Steve Lundeberg

Just when I thought I’d seen everything when it came to bizarre items in the newsroom mail, on Monday our news clerk, Amanda Robbins, dropped this on my desk:

Let’s just say I’m not going to place this particular booklet in with the Baseball Encyclopedia, Bartlett’s Quotations, Oregon Geographic Names, Pictorial History of Boxing and other volumes that line one edge of my desk.

But before I tossed it, I thought maybe we could have a little fun with it.

First off, it has a three-page glossary that includes terms both ridiculously common (abdomen, constipation, disorder, gut) and quite esoteric (dymotility, dysphagia, globus). I guess you never know what someone might know or not know, and for the record, I was unfamiliar with those last three terms; just Google them if you want to know what they refer to.

The other component of the book that I found sort of entertaining was a list of “story ideas” for me. The list included, and I am not making these up:

Researching the Brain-Gut Connection;

Good and Bad Gut Bacteria, and my personal favorite,

Constipation may be Learned — and Unlearned.

Elsewhere on the mail front, via email I received press release from Redbook magazine that included the following results of a survey of more than 2,000 women:

Actively cheating is not as common as the Tiger Woods Affair makes us believe…but women do think about it.  A 45% majority of women have never been tempted to cheat on their partner, 32% have fantasized about it, 12% have come close, and a mere 11% admit they’ve cheated.

Any reaction to those numbers, from readers of either gender?

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