Reason #578 to let your kid play in the darn dirt.

I know that's not the bacteria they're talking about, but the helicopter mom with the neosporin keychain spray and alcohol hand sanitizer drives me nuts.

They're kids, they'll be ok. Just don't let them play with electricity, guns and really sharp objects.

reproduce sexually?

elvisaintdead: reproduce sexually?

Beat me to it

Run for POTUS?

(not until they're 35, at least.)

elvisaintdead: reproduce sexually?

While bacteria mostly reproduce asexually they do engage in sex as well, swapping genetic material and undergoing recombination. Although it's more like having sex and gaining the benefits of genetic recombination yourself and then your "kid" is still a clone but still, bacteria do get freaky on occasion.

Bring a dead hooker back to life.

Add this and allergies to the growing reasons to avoid using antibacterial farking everything in your house...

elvisaintdead: reproduce sexually?

Make beer? You need a fungus for that. And alot of Farkers seem to find beer an essential ingredient in sexual reproduction.

Give someone Force powers? Oh wait, it can do that too.

Will be out of a job.

CommieTime: Bring a dead hooker back to life.

I'm going to have to agree with this one. Lord knows I've tried.

CommieTime: Bring a dead hooker back to life.

You obviously haven't been watching the same movies I have.

is there anything bacteria can't do?

Besides peeing standing up?...Nope.

CommieTime: Bring a dead hooker back to life.

You're doing it wrong.

H.Pylori. I haven't eaten summer sausage since my brother told me that it almost always has that bacteria in it. Maybe I should reconsider now that I know it will protect me from Wilford Brimley.

So - right now they're saying it's still the luck of the genetic draw?

/brother and sister both have Type I

I've got diabetes and a bacteria infection. Did I win???

http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/Bacteria

/got nothing else to say

Another treatment that will be too expensive for health 'insurers'.

Pus Gut: H.Pylori. I haven't eaten summer sausage since my brother told me that it almost always has that bacteria in it. Maybe I should reconsider now that I know it will protect me from Wilford Brimley.

This implies that you once ate summer sausage (that you claim is "almost always" infected with H. Pylori), in which case you are probably already infected (and apparently asymptomatic) , so you might as well continue enjoying those delicious sausages.

That said, your claim is silly given that researchers still aren't sure how H. pylori is getting around (certainly not sure enough to claim that summer sausage is a major culprit), so even if you are infected, summer sausage consumption may not have had anything to do with it (and some salad you ate at a restaurant might have).

/eat some broccoli with the sausage if you're really paranoid

Get legalized?

/obligatory

entropic_existence: elvisaintdead: reproduce sexually?

While bacteria mostly reproduce asexually they do engage in sex as well, swapping genetic material and undergoing recombination. Although it's more like having sex and gaining the benefits of genetic recombination yourself and then your "kid" is still a clone but still, bacteria do get freaky on occasion.

Rule 34?

eliz1bef: Add this and allergies to the growing reasons to avoid using antibacterial farking everything in your house...

THIS.

The Calculus?

H. pylori causes stomach ulcers. The doctor who proved this did it by the classic method of infecting himself, getting ulcers, killing the H. pylori, and getting rid of the ulcers. It is suspected not only to have a role in type 1 diabetes control but also asthma. People who have the bacterium are less likely to develop asthma. The connection seems to be via gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), which coexists with and worsens asthma by multiple mechanisms. H. pylori may help to prevent GERD from harming the esophagus, thus preventing the inflammation which leads to asthma.

You win some, you lose some.

smage This implies that you once ate summer sausage (that you claim is "almost always" infected with H. Pylori), in which case you are probably already infected (and apparently asymptomatic) , so you might as well continue enjoying those delicious sausages.

I didn't claim that, my brother did. He might of been lying but he's a biologist so I can't take chances. He also said that they are the biggest bacteria of all, almost visible by the naked eye. Creepy. I hope all of the beer and antibiotics that I've consumed since I stopped eating summer sausage has killed them all.

I suspect that bacteria can do just about anything. They can survive under extreme conditions, such as several years on the Moon in a camera left behind by astronauts, in the deepest depths of the Ocean or the crust reached by man, and in the most hostile extremes of salinity, heat, cold, acidity, etc.

They cheerfully swap genes with each other and everything else they meet, and are, like Sir Alfred Tennyson's Ulysses, "a part of all that they have met".

They may play a major role in climate--since water droplets and snowflakes form around them, they appear to be appear to travel into the upper atmosphere and then engineer their own descent as precipitation.

James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis may depend on them acting as a universal organism and the original "cloud computer", while Sir Fred Hoyle and Chradrawrickhamsingh's Panspermia may depend on their ability to survive for unbelievable periods of time hidden in rocks (and maybe meteorites).

They are the point where plants, animals, fungi, etc., blur together.

As Charles Hoy Fort pointed out, it's not hard to tell a bouquet of violets from a hippopotamus but in the infusoria (microbes), extremes meet.

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

Ulysses (new window) by Lord Alfred Tennyson (a cousin of Charles Darwin, and his wife, Emma Wedgwood, and most of the rest of the intellectual elite descended from Josiah Wedgwood.

The Wedgewood Darwin family tree (new window) is almost as successful as bacteria.

Benevolent Misanthrope: elvisaintdead: reproduce sexually?

Make beer? You need a fungus for that. And alot of Farkers seem to find beer an essential ingredient in sexual reproduction.

Nope. (new window)

Let's see....they can't have membrane bound organelles?

incarcerated: I've got diabetes and a bacteria infection. Did I win???



/link it like its hot

Benevolent Misanthrope: elvisaintdead: reproduce sexually?

Make beer? You need a fungus for that. And alot of Farkers seem to find beer an essential ingredient in sexual reproduction.

While they do try hard to keep bacteria out of mass-market bladderwash, there are some beers that bacteria help make...

Banky_The_Hack: Let's see....they can't have membrane bound organelles?

Can't even claim that one any more. There are protein membrane bound organelle like things present in some bacteria (not lipid double-membrane bound organelles) and there is at least one species that has isolated it's genome into a specialized subsection of the bacteria.

Prokaryotic Organelles

Pus Gut: I didn't claim that, my brother did. He might of been lying but he's a biologist so I can't take chances. He also said that they are the biggest bacteria of all, almost visible by the naked eye. Creepy. I hope all of the beer and antibiotics that I've consumed since I stopped eating summer sausage has killed them all.

I'm assuming that unless you misunderstood that your brother isn't a microbiologist. H. pylori are only about 3 micrometers long and 0.5 micrometers in diameter. Most bacteria fall within the 0.5 to 5 micrometer range in terms of length but thats only most. The largest are close to half a millimeter and can be seen with the naked eye. That would be 500 micrometers, over 100x the size of H. pylori and nowhere near visible unaided.

Teach me how to love again?

brantgoose +1, Informative

entropic_existence: While bacteria mostly reproduce asexually they do engage in sex as well, swapping genetic material and undergoing recombination. Although it's more like having sex and gaining the benefits of genetic recombination yourself and then your "kid" is still a clone but still, bacteria do get freaky on occasion.

franjime: Rule 34?

Wonderful article.
No supporting references to any scientific data whatsoever.
Makes me a believer.

Having said that, the bacteria and viruses of this world will beat us in the end... even surviving Al's global warming!

We are down to some of the last defences against these microscopic survivors.

/That is all

ass2mouth: Teach me how to love again?

switch hands.
maybe try some playful role-playing.

I think the conclusion would be more accurately described as "near total lack of bacteria can help cause type I diabetes." Which isn't really something most people have to worry about.

It could be a good reason to avoid antibiotics in children, though.

It's true, they can do anything. Except make phone calls and things of that sort.