Free Blame It on the Dog by Jim Dawson

Serve hot.
    As with any traditional dish, there are many variations of nun’s farts. Cajuns more typically call these pastries
pets de soeurs
, use ample amounts of lard, and mix in plenty of cinnamon. Other names include
bourriques de soeurs
(nuns’ belly buttons) and
bourriques de viarges
(virgins’ belly buttons). The Germans also have fritters called
Nonnenfurzen
(nuns’ farts), but they fill theirs with cream or jam.
    Speaking of Germans, they make a bread so heavy that it can produce hellacious flatulence that may require an exorcist. The English translation for its name is “devil’s fart,” which may account for why Americans use the German word instead:
pumpernickel
, taken from
pumpen
(to fart) and
nickel
(a goblin or devil).

WANTED: FART SNIFFERS, NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY
    I t’s probably tough enough being an odor judge in the research labs of mouthwash companies, testing their products by getting gargle-scented halitosis breath exhaled directly into your face. But Dr. Michael Levitt, a gastroenterologist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Minneapolis, has taken this drudge job to a whole new level—down to the other end of the long and winding road of human digestion. According to
Popular Science
magazine, in early 2005, Levitt hired two hardy souls to smell other people’s farts. “Levitt refuses to divulge the remuneration,” staffer William S. Weed wrote, “but it would seem safe to characterize it thusly: not enough.”
    Under Levitt’s guidance, sixteen healthy volunteers ate pinto beans and inserted small plastic tubes into their anuses; after each “episode of flatulence, Levitt syringed the gas into a discrete container, rigorously maintaining fart integrity,” according to Weed, a journalist determined to get to the bottom of the story. The two judges then received at least a hundred air samples, opened the caps one at a time, took a nice breath (well, a breath), and rated each fart’s noxiousness. Levitt also chemically analyzed each sample and discovered that the worst smelling part of a fart was hydrogen sulfide.
    (You have to wonder if the two judges put this job on their resumes. I can see one of them applying for his next position; the interviewer looks up nonplussed and says, “You seem like a real fart smeller, er, I mean, a real smart feller.” In English, we call this transposition of firstparts of words a
spoonerism
, named for an absentminded reverend, W. A. Spooner, who was prone to saying things like, “It’s kisstomary to cuss the bride.” But the French call these verbal accidents
contrepeterie
, which literally means “cross-farting.”)
    Anyway, despite skepticism from many quarters, Dr. Levitt, who’s one of the world’s top authorities on flatulence (see
Who Cut the Cheese?
), insists that he isn’t just farting around. Though gastroenterology is the study of stomach and bowel ailments, he says that up until now his fellow practitioners have never analyzed colon gas to diagnose medical problems. “The odors of feces and intestinal gas and breath could all be important markers of gastrointestinal health,” he claims. Hydrogen sulfide, for instance, is very toxic and could lead to ulcerative colitis, among other ailments.
    Perhaps the Greek doctor Hippocrates, for whom the Hippocratic oath is named, was right after all when he wrote in 420 BC, “[It] is better for gas to pass with noise than to be intercepted and accumulated internally.” In other words, keep farting as if your life depended on it.
    As for future jobs requiring professional fart smellers, well, I understand that they’re being outsourced to Third World countries.

A BLAST FROM THE PASTURE
    I t’s official. You can stop badmouthing bovine butt gas.
    True, methane molecules and light waves vibrate at the same rate, causing methane to absorb more of the sun’s energy and create about 20 percent of global warming.
    True, methane concentrations have more than doubled in the past one