(Roughly) Daily

… it’s not a good idea to have a “fish pedicure.”

Fish pedicures aren’t just a bizarre beauty ritual with shady animal-welfare considerations, they’re also downright dangerous to your health, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Wednesday, the federal agency published a report by U.K.’s Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science, which examined the types of bacteria associated with Garra rufa, an inch-long toothless carp that nibbles away at dead skin. Native to Southeast Asia, the so-called “doctor fish” soared in popularity in 2008, when salons across the nation began offering them as an alternative to razors for scraping away calluses.

More at Ecouterre.

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As we put pescatorial pleasures aside, we might send transcendent birthday wishes to Henry David Thoreau; he was born on this date in 1817.  An author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic,surveyor, and historian, Thoreau was a leading Transcendentalist.  He is probably best remembered for his books Walden (a reflection on simple living in the natural surroundings of a rural pond– into which he did not dip his toes in the hope of treating his calluses) and Civil Disobedience (a book of practical moral philosophy that inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many others).

“Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after”

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