Let's look through our mailbag. Item One, a scribbled note from a certain fifth-grader:
"In your recent article, you said you lost two crowns after eating my Halloween Milk Duds, but in fact you lost the second one after eating a giant Gummi Bear. Please correct this mistake." (Consider it done, young lady. Now about your allowance. . . .)
Item Two: A missive from Holly Maloney of Preventive Dentistry Products Ltd. of Costa Mesa:
"Read your interesting 'The Sweetest Way to Extract a Tooth' and noted your need for 'a tad more flossing . . .' Enclosed are 'Plac-Piks' to help fill your need." Thank you, Ms. Maloney, and I certainly will use the lovely lime-green picks.
Item Three: an electric tongue-cleaner (batteries not included). Hey! What is this?
We also got a book. And, since we're high-brows and all, we've already read it. Cover to cover.
"The Cartoon Guide to Sex" (HarperResource, 1999), by artist Larry Gonick and human sexuality scholar Christine DeVault, is funny, informative and frank, stuffed with pictures of slugs, frogs, birds, bees and people--we don't need to say what they're doing--plus all kinds of info about hormones, evolution, puberty, fertility, STDs, you name it.
This isn't Gonick's first cartoon book: He was the one who made studying biology that much more fun with his "Cartoon Guide to Genetics." He's also written cartoon guides to physics and the history of the universe (which he hasn't quite finished yet). Call it a hunch, but we think this one will be more widely read.
Breaking the Mold in Fungus Research
Not all our letters are about teeth or oral hygiene: Some are about nicer things, like mold. Ray Coffin of Culver City wrote to ask whether he was risking life and limb every time he scraped mold off his jam, or cut it off cheese or bread, and ate the rest.
Our first reaction was: With a surname like that, Mr. Coffin, why push your luck? Next came research: An old piece of cheese with white spots was left to grow in the fridge just in case a microbiologist would agree to dissect it and show us what's what.
The microbiologist we called--John Bissett of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a government research body--politely declined to have us send him the cheese. Then he told us all kinds of stuff about fungi.
