacteria — most of which are harmless to humans. So scarfing food from the floor generally wouldn’t be worse, she reasons. Abigail Gamboa, a sophomore at De Anza College in Cupertino, Calif., never eats off the ground. “Germs are everywhere,” she said. “You never know what’s been on the floor.” Grace McDuffie, 48, of Monterey, Calif., doesn’t apply the five-second rule herself but says the men in her family routinely use it. “We usually hear about it from our husbands,” she said while lunching at San Jose’s Westfield Shoppingtown Valley Fair with her daughter and granddaughter on a recent afternoon. “If it hits the floor, they’ll pop it in their mouths.” Ultimately, the five-second rule seems to put us at ease in situations typically regarded as social taboos. “It’s just an excuse so people can eat fofcd they’ve dropped on the floor,” said Chuck Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona. “I’d be more worried if it fell on your desktop than on the floor,” said Gerba, whose recent study found 45 percent of workplace cubicles infested with a virus that causes respiratory infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia. “Most people aren’t cleaning their desktops. At least janitors are cleaning the floor.” Aside from pardoning a public no-no, others propose a slightly nobler reason for invoking the five second rule. “It’s thrift,” said Lynne Olver, editor of the Food Timeline, a culinary history Web site sponsored by the Morris County Library in Whippany, N.J. “I bet everybody’s dropped a pie, or dropped something, and picked it up and served it because that’s all there was.” Th ic ltn#» rvf ra inbmo cnnnrfc o reasonable to Clarke, who credits the study with relieving some of her prior angst about eating dropped food. “Now I don’t really hesitate if I drop something,” she said. “It’s not a big deal to me anymore. I’m glad I’m inspiring people to not waste their food.” Last fall, Clarke’s work earned a Public Health Ig Nobel — one of 10 annual prizes sponsored by the science humor magazine, Annals of Improbable Research, to honor unusual and imaginative scientific projects. In most cases, says Clarke, now a freshman at Howard University, nibbling off the ground won’t be dangerous because “there isn’t going to be a pile of E. coli lying around.” Germ guru Gerba gives it a slightly different twist. “Most bacteria aren’t harmful,” he said. “Every time you pick up food off the floor, you’re gambling with germs. But if you’re a lucky person and you win the lottery a lot, go ahead, pick it up. The odds are in your favor. It’s just a matter of how much yd® want them in your favor.” CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Woeful word 5 Leather piercers 9_Ababa, Eth. 14 Concluded 15 Oxford, e.g. 16 Pulverize 17 Jekyll’s alter ego 18 Actor Connery 19 Crab-walk 20 Galley gear 21 Beanery sign 22 Perplexed 23 Dispels differences 26 Used to be 27 Worn-out words 31 "The Ballad of _Jones” 34 Painful spots 37 In what way? 38 Saharan 39 Bombay wraps 40 Sheet of glass 41 At the ready 42 Lassoed 43 Fills to capacity 44 Dangling frill 46 Animal gullet a —r it__ii_i ■f / III UIICU individuals 54 Razor sharpener 57 Is not well 58 Fraud 59 Hamlet, to Horatio 60 Tolstoy and Gorcey 61 Possess ; 62 Word with renewal or sprawl 63 Duration 64 Of the mouth 65 Signifies j 66 Bribes ' 67 Animal hide : DOWN I 1 Kind of ' committee ' 2 Staunch ' 3 Agassi or ' Citroen i 4 Teetered t 5 Appraise 6 Cereal grain t © 2005 Tribune Media Services, Inc. 04/25/05 All rights reserved. 7 Unwilling Solutions 8 Feel 9 Besets 0 Composer Shostakovich 1 Pops 2 Anglesey or Wight 3 Queens ballpark !4 Charles or Bradbury !5 Suit toppers !8 Confab !9 Use a whetstone 10 Flock mothers 11 Playbill listing 12 Surface measure 13 Makes a lap 14 Sucker 15 Mining product 45 Catchphrase 52 Involving 16 Divest 46 Large groups warships I9 Fly alone 48 Old sailors 53 Small silvery iO Hock spot 49 MacDonald’s food fish \2 Resumes refrain 54 Urban blight business 50 Heavy tread 55 Michelin product [3_Miguel, CA 51 Midwest airport 56 Ms. McEntire HOROSCOPES ARIES The temptation to splurge is strong but must be resisted again. Be practical even if it’s no fun, or you’ll hate yourself in the morning. TAURUS You’re the charmer of the group, which is a very important role. Don’t be upset if they refuse to compromise for a while. Be a stabilizing influence. GEMINI A fanciful fling could turn into a rather exhausting adventure — unless you do the homework first. Be prepared, and minimize risk. CANCER Don’t deplete your savings to impress someone you admire. Offer understanding instead — it’ll be greatly appreciated. LEO A discussion about household matters or real estate could turn ugly, simply because nobody wants to bend an inch. Leave it alone for a while, and the matter might resolve itself. VIRGO Don’t let your studies interfere with the work that must get done. You’d rather spend all day with your nose in a book, but that could cause problems. LIBRA There’s a time for planning and a time for taking action. Actually, you might have to do both simultaneously. Pay attention to where you’re going. SCORPIO It’s not a good idea to throw away things that belong to other people. Save yourself a huge hassle, and simply don’t do it. SAGITTARIUS You’re not any good at keeping secrets, even when you should. Take a word of advice, and don’t go hollering about something you uncover. CAPRICORN You might wake up with a touch of buyers’ remorse. You’re also filled with love for your fellow human beings. Generosity, can hurt sometimes, but it’s a good pain. AQUARIUS It might seem that everywhere you turn, you meet with resistance. This is good, because it gives you something to think about. PISCES Your curiosity keeps pushing you farther and farther from your comfort zone. This is exciting but also dangerous. Something you fear is out there, but don’t let it stop you. CALENDAR Tigerbot Hesh With If Not Winter, Kapone, Sedgefield Drive. 5 p.m. New Brookland Tavern, 122 State St. $5 over 21, $7 under. All ages. Today. TODAY Benefit for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital with Maywater, PointOeight, Closer, Mind Your Head, Alternative Solutidth: 8 p.m. Headliners, 700 Gervais St. $5 over, $7 under. “Les Choristes”: 7, 9.05 p.m. Nickelodeon Theatre, 937 Main St. TUESDAY Rufio with Gatsby’s American Dream, Over It, Chronic Future: 5 p.m. New Brookland Tavern. $10 advance. All ages. Sunday Metal Sunday: 10 p.m. New Brookland Tavern. $6 over 21, $8 under. "Les Choristes”: 7, 9:05^.m. Nickelodeon Theatre.