Who Are Mario and Luigi?

Back in the 80's, the news really knew how to get to the bottom of a breaking story, cutting to the chase and asking the toughest questions. An excellent example of this was Inside Edition TV when they uncovered a new craze called "Nintendo". Watch and learn.



I love Ron Leingang's part about level 3-1, and the CRAZY secrets that he reveals. Who knew that there was a beanstalk? Jack, I can picture you doing an amazing impersonation of him :)

So if you missed the answer to the eternal question "who are Mario and Luigi?", remember that "they are us".

Also, if you're in a Nintendo mood and have 10 minutes to kill, then check out this collection of 100 Nintendo games. But play your own music in the background.

Science Fact – Broken Hearts are for Assholes and Post-Menopausal Women

Many of us have experienced heartache in our lives, and some would go so far as to say that they suffered from a “broken heart”. We have all heard this expression ad nauseum in conversation, literature, and in an abundance of songs. But is there any literal meaning to the term? Can your heart actually break when left by a lover, or when finding out that your child had died overseas?

Well, there is recent evidence suggesting that people who are faced with sudden, intense emotional stress can develop serious heart muscle weakness. This is called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, stress cardiomyopathy, or simply “broken heart syndrome”. People with this condition can have symptoms that feel like a massive heart attack, including:

• Shortness of breath


• Severe chest pain


• Low blood pressure


• Congestive heart failure

Broken heart syndrome is a relatively new idea, so the mechanism isn’t well understood. However, it is believed to be caused by a huge release of adrenaline from your adrenal glands (the glands that sit on top of your kidneys) when you experience sudden emotional trauma. This massive amount of adrenaline will “stun” your heart muscle, preventing it from working properly.

Although stress cardiomyopathy is life threatening, it is surprisingly reversible. Unlike real heart attacks, you can recover from a broken heart in a matter of days to weeks with little to no permanent damage. The only problem is that you could have serious consequences or even die during the initial phase.

Is there any good news to this? Well, the symptoms are so severe that you’re unlikely to ignore it. And if you recover (which often happens) you shouldn’t have any permanent damage to your heart. Finally, there is no increased risk of recurrence. If you have one broken heart, you’re no more likely to suffer from another broken heart than anyone else.

Let’s finish off with some epidemiology. We all know that broken hearts are for assholes (thank you Frank Zappa for enlightening us with your controversial song). But now we can add post-menopausal women to this group. For some reason this is the most likely demographic to suffer from stress cardiomyopathy.

Let's Go To The Mall

To celebrate my 1 month absence from blogging, I thought I would share a video that has everything you could ever want: 80's music, Canadian content, and robots. If you've seen it in a cheesy 80's music video, they have it here.