The Ghan and Rocky Mountaineer

World's best train journeys | Holiday Ideas | News.com.au

THE GHAN

Australia

Celebrating its 80th birthday this year, The Ghan is the ultimate journey through the centre of Australia. It's named after the Afghan camel trains, which once carried goods to far-flung and remote parts of the country and travelling on The Ghan is a relaxing way to see diverse landscapes such as the South Australian countryside, the dry Red Centre and the lush tropical Top End.

The two-night trip between Adelaide and Darwin has three service levels, Red, Gold and Platinum.

Platinum Cabins come with double beds, spacious ensuite bathrooms and room service. Gold and Platinum passengers dine in the Queen Adelaide restaurant where freshly prepared meals are matched with premium Australian wines.

For a family gathering or special anniversary, consider a private carriage, such as the historic Prince of Wales Carriage originally built in 1919 to accommodate a royal visit from Edward, Prince of Wales.

Deal: The Ghan is offering a $660 saving to upgrade to Gold Service

The Ghan - Transcontinential Journey

Dr Pek Van Andel's MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) of Male and Female Genitals

Education | The Guardian

Dr Pek Van Andel's MRI sex video has thrust its way into an argument that periodically convulses the public and the courts. The video shows the first moving images of a couple's sex organs while those organs were in use. It gives graphic new life to a question as old as sin: what is pornography?

As used by Van Andel and his team, the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner lets us probe anew, and deeply, this legal and philosophical chestnut.

Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote in a 1964 US supreme court decision that defining which materials are pornographic is hard, but recognising them is easy. Quoth the justice: "I know it when I see it."

Laypersons watching the Van Andel video have a tougher time. During the short time it's been on the internet, around half a million people have taken a look. Many, unaccustomed to seeing medical imagery of internal organs, struggled to make sense of the unfamiliar shapes and motions. Their comments, posted on YouTube, make this clear. For every excited "AGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!", there is a baffled "???"

Some people express confusion. One wrote: "Took me a while to figure it out. I thought the man's torso was his penis."

Another hazarded that: "The dark spots on either side of the 'line' (their skin) are the bladders. The spines are at the outside edges. As best as I can tell it's the womb being bounced around so much."

A third explained: "It's obviously missionary. Anyone can see the spines of the man and woman are on the outsides, which shows they are facing each other."

A number of people do find stimulation, and perhaps even satisfaction, as expressed in this remark: "It kind of loses something with just the white noise audio ... Having said that, I still need a cigarette now."

Van Andel made the video in the late 1990s, but kept pretty quiet about it for a decade. He instigated and orchestrated the entire project at a hospital in Groningen, the Netherlands. He and three colleagues published a monograph in 1999, in the British Medical Journal. (Two co-authors, Ida Sabelis and Eduard Mooyaart, themselves engaged in intercourse in the MRI tube. Several other couples also contributed their all to the project.) A year later, the entire team was awarded an Ig Nobel prize.

Called Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and Female Genitals During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal, the study includes two copies of an MRI midsagittal image of "the anatomy of sexual intercourse". In the second copy, labels and hand-drawn outlines identify the bits that are of medical significance ("P=penis, Ur=urethra, Pe=perineum, U=uterus, S=symphysis, B=bladder, I=intestine, L5=lumbar 5, Sc=scrotum").

Unknown to almost everyone, Van Andel asked the MRI technician to gather all the static images and assemble them together into a motion picture. The result: the 21st century's greatest challenge to easy assumptions about porn.

Improbable Research Collection #119: MRI Sex

How to Grow Marijuana is taught at Detroit's new cannabis college

Students taught how to grow marijuana i | Society | guardian.co.uk

It goes without saying that there's no smoking in class. But there is a good deal of sniffing of leaves, discussion of the finer points of inhaling and debate over which plant gives the biggest hit.

Welcome to Detroit's cannabis college, recently opened with courses on how to grow marijuana – and harvest, cook and sell it too – after Michigan legalised the drug as a medicine.

Students get instruction from horticulturalists, doctors and lawyers as well as hands-on experience cultivating plants and guidance on how to protect their stash from the criminal element.

"Growing pot by chucking seeds in the garden is fine for the recreational industry," says the college co-founder, Nick Tennant, whose wholesome and youthful appearance, including acne-covered cheeks, startles some of the more ragged-looking students. "But when we're using this from a medicinal standpoint, you really need to document your strains and your genetics. The horticultural process is very complex. If you want to do it right you're going to need to learn. There's a lot of money in this if you do it right."

With more than 1,000 medical marijuana certificates issued each month in Michigan for users and growers to sell to them, there is demand for places at MedGrow Cannabis College, located in a small office block.

Among the first students paying $475 (£285) for six evening classes are people reliant on marijuana for pain relief and those who help them, including a clergyman who runs an Aids clinic.

Then there are young men such as Ryan Hasbany, a 20-year-old business student. He's still a year too young to get a grower's licence but he wants to learn the trade. "My father is a family practice doctor and he is issuing medical marijuana cards so I know there are a lot of people getting them. It could turn into a very lucrative business. The street prices are ridiculously high," he says of medical grade marijuana, which sells at $250 (£150) an ounce in Michigan. "There's Harvard economists who say this is what we need to bring the economy back."

Hasbany has no hesitation in admitting that he might be in a good position to judge the quality of what he grows. "I smoke it. In my high school graduating class, I'd say 25% of them were smoking it," he said.

Michigan became the 14th state to legalise medicinal marijuana this year after about two-thirds of voters supported the measure in a referendum. The move reflects growing acceptance of the drug in large parts of the country. In the past week, the US's first marijuana cafe opened in Oregon and Colorado ordered cannabis sales subject to tax.

The path was carved by California, where permission to buy marijuana requires little more than telling a sympathetic doctor it would make you feel better. Attitudes are changing in Washington too, where the Obama administration has told the FBI and other federal agencies to adhere to state marijuana laws in deciding who to arrest.

For all that, there is still hesitation over identification with what is now a legal industry in Michigan.

The first class of the evening at cannabis college is led by a physician who wants to be known only as Dr Powell. "Don't mention my first name. It'll make it harder for them to identify me," he says.

Powell explains to the students the range of conditions that permit him to issue a medical marijuana certificate, from cancer and Aids to a broad category of severe chronic pain. "If someone's had back surgery or a gunshot wound," says Powell.

There are questions. "Can I get it for gout?" asks a student. Powell thinks it unlikely.

The doctor says he is not concerned about addiction but regular cannabis users should find an alternative to smoking. That's why the course also includes a cookery class with recipes as varied as hash cakes and marijuana sushi.

The horticulture lecturer is even more wary than the doctor about being identified. "They might ask how I know how to grow all this stuff," he says. "I've been doing it for rather longer than it's been legal."

He, like many of those who lecture at Cannabis College, is also a consumer because of severe injury in a bad sporting accident. Tennant obtained a medical marijuana certificate to deal with a stomach condition that causes nausea. It is what brought out his acne.

The horticulturalist pulls open a couple of large white doors that act as an entire wall at the front of the classroom. Bright white light streams through the cracks and across the classroom to reveal a den of silver-lined walls, air conditioning ducts, fans and intense lights. At the heart sit a handful of plants – some of them bushes really.

The teacher runs through soil versus hydroponics, lights (red and blue better than LED), pruning (pluck, don't cut) and the intricacies of cloning. There's an explanation of ozone generating devices to cover the smell. "You might not want the neighbours to know. You don't want them raiding your house for your supply," he says.

Pasted to the wall is a chart of the labyrinth of marijuana species, their effect on different diseases and their particular tastes.

The horticulturist explains that there's money to be made from the trade in medicinal marijuana but growers must tailor the plant to the customer's need. "There's pot that makes you not shut up for five hours. There's pot where you sit on the couch and drool for five hours. That's not what you need if you're going to hold down a job. There's thousands of people getting patient cards and they all have needs. If you can work out how to meet those individual needs you're gonna get rich," he says.

Superdiets? Doctors said they're just a fairytale

The Observer

Some swear by chewing 32 times to aid digestion; others stick to raw vegetables and fruit; many opt for high-protein diets in the form of fish, chicken and beef; a few proclaim the powers of grapefruit juice.

Whichever diet you follow, there is a good chance that it will be challenged tomorrow, when one of the country's leading doctors exposes the "myths and fairytales" surrounding some of the world's best-known food fads.

Professor Chris Hawkey, president of the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG), will list more than a dozen famous diets when he addresses Gastro 2009, a major conference for doctors. They include "rawism", the grapefruit diet and the alkaline diet.

The chewing movement emerged in the 19th century with the claim that chewing each mouthful 32 times helped digestion. "Gladstone was apparently very eccentrically in favour of this diet," said Hawkey of the British prime minister who died in 1898. "The idea is that salivary enzymes start digestion." However, like many other diets, it was based more on "theory than evidence", according to Hawkey.

As for the Hollywood grapefruit diet, which is based on the belief that the fruit contains an enzyme that breaks down fat and which Kylie Minogue is reported to have used, Hawkey argued that the chemical is unlikely to even make it through the gut and into the body where it is meant to do its work.

"Food has been shrouded in myths and fairytales since time immemorial," he said, arguing that some people become "quasi-religious" about what they eat. "But what's important is to recognise that, despite the popularity of fad diets, we are losing a grip on the fight with obesity."

His comments come as a survey by the BSG shows that one in five Londoners would turn to weight-loss pills to slim down. As for the Atkins Nutritional Approach, the famous diet that is low in carbohydrates and high in protein, one in five women would try it, but only 2% believe it is healthy. For Hawkey, the diet is one of the few that carries at least a small amount of evidence.

"It is not terribly healthy in the sense that you are going to have a lot of fat, but if you lose weight then it is a good thing," he said. "The theory is that it resets the metabolic rate and there is some science to back that up."

He argues that there is no harm in any diet that retains some nutritional balance and makes an individual lose weight.

Among the more balanced diets he will mention is one promoted by the nutritionist Esther Blum, who advocates eating full-fat foods in moderation to help metabolise cholesterol and to improve sex drive. Its famous fans include Sarah Jessica Parker and Teri Hatcher.

"I'm all for informed scientists and practitioners actually debunking some of the mythology around diets," said Andrew Hill, professor of medical psychology at Leeds University. "People are looking for quick-fix repairs, but in fact they are very rare, particularly in relation to being overweight," Hill said.

"The idea that some new discovery or new way of combining food will give you an instant fix to your weight or health problem is nearly always misinformed. Health isn't immediately reparable; weight isn't immediately modifiable."

Idle

Sorry, I haven't posted much recently because of some personal issues. Everyone has problem, and so do I. I hope I can cope it well. Have a nice Sunday for everyone!