My parents arrived in Florence safe and sound on Tuesday, and we have been catching up since then. Their luggage was filled with the supplements that I will use in my experiments planned for 2007 and 2008. Quite an impressive pile of bottles, I must say. Among other things, including curcumin, of course, they brought me resveratrol, ellagic acid and Scutellaria baicalensis (for my baicalein test). I haven’t had time to do any serious research in the past couple of days. But just this morning a close friend (thanks!) sent me a funny joke, as follows:

The Hikers

One day, Joe, Bob and Dave were hiking in a wilderness area when they came upon a large, raging, violent river. They needed to get to the other side, but had no idea of how to do so. Joe prayed to God, saying, “Please God, give me the strength to cross this river.”Poof! God gave him big arms and strong legs, and he was able to swim across the river in about two hours, although he almost drowned a couple of times.

Seeing this, Dave prayed to God, saying, “Please God, give me the strength and the tools to cross this river.”Poof! God gave him a rowboat and he was able to row across the river in about an hour, after almost capsizing the boat a couple of times.

Bob had seen how this worked out for the other two, so he also prayed to God saying, “Please God, give me the strength and the tools, and the intelligence, to cross this river.”

Poof! God turned him into a woman. She looked at the map, hiked upstream a couple of hundred yards, then walked across the bridge.