A Trivial Question About Your Coffee Cup

Cari Romm explains, for Science of Us, a few details about why “It’s Okay to Never Wash Your Coffee Mug”:

As Heidi Mitchell wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal column, it’s fine to never wash your mug, as long as you’re not sharing it with anybody else. Better than fine, in fact: It may actually be the most sanitary option.

There are two caveats to that statement, infectious-disease expert Jeffrey Starke, a pediatrics professor at Baylor College of Medicine, told Mitchell: One, it only applies if you’re not sharing the mug with anybody else. And two, “if you leave cream or sugar in your mug over the weekend, that can certainly cause mold to grow”―in which case, wash it out.

The bottom line, Romm suggests, is that “letting your mug live in its own filth may be a safer bet than the alternative: scrubbing it with the disgusting communal sponge in the office kitchen”.

And, yes, there is the bit about putting the sponge in the microwave, but this still begs a question.

Who says you absolutely must use a sponge?

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Romm, Cari. “It’s Okay to Never Wash Your Coffee Mug”. Science of Us. 3 November 2016.

Not Fiction

To what degree is it refreshing that for once a Republican gaffe has nothing to do with female reproductive health? To the other, is there a line in Jon Ralston’s report on Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore (R-04, Clark County) that doesn’t read like political satire?

“If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus,” she began, citing a widely debunked theory that the American Cancer Society warns about, “and we can put a pic line into your body and we’re flushing with, say, salt water, sodium cardonate (I think she means bicarbonate), through that line and flushing out the fungus. These are some procedures that are not FDA-approved in America that are very inexpensive, cost-effective.”

So says the expert who runs a home health care company with a sketchy tax history.

Yes. Really.

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Image note: Top ― “But I said I don’t like sour stuff!” Yet Naota drinks the lemon-squash something-or-other, anyway. Right ― The ever-elegant Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore (R-04, Clark County), a business owner in the health industry who thinks cancer is a fungus.

Ralston, Jon. “Dr. Fiore is in: Cancer is a fungus that can be flushed out!” Ralston Reports. 23 February 2015.