Our Malined Friend

I feel sorry for the toilet seat. It's always the comparison point for grossness.

Every few months there's a story on how Everyday Object X has more bacteria than a toilet seat. "Average keyboard has more bacteria than a toilet seat." "Calling Dr. Gross--mobile phone has more bacteria than a toilet seat." "Why don't you have your baby lick a toilet? Pacifiers have more bacteria than gas station commode."

If there are so many objects more disgusting than a toilet seat, maybe it's time to back off the insults to our porcelain friend. It's doing something right. It is beating our cell phones in the clean contest, and I don't know about you, but I don't poop on my cell phone.

What would I use as a substitute? A far question to ask. If I were a scientist releasing a meaningless study because my company's PR department wants to generate publicity from a media machine that hungers for attention-grabbing stories that require almost no research or effort to report, I'd....well, actually, I'd kill myself, because my life would be a hollow shell, empty of a long-forgotten dream to do something meaningful.

Or...I would use an object that no one would suspect harbors bacteria, and give people two things to fret about. "Office keyboards have more bacteria than corn!" What? Corn has bacteria?

Cancer Ruins Everything: News on RFIDs

"There's no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members," said Dr. Robert Benezra, head of the Cancer Biology Genetics Program at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Oh, how the cyborg future is fraught with peril.

The Associated Press unearthed several studies done in the mid 1990s that show a possible link between cancer in mice and RFIDs, Radio Frequency Identification Devices. I'll risk cancer for a laser chip or a neural implant, but not for something that is essentially a high-tech name tag. The chips are popular with pet owners. If their robo-puppy runs away, many local animal shelters have scanners that can read these chips and retrieve the owner's information, making it easier than ever for shelters to return the runaway pooch to a place that he obviously does not want to be.

The FDA approved a product made for human implantation in October 2004, although the product's manufacturer probably called it a more congenial name than...HUMAN IMPLANTATION (“Who wants a permy-pill? We got three flavors.”).

An object that is cancerous to mice or rats doesn't mean it will be cancerous to pets and humans. As I mentioned, the devices are popular with pet owners, and one would assume if RFIDs posed a significant health problem to animals, anecdotal evidence from pet owners and veterinarians would have bubbled up by now.

The AP's story brings up some questions. Was the FDA aware of these studies before approving the product, VeriChip? Did VeriChip's manufacturer know of these studies and withhold them from the FDA? Guess who's stonewalling? That's right, everyone! Read the article for a special guest appearance by a former top-level Bush administration appointee.

The Nerd Herd

NASA Rover Finds Surprising Evidence for Mars' Watery Past

Chemical analysis performed by the rover's robotic arm-mounted science instruments measured a composition of about 90 percent pure silica -- a material commonly found in quartz on Earth -- for the bit of Martian dirt, said mission scientists, who first heard of the find during a teleconference.

"You could hear people gasp in astonishment," said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "This is a remarkable discovery." (space.com)


NASA PR: “Ladies and gentlemen of the press. Welcome. We gathered you here to make an exciting announcement. HQR-3527—I’m sorry, “Spirit”–has just finished its analysis of an interesting patch of soil it unearthed. The soil...is 90% pure silica!!!”

[silence]

NASA PR: “Hello? 90% silica? Is this thing on?”

AP: “What’s the big deal about that?”

NASA PR: “Well, silicon dioxide, SiO2, which we commonly refer to as silica, is---“

REUTERS: [scribbling notes] “One sec. How do you spell your name?”

NASA PR: “Wojozecski. W-O-”

REUTERS: “Screw it. I’ll just attribute it to Wikipedia.”

NASA PR: [sighs] “As I was saying, silica is found in nature in several forms, particularly quartz. Quartz crystals are typically formed in hydrothermal environments— hot, watery solutions, such as one from a volcano or a hot spring. That means at some point in time, there was water on Mars.”

AP: “Why does quartz need water to form?”

NASA PR: “Good question. The answer is complicated, so bear with me for a few minutes. Let’s start with a Chemistry 101 lesson. In a hydrothermal solution, there are no free molecules of---who’s snoring?”

WOLF BLITZER: “Zzzzzz....”

NASA PR: “IN A HYDROTHERMAL SOLUTION, there are no...”

REUTERS: “Excuse me. I have a question.”

NASA PR: “What now?”

REUTERS: “Science makes my brain hurt.”

NASA PR: “That’s it. Larry, bring out the nerds.”

Larry, using an electric cattle prod, jabs a herd of pencil-thin, disheveled nerds on stage.

AP: “Nerds!” [applauds] [whispers to Reuters] “They have all the answers.”

NASA PR: “From the top. Spirit has just finished its analysis of an interesting patch of soil it unearthed. The soil...is 90% pure silica.”

Nerds gasp in absolute astonishment.

NERD HERD: “That’s amazing!” “Wow, what a stunning find!” [nerd wets himself]

AP + REUTERS: “What a story! Thanks, Wikipedia!”

NASA PR: “Wiki....? Larry, get them out of here.”

Larry forcefully prods press out of room.

Dude, Where's My Crust?

Someone--most likely evil space aliens (as if there were any other type!)--stole a large part of the Earth's crust.

That's not the fancy-shmancy "scientific" view, but dude, come on. It's obvious aliens took it to build more moon condos. Wake up and smell the coffee, which is made from dead bug larva. From the moooooon!

I Am the World's Most Healthiest Man

Study: Napping Regularly Fights Heart Disease

My favorite quote: "Taking a nap could turn out to be an important weapon in the fight against coronary mortality."

Yes. And I will be your General.

The only better scientific news today would be a study titled, "The New Weapon Against Cancer: Potato Chips" with a full-page, color graph correlating the effectiveness of the potato chips' cancer fighting ability with the amount of artificial bacon flavoring on the chip.

I love it when science supports my lazy lifestyle. We all welcome scientific evidence that effectively says, "Keep doing what you've been doing", but think about how much more welcome that evidence is for lazy people. I and other members of the lazy community aren't going to change our eating, sleeping, or exercise habits, no matter how much longer the changes would let us live. We're lazy. That's what we do. Well, don't do.

Our only hope to reach a healthier lifestyle is to have scientists ("Glory be to them!") is to redefine the slothful behavior that we've been practicing for most of our lives.

I don't want to end this post with something along the lines of, "I'd write more, but I'd have to take a nap." It is so predictable that it approaches cliche, and I've overused it already. The thing is, I really am going to take a nap, and that really is why I'm not going to write more. Truth is a bitch when it doesn't sound plausible.

That will be the subject of one of my next posts.

Doggy Senility

I read a blurb in Psychology Today that 90% of dogs have a moment of senility by the time they are seven. How does a creature that chases its own tail, eats poop, and says hi by sniffing each other's butts have a moment of senility?

Earth Global Warming Causes Hurricane-Like Storm on Saturn

I'm joking about the Earth global warming connection, but this is neat.

Bear Behavior

If you think men go to extremes to get sex, you don't know bears.

In Grizzly Man, Warner Herzog's documentary of a man who lived with grizzly bears every summer for over a decade, Herzog says that some male grizzly bears will kill their cubs so the female will be ready to fornicate sooner.

Talk about a mood killer.

Calling All Math Majors

I've been thinking about the flash video below that explains the ten dimensions. The way the dimensions are defined, there can be no more than ten dimensions, because the 10th dimension is the infinity of all the infinite universes. But I remember reading of some string theories that propose the existence of more than 10 dimensions, most notably 11 or 26. Are these other definitions just different ways of categorizing the same thing, like instead of "5, 6, 7" it's "5a, 5b, 5c, 6a, 6b, 7a..."

Do I even want to know? Sometimes I like asking questions more than the answers. Questions are easy. Answers are hard. When I think about researching my own questions, part of my brain goes, "Woah, hold on there, Einstein. We haven't had our second nap yet Why don't you go grab that duck feather pillow there, and we'll think about this in an hour."

The 10th Dimension

If you watch one flash animation of the 10th dimension, make it this one. A lucid explanation matched with lucid design.

Get Some Self-Respect, Europe

Europe's first spacecraft to the moon ended its three-year mission Sunday by crashing into the lunar surface in a volcanic plane called the Lake of Excellence, to a round of applause in the mission control room in Germany.

It took you three years to fly to the moon, when your craft finally gets there it crashes, and you congratulate yourselves on your hard work? You even had the temerity to crash it in the Lake of Excellence, like its name would rub-off on the Crapship 2000. It didn't. Now the Lake of Excellence is the Lake of Excellence with Pieces of a Dirty European Ship in the Middle of It.

Also, have you considered exploring a more interesting place in the cosmos, such as "anywhere but the moon" or "not the closest object next to us""? The moon is ours. Or didn't you notice the flag we planted there almost 40 years ago. What are you going to do next, invent snap-on pants and Velcro? Sure, we lost the original recording of the moon landing, but we saw it on TV, so it's better than true.

Okay, ha ha. I'm done being facietious. The mission was designed for the craft to crash in the moon. Although now that I think about it, the fact that they designed the craft to crash is in some ways worse than if it happened accidentally. Objects hitting other objects is so Shoemaker-Levy.

Scientists Offer Proof of 'Ether'

Oops! Typo. Scientists Offer Proof of 'Dark Matter' Even for a lay person, I'm unqualified to judge the probability that dark matter exists. It seems though that there are some similarities between the theory of dark matter and the theory of luminiferous ether, which was created in the late 19th century to patch up holes in the understanding at the time of how light works.

We know that there is a flaw with the current theory of the universe based on what we can observe. So either there is a flaw in the current theory, or there is a significant amount of matter out there that we cannot observe.

Well, both options could be true. And that would really suck. If I were a scientist and found out that not only is our theory of the universe fundamentally flawed, but there's a big chunk of the universe we can't even hope to see as well, I'd call it quits. "The Universe is made up of cotton candy. I'll be in Bermuda."

At the very least, the International Council of Science, or whatever the governing body that doesn't appear as the first link on Yahoo is, should change the name from "dark matter" to "we don't have a fucking clue." In the name of scientific accuracy, of course.

Gotta Love the Comparison

Scientists recently discovered a bizarre, new crustacean 900 miles south of Easter Island. From the AP article (italics mine):

"Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it. The animal is white and just shy of 6 inches long, about the size of a salad plate."

Great. We discover a hitherto unknown sea creature fantastical enough to merit its own classification, and our first thought is, "Will it fit on my dinner plate?"

Medical Bumper Stickers

I saw a bumper sticker that said, "Autism—Solve the Puzzle".

I thought this was a pithy way to point out the lack of attention the medical community pays to the easily solvable disorder of autism.

That's why I came up with more bumper sticker slogans to raise awareness of common health problems that could be eliminated if physicians in the medical community would stop poking each other in the butt with needles and start Doing Their Jobs.

Diabetes—Do Something!

Cancer—Thanks a Lot, “Doctors”

Lou Gehrig's Disease—Hello? It Affects More Than Lou Gehrig, People

Heart Disease—Get Off Your Asses, Already. And Even If All the Words Weren't Capitalized in This Absurdly Long Bumper Sticker, Asses Would Still Have a Capital A

The Jetsons Don’t Have Kidney Failure. Why Do We?

Death--Gimme a Break

NASA TV

Every now and then, I marvel at what technology has brought us. Like being able to watch, live, an astronaut prepare for a spacewalk (NASA TV).

Test Babies

One of my favorite features in The Washington Post is Unconventional Wisdom, a summary of the more interesting findings from the social sciences. It appears biweekly in the Outlook section, except for that time when the University of Michigan was studying the relation between routine and stress and got the Outlook editor to print it at irregular times for a few months.

This week's findings included a study that examined the effects of noise on infants language development. They studied 100 babies and found that noisy environments can interfere with language development in infants younger than 13 months.

Which brings me to a question I have every time I read about a study like this: where are they getting the babies from? I thought childbirth creates a powerful, unbreakable bond between mother and child. Yet I've been reading Unconventional Wisdom for many years, and every now and then there's a study like, "Jackhammers Make Babies Cry" or "Shake n Bake: Both Bad for Babies."

What are these mothers thinking? Scientists aren't loading up into a Humvee and doing drive-by baby snatchings. The mothers had to sign at least a few forms. Any parent who sees the words "detrimental," "baby", and "?" in the same sentence should drop the clipboard, remove the baby from the locker, and walk away.

Although I am being presumptuous in assuming these studies are being fueled by mothers' desire for free baby sitting. Maybe it's a lackadaisical father, well-intentioned to give his spouse a day off and then he gets a call from a friend, "Hey, do you want to go golfing?"

At Delinquent Fathers Headquarters, a bulb on the national map lights up, a retrieval unit is dispatched, and five minutes later a Humvee pops up on the curb and a team of scientists jumps out with a clipboard and a six-pack of Corona. Problem solved, even as he can hear his wife's squeaky voice nagging him in the back of his head that their child is not a problem why aren't you listening to me wah wah wah...golf.

Just Another Wholphin

Do you know what's wrong about our society today?

Whale-Dolphin Hybrid Has Baby Wholphin

That's a recent news headline. Or it's something I just made up. What's wrong is that there's no way to tell just by reading the headline.

There's a GEICO commercial about a fake reality show called "Tiny House" where a couple has to live in a house where the ceilings are four feet from the floor. A network executive saw the commercial and bought the rights to the idea from them. It's coming out as a four-episode special this fall.

Or am I making that up?

What can humanity do in the face of the wholphin?

We live in a society where absurdity has permeated every aspect of our culture. Where our action heroes are our governors, today's joke is tomorrow's product, and yesterday's news is today's entertainment. Life and art are no longer imitating each other, they're humping.

How did we get to a point where knowledge is called bias? When did entertainment get powerful enough to rival soma?

My memory is poor. I have no anchor to hold onto. I find myself choosing Netflix over reflection. Some days, when my mind breaks through the static, I wish I could find the road less traveled--another choice between confused and sedated.

Winged Merchants of Death

A sign that our troubles are not so great, at least in the D.C. area, is that we are worrying about cicadas.

This year's cicada brood, Brood X, comes out every seventeen years. As a 6th grader, I was both squeamish and fascinated by the hordes of insects that became part of recess for a few weeks. They were bugs after all, possibly with fangs. But the delicate shells they left after molting were almost as precise as a cast mold, and you could place one on your finger without fear.

If I read the newspaper back then, I would have known that cicadas are a horrible menace that will ruin life in Washington as we know it and psychologically scar all children, the elderly, and those with weak hearts. Thankfully, I read the paper now, and the almost-daily articles in The Washington Post during the past month have taught me to view them as a rare but annoying event, kind of like Nature's herpes sore.

If only an enterprising terrorist could figure out how to coat the cicadas with ricin. Then the real fun would start.

To be far, The Washington Post has had some interesting articles about this brood of cicadas, like in their Science section today. I have wondered why the cicadas come out every 17 years, and not 5 or 8 or 23 years, and how do they get the timing right. The Post's article interesting theory of how this unusual cycle came into being.

Remember When You Were a Kid And You Were Lost in a Store?

This is the first article I've read about false memories. I thought I read other articles on the subject, but after reading this one, I remembered the truth.

Wait a minute...

I hope the dependence on witness testimony in court cases is an artifact of the movies and not a practice in real-life. Sure, I'm aware that memory can be manipulated and fallible, but I don't live my life constantly questioning their accuracy or wondering if the few memories I have from childhood are true. I doubt anyone does. Life has enough doubt as it is. But (read this guardedly) most of us can remember a time when we or a friend of ours was positive this happened that way, or we definitely parked here, but it actually happened the other way, or we parked over there.

But occasionally I'll hear of a person wrongly imprisoned, usually based on the testimony of one or two people whose certainty in their false memories swayed a jury, and I wonder how often it happens. Is eyewitness testimony sufficiently doubted in today's judicial system? Should it be trusted at all?

There's no way I'm ending on such a pretentious note. This is one of the quotes from the article:
"In one study published last year, 50% of volunteers were persuaded they had taken a ride in a hot-air balloon when they had not. But when Kathy Pezdek of the Claremont Graduate University, California, tried to make people believe they had received a rectal enema, she met with almost universal resistance."

Here Comes the Sun

Doo doo doo doo...

Top 10 images of the sun. They are amazing.

From the WP String Theory Discussion

I was trying to get a Pancake City online store (through CafePress) up by 4:00, but I'm too brain dead to come up with good ideas. My two ideas so far are this (which has probably been done before) and a shirt that says "Preachers Like To Thump It."

This question in the chat made me laugh:

Normal, Ill.: Why do the strings, the fundamental elements of matter and energy, vibrate in the first place? Does something induce an outside force which makes them them vibrate, or do they will themselves into vibration, because I want to know how to make myself vibrate.

Jim Gates: Hi,

The short answer to this question is that the laws of
quantum theory demand that superstrings vibrate. So
it is not necessary for any outside agency to "cause"
the vibration.

This Was Going To Be an Extra Post, But It Took Too Long To Write. Plus, I Had To Go To The Bathroom. And I Didn't Capitalize 'an.' Should I Have?

I feel like I'm in the Army, catching quick naps as the Humvee barrels into enemy territory, but always ready to jump up at full alert and ready to start making monkey jokes.

I may have mentioned this before, but there is what should be an awesome series on string theory currently showing on NOVA. The series is based on Brian Greene's book "The Elegant Universe." Based on his writing style, I'm expecting the series to be similar in approach to the one Robert Crow-something-or-other did for ABC a few years back. The Washington Post chat today on the series will have more information for those interested.

I like to hide related links in my posts, but I'm putting this one in the open because it's too good to miss.

Show schedule: The series is showing in WETA 26 (D.C. area) on Tuesdays at 8:00 and Saturdays at 1:00.

Creationist Science Projects

The line between parody and reality has been blurred. From one of the funniest web pages ever:

Elementary School Level
1st Place: "My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)"
"Cassidy Turnbull (grade 5) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey."

Middle School Level
1st Place: "Life Doesn't Come From Non-Life"
"Patricia Lewis (grade 8) did an experiment to see if life can evolve from non-life. Patricia placed all the non-living ingredients of life - carbon (a charcoal briquet), purified water, and assorted minerals (a multi-vitamin) - into a sealed glass jar. The jar was left undisturbed, being exposed only to sunlight, for three weeks. (Patricia also prayed to God not to do anything miraculous during the course of the experiment, so as not to disqualify the findings.) No life evolved. This shows that life cannot come from non-life through natural processes."

2nd Place: "Women Were Designed For Homemaking"

High School Level
Honorable Mention:
"Thermodynamics Of Hell Fire" - Tom Williamson (grade 12)

Every page on this site has a gem. I'll post a few highlights in the next day or so. You might want to check out the site before reading the rest of my comments.

***

This site got me thinking about the difference between reality and satire. The two can be easily blurred. "Governor's wife calls for popping a cap in Britney Spears at gun control rally"--this could have easily been from The Onion. And many articles from The Onion have been mistaken for real news by some people before.

In response to this, most satire makes the fact that it is satire obvious in some way, so people can get the joke. The site is a different kind of satire, one that takes great pains to hide the fact that it is satirical. And it has a different motive than typical satire. Instead of poking fun at something, it tries to trick people into believing that it's true (and, I think, poke fun at the people who don't get it.) I'm not even sure if it qualifies as satire. It's closer to a practical joke than anything else. A very successful joke that, while I'm not sure it was the site's intent, makes more fun of people ready to rush to judgment rather than the creationists themselves.

Monkey Think, Monkey Do

From The Washington Post:
"Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts. [...]

"In the new experiments, monkeys with wires running from their brains to a robotic arm were able to use their thoughts to make the arm perform tasks. But before long, the scientists said, they will upgrade the implants so the monkeys can transmit their mental commands to machines wirelessly." [italics mine]

Look. I like monkeys. They're cute and, unlike lazy babies, throw away their own poop. But this is a bad idea. We've been smearing pink mascara on them, pushing them down hills on rollerskates and forcing our simian friends into servitude for capriciously-offered sips of juice for decades now. I don't care how often they smile or hug animal trainers of talk shows: monkeys want revenge. And giving them mental control over a man-crushing robotic arm is two steps away from a horror movie plot and one step away from: "Sorry, Koko. I'm out of bananas. I'll bring some tomorrow. Koko, what are you doing? No, Koko, no! I am your master! I AM YOUR...urlr...ack... [whump]."

Move Over Plato and Frodo

This is a really cool invention. It's a projection system that creates the illusion of transparency. Check out the researcher's home page--it gives a more accurate explanation of the device than Yahoo.

Interesting note: One of the research team's publications is called "Ghost in the Shell." This is just a coincidence, but remember the invisible jacket in the movie?

Don't make me use my real tail

To save their resources, scorpions have the ability to attack first with a prevenom that doesn’t kill the victim but causes it extreme pain.

It’s like how parents use one tone for when their kid comes home past curfew, and another tone when he smears his crap on the wall. You know, like when the child is a budding conceptual artist and his stupid parents try to crush his creativity with a lame excuse like, “You’re too old for this Jason! You’re 16!” Well, screw you Mom and Dad! I’m living on my own now, and once my roommates figure out where the smell is coming from, they’re going to accept me for who I am!

Scientist Quote of the Week

From a Washington Post article on a species of insects that evolved from winged to wingless…and then backed to winged:

“The study shows that ‘somehow this whole developmental problem can be switched on and switched off,’ said Pennsylvania State University biologist James Marden. ‘That's cool, and not just cool for insects. That's cool across the board.’ “

What's New?

Moon people found three new moons orbiting Neptune. That, or they found one moon and copied the image three times.

It's heartening to know that there are still things to be discovered relatively close to home. A few hundred years ago, people could fantasize about stumbling upon wooly mammoths butting heads and dinosaurs eating ferns in an unexplored land. Today, we have to manufacture our own surprises.

If I win the lottery, I’m putting a cotton-candy tree in a forest.