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It seems Pope Francis needs to brush up on his Tertullian!

It has been reported (in The ChristLast Media, I must note) that the current Pope does not like the phrase "lead us not into temptation...

"Let no freedom be allowed to novelty, because it is not fitting that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture." -- Pope Sixtus III

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Student discovers ironing deactivates anthrax.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:High-school senior: 'I thought, there's got to be a way to stop this'

Protecting yourself from biological weapons might be as simple as using a hot clothes iron.

Through a project for a statewide science competition, Central Catholic High School senior Marc Roberge discovered truth in the urban legend that ironing can kill anthrax spores in contaminated mail.

His findings will appear in the June edition of the Journal of Medical Toxicology, which publishes peer-reviewed research papers. It is an accomplishment usually reserved for Ph.D.-level scientists and physicians.

"He's just 17. I was 35 before I had my first publication," said Roberge's father, Dr. Raymond Roberge, a medical toxicologist who works for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in South Park. "This is just amazing to me."

Marc Roberge's idea for his Pennsylvania Junior Academy of Sciences project -- which won first place at regional and state events last year -- came after the 2001 bioterrorism attack in which letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to several news media offices and two U.S. senators. Anthrax infections killed five people. The crimes remain unsolved.

Due to time constraints, we now move to further action...

For his experiments -- conducted in the family's Highland Park home and at Central Catholic in Oakland -- Marc Roberge did not use actual anthrax.

"The government might have had a little problem with that," he said.

Instead, he substituted a more heat-resistant but harmless bacterial spore from the anthrax family that scientists often use as a surrogate.

Marc Roberge placed paper strips laden with millions of spores inside standard envelopes, and then ironed the mail at various dry heat settings for up to 15 minutes.

He found that an iron adjusted to the hottest setting -- at least 204.5 degrees Celsius, or 400 degrees Fahrenheit -- and used for at least 5 minutes destroyed all spores so no bacteria would grow. The iron didn't open the letters or make pen-written addresses hard to read, Roberge said.

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First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct. "My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up. What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.

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