In the meantime, more coffee and more pizza means more blogging energy. Or I’ll totally crash in an hour. But before then, posts!

I’m also pleased to report that we’re now up to $153 in pledges for the Canadian Cancer Society.

(Remember, donations to the Canadian Cancer Society buy you a post on the topic of your choice!)

It suggests a correlation between grapefruit consumption and DVT, deep vein thrombosis, the clotting disorder known to be triggered by sitting for extended periods of time:

Grapefruit juice is known to block the action of an enzyme called CYP3A4 which breaks down the contraceptive hormone oestrogen. This in turn boosts levels of coagulability — the tendency of blood to clot.

However, it also mentions this detail:

The physicians found she had taken a relatively long car journey, of about an hour and a half, the day before; took a daily dose of oestrogen oral contraceptives; and had a genetic variant, called the factor V Leiden mutation, which is linked to a blood-clot disorder.

Yeah, sorry, I’m not convinced it played a huge role. Sure, given all those other risk factors, she definitely shouldn’t have been eating them, but I’m still skeptical.

So. What the heck? Why am I talking about this, anyway? Curiously enough,

This came in handy when I saw a post on Twitter by fellow C/Kate and internet marketer, Kate Trgovac:

@CatherineWinters Just donated $35 to CCS on behalf of your #blogathon efforts! Requesting post on Little Known Facts about Grapefruit :)

Which was fortuitous, because I’m @CatherineOmega on Twitter._[1]

And now, Little Known Facts about Grapefruit:

Believed to be a hybrid of the orange and the pomelo, the grapefruit was discovered by Western science in Barbados in the 18th Century.

Because of its recent cultivation and exposure to the world, it’s known by a range of completely unrelated names, even in closely-related languages: grapefruit, toronja, pamplemousse. (Compare this to the etymology of the word (and colour!) “orange”:

Orange
c.1300, from O.Fr. orenge (12c.), from M.L. pomum de orenge, from It. arancia, originally narancia (Venetian naranza), alt. of Arabic naranj, from Pers. narang, from Skt. naranga-s “orange tree,” of uncertain origin.

At least one study has indicated grapefruit scent may make women seem more appealing to men. (You said little-known, not helpful, Kate.)

This 1931 article in the Victoria Advocate, a paper from Texas, indicated that the grapefruit was met with significant skepticism when introduced to consumers in France.

The article notes that grapefruit are familiar to Americans and will surely become a staple of the French diet. I can’t comment on the latter, but the grapefruit was as well-known in 1931 as to be featured in this famous (and violent!) scene with James Cagney in The Public Enemy:

And that may actually be everything I know/remember/can Google about grapefruit. Hopefully it was informative!

So, as promised, a donation to Canada Cancer Society gets you a post on a topic of your choice. Sometimes they don’t start out all complaining about the accuracy of pop-science articles.

Thanks for your donation, Kate!

[1] Now I’m <a href=“http://twitter.com/catherinewinters’>both.

As part of their depressing cost-cutting measures, the CBC newsrooms are consolidating news operations. As Tod describes:

Rather than having separate newsrooms, assignment desks, and reporters for TV, radio, and web, CBC will now have a single source for its operations. CBC Vancouver just opened its integrated newsroom.

Go watch Behind the Scenes at CBC Vancouver’s new “integrated newsroom” at Tod’s site now!

Set phasers on ‘stalk’!

Google is handy, no? In retrospect, responding with his name and address a minute later is pretty much the worst possible response next to, “we have your wife.”

I was really wondering, though — how do you even text someone at random? Don’t you generally select the person you’d like to talk to from a list in your contacts? My guess was that it was either typed in wrong or that someone borrowed the guy’s phone as a prank.

Of course, maybe he was just trying to get the word out.