The Straight Dope 01/27/2006

The Straight Dope -- By Cecil Adams
http://www.straightdope.com

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THE STRAIGHT DOPE 01/27/2006

Dear Cecil:

Two related questions: As a cat owner, I've been a little concerned
recently about rumors that cat poop can cause schizophrenic behavior in
people who are overexposed to the waste. How much truth is in this--and
if there is any truth to it, what amount can possibly count as
overexposure? I'm also bothered by the supposed risk to pregnant women
that changing the litter box can cause--not so much to them as to the
fetus, through bacteria and whatnot. If that's really true, then with a
third of all Americans owning cats, why don't we see higher rates of
these dreadful birth defects? Certainly some of these women must get
pregnant sometime, and I doubt they all know the dangers posed to them
by cleaning up what Puss left behind. What gives? --Onnie in
Baltimore

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Cecil replies:

Buckle up, friend. This one's bizarre.

While you're surely right that not everyone has gotten the word, the
medical profession and hopefully most women of childbearing age know
that if you're pregnant you don't want to get near cat feces. The
problem is the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, for which cats are the
principal host. The microscopic parasites reproduce in the cat's gut,
the eggs are excreted, and by a process I'm not about to describe the
critters wind up in your brain and muscles, where they create tiny
cysts, leading to a condition known as toxoplasmosis. Unpromising as
this sounds, the symptoms of toxoplasmosis are generally mild to
nonexistent in adults, which is good, because roughly a third of all
humans are infected, with the rate in some tropical countries
approaching 100 percent.

For some, though, things are less benign. If a woman initially becomes
infected while pregnant, there's a fair chance the T. gondii will
migrate across the placenta to her unborn child, with ghastly results
ranging from cerebral palsy, seizures, and mental retardation to death.
Women infected prior to pregnancy don't run the same risk, which no
doubt explains why we haven't seen an epidemic of toxo-induced birth
defects--the parasite's ubiquitousness confers a sort of immunity. I've
seen no research suggesting there's a threshold exposure below which
there's no danger, and in my opinion it'd be foolish to assume there is
one. Besides, you'll never get a better excuse to make somebody else
clean the litter box.

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/060127.html

STAFF REPORT

Dear Straight Dope:

What's so great about the Dewey Decimal System? I keep hearing
librarians rave about it as the greatest invention since cheese-flavored
dog food, as if Dewey is some genius on the level of Einstein (or
Cecil). It seems obvious that if you have to categorize a huge number of
objects (say. books for example), you would set up a set of unique
categories, sort the objects into the appropriate category, and then
itemize the objects within that category. Is Dewey famous just because
it's the standard, or is there more to the system that makes it so
great? --E. Rudite, Boston

SDSTAFF Dex replies:

Lots of things seem obvious after the fact. The trick is seeing the
obvious things that everyone else has overlooked. The genius of the
Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system isn't so much its
methodology--you're right, E., even you could probably come up with a
workable system if pressed. Rather, Dewey's achievement lies in the
insight that a standardized method of book classification would simplify
life for both librarians and their patrons, and in the doggedness
necessary to see such a system implemented. 

What's great about the DDC is that it's so common that no one gives it a
moment's thought. The DDC is by far the most widely used method of
organizing books in the U.S, and indeed in the world; it or its offshoot
the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) is used in over 130
countries. Somewhere around 95% of all school libraries and public
libraries in the U.S. use DDC. Its leading competitor is the Library of
Congress Classification (LCC) system which, in contrast, tends to be
used by government and academic libraries (that is, colleges and
universities.) Only 25% of colleges and universities use Dewey Decimal
Classification, and around 20% of specialized libraries do.

Now, why it's an important development: what is obvious to you nowadays,
having familiarity with libraries, was not so obvious in the era before
Melvil Dewey. Once a creative genius has come up with a major
innovation, a century later, everyone can think it's obvious. 

And, hey, you think it's easy, then YOU come up with a system that can
classify all areas of human knowledge.

For more, see: 
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdeweydecimal.html

STRAIGHT DOPE CLASSIC - 03/27/1992

Dear Cecil: 

I recently read in Life magazine about people who have had near-death
experiences. These people report walking toward a being of light,
feeling totally loved, etc. Do near-death experiences prove there is
some type of existence after death? --Jeff Collier, Falls Church,
Virginia  

Dear Jeff:  

If you doubt there's some type of existence after death, 
Jeff, you've never been to the suburbs. Whether it's anything
akin to personal existence (that is, the kind of existence you have now)
is another question. Unfortunately, near-death experiences (NDEs) don't
offer much clue one way or the other.  A surprisingly large number of
people have had an NDE--maybe a third to a half of those who almost die
but don't--and their accounts of the experience are sufficiently similar
to have intrigued scientists. The typical NDE has five stages: (1) you
experience a sense of peace; (2) you have the sense of leaving your body
and observing it from afar--in other words, you have an out-of-body
experience (OBE); (3) you enter a tunnel or "darkness"; (4) you see a
light at the end of the tunnel; and finally (5) you enter the light.
Often at some point during the process you see your life pass before
your eyes.  

All of this seems absolutely real. People who have had NDEs
say there is nothing hallucinatory or dream-like about them. Research
has shown that many who have had NDEs permanently improve their
behavior, presumably because they are convinced of the reality of an
afterlife.  

What really happens during an NDE? 

For more, see:
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_030.html

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