Turd Transplant

I was reading Crain's Health Pulse this morning, as I tend to do most mornings, and I came across this article:

"Feces Can Fight Colon Infections

In a presentation of medical news at this week's meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Dr. Lawrence Brandt reported on a treatment for a persistent and life-threatening colon infection known as Clostridium difficile. The treatment, fecal transplantation, involves collecting donor material from a healthy person and delivering it by various means—including a nasogastric tube—to the patient. The donor's healthy intestinal bacteria restore the colon's natural balance. C. difficile infections are common in the elderly, usually patients who are on a regime of antibiotics that wipe out their healthy bacteria, allowing C. difficile to flourish. The treatment is nearly 100% successful."

Eww....!  In other news, I was meandering to work this morning, and when I was walking across the bridge I noticed this odd sight:

Its kind of a weird dark photo, and you can't see it from here but there is another tug boat pulling the thing from in front.   I saw it from way off and I the way it was sitting so low in the water I kind of guessed it was a gigantic submarine or something (since those are just sooo prevalent in New York's waterways).  But as it got closer, I saw that it was actually gigantic long redwood or maybe giant sequoia logs being floated up the east river by lumberjacks, who happen to use tugboats.  I don't actually know anything about modern-day logging, and while I know the nearest redwoods and sequoias are roughly 2,000 miles away, but for some reason this made sense to me.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that these were not lumberjacks floating giant trees up the river, but rather standard-issue tugs tugging the biggest, rustiest pipes I have ever seen up the river.  I mean, these things were LONG.  And you can't really see it well from the picture, but sitting on the front end of the pipes was this equally giant rusty metal ball.  Now, I'm no scientist, but I have three theories as to where these pipes are from:

1. The lost city of Atlantis
2. Something having to do with the Underground Railroad, or
3. Sealab