The Angry Lab Rat

A Day For Big BIG Explosions

2008-07-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

Happy Independence Day! (and, may I add, I'm glad to be back to my blogging routine!)

As I write this, the night's first fireworks are exploding around my home. Yes, today is the day that pyromaniacs dream of all year long, when they legally get to set off explosives and display them for all to see. Cool.

Oh yeah, and it's the country's birthday. Yada yada yada.

Actually, being hyper-patriotic, this day means a great deal to me. My flags are out, and I'm thinking about those I consider to be national heroes: people like my niece who are fighting for, or have fought for, our country's national interests and safety (though, may I add, the war in Iraq has little perceivable interest for our country in either regard), and people who are exercising their right to freedom of speech and democracy, like myself, by publicly opposing our President in his attempts to tear down those rights (or the separation of church and state, or his trampling of people's right to privacy, the Geneva Convention, environmental consciousness, etc etc).

But I digress. Let's get back to the intoxicating topic of things that go BOOM in the sky.

Last Monday, June 30, was the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska Event:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/30jun_tunguska.htm?list1101046

Yes, a century ago in 1908, just after 7 AM in the Tunguska wilderness of Siberia, a massive meteor exploded several kilometers above the surface, releasing the equivalent energy of 185 Hiroshima bombs, leveling 800 square miles of forest.

Now THAT'S fireworks!

Due to the remote location and the state of science and communications of the period, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the explosion. Enough gaps, at least, to lead to the occasionally wacko interpretation as to the cause of the event, everything from mini-black holes to UFO's (see my previous blog post on one, HERE, which also talked about how one of the meteorite fragments had gone missing from storage). Personally, I'll stick with the scientific explanation.

So I hope you've taken the chance to go outside to eat a hot dog, drink some brew, and set off some sparklers, bottle rockets, fountains, and other assorted explosives to celebrate the founding of our great nation. And while you're at it, ponder how, a century ago, one particular explosion lit up the sky from Siberia strong enough to read newspapers at midnight in China and be read by sensitive barometers as far away as England.

Happy 4th of July!

Image taken from HERE.

Where The Heck Have I Been?

2008-06-16T22:21:00.000-07:00

Geez! Where the heck have I been for the last couple weeks?

No, I haven't given up blogging. I was on a business trip, then my wife was sick, then I was sick, now we are simultaneously: a) having wood floors installed in half our house, b) stripping wallpaper and repainting our dining room, and c) repainting our master bedroom.

It's enough to drive an angry lab rat crazy! Ever tried living in a construction zone – with two small children – while sick? It ain't fun, and it's just barely begun. (My blogging pal, Maggie, at Mind Moss, can attest to this, having gone through this last year!) It's enough to make me howl at the moon.

So please stay tuned. Lots of good stuff to write about, but it may be as much as a week before I get back to my usual blogging schedule.

In the meantime, there will be a fantastic full moon on June 18th. This is a solstice moon, meaning that the moon will be full around the time of the summer solstice (on the 20th), which means that the moon will be hugging the horizon.

This makes the moon appear unnaturally large and spectacular, an optical illusion known since ancient times but nonetheless wonderful to behold. Here is a link that explains it:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/16jun_moonillusion.htm?list1101046

So, in a couple nights, go outside and enjoy the early summer night and its nice, full moon. I'll try to join you, but there's a good chance I'll be sniffing paint vapors while tip-toe-ing around the half-installed bamboo flooring.

Image taken from HERE.

Sure, But Which Gene Helps Her Remember Everyone's Birthday?

2008-06-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

Last week it was announced that, for the first time, the full genome of a woman had been sequenced:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-05/nofs-lss052708.php

The lucky gal was Dr. Marjolein Kriek, a clinical geneticist at Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, where the study was undertaken. This was not only the first sequence of a woman, but also the first of a European.

The sequencing had taken six months, reading over 22 billion base pairs (the "letters" of DNA for you non-science types out there), but had been run in-between other experiments. If it had been run straight through, it would have taken only 10 weeks. Typical. Once again women get second billing! Go on, you female lab rats! Throw down your test tubes and burn your bras! I'll only gawk a little.

The first human sequence, as you may remember, was completed in 2001 using the combined DNA of several people. The next was that of Jim Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double-helix structure. "Gene hunter" Craig Ventor was next. The final two were of Yoruba African men (I didn't know about those two, but now I'm curious).

In the words of the principal scientist of the study (as quoted in the article), "So it was time, after sequencing four males, to balance the genders a bit”. He smiles: “And after Watson we also felt that it was okay to do Kriek”.

Get it? Watson and Crick? Discoverers of the structure of DNA? Ha ha! Ha. ha. (sigh). Scientist humor….

Now that they have sequenced the X chromosomes of a female, the researchers say they are better able to study X chromosome variability.

That's well and good. But what I'd really like to know is which genes control that desire and ability of women to schedule everything. Or to coordinate their blouse with teal pumps. Or how to have a conversation on their tiny cell phone while simultaneously wiping a child's runny nose, stopping another child from climbing the bookcase, and writing up a report for their high-pressure career.

Yeah, that's right you sexy Dutch chicks, I've got your number (or at least the number of base pairs), and I've got a little Jean Gnome for you to "sequence". Giggity giggity.

Image altered from HERE.

Science Tattoos!

2008-05-31T00:02:00.000-07:00

For many years I have wanted to get a tattoo. I've balked at the price and at the lack of seemingly decent tattoo parlors around where I live, but I've decided to go ahead with what I can find.

And what kind of tattoo am I getting? A flaming skull? A heart inscribed with my lovely wife's name? Pictures of my kids? "Momma"?

No, of course not. I'm a scientist, after all. It's got to reflect my scientific interest (no offense to Mom, my wife, my kids, or skulls, thank you).

I am choosing to have permanently inked into my left upper arm the image at left. It is the first critter I studied, while as an undergrad. I studied the Cottonwood Borer beetle's reproductive anatomy and behavior in GREAT detail. Yes, not all science is for the betterment of mankind, but I found it fascinating, and still do. The beetles are about 2 inches long from the front of their head to the tip of their butt (though the antennae are longer). That little research project (which also involved learning some pretty detailed and traditional procedures and instrumentation) led to years of entomological research, then toward a career in biotech. The beetle isn't exactly colorful, but the story behind it means a lot to me. Sadly, we never published the work.

And then yesterday I came across this amazing blog dedicated to nothing else than documenting science-themed tattoos, imprinted onto scientists who study those topics:

http://carlzimmer.typepad.com/

Absolutely fascinating! People have sent him pictures of their tattoos on everything from evolution to zoological anatomy, subatomic particles to mathematics, computing to ecology.

Some of my favorite examples from those pages include THIS one, THIS one, THIS one, THIS one, and THIS one (but it is so hard to choose!). Enjoy!

Memorial Day '08

2008-05-26T01:03:00.000-07:00

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, when we remember and recognize all those men and women in uniform who went into harm's way for our country (whether the war was justified or not) and, in many cases, gave the ultimate sacrifice to protect our nation's interests.

Right now, the giant American flag that was presented in my grandfather's memorial service is hanging in my bay window, completely covering the glass there. Grandpa served aboard a supply ship in the Pacific during World War II, but came home safely. My great uncle fought in the Battle of the Bulge in World War II Europe. He came home, too. I also had a step father who served in the Korean war. A fall from an icy tank injured his back, but he came home. He never really recovered from his back injury, but he had a far harder time dealing with the mental wounds of war. And my lovely young niece is, right now, patrolling the edges of Sadr City in Baghdad. She is shot at often, and the risk of being killed by bullet, mortar, or roadside bomb is very real. I am lucky that none of my relatives has actually died while at war. Let's hope it stays that way. She comes home in August, just before her 23rd birthday.

But the danger doesn't end when they walk through that door to their good ole home. A recent study found that 1 in every 5 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD):

http://www.physorg.com/news127650186.html

That's 20% of returning veterans. Of those who seek treatment, only about half receive "minimally adequate" treatment.

The biggest effect of PTSD is depression, with suicide as the worst outcome. According to the Pentagon's own assessment, soldier suicides are five-fold higher than before the wars began, and currently that rate is at its highest ever since the start of the war (SOURCE). At least five soldiers commit suicide each day. That means that the number of suicides may soon outpace the number of combat deaths.

In a recent phone call, my niece commented on how surreal it is, fighting there in Baghdad, where you drive around in a big city, like any big city, where there are cars and people walking around, except there you can expect to be shot at at any moment, and everyone you are supposedly fighting for wants you gone and may be conspiring against you.

This isn't the war my grandfather and great uncle fought, or even my step father. Those we were liberating wanted us there.

So as you enjoy your day off, going boating, cooking hot dogs with the fam, reading blogs by liberal scientists, or simply gathering around the home entertainment system to watch this week's episode of American Gladiator, give a thought to those who have fought for your country, and another for those who are fighting for their lives right now.

Hang in there, my niece. I'll see you soon. Though this holiday is meant to remember our soldiers who have died, my flags fly for the living heroes, too, and one day soon this unjustified war will be over.

Addendum: On a closely related note, May 17 was Armed Forces Day, a day where we celebrate all that our combined armed services do for us (and, I might add, a holiday which is practically unknown or ignored outside of miltary circles, as far as I can tell).

Image taken from HERE.

Keeping Yourself Pale May Also Make Coral Reefs Pale

2008-05-24T00:10:00.000-07:00

I love the smell of cocoa butter. It sends me immediately into daydreams of hot, summer beaches and cool water.

If that statement seems odd to you, then you are either old and forgetful or younger than 25, or were too much of a lily to go outdoors.

Back when I was a kid, running around mostly-naked on the beach during summertime, the word "sunscreen" meant a wide-brimmed hat. I would slather Coppertone on myself. That rich, mildly-chocolate smelling yummy lotion infused with cocoa butter seemed an excellent means by which I could sauté rotund little body to a beautiful tan in no time without sizzling to a crisp in the mid-day Southern sun. SPF values were something like 2 or 4, which meant that drenching myself with Coppertone only protected me four times longer from imitating a beet, which I did often. Anytime now I expect skin cancer to crop up and remind me why my grandma carried an umbrella (which she called a "parasol") to shade herself when she went outside (and with good reason – she developed skin cancer in her elder years).

But by the 80's, the term "suntan lotion" was gradually being replaced by "sunblock" or "sunscreen", until now you never hear the term "suntan lotion". HERE is a good discussion about the change in terms.

Is it wrong of me to be wistful? Maybe it's because I live in the Northwest, where it's too testicle-shriveling cold most of the year to lay around nearly naked absorbing photons, but I just don't hear about people trying to get tans anymore. Everyone's too busy coating themselves with sun-repelling chemicals. I miss being brown.

Besides, this picture illustrates how "artistic" you can be with your melanoma-inducing love of sun (see THIS page for information on the artist).

Oh, sure, sure, I know all the arguments. Skin cancer = bad. Pale = good. Love the skin you're in. No one wants to look like an alligator by the time they're 45. Even I use Coppertone Sport sunblock, with SPF 15, and my children, who are dark-complected African-Americans, get coated with Baby Blanket sunscreen, SPF 50+.

But before we pat ourselves on the back for being health-conscious and educated about the potential dangers of UV radiation, let us consider a recent study that shows that sunblock lotions washed off of our sweaty, body-surfing bodies are contributing to the bleaching of coral reefs:

http://www.physorg.com/news130762664.html

Yes, in addition to the effects of global climate changes like increased UV radiation, increasing water temperatures, and rising water levels, plus industrial pollution, which endangers some 60 percent of coral reefs, some 10 percent of reefs are also at danger to being bleached by dangerous by-products produced when sunscreen breaks down. 78 million tourists who visit these reefs each year may gawk at the incredibly diversity of fishes and corals, but they are also releasing some 4000 to 6000 metric tonnes of sunscreen into that water. Researchers demonstrated that even small doses of sunscreen can bleach coral reefs within 96 hours of application, probably by stimulating viral infection of the coral.

No, I'm not advocating giving up the sunscreen. But maybe my grandma had the right idea. Let's not rely completely on painting our bodies with chemical sunscreens. Bring a parasol. Or at least a beach umbrella. But I still recommend getting out from under it enough to get some Vitamin D and maybe darken your skin enough to hide the veins. Ew!

Image taken from HERE.

One Hell Of A Toothpick

2008-05-20T23:21:00.000-07:00

Try to guess what the next three things have in common:

1. Last night I shoved a small, plastic stick with a wad of cotton at the tip into my ear canals and scraped out loving chunks of brown-yellow wax. It was nice to hear clearly again.

2. Today I go to the dentist to have my bi-annual tooth scraping and (bloody, painful) reminder to floss more often.

3. I plan to spend my supposed recession-deflecting economic band-aid of a stimulus package on something that makes me ignore the catastrophic national debt and economic recession.

Yes, you likely have already received a large sum of money from our government who, in their infinite wisdom, has waged an unjustified war that has cost the average American family $20,900, promoted big oil to record profits and record prices at the pump (the cheap stuff was $3.92 / gallon in town today!), and allowed fiscal irresponsibility to lead us into a recession. But, hey, even though it has cost each family dearly, they'll throw a trifle thousand bucks or so back at ya to spend on that new HD TV or, you know, buy the medicine that grandma needs because our failing healthcare system let her down. Thanks for the money, Dubya. It'll pay off about 1/8th of the average family's credit card debt. No need to invest it into our educational system, for instance, or social security.

Some folks suggested new and exciting ways to spend your stimulus package. Mark Morford had some good ideas (like buying one share of Google stock, filling four tanks of gas, or saving for the massive bonfire celebration to be held on 1/20/09).

Personally, I think a better way to blow your stimulus package would be to follow the lead of a wealthy Spanish galleon captain from the 17th century: a toothpick / earwax spoon made of solid gold:

http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20080519/Florida.Artifacts/

Divers recently unearthed from the sands of the Florida Keys a 3-inch long personal grooming device made of solid gold which has a toothpick at one end and an ear wax spoon on the other end (see picture). This is the latest find of years worth of searching for a fabled lost galleon, the Santa Margarita, which was sunk during a hurricane in 1622. So far they have found bars of gold, a lead box filled with pearls, and gold chains, but have yet to find the ship. This golden toothpick / earwax spoon has an estimated value of around $100,000.

Are you as horrified as I am that such a thing exists as an "earwax spoon"? Ew! And to have a toothpick at the other end! Double ew! Don't mix up one end from the other! You're likely to get a mouth full of yummy ear wax or a pierced eardrum with gingivitis.

But, hey, isn't it really just a status symbol? This little tool was apparently worn on a necklace. Wearing it on your neck, you would be proclaiming to the world, "I can afford a golden toothpick and you can't." You would also be proclaiming, "I have such bad earwax and tooth plague that I have to carry a special tool around my neck at all times to deal with it." But who cares? You're rich! Women will want to lay you no matter how horrible you look, just for a chance to get their own golden earwax spoon.

So, please, run out and get a golden earwax spoon / toothpick of your own. According to our government, it will help the economy. Sound economics.

Now that's picking your teeth with style!

Image taken from HERE.

Not Your Usual Computer Bug

2008-05-18T23:50:00.000-07:00

Last winter our house was infested with ants. More specifically, by "sweet-eating ants", little red buggers that love nothing more than to get into any remnant of sweet foods left in your kitchen, like un-rinsed pop cans, sugar bowls, glasses that had held juice, and sugary cereal boxes. Trust me, when you have two small children with two working parents and precious little time to clean anything thoroughly, there is PLENTY for these f*ckin' ants to eat, anywhere in the house. Trust me, we fought them long and hard.

And then one evening my lovely wife told me she had found a "highway" of ants traveling down our bedroom wall and into a pile of clean laundry I had not put away for, oh, two weeks or so (did I mention that we have precious little time to clean anything thoroughly?) on the night stand next to my side of the bed. Shaking my head and wondering why, in the name of E.O. Wilson, these little insects could possibly be attracted to my horribly unfashionable garments, I marched into our bedroom, found the line of ants, and proceeded to dig through the pile of clothes looking for some half-eaten Pot-Tart my kids may have sequestered there. In my rummaging, I accidentally knocked my digital alarm clock off the night stand.

When the clock hit the floor, it positively exploded with ants.

Aghast, I grabbed the clock and, ignoring the army of ants running up my arms, put the clock outside so the little monsters would freeze in the winter air. After shaking them off of my body, I went back to the bedroom and proceeded to slap and stomp to death about a zillion of them next to my bed (I'm exaggerating. It was only half a zillion).

Then I took a big Ziplock, placed the alarm clock in it, and put the sealed alarm clock into my freezer overnight. By the next morning, this little nest of ants was dead. I shook out the dead ants as best as I could, then tentatively plugged the clock back in, half expecting a fiery short circuit, but the clock has worked fine ever since. No doubt there a hordes of dead ants still inside. I can still see one inside the faceplate. Eventually we got an exterminator to control the infestation.

HERE is a rather entertaining video where some ants made a nest in some poor sucker's computer mouse!

This is nothing new. Having once been an entomologist, I've noted news stories off and on over the years of ants forming nests in breaker boxes and various appliances, even computers. No one is sure why ants can be attracted to electricity.

Lately a news story has been going around about an invasion of "Crazy Ants" in the Houston area:

http://www.physorg.com/news130001024.html

News videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyLfSemVM3Y

These species of ant (scientifically named Paratrenicha species near pubens) are only about the size of a flea and race around in a seemingly random manner, thus the name, and are native to the Caribbean and the southeast of the U.S. This invading population, however, seems more rampant than the others, having apparently arrived in Texas by way of a cargo ship. A fellow by the name of Tom Rasberry, an exterminator, has been leading the charge in popularizing this invasion (and, apparently, generating much more business for himself. He was recently hired by NASA to guard the Johnson Space Center against the ants) and has even gotten his name attached to them, as many media outlets are reporting the species common name as "Crazy Rasberry Ants". Not only are the ant colonies spreading, but they have been shorting out electrical devices in the area, including fuse boxes and computers (see picture).

They are resistant to ant sprays, have multiple queens per nest, and spread quickly.

The good news is that they eat fire ants. If you've ever been stung by fire ants, as I have, you'll be happy to hear this. Texas is overrun with fire ants (another introduced ant species that shorts out electrical boxes, I might add).

So the next time you have an ant infestation in your home, and you can't find the nest, check your electrical box, appliances, laptop, and your frickin' alarm clock, especially if you're in the Houston area. There may be a different sort of computer bug living in there!

Image taken from HERE.

My Liquid Lunches

2008-05-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't been going out to the bar at lunchtime.

As you can see in the margin of this blog page, I have been dieting lately. I've lost over ten pounds and over four inches off my belly. Yay me! Of course, I was as handsome as a lab rat could be beforehand, but now I'm a slimmer, healthier rat. How have I done it? Nightly exercise (one reason I haven't been writing as much lately), lower portion sizes, and calorie restriction.

In particular, my lunches typically involve drinking a Slim-Fast shake. Chocolate. 190 calories.

Now, I went into this little endeavor of drinking my lunch with the sort of enthusiasm typically reserved for National Guardsmen headed to Iraq, and drinking my lunch each day sounded about as fulfilling as trying to defend Hillary's chances of getting the Democratic nomination. And yet, I was surprised how well these shakes sated my appetite. They are high protein and high fiber, but low calorie. A recipe for success.

What's more, they are creamy and whipped with air. Whip it, baby! Whip it good! It turns out, according to a recent study, that this is a major factor in making a diet shake work well:

http://www.physorg.com/news130069235.html

Bulking up food with water and gas extends that food's ability to satisfy an appetite for one or two additional hours. Whipped milkshakes were a good choice. But not just any gas will do. Carbon dioxide, apparently, doesn't work. Darn, there goes my Pepsi diet!

Unfortunately, the article doesn't specify which gases are best. Let's hope it's not the kind that comes out the other end.

So, tomorrow at noon, I'll pop open another cold one, drink it before the whipped air escapes, and watch my beer belly melt away.

Slurp!

Image taken from HERE.

When Cremation Isn't Gross Enough

2008-05-09T00:48:00.000-07:00

How much thought have you given to what will become of your corpse?

Oh sure, sure, we try not to think about such things. Death is a thing better not dwelled upon. But let's face reality. Eventually we're all worm food, in one form or another.

My paternal grandma was convinced that burial was the only option. A thoroughly religious and superstitious woman (is there really any difference between the two?), she believed that cremation was the Devil's work, that somehow by being cremated you were inviting eternal damnation in a lake of fire. Of course, she also believed that having a beard meant that you were hiding something, and she always distrusted daylight savings time so much that she kept at least one clock with "the correct time" all year round. I loved her dearly, but you have to admit she was eccentric. What would she think of me now, I wonder, being an atheist, an advocator of cremation, hairy like a rat, and adhering to that daylight savings time conspiracy?

Yes, Grandma thought a lot about her corpse. She had everything arranged. The cemetery plot was purchased, and she visited it now and then. She had purchased a headstone (unfinished, of course). She even had a funeral home on stand-by. It was that way throughout my youth, and she reminded me of it often. If she could have dug the grave ahead of time, she would have.

It's good to be prepared.

Personally, I'd prefer my body be laid out in state, with thousands of mourners shuffling by to look at my handsome face, then be buried in a massive and overly-expensive granite tomb with my most famous quotes chiseled into the side of it…. But since that isn't likely to happen, I guess I'll just donate my organs and have the rest of me cremated. (Lake of fire! Lake of fire!)

Of course, there are other options to burial and cremation. There's the ancient and (thankfully) extinct Native American practice (in some areas) of simply putting the body up on a wooden platform to rot in the wind, or the Tibetan practice of chopping off the limbs and tossing them to the winds for vultures to feed on, or (my favorite), the Viking burial in a burning ship at sea (now that's a way to go!).

Now there's a new option: Dissolving your body in lye:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080508/ap_on_sc/dissolving_bodies;_ylt=AhxAi5B3goY5EidSQI1hMoSs0NUE

Yes, that's right. Dissolving corpses is no longer reserved for lunatic murderers. Now a couple of medical centers (The University of Florida in Gainesville and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.) are using a special "pressure cooker" filled with lye, at 300 degrees F and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch, to literally dissolve the body away – a process known to chemists as alkaline hydrolysis, which has been used for years for disposal of medical waste and dead animals. Now a New Hampshire mortuary is wanting to buy one of those "pressure cooker" tanks.

The resultant human-goo is a "coffee-colored liquid [that] has the consistency of motor oil and a strong ammonia smell." Umm, appetizing! Need a cup of java, anyone? This liquid, which is now sterilized, is then poured down the drain.

I repeat: poured down the drain.

So if you're living in Gainesville or Rochester, give that water of yours another sniff, eh? If you drink it, does that count as cannibalism?

This whole body-processing thing dredges up visions of Charlton Heston running through the streets of a crowded, dystopic future New York yelling, "Soylent Green is made of people! People!"

Personally, I'm not as horrified by this rather macabre method as I thought I would be. I'd be dead, after all. It's technically sanitary, doesn't fill up otherwise wonderful sunny meadows with depressing graves for ghosts to putter around in, and you don't have to find a place in the rose garden for your Cousin Ralph's ashes. Just fill the pressure cooker, insert the lye, press a button and Voila!, your beloved is turned into gravy. Just be sure to flush twice.

And as for my Grandma, she died at a ripe old age, and she got the burial she always imagined for herself, in that grave she had prepared, and with the gravestone she'd bought so far ahead. But we deviated in one minor way from her well-laid plans. She had wanted a closed casket, believing herself too ugly to view. But I have to say, when I viewed her laying there, she was more radiant and beautiful than I had ever seen her in life. You can't get that with alkaline hydrolysis.

AP photo taken from HERE.

Another Flighty Invention

2008-05-05T00:33:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, a Mexican (yes, Mexican) aerospace company announced designs for a new strap-on helicopter backpack:

http://www.physorg.com/news128929559.html

From the article:

Technologia Aeroespacial Mexicana (TAM), the company behind the Libelula strap-on helicopter, explains on its Web site how the device is powered by two hydrogen fuel canisters. Tiny rockets at the tips of the helicopter´s rotor blades take the place of a tail rotor, a component which couldn´t be safely attached to a human body. According to the company, the Libelula would be the lightest helicopter in the world, so light that it could be strapped to a person´s body with a carbon fiber corset.

Wow. Nifty. Gee whiz…. Yawn.

Several times a year, some enterprising inventor comes out with yet another far-out but over-played transportation device that, like its predecessors, is too expensive, too unsafe, often untried, and simply not marketable. Take, for instance, the most recent car that can turn into either a boat or a submarine (the sQuba car), or yet another flying car concept that was announced not so long ago.

Yeah, it's neat, but even if the Libelula helicopter backpack works (and it is still just a concept, I will remind you), it's really just a novelty. Hell, it would take some convincing just to get me to travel by motorcycle (four wheels is a LOT safer than two!). Getting me to strap a hydrogen fuel tank to my back, then take off with a loud engine and whirling blades just inches from my sensitive little head, is a whole other thing. Hey, while you're at it, let's make it even more unsafe and add some potentially-explosive rockets to the blades. Oh, I guess there already are.

It's an interesting commentary on the workings of the world that most people have trouble understanding how to hook up their stereo systems or operate their digital cameras, but we'll give any schmuck a license to drive a half-ton SUV at ramming speed down the freeway. I don't trust most drivers to keep me from becoming one with their hoods, so it should be no surprise that giving them a helmet with a couple of spinning 3-foot, potentially-decapitating blades and explosive rockets and hydrogen fuel isn't a concept I endorse. Call me snobby, but I'd like to keep folks on the ground and leave the flying to licensed pilots.

As for the personal-helicopter idea, I'll leave you with a link to a video of someone who has already built a similar contraption:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f09_yvcASLM

Here's another one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd99ziWFF7Q&feature=related

Yes, you, too, can experience the miracle of flight with the new Libelula helicopter backpack, able to leap tall buildings and border walls with a single bound. Just watch out for those power lines, amigos, or those blades will be chopping more than air.

Addendum: For a slightly less explosive and death-defying option, consider the "Mosquito" personal helicopter: http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1878.

Image taken from HERE.

Not Your Usual Hobby

2008-04-30T01:07:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what people do in their spare time. Some folks collect stamps, or go hiking, or, hell, do cross-stitch. Whatever. Something to make life a little more interesting. I write fiction. Some folks go further, doing something to change the world. I'm campaigning for Obama, for instance.

And then you get the weirdos. Consider a historian named Dee Brecheisen, for instance. What did he do that was so weird, you ask? Was he a snake charmer? Fire eater? Duct tape artist? Sock collector?

No, no, nothing like that at all. Those things would be too normal. No, Mr. Brecheisen collected civil war-era mummies and showed them off at home:

http://www.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2008/04/08/Soldier.Remains.Exhumation/

Or, more accurately, he was a grave robber of century-old burial sites.

Union troops had been stationed at Fort Craig, in New Mexico, in the 1880s to guard against Confederates and Indians, but the fortress had been abandoned and the location of its graveyard lost. Until, that is, Brecheisen found it, some time in the 1970's or '80's. Since then he has unearthed some 20 graves and stolen their contents, bodies and all.

But that's not the most disturbing thing. Apparently, at least some of these bodies and their possessions were displayed in his house. One historian friend of Brecheisen's, a guy named Don Alberts, visited the house 30 years ago and saw there the full mummified remains of an African-American Union soldier, "with patches of brown flesh clinging to facial bones." Did the friend DO anything about this? Did he report it to anyone? No.

Brecheisen: "Over here you can see my authentic collection includes a musket, a belt buckle, and, oh, the rotted remains of a corpse I dug up in the desert."

Alberts: "Oooh. Lovely. That's perfectly normal."

Brecheisen: "And next I'll show you my collection of Civil War hats…."

The skull of the soldier eventually wound up being stored in a brown paper bag.

When asked why Alberts hadn't reported his pal's macabre and illegal practice, he simply replied, "I didn't want to get a friend in trouble."

Goody for you, Don.

Sadly, Brecheisen recently died. All of his other "mementos" have been auctioned off by the family (apparently they didn't have any qualms about selling off body parts and stolen burial items, either).

Personally, I hope Brecheisen gets dug up a hundred years from now and displayed in someone's living room – and his head winds up in a paper bag.

It's good to have hobbies.

Image taken from HERE.

The Anti-Youth Device

2008-04-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

I once had a chemistry professor who hated kids, including his college students. I first met Dr. Kopper just before the start of my freshman year, during a "pre-orientation" trip where he was one of the faculty chaperones. I happened to walk by when he was confessing his lack of ability to relate to the students to another faculty member and wishing he hadn't come along. Loser.

Well, Dr. Kopper would fully appreciate a device called the Mosquito (see picture), which has the sole purpose of chasing away youths by emitting a horrible, high-pitched whine at a frequency that people under 20 can hear, but people over 30 cannot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito

That's right. If storeowners or old grumpy men don't want young people loitering around ('cuz, you know, all young people are up to no good!), they turn on the mosquito and the horrible shrieking chases the kids away. At 17.4 kHz at 85dB, folks older than 30 have lost just enough of their hearing by then that they can no longer hear it. Ingenious. Heck, we don't need young people around. We LIKE being old at heart, right?

The inventor of the product, Howard Stapleton, has sold some 4000 units of the device since he first tested it in 2005. Mostly in the U.K. From the very beginning, though, the product faced protests and bans. Nonetheless, it is still legal to use in most places.

Now it is facing yet another legal proceding:

http://www.physorg.com/news128273220.html

When some grumpy child-hater in Brittany, France, mounted a unit on his house, some people around the neighborhood got sudden headaches, and children ran past the house holding their ears. I can just see some old guy laughing at them through the blinds.

The guy claimed to have mounted the unit after being the victim of vandalism. But now he's being sued by community members for using an "illicit sound weapon".

Personally, I'd rather have an anti-old fogie device.

Of course, teens being who they are, have turned this "mosquito alarm" to their advantage. They have created a ringtone on their cell phones at the same frequency. Thus, their phone can ring, but only they and their fellow students will hear it, and the teachers will not, and they can use the phones during class without the teacher knowing. Clever. They've even incorporated the sound into music so that only young people would "get it".

Damned kids! Get off my lawn! Where's my Mosquito….

Image taken from HERE.

Happy Earth Day! (Unless You're A Polar Bear)

2008-04-22T11:24:00.000-07:00

I’d hate to be a polar bear these days.

My family recently went to the nearest zoo, where my young kids had a great time watching the very large polar bears frolicking in their pool, chewing on things like giant soccer balls, children’s play structures, and even a mannequin (!). The highlight for the kids, though, was watching the bears back up to the pool like a delivery truck and deposit there hot steaming piles of poop or streams of bright yellow pee. Eww! Great fun.

On this glorious Earth Day, where we concern ourselves with the well-being of our environment and animals, and the wild relatives of those two less-than-sanitary zoo animals, let us pause a moment to consider the plight of the polar bear.

In short, they are dying because the arctic ice is receding due to global warming (at a rate that surpasses even the most extreme models that scientists had predicted less than a decade ago). Polar bears require sea ice to hunt for seals, where the bears hang out at seal breathing holes and then ambush the blubbery animals. Yum! Without the sea ice, the bears starve. For the first time in centuries, as you may have heard, polar bears are being found dead due to starvation, and there are even reports of cannibalism.

Since this was discovered, a few years ago, environmental groups have been pressuring the Bush administration to take action to protect the polar bear and to reduce global warming through legislation. Not surprisingly, the President is less than interested, stalling protective status for the bears, moving forward with increasing off-shore drilling rights in polar bear habitat, and doing the usual oil-industry friendly activities that belch forth lots of carbon emissions. This despite his supposed change of stance toward Global warming.

Now those environmental groups have taken their appeals to the federal court system:

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/031108EA.shtml

These groups are now suing the Bush administration to force them to protect polar bears under the Endangered Species Protection Act. From the article:

“The Endangered Species Act listing process for the polar bear due to global warming was initiated with a scientific petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC, and Greenpeace. In December, 2005, these groups sued the Bush administration for failing to respond to the petition. As a result of that first lawsuit, in February 2006, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that protection of polar bears "may be warranted," and commenced a full status review of the species. A settlement agreement in that case committed the Service to make the second of three required findings in the listing process by December 27, 2007, at which time the Service announced the proposal to list the species as "threatened." By law, the Service was required to make a final listing decision within one year of the proposal. The decision is now more than 2 months overdue.”

“To date, the government has received approximately 670,000 comments in support of protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, including letters from eminent polar bear experts, climate scientists, and more than 60 members of Congress.”

Gee, what’s a polar bear to do? They can’t all live and poop in cushy zoo pools, can they?

Happy Earth Day. Now take a hike, and if you get cold, just think how much polar bears would like it to stay that way.

Image taken from HERE.

How Many Farts Does It Take To Make A Tornado?

2008-04-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

Apparently, not many. That is, if you do it at just the right time and place.

This week, Edward Norton Lorenz died:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/18/db1801.xml

Why is this notable? Because Dr. Lorenz is an early researcher in Chaos Theory who came up with a mathematical principle called the Butterfly Effect.

What is The Butterfly Effect? No, I'm not talking about that singularly horrible B sci-fi movie made a few years ago, or its even worse sequel. I'm talking about the mathematical theory that very small changes early on in a system, such as "the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil" could lead to extreme repercussions later in that system, such as "a tornado in Texas."

Lorenz was a meteorologist (and previously an Army Air Corps weather forecaster during WWII) who was trying to use mathematical models to make long-range forecasts of wind currents. One day back in 1961, Lorenz ran a computer simulation that he had run before (using one of those early, building-sized computers) and got a completely different result than he had the first time. Very surprising, since he had thought everything had been entered exactly the same. It turns out that this time he had rounded the number 0.506127 to 0.506, a 0.1% difference.

Some people would shrug that off, re-enter the correct number, and continue on with their work. I've known lab rats like that. But Lorenz was among the few who could see this result and realize the great significance of it. What he had stumbled upon was proof that very small changes, like a seemingly minor increase in temperature or wind speed and direction, could cause profound weather deviations down the line, perhaps in a totally different part of the world. This factor was dubbed the "Lorenz Attractor."

For example, if you start a ball rolling at the top of a hill, but it is at only a very slightly different position, it will likely wind up at a very different position at the bottom. Or if a seagull flapped its wings at just the right time and place in Brazil, the change it created in the wind could lead to a tornado in Texas (to use his examples). These sorts of things have been demonstrated in simulations again and again, including with the newest supercomputers. The movie "It's A Wonderful Life" illustrates this principle, in a more sappy, cultural manner (I cry everytime when George Bailey's brother makes that toast at the end!).

So, let me see if I understand: if a plaza full of Germans eating Octoberfest sauerkraut, brautworst, and beer suddenly let loose with a cloud of warm gas (from whichever end you choose), the sudden change in heat and wind could cause a cascade of events that leads to winds that rip across the Atlantic and belch up a hurricane that ravages America?

Damned Germans. I knew it! They caused Hurricane Katrina!

That's it! I'm throwing out my laderhosen.

Of course, those "Lorenz Attractors" can prevent devient weather, too.

And as for Dr. Lorenz, he led a very active life, with many awards, scholarly papers, and academic achievements, most of which seem to revolve around the later refinements of his initial discovery. You could say his personal "Butterfly Effect" was his own discovery of the Butterfly Effect, if that makes any sense. His Butterfly Effect theory has led to a better understanding of seemingly random events that can drastically change our weather – more important now than ever with global warming – and has been used in science fields far beyond meteorology.

He was an avid sportsman, even into old age. But cancer finally claimed him a few days ago, on April 16. He died at home in Cambridge, with family, having finished yet another paper only a week before. He was 90 years old.

Thank you for your contributions, Dr. Lorenz. And I'm glad to hear that your death wasn't a chaotic one. I just wonder what that last breath of yours did to the weather.

Images taken from HERE and HERE.

Bush's New Stance

2008-04-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

I'm shaking my head right now, and that's never a good sign.

Yesterday, President Bush announced in a press conference that halting global warming was a priority for his administration and urged other nations to develop measures to fight climate change:

http://www.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2008/04/15/Bush.Climate/

Please excuse me, I need to run to the other room so that my laughter doesn't shatter the computer monitor and my tears don't short-circuit the keyboard.

Is he feeling okay? Is the prozac finally kicking in, or did another pretzel go down the wrong way?

This is the man who coined the term "junk science" to describe his opinion of years of tedious and well-formulated scientific findings from thousands of researchers all over the world who came to the conclusion that man-made pollutants were changing the world climate. The man who refused to include the United States, the world's worst polluter for carbon emissions, in the Kyoto Treaty. The man who put oil profits ahead of environmental legislation, and even put oil industry notables into key positions overseeing our nation's environment.

So far we've seen seven years of big-ass SUVs on the roads, a war over oil fields, huge cuts in research funding for areas of environmental studies and alternative energy sources, and record-smashing profits for oil companies. When Bush took office, a gallon of regular unleaded cost between $1.40 and $1.60. When I filled up my car a few days ago, at $3.50 a gallon, it cost me nearly $50.

And now, after years of melting glaciers, state-sized chunks of ice breaking off Antarctica and the arctic ice sheets, the opening of the fabled Northwest Passage in the summer for the first time in history, starving polar bears, bleaching coral reefs, and worldwide tours by one notable but very geeky ex-vice-president-turned-Nobel-laureate, our nation's Denier-in-Chief has suddenly changed his tune?

Hell, I'm glad Bush is finally acknowledging what the rest of the world's science community considers obvious, but how could we possibly take him seriously? It's too little, too late, especially for a lame duck who is drowning in scandal and oil.

Image taken from HERE.

Don't Touch My Cola No Matter How Thirsty You Are

2008-04-15T00:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a question for you: If you were really thirsty, and there was an ice-cold six-pack of your favorite soda that was seemingly abandoned in your work lunchroom refrigerator, would you help yourself to a can? What if no one else was in the building? What if the six-pack had been left untouched in there for weeks? Is it really stealing if no one seems to care if you take them? I have to confess, I'd be tempted.

What if, instead of a six-pack of pop, it was a plate of $1 bills?

I probably wouldn't touch them.

I once did some backpacking in the wilderness of Idaho a couple of sweltering summers. Just before leaving for a one-week hitch into the woods, with a forty-pound pack on my back, I left a six-pack of ice-cold cokes in the fridge of the bunkhouse where I was staying. By the time I got back, lean and sweating and ready to collapse, all of the cokes were gone. I was pissed off! No one confessed to this dastardly crime.

Here's another one for you: If you had to choose between making someone suffer quickly or slowly, which would you choose? Let me put it another way: When you take the band-aids off your kids, do you do it slowly or do you rip it off? I'm more of a "rip it off" kinda guy.

An Israeli researcher at MIT named Dan Ariely is exploring these very sorts of scruples:

http://www.physorg.com/news127399170.html

He argues in his new book, "Predictably Irrational", that these seemingly irrational decisions people make about ethics is actually predictable, and he has tests to show it. The examples I gave above were two of the sorts of questions. The book has been on the New York Times bestseller list since February 19.

His results, in a nutshell: People start out with good intentions, but life experiences lead them to cheat just enough to get away with it, or to make irrational decisions that seem to justify their mindsets, often in a predictable and economically-driven way.

I think we'd all like to think we are very ethical people. I do. But if it's a hot, hot day in the middle of summer, there's a wet six-pack of cola sitting in that fridge, and the owner of that coke has been gone for a week, wouldn't you reach out for a cold one? You can pay him back later, right?

Go on. Take a sip. I won't tell. They'll never know it was you ….

Image taken from HERE, stolen without conscience.

Insert Foot In Mouth Disease

2008-04-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

If your government is working on a highly-contagious virus that could threaten to wipe out massive numbers of cattle and other hooved animals, wouldn't you want it to be done in some location far, far away from other cattle? Say, a remote island?

Well, that's been the case for the last 50 years. Plum Island, out on the Long Island sound, has been the main research facility for Hoof and Mouth Disease (also known as Foot and Mouth Disease), for America, as well as Mexico and Canada (see picture).

But now the Bush Administration wants to move the facility to a mainland location:

http://www.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2008/04/11/Animal.Disease/

Oh, but hey, our government must surely take all the reasonable precautions. I mean, being a contagious cattle disease that, if released into the general bovine population would spell the needless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of cattle, won't this new facility will be located in some wilderness far beyond the reach of cattle farms? Right?

No, actually. According to a recent Congressional hearing on the topic, each of the five sites that they are considering, according to the article, are within range of between 132,900 and 542,507 cattle.

But they'll be careful. They'll have all the safeguards. Or will they?

It was revealed in that congressional hearing that the Plum Island facility, considered to be one of the nation's foremost top-level containment units, has had numerous accidents and releases of virus, one of which infected cattle outside of the facility in holding pens. Hoof and Mouth disease is so contagious that it can travel on the breath of worker, on their clothes, on their cars. In 2002, a simulation showed that an outbreak of the virus could potentially infect tens of millions of cows, leading to widespread food shortages, rioting, and a 25-mile-long trench to bury all the slaughtered cows.

The poor cows that get this disease experience painful mouth sores and hoof blisters that swell and burst, then can become infected. Eeesh. And I thought my occasional canker sores were painful.

And why are they moving the facility? Fear over being able to protect Plum Island against terrorists. Hillary Clinton was one of the ones who voiced this fear. Control of the island was recently put in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security. I tell you, with all the over-reaction to terrorism (two wars, illegal wiretapping, data mining, waterboarding, screenings at airports, etc etc), I'd say the terrorists have succeeded in their goals of disrupting the American Way. Let's not make it worse, shall we? And, may I add, I am a little leary of decisions about human and animal health issues that seem driven more by politics than science.

Now, I have a great deal of respect for Hillary (although I'm voting for Obama), but I am FAR more afraid of our government's inefficiency and the potential for mistakes by my fellow lab rats than I am of any zealous bin Laden followers.

Get real, Bush. Let's keep the virus off-shore.

Image taken from HERE.

It's Time My Children Went Deaf

2008-04-08T00:20:00.000-07:00

I've decided my children need to be deaf. Tomorrow I'm going to ruin their hearing forever.

No, I'm not kidding. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it, though. Ice pick to the ear drum? No, too bloody. How about playing Iron Maiden at volume level ten on my stereo system, shoving their tender little ears up to the speakers. No, that won't work. They won't stay still long enough. I know! I'll take them swimming and give them a serious case of swimmer's ear, then pack their ears with ear wax harvested from my own auricular orifices via ear candles. Yeah, that's the ticket. That way it will seem "natural", and I will only be accused of neglecting to take them to the doctor as their ear drums swell and burst.

Are you horrified yet? Has our bombed-out, economically-depressed, Paris Hilton-ized culture not yet ruined your sense of ethics and numbed you beyond gross fear and loathing? No? Is it just because I'm talking about maiming my children?

Ah, but wait! If they were deaf, my little 2 and 3 year old babies would be part of a fantastic subculture of deaf people, able to learn the mysterious ways of sign language, and partake in a rich milieu of disability-turned-sense-of-self with their other deaf friends. Why, they would have an "identity".

You wouldn't think this could happen in the modern world, right? Not if the sensible government of England has its way.

A couple in the United Kingdom wants to have the right to purposely choose an embryo, through in vitro fertilization, which is deaf like them:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7287508.stm

That's right. This couple wants to purposely choose an embryo that, like them, will have a genetic profile that indicates it will be deaf. Says the husband (who has the unlikely yet gustatory name of Tomato Lichy): "The core issue is that the government is saying deaf people are not equal to hearing people," he told the BBC via an interpreter. They are "profoundly grateful" to have a deaf child already. Now they want another one.

It's eugenics in reverse.

What bugs me, though, is that Mr. Tomato Lichy is assuming that a hearing child would not be able to be a member of her father's deaf subculture.

I've blogged on this in the past, a little more than a year ago. Now the UK is likely going to pass the Human Embryology and Fertilisation Bill, which, among other things, would make it illegal to purposely choose an embryo with a disability. The tiny minority of deaf people who, like our friend Tomato, actually wish to select a child like them will have an even harder time making their diabolical wish come true. They are calling it discrimination.

Oh, but please don't get me wrong. I know deaf people have a subculture. I can respect that. I even tried to learn American Sign Language once, and I've had friends who were legally deaf, but none of them ever expressed a wish to have children who, like them, would never be able to hear the bus bearing down on them, or the bear leaping at them in the woods, or the latest slaughtering of your favorite elevator music by star wannabes on American Idol (I'm not sure which of these is really the worst way to spend an evening).

Careful, you English Lords. You tread a fine line there regarding how you define "disabled" or "unhealthy". Sure, deafness seems an easy thing to label as disabled, but how "disabled" is disabled? Would having a gene for heart conditions count? Cancer? Irritable bowel? Acid reflux? And just because there's a genetic profile, the body doesn't always pay attention to it. Having a bad gene only increases your chances.

Is my purposeful deafening of my children really any different from dooming a child-to-be to a life of silence, just to satisfy its parents' sense of self? Would that embryo have any more say than my kids would?

Hmm. On second thought, maybe I won't ruin my kids' hearing. I'll wait and let them do it to themselves in their teen years, with whatever future form of iPod ear speakers are being used at that time. They'll just have to wait for that marvelous subculture that Tomato Lichy and his reverse-eugenics friends love so dearly. How heartless and cruel of me not to understand.

And as for Mr. Tomato's next child, I feel sorry for the baby if she isn't deaf, whatever way she comes into the world.

Image taken from HERE.

The Disappearing Car Door

2008-04-02T23:47:00.000-07:00

Do you tire of the same old car doors? Those bulky, swinging slugs of metal? Why, it's so last century! Are your rich friends struggling to keep up with your techno gadgets? Have you ever had the desire to make your expensive luxury vehicle look even more like a Star Trek shuttlecraft?

Now a company called Jatech has the answer for you – the Rotary Drop Door:

http://www.disappearing-car-door.com/

Step out of your car in style as you pull up to your friends, then your car door slides smoothly downward, folding underneath the car so that you can step out like a pimp and bask in their awe.

The link above has a really cool video of the doors in action. Jatech basically retrofits already-existing car designs by removing the factory-made doors and replacing them with a design that folds down and under the car body, thus they seem to disappear.

Sure, Delorian sports cars may have had those cool wing-like doors, but they never really caught on, did they? The new Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 has doors that swing upward and forward. Nice, but like the Delorian, you'd better have high ceilings in your garage. Same goes for the Ferrari Enzo, which takes up even more room. And then there's the Hungarian-made Kenguru, which only has a back hatch (and room for only one wheelchair-bound driver!). But this is the first car door design that is made to "disappear" into the car body that I know of.

Jatech doesn't reveal the cost of retrofitting your vehicle for their rotary drop door design, but I'm wondering how many Smart Cars, for instance, you could purchase for the same cost (each Smart Car starts at about $11,000).

And what benefit is this amazing miracle of auto design? Oh, sure, the makers say in their little video that it "saves on parking space" by removing the need for space for a swinging door, that it prevents car-door "dings", and that it makes getting in and out of the car more convenient. But let's face it, having this way cool design is just plain kick-ass, gets lots of looks, and gets you that much closer to getting laid.

Cool.

Image taken from HERE.

The Earliest Audio Recording (But Not The Grooviest)

2008-03-30T17:25:00.000-07:00

When you learned in grade school about Thomas Edison, you probably had to memorize a list of significant inventions he came up with: the electric light bulb, direct current distribution of electricity, the motion picture camera (or "kinetograph"), and other marvels. But one that he is famous for is the phonograph, back in 1878.

You remember phonographs, right (a.k.a. the record player)? I mean, yeah, you have to be, like, over 35 or so these days to have actually heard one, and most of us over that age have records stored somewhere but no longer have an actual turntable to listen to them. Believe it or not, I actually have a record player. Yes, I like Disco. No snickering, please.

For those who are too young, records are those plastic discs that turn around and around and play your parents' and grandparents' oldies-but-goodie songs from the 70's and before (that's the 1970's, thank you, not 1870's), only Edison's were made of tin and were in the form of a cylinder. Later inventions made cylinders out of wax (played on a "graphophone"), and then discs made out of zinc (played on a "gramophone") and other materials, before plastic was invented.

Yesterday the world's first audio recording was revealed to the public, previously unknown until recently re-discovered in February at the archives of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris by an organization known as First Sounds, then converted to sound by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:

http://www.physorg.com/news126017185.html

The recording is of "Au Claire de la Lune", and was recorded on paper that had been coated with soot. The sounds were inscribed by a needle into the soot by an instrument called a "phonautograph" (see picture), by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville, on April 9, 1860, 17 years before Edison and his phonograph.

Here you can hear the ghostly, warbly, 10-second recording: http://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/. Most likely it was Scott's daughter singing.

HERE is a touching modern rendition of the song, sung by a father and his baby daughter.

The funny thing is that Scott, as I understand it, couldn't actually listen to the recordings he made. They were merely made and then submitted to the French patent office, then stored. It's a miracle they still exist.

Cool enough. I think I'll mark this discovery by listening to one of those grooved (groovy?) plastic discs on my own phonograph tonight: Donna Summer. I love to love you, baby!

Images adapted from HERE and HERE.

I'm Losin' It

2008-03-28T00:08:00.000-07:00

Now that my vacation is over, and the in-laws have left (fled?) the guest bedroom, I have moved the exercise cycle back in. My intention is to lose weight.

Okay, you can stop rolling your eyes and thinking, "Great, another stupid weight loss story." The Angry Lab Rat blog isn't about weight loss, and you can rest assured that this will be one of only a very few blog posts on my personal weight loss attempt until I either succeed in my goal or give up completely. The exception is that, in the margin to the right on this blog site, I will keep an update of my progress, for those who are morbidly interested (or morbidly obese). Additionally, I will be joining a number of coworkers in the attempt, though we will surely be doing things differently from each other.

Now, I'm not the sort of guy who is obsessed with weight. In fact, I really don't mind the fact that I'm short, fat, and hairy. Aren't all rats? But now I'm hoping to be short, not-so-fat, and hairy.

This attempt at weight loss has happened before. Back in February 2003 I was 231 pounds with a waistline of 48". My liver enzyme readings were high, suggesting I had Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (yes, that's its real name!), a potential side affect of, you guessed it, being a fatty. I cut my serving sizes in half, generally ate better food, and, most importantly, exercised rigorously at least 15 minutes every day, no matter how tired I was. No special diets, no calorie-counting, and no fads. The only special thing I did, at the beginning, was get some idea of the nutritional value of what I was eating in order to insure I wasn't going to starve or go deficient in protein and vitamins. Over the course of 8 months, this technique led me to lose 23 pounds (to 208) and almost 8 inches off my waist (to 40.5") (click on the graphs). Most importantly, I have pretty much kept off the weight, even to today, though I've been slowly creeping back upward over the years without any real exercise, but my liver readings have been normal ever since. I was very hungry at first, but then I was fine, and I have generally maintained my eating habits.

It is an interesting coincidence that just a couple days ago the results of a very thorough study found that being a fatty around your belly around 40 years old significantly increases your chances of having Alzheimer's and dementia in your senior years:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23800703/

This correlation is apparently independent of other common health issues, including general weight problems (other than belly fat). According to the article, if you lie down on your back on a flat surface and then have someone measure the height of your belly, and that measurement is greater than 9.8 inches, you are at risk. I tried it. I'm somewhere just above 10 inches.

The researchers are unclear why having belly fat affects the brain later in life, but I think I have the answer: Your brain really is in your stomach! No wonder food is such a motivator!

So wish me luck in my weight loss endeavor. You can keep tabs in the margin of my blog. Hopefully I'll be successful, making me even sexier than I already am, and less likely to be senile in my old age.

Mind-Meld With Your Wii

2008-03-24T12:25:00.000-07:00

I'm mid-way through my vacation with my in-laws and thought I'd pop onto the computer for a bit to send some digitized brainwaves your way.

One of the highlights of this vacation is my wife's birthday. This year I got her a Nintendo Wii. You know, the game system that everyone is raving about, with remote controllers that you use to play with that have little gyroscopes in them so that your arm movements are captured and transmitted to your video characters. You can do all sorts of amazing things, like play tennis, bowling, sword fighting, and so forth by simply moving your arms and controllers. You can also accidentally throw your controllers through your TV. And if you're like me, you might be tempted to throw them across the room when you can't get the console hooked up correctly. And why is it named "Wii"? Probably because of the high-pitched noise you make as you shell out $300 bucks for the console and an additional $30-50 for each game.

I haven't yet gotten the chance to play this marvel of technology, but I'm looking forward to it. It took me an entire month to get the damned thing, since they are sold out everywhere. In order to get it, I basically had to stake out the department and video stores where they are sold, like some sort of noir detective, waiting for the latest shipment to arrive and then madly rushing in within an hour or two to grab one before hordes of teenagers got theirs. Well, something like that, anyhow. You practically have to bribe the store workers to hold it for you as you drive frantically through traffic to get to the store to pick it up.

This physical interface with the computer is a relatively new thing for the gaming industry. But now a number of companies are rushing in to one-up Nintendo by introducing not a physical interface, but a mental one. One, called Emotiv Systems, is nearing release, probably this year. That's right, control your video character with the power of your mind, using the Emotiv Epoc Neuroheadset:

http://www.physorg.com/news124723221.html

Do you remember Mindball, which I blogged on over a year ago? That was a system where two players sat across from each other controlling a ball using only their mental power of relaxation, using a helmet that read their theta waves. The more mentally relaxed or meditative you were, the more you were able to move the ball and beat your opponent.

This new system from Evotiv goes further, incorporating biofeedback readings such as EEGs and alpha waves (your state of relaxation), EMGs (muscle movement), ECGs and GSR (measuring heart rate and sweating), and possibly near infrared spectroscopy for blood oxygenation, all in a really kick-ass, futuristic mind-reading helmet (see picture). Excellent.

And what can you do with this nifty little device straight out of Neuromancer? So far Emotiv has developed an adapted version of a Harry Potter video game where players use their biofeedback to lift boulders and throw lightning bolts.

Other company's working on this include EmSense, NeuroSky, and Hitachi.

So for my lovely wife's next birthday, I may find myself staking out the department stores again, this time trying to find a way to snag a mind-reading device for the Wii and make more high-pitched pained sounds at the cash register.

Oh, my dear Nintendo, let us mind-meld! My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts…..

Image taken from HERE.

When Life Needs Porpoise

2008-03-17T01:04:00.000-07:00

My in-laws are coming to visit. Well, by "coming to visit", I mean that my wife and I and the kids will be joining them at an ocean-front condo here in the same state for several days, then we'll all come back to stay at our place before going yet somewhere else for a few days at yet another condo. Lots of traveling in a week's time.

But it's cool. I mean, even though I live just an hour or so from the ocean, I haven't actually gone to visit the ocean for nearly two years (yeah, believe it!) due to work and kids and stuff. And I get along great with my wife's family. I can't wait.

The really cool thing is that we've seen whales along the coast. We've missed the peak migration time this year, but you never know, maybe there'll be a few lame stragglers wondering why their pals have gone off and left them. Yeah, I relate to the geeks of any species.

I can hear it now. Some poor whale out there, swimming along the coast, saying in its sing-song echoing voice:

"Hey, guys, where'd you go? There's some really cool Euphausia pacifica swimming around near the surface. Guys? You wanna go back to my place and play some D&D?"

Of course, it'd be just my luck if the whales get beached by Navy sonar tests or something while I'm there. "Look, son, a majestic behemoth of the ocean! Let's marvel in its beauty and the sadness of its predicament. Now be a good boy and get the dynamite."

Even if a whale does get beached, though, it may do to have some dolphins around.

Dolphins have been known to help humans in trouble, but now a recent report suggests that one dolphin led a whale and its calf to safety after they had repeatedly beached themselves:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/12/nz.whales.ap/index.html

Moko, a bottlenose dolphin known for befriending humans in New Zealand (see picture), came to the assistance of a pygmy sperm whale and its calf. Human rescuers had tried to save the pair only to watch in despair as the whales were beached again and again on a sandbar. They were contemplating euthanasia for the whales, when the dolphin came in and showed the whales how to escape the sandbar back out to the open ocean, leading the way.

After the heroic dolphin led the pair to safety, Moko returned to the humans at the beach and played with them.

Now that's interspecies cooperation!

Makes ya feel like leaping and chattering, don't it? Throw that porpoise some anchovies, for cryin' out loud!

So I'll keep my eyes open for any whales and dolphins on our little vacation. In the meantime, buy some dolphin-safe tuna and think of the whales you may have saved.

And if you do see any beached whales and there aren't any dolphins around, just promise me you won't be like THIS JERK.

Addendum (3/24/08): It turns out the gray whale migration is in full swing, still. The cows and calves are currently moving up the Oregon coast. The vacation has gone well, but now my in-laws have come down with colds. Ugg.

Image taken from HERE.

Number 200

2008-03-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

Today I celebrate my 200th post on The Angry Lab Rat. Yay, me. I’m certain you read this with a mix of joyful glee and scientific exuberance as, once again, I bring you enlightenment about science weirdness and news, downloading my brain to your otherwise virginal computer screen.

Okay, fine, maybe it’s not so virginal. And maybe you’re actually thinking, “Has it really been 200? Damn, I’ve got to find something else to read!”

Ah, my fellow readers, please be aware I sacrifice greatly to bring you this source of wisdom. Typically I write and publish late at night when I should be happily dreaming, squeezed between cats and my lovely wife on a bed that’s really too narrow for my wide girth plus various other mammals. And maybe I should instead spend the time coming up with new and exciting ways to provide for my family by, you know, actually earning money for my writing, and buying things like flowers with it.

So I leave you with this cartoon from the very interesting blog site and mind of Wellington Grey (a science teacher in the UK). I’ll keep on posting if you keep on reading!

By the way, my lovely wife does read my blog....

Cartoon taken from HERE.

Crap Fountains And Biosolids On Your Food

2008-03-11T00:18:00.000-07:00

Just north of my little town is a cow farm. Every time I drive past the place I hit the little "recirculate" button on our car so that no outside air can get in. The stench is positively wretched almost any time of the year. During the winter (which I call the "rainy season" because of the climate here), the smell is somewhat tolerable as long as you drive too fast, but the cow dung is nice and soggy and fermenting. During the summer, though, the smell is overwhelming as the cow turds ripen in the heat.

And then there is a nightmare even worse than the usual nasty stench: several times in the spring and summer, all that cow crap is liquefied and pumped out over the neighboring agricultural fields in an ungodly fountain of sh*t, turning the crops dark brown with a rain of feces.

Oh – my – God! Now say with me: Ewwwwww!

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "Oh, get over it, Lab Rat! It's just fertilizer in liquid form. You're a biologist. You know the value of poo for growing plants."

Fine! But I just want to say for the record that the typical cow dung fertilizer is first allowed to compost. Thus the harmful bacteria and parasites are neutralized, along with most of the foul smell.

But then I came across this wretched article, which informs me that it has been perfectly acceptable – nay, encouraged by our government! – for farmers to use human sewage and industrial sludge to fertilize their fields!

http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/science/2008/03/06/Sludge.Poisoned.Land/

Are you f*cking kidding me?!! Has the world suddenly gone upside down? You mean to tell me that I've been eating food that has had my neighbor's crap sprayed on it? If you've ever seen my neighbor, you'd be shaking as hard as I am!

Apparently this policy has been in effect for 30 years. I'm very disappointed in Jimmy Carter!

From the article: "About 7 million tons of biosolids – the term that waste producers came up with for sludge in 1991 – are produced each year as a byproduct from 1,650 waste water treatment plants around the nation. Slightly more than half is used on land as fertilizer; the rest is incinerated or burned in landfills. Giving it away to farmers is cheaper than burning or burying it, and the government's policy has been to encourage the former."

HALF?? That's 3.5 million tons of wastewater sludge on our crops!

In addition to the risk of carrying human disease, bacteria, and parasites, the sludge has been found to contain dangerous levels of arsenic, thallium, other heavy metals, and PCBs. Plus the drugs you flush down your toilet when they expire. I shudder to think what else. Anything that can be pollutants of our waterways.

The article mentions a recent court ruling where a dairy farmer sued the government for poisoning and killing his cows, which had fed on plants fertilized with this raw sewage and sludge laced with heavy metals and PCBs. He won his case. The judge in the case said that, in addition to using questionable data for their actions and policy, "senior EPA officials took extraordinary steps to quash scientific dissent, and any questioning of the EPA's biosolids program."

Yes, this is America. Not China. Not some third world nation. Not the sewage-filled tenements of some late-night plea for helping poverty-stricken families in Latin America "for just pennies a day". No, this is the USA, where industry reigns supreme over the health and welfare of our Twinkie-eating obese citizenry. Heck, using sludge on fields is a win-win situation, right? I mean, the EPA gets to claim that they are cleaning up our waterways, and farmers get a free source of fertilizer. Wow! Genius!

The sad thing is that the product of all this a-maizing arsenic-laced miracle of modern agriculture is food direct to your supermarket, and milk from poisoned cows. Heck, it's the "cycle of poo". Once you've eaten your thallium laced food grown in crap-sprayed fields you can take a dump and start the process all over again.

Sure, the victim in that lawsuit had cows that died, but how many other cows aren't dying, but instead are merely passing along their PCB milk to you and me and our kids?

So the next time you pour yourself a glass of chocolate milk or put a pat of butter onto your ear of corn, take a quick sniff and think twice about its source. There may be more than chocolate in that glass of yours, and the yellow of your corn may hide little physiological timebombs.

As for me, the next time I drive past one of those fountains of sh*t, I'll be wondering if it truly is cow manure that's being sprayed, as I had thought, or crap from the farmer himself!

Image taken from HERE.

You And Me And Baby Makes Four

2008-03-08T00:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, here's a little tidbit that's sure to get the giddy mad scientist in me excited and ready to rev up the plasma balls and Tesla coils, break out the microscope, and start doing bizarre and rebellious things with human reproductive systems.

Oh, and I might add before I start the meat of this blog post, let's be sure to clear the room of any neoconservative types, please. We wouldn't want any fundamentalists thumping their leather-bound holy books (why are the covers always black?) and ruining our scientific parade. I mean, really, if they get a whiff of what's going on in the hallowed halls of biology these days they might just, you know, insist that we keep living with our God-given diseases and disorders.

Now, having gone through six years of infertility treatments prior to the adoption of our two wonderful children, I can tell you with a certain degree of authority that there are some pretty unnatural yet clever ways of making babies that don’t in any way involve sexual intercourse. The most simple of these is artificial insemination (where the father – um, how should I say this? – "collects" his semen, and the concentrated "man-soup" is put into the female at just the right time and in just the right manner). If that fails, in vitro fertilization is an option (you know, "test tube babies", where eggs are surgically collected from the female, put into a Petri dish, washed with live sperm, and grown for a few days before being put into the mother's uterus). Yeah, we went through all that. Several times.

But reproductive biologists have gotten pretty good at the art of manipulating eggs, removing and even transplanting nuclei (where the DNA is located) between eggs, and adjusting the environment around the developing embryos. In fact, there's this little technique called Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT) which has bioethicists all in a tizzy, where you can remove the nucleus from an egg and replace it with the nucleus of an adult human, thus potentially cloning a person. Sounds like science fiction? Not at all. We can do it right now. We just don't. Because, like, that would be way too close to the plot of a bad B movie. And we wouldn't want to, say, remove stem cells from the embryo (which, at that point, looks more like a beach ball than a little human with a beating heart) and actually save lives.

Well, now some researchers are reviving the SCNT method.

But wait! Before you start shaking your head and calling up your Pentacostal buddies (I have one, too) and alerting FOX News, the new SCNT technique isn't for cloning purposes or harvesting stem cells or creating mindless replicas of Hitler or anything. Instead, this is a novel way to keep the potential child from developing mitochondrial disorders. And how do they achieve this lofty goal? By involving two mothers and one father!

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=4246047&page=1

Your typical egg is composed of a single nucleus that, once fertilized with sperm, has DNA from both the mother and father. The egg also has mitochondria, which are teeny-tiny structures that provide energy for the cell. Mitochondria also have DNA, but that DNA is solely derived from dear ole Mom. When the child grows up, he or she will have that Mom's mitochondrial DNA in every cell of their body, and none from Dad.

But if Mom's mitochondrial DNA is defective, harboring mutations that lead to a variety of diseases, heretofore there has been no way to prevent it from being passed to the child.

Using SCNT, though, researchers can remove the fertilized nucleus from the original Mom's egg and place that nucleus into the egg of another woman, whose nucleus had been removed. "The Other Woman" would have normal mitochondrial DNA. Thus, the resulting child from the fertilized egg would have the nuclear DNA (which make us who we are) from their traditional mom and dad, and mitochondria from woman #2. Voila! One father and two moms = healthy baby (and a bizarre family tree).

Wow. That gives a whole new meaning to the term "ménage tois"!

Image taken from HERE.

Goodbye To The Master Of Dungeons

2008-03-04T23:03:00.000-08:00

When I was in fourth grade, my mother gave me a new game. I remember it well. I thought this was a strange game, since it had no board, no colorful pieces, or anything electronic. It was a game where you were supposed to play pretend, but you didn't dress up or run around. Instead you looked at maps and rolled dice, and you were supposed to talk all the way through it. And you couldn't play it alone.

The game was Dungeons & Dragons.

"How very odd," I thought. But the dice were all sorts of odd shapes, you played a character that interacted with and fought mythological beasts, and there were all sorts of complex rules and statistics to deal with. Even the cover of the box was fascinating, with a picture of a dragon on a pile of golden treasure, about to engage in battle with a wizard and an archer.

The budding geek in me was instantly hooked. I quickly found a neighbor kid to play with, then other friends, and by the time I was a teenager I was a pro, spending all-night D&D sessions with friends and pizza and laughter, populating our imaginations with elves and dragons, dwarves and warriors, wizards and kingdoms. The fantastic world I created for those games became the fantasy world I write fiction in today.

If you are an American under the age of 40 and work in some technical field, I'd say there is a higher-than-average chance that you enjoyed this game in your youth. And, if so, there are pretty decent odds you still play it when you get a chance, or some other role-playing game or video game spawned by the revolution that game created.

And it is all due to the vision and creativity of two men, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, in 1974.

Sadly, Gary Gygax died today.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/03/04/obit.gygax.ap/index.html

The article says that he died at home, in Lake Geneva, and had suffered a number of ailments. He was 69.

But I prefer to believe that his hit points ran out. He may have been at 100th-level, but you only have so much armor class to go around!

When Gygax and Arneson developed the game, they drew upon some previous wargaming experience and merged it with role-playing, a heretofore psychological technique of imagining yourself in someone else's shoes to better understand their way of thinking. Except instead of pretending you were your dysfunctional relative, you instead imagined yourself as a heroic medieval fighter or wizard. Cool!

Derided by evangelical fundamentalists as the spawn of Satan, or heralded as the King of Geeks by teenage boys with glasses, Gary Gygax was certainly the father of role-playing games, giving birth to an entire class of games and game systems.

More importantly, though, he has inspired several generations of children with the power of imagination, the effects of which have certainly gone beyond the realm of medieval role-playing and into the innovative spirit they carried into their careers, as I have.

He hosted role-playing games right up to January of this year. He is survived by his wife, six children, and seven grandchildren. Hopefully they are enjoying their patriarch's legacy as much as I did.

So, Gary, thank you for your inspiration. It's been fun.

In his own words, "Games give you a chance to excel, and if you're playing in good company you don't even mind if you lose because you had the enjoyment of the company during the course of the game." (source)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to unsheathe my +8 Pen of Creativity, strap on my Armor of Imagination, and go do some fantasy writing. And, yes, there will be elves involved!

Addendum (3/7/08): On an almost-unrelated note, check out this webpage for the “Goblin Defense Fund”: http://www.goblindefensefund.org/main.html.

Addendum (3/9/08): Cartoon: Gygax versus Death: http://xkcd.com/393/.

Image taken from HERE, where you can also find a great interview.

Ice Worms

2008-03-04T00:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday my little 2 ½ year-old darling girl was watching a cartoon series called Caillou. Suddenly she started trembling, watching the TV with wide, fearful eyes. I looked up, wondering what bloodshed my child was watching, only to see – a cartoon worm.

Yes, my little girl is "all girl". She loves anything pink, dresses, hair styles, and playing tea party. Sigh. This is the daughter of two biologists!

So, given her fear of worms, I will have to avoid places where worms tend to be found – compost bins, forest floors, rainy lawns, glaciers.

Yes, glaciers!

Believe it or not, there is a species of worm that lives exclusively in the ice of high mountain glaciers. Mesenchytraeus solifugus, better known as "ice worms", are found only in glaciers of the American Northwest. They have been found on at least 20 glaciers, between Alaska and Oregon. They will only venture a few meters into the snow around a glacier, and never beyond. How they were distributed between distant glaciers is a mystery.

Science website: http://www.nichols.edu/departments/glacier/iceworm.htm.

A great video from Oregon Public Broadcasting's "Oregon Field Guide" episode on Ice worms:
http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/videos/view/51-Ice-Worms

Scholarly Paper: HERE

Sounds like something out of science fiction to me. These little buggers bore through the ice by excreting some sort of gunk from their head, rising to the surface at dusk and through the night, then descending downward in the daytime. They don't freeze solid despite living in ice. Instead they "boost their energy output" to stay warm. Above 40 degrees F they die. Below 22 degrees they freeze. They eat mainly algae, but also bacteria, fungi, or just about anything that will fit through their tiny, tiny mouths. In some areas, at dusk, they are so numerous that you can't help but step on them. Their life cycle is still a mystery.

Eesh. Don't go making any snow cones up there!

So the next time you make it up to the mountaintop glaciers of the Great Northwest, keep an eye out for dark squiggly critters in the snow and ice. I know my daughter will!

I'll leave you with "The Ice Worm Song", a song played during the Northern Manitoba Trappers Festival in The Pas, MB Canada: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJhwDW8wQ9M.

Goodbye, Precious Lab Bench

2008-02-28T11:03:00.000-08:00

Back in August I told you guys about how I had moved away from doing benchwork in my evil global biotech company’s R&D department and became a Technical Support scientist. However, all this time I have had one last R&D project looming over me, awaiting outside collaborators who would come in and do lab work with me. I had promised to help, and I’m a lab rat who honors his word, no matter how stupid the project turns out to be. So I kept a lab bench over in the lab, staunchly refusing to let anyone steal away my precious pipettors and other lab equipment, and growled like a dog over its food bowl when anyone wanted to take my “turf”.

The project was one of those super top-secret things, and all I can say is it involved a great deal of money. It went all the way up the food chain to the very top. Even the CEO got involved. They kept saying the project would happen, and just as I and the other folks involved would get things ready, the visit would be postponed at the very last moment. Finally the project fell through completely and was cancelled.

If I tell you any more about the project, they’ll chop off my head. I’d rather like to keep my head. I’d be a lot less handsome without it.

So after the project was cancelled, I finally went and cleaned off my bench and refrigerators, and handed everything over to the lab rats who really needed them. In the process I threw out years worth of needlessly-archived samples and reagents.

This was a surprisingly poignant action. Too many of the samples I threw out represented projects that were never finished, or had showed very promising results that could have led to good products that customers needed (and still need), but were “backburnered” due to the politics around that place. It made me reminiscent of the “good ole days” when researchers there were more free to explore novel techniques and develop products they felt were useful. Now projects have to go through too many committees, bureaucrats, and profit/cost projection studies before you can do any significant experimentation. That just kills innovation. Doing novel research requires some initial exploration. This is one of the reasons I left R&D at that company. All I do with the R&D folks now is advising on projects.

So I left my bench sparkly clean and walked away saying (as I have hundreds of times) how much more I love my new position. I don’t growl as much any more.

Addendum (3/3/08): Speaking of good projects killed by politics, today I was in a think-tank meeting populated with R&D scientists, product managers, and even a couple directors, to plan out the next year’s R&D activities and new product development in a particular product niche. One of the most promising product target areas turned out to match a product I led development on back in 2004, but was killed due to politics – by one of the very people in that meeting. It was satisfying to see him eat humble pie as I pointed out how the product would meet the necessary criteria and how he and others had killed it. To think, we’ve lost out on more than three years of potential sales on a product that currently has no competition in the marketplace! At least I have the satisfaction of knowing my hard work may not have been for nothing, and the product might still be released.

Image taken from HERE.

African-American Scientists: Neil deGrasse Tyson

2008-02-23T22:59:00.000-08:00

Neil deGrasse Tyson is arguably one of the most influential African-American Scientists alive today. He is basically an all-around astrophysicist extraordinaire, leaning more toward the public face of the field than the hard-core lab rat type.

Tyson grew up in New York City, attending public schools through graduation at the Bronx High School of Science. He went on to wrap himself in "ivy", graduating with a BA in Physics from Harvard and a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia University, with an MA in Astronomy in the meantime from the University of Texas at Austin, and has been a visiting research scientist and lecturer at Princeton. He is currently director of the prestigious Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History.

Tyson isn't the geeky, shy sort of scientist. He's "out there" livin' large. He's handsome, muscular, and trades quips with talk show hosts. He makes frequent appearances on The History Channel's "The Universe" series and hosts PBS's "Nova ScienceNow" series, discussing everything cosmological, from black holes to the formation of the universe, our solar system, and even life on other planets. He analyzes images from the Hubble Space Telescope, as well as from telescopes from all over the planet, including Palomar and the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. He's edited or written nine books, and has another on the way, as well as chapters and articles in other publications, and about a dozen scholarly articles. I won't list here all the assorted honors, guest appearances, astronomy board memberships, and society memberships.

Twice (in 2001 and 2004) Tyson was named by President Bush to be a member of commissions to study America's role in space and to explore the future of space travel. I'll try not to hold it against him. In 2006, Tyson was appointed to the NASA advisory panel by the head of NASA.

He is the recipient of nine honorable degrees, the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, and even has an asteroid named after him ("13123 Tyson").

And if all that wasn't enough, Tyson made Time Magazine's "Time 100" of 2007 (HERE), and was named "Sexiest Astrophysist Alive" by PEOPLE Magazine in 2000. Just look at that picture!

Here is Tyson's official website, which contains just about anything you would care to know about the man: http://research.amnh.org/~tyson/.

Image taken from HERE, where you can also find a short interview with Tyson.

Space Is Getting Colder

2008-02-20T09:46:00.000-08:00

Don't you miss the Cold War? Our government does. All that muscle-flexing and ball-grabbing as we and our opponent, the good ol' CCCP commies, traded insults and ominously positioned our forces across the iron curtain, awaiting with childish glee and fear the First Strike as we aimed our nukes at the other sides.

Duck and Cover!

Ah, those were the days.

But, hey, there are other bad guys out there, right? I mean, China is a rising world power, with a space program of their own, big guns, millions of shouting, goose-stepping commies marching through blood-soaked Tiananmen Square, stomping on the human rights of their people. Doesn't stop us from giving them favored-nation status for trade, but I guess they'll do for the next Cold War enemy.

Well, dig out that back yard bunker, boys and girls. They've gone beyond buzzing our warships with their fighters.

Remember last month, when China shot down one of their defunct weather satellites? Now that was a novel bit of Cold War-ness if ever I saw it. Remember the worldwide condemnation of the act, led by the U.S. and our allies? If they can shoot down their own satellite, they could shoot down ours (spy satellite or otherwise). Here's a taste, in case it's too hard to remember back a month:

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/China_Under_Pressure_To_Explain_Satellite_Missile_Strike_999.html

What a furor that caused. Oh, how our government admonished China for breaking the treaty against militarization of space, chided them for failing to restrain themselves, shook our heads at their blatant disregard and aggression.

So now I'm chuckling. Surely you've heard the reports over the last week or two about how the U.S. is going to shoot down a defective spy satellite. It's supposed to happen today or tomorrow, depending on the weather:

http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2008/01/26/Dead.Satellite/

But we aren't flexing our Cold War muscles! No way! Not according to Bush. We're protecting our civilians against the potential for the satellite to crash into the good ole US of A and getting poisoned and eaten alive by satellite fuel (hydrazine). Very thoughtful.

Don't believe the hype. This is posturing at its best. Gotta keep up with the Johnsons, don't you know, or the Jong's. And we don't want damaged military imaging components sold on EBay.

As for the deadly hydrazine, it's not really so deadly. You'd have to eat the stuff or swim in it before it could kill you. It's an irritant, sorta like gasoline is. Read it yourself: http://www.sciencelab.com/xMSDS-Hydrazine-9924279.

So, when you look up at the sky tonight at the last lunar eclipse until 2010, cross your arms and try not to shiver. A space-based military arms race may have already begun.

Addendum (2/20/08): The Pentagon announced that the satellite has been successfully blown up. They are still sticking to the save-the-public-from-deadly-hydrazine story:
http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2008/02/14/NEWS-USA-SATELLITE-MISSILE-DC/.

Update (2/21/08): See footage of the satellite's destruction:
http://www.comcast.net/providers/fan/popup.html?v=658927153&pl=622214722.xml&plc=622214722&launchpoint=Cover&cid=fancover&attr=default_headline&config=/config/common/fan/default.xml.

Watch Where You Point Your Top Gun, Flyboy

2008-02-17T22:13:00.000-08:00

A recent study by Israeli scientists found that climbers on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro who took the drug tadalafil were less likely to suffer dizziness and fatigue brought on by low oxygen levels near the top of the mountain.

Okay, you say, so what? But the story gets more interesting when you realize that tadalafil is the active ingredient in Cialis, that wonderful impotence-fighting, Viagra-like drug for erectile-dysfunction.

Now, after having read the results of that study, a retired Israeli general is proposing that the Israeli military give tadalafil to its fighter jocks in order to allow them better in-flight "performance" through increased blood flow while flying their jets, according to Bamahaneh (an official Israeli military magazine).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3330873.ece

I don't know which study the retired general referred to, but HERE and HERE are two recent examples of research papers dealing with the effects of tadalafil on the physiology of climbers.

Wow. Cialis for pilots! That gives a whole new meaning to the word "cockpit"! It's tight enough in there already. Now these poor pilots will have to contend with two joysticks between their legs. Careful, boys, you don't want to eject prematurely.

But, hey, as the Cialis webpage claims, the pilots will "have the option of being ready fast, or have up to 36 hours to take their time." But does this mean that they'll have to seek a doctor if their sorties take more than four hours?

Image taken from HERE.

An Atomic Energy Lab -- For Children!

2008-02-14T22:45:00.000-08:00

Oh, to have lived in the early 50's! When Father Knows Best was the ideal for households everywhere. When racial discrimination was still a simmering norm. And when the secrets of the atom seemed to promise both everlasting energy and weaponized domination, not to mention fodder for so many titillating "B" sci-fi monster movies.

In 1950, the year America's Federal Civil Defense Administration released its movie, Duck and Cover, and even the atomic scientists still thought atomic radiation was no more harmful than sunlight, Gilbert Toys released the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab:

http://www.orau.org/PTP/collection/atomictoys/GilbertU238Lab.htm

More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_U-238_Atomic_Energy_Laboratory

Yes, toy inventor (and record-breaking, Gold Medal Olympic athlete) Alfred Carlton Gilbert, the maker of the famous Erector Set, microscope sets, chemistry sets, and American Flyer toy train sets, released the most complete atomic energy detection set for children ever made.

Wait. For children?

Yes, this kit came complete with radioactive energy sources, including uranium ore, as well as detection devices, including a Geiger counter, cloud chamber (where atomic particles created shooting clouds of vapor), and the tongue-twisting-named spinthariscope (which showed alpha radiation particles using sparks of fluorescence). There was also a little nuclear model set and some manuals. For the not-so-low price of $50, little Johnie could examine simple nuclear phenomena and go search for new sources of uranium in the back yard.

Most humorous of all, though, was a comic book, entitled Dagwood Splits The Atom, featuring everyone's favorite deli-sandwich-eating, hollow-eyed comic couch potato, Dagwood's wife, Blondie, Mandrake the Magician, and even Popeye!

For one year, between 1950 and 1951, this kit was on the market, selling radioactive uranium ore to be marveled over by geeky young teens and preteens everywhere. And to think, today, the tiniest speck of nearly harmless radioactive dust used by scientists in biological fields has to be closely monitored, accounted for, and discarded according to strict Federal guidelines.

This was still several years before folks realized that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs had done more than kill with heat. The radiation eating away at the victims of those bombs, and numerous guinea pig American soldiers in Nevada ground zero sites, had yet to be understood. Heck, why not let little kids handle radiation?

Look at the cool sparks in your spinthariscope, Billy! That's American scientific eminence wavin' back at ya!

Image taken from HERE.

African-American Scientists: Earnest Everett Just

2008-02-12T22:01:00.000-08:00

February is Black History Month. It is a time for us to remember the sacrifices made by African American forefathers in building America, and the contributions they have made, and continue to make, toward making our nation great. When we think of those contributions, too many of us focus on the famous stereotypes: singers, sports stars, social and equal-rights figures, great though they are, but too often forgotten are those who contributed in the other fields. It is in this vein that I feature on this blog, each February, historical and contemporary African American Scientists.

Earnest Everett Just was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1883. His mother was a teacher, and thus knew full well the importance of a good education and the challenges facing African Americans to get an excellent education at that time. At 13, he was sent north, to New Hampshire, to attend a college preparatory school, Kimball Academy. He finished in only three years (instead of four) and graduated class valedictorian. He went on to Dartmouth College, specializing in cell biology studies, earning degrees in biology and history. Again, he was class valedictorian, as well as magna cum laude. Next he went to Howard University, where he eventually became the head of the Department of Zoology, and stayed until his retirement, except for a brief period during which he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Just's greatest contribution to science resonates even to my own career, studying live-cell physiology. Just believed in the radical notion of studying cells as close as possible to their natural state, looking at the whole, living cell rather than breaking it up into its component parts. He became well known for his studies of marine mammal reproduction and fertilization events, as well as cell division, parthenogenesis, effects of UV radiation on chromosome number, and studying the role of the cell surface in its overall physiological state, much of which took place at the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole (one of several marine science centers set up over a hundred years ago). Like me, microscopy was his chosen mode of observation.

Increasingly frustrated with the racial prejudice in the United States, Just studied abroad starting in 1929, eventually studying in Italy, Germany, and France.

In 1940, Just was briefly a prisoner of war when Germany invaded France. The U.S. State Department negotiated his release, but he grew ill just before being captured, worsened during the imprisonment, and never fully recovered. He died of pancreatic cancer in October of 1941. He was survived by his wife and three children.

Here are some additional resources about the life and accomplishments of Earnest Everett Just:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Everett_Just

http://esperstamps.org/h19.htm

http://web2.ccpl.org/prvEmployees/HTML/scienceproject/ScienceWalk/Ernest%20Everett%20Just.html

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0775692.html

http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/ernestjust.html

Picture taken from HERE.

Science Policies Of Presidential Candidates

2008-02-08T10:32:00.000-08:00

Anymore it seems that if you are a Republican politician, your only interest in science topics is to oppose anything with the words “stem cell” or “evolution” and to support anything having to do with defense. If you are a Democratic politician, stem cells and evolution are back on the table, as well as protecting our environment and fighting global warming. So let’s hear it for the Dems, who wish to protect our health, fight for rationality in teaching science to our children, and actually want to protect the world we live in.

But don’t take my word for it. Below are three links to the stances of each of the candidates (including those who have stepped out of the running) on science issues, including their actual quotes and even videos. Enjoy!

BioTechniques:
http://mailcenter3.comcast.net/wmc/v/wm/47AC9192000792C500002A4122155517240A9D0109040705D202019C0E06?cmd=Show&no=317&uid=1326&sid=c0#news

Popular Mechanics “Geek The Vote 2008”:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/geekthevote08

The Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-blumenthal/us-presidential-candida_b_60549.html

Image taken from HERE.

Remote-Control Insects

2008-02-06T21:54:00.000-08:00

Oh my god. Be afraid and awestruck of your government.

In a move that makes the science fiction fan in my giddy with delight, I read today about how scientists in Arizona have successfully created live, remote-control insects:

http://technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1421#cyborg

They inserted electronic circuit probes into early stage pupae of the tobacco hornworm (Manduca sexta), and by the time the moth emerges as an adult, the flight muscles have grown around the probes. The researchers are then able to stimulate the muscles to make the moth fly and to control which way the moth goes!

They may even have tried controlling beetles (HERE).

The research was showcased at MEMS 2008, an international academic conference on Micro-Electrico-Mechanical Systems that took place from January 13-17 in Tucson, AZ.

Wow. The idea was inspired by the science fiction novel, Sparrowhawk, by Thomas Easton, wherein giant insects are outfitted with electronic control systems for a variety of purposes, including transportation of humans.

The scary part is that the research was funded by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. That's right, the folks who bring us all those wonderful James Bond-esque devices that spy on terrorists and ordinary civilians alike or outfit the most advanced military commandos, used by our friends at Homeland Security, the CIA, Navy Seals, and snarling vice presidents.

The head of the research project, Dr. Amit Lal, suggests that the remote-controlled moths are for sniffing out bank robbers or detecting chemical traces of drugs or explosives. But given that this is DARPA, I'm thinking of darker uses. Like little mobile spy platforms, outfitted with listening or imaging "backpacks." Big Brother's watching! Or how about making them into tiny, one-man assassins by strapping little bombs on them, or poison needles. Just activate their wings, point them in the right direction, crash-land onto your hapless victim, and BOOM!

Someone call the Orkin man!

So the next time you see a big insect fluttering around your room, take a second look. If you see a little backpack on it, tell our pals in the government "Hello" and give them a good look at the bottom of your shoe.

The Digital Abacus

2008-02-05T00:13:00.000-08:00

So there I was in the San Francisco International Airport recently, blithely killing time by laughing at hapless travelers as they frantically undressed and redressed themselves at the security area, or rushed through terminals like sex-hungry salmon against a raging river, or, you know, lay in a helpless heap of eye-bleeding insanity from the nightmare that is often intercontinental travel. I had traveled to the City By The Bay to attend a science workshop, and now had two hours of down time before my delayed flight was to leave. With a shrug, I decided to walk through one of the concourses.

There, sandwiched between human conveyor belts on a particularly long corridor were largely-ignored display cases showcasing the process of making prototypes into nifty products. They featured useful things like mp3 players, artsy lamps, and modern game systems, and their early design phases. But amongst these great, utilitarian inventions was an oddity which made me stop dead in my tracks. In the case in front of me was a digital abacus:

http://www.coroflot.com/public/individual_file.asp?from_url=true&sort_by=1&portfolio_id=34998&individual_id=36630

It was like looking at a pile of snow in the middle of the Mojave desert in July. It was a freak of technology. "Digital" and "abacus" are two words I thought I would never find together. Like a Frankensteinian mutant, here before me was an unholy marriage of modern technology and ancient relics seen nowhere else in the world where electricity is common (except Japan, but what can one expect of a land where raw fish is eaten with gusto?).

Like beaming Beatles songs into space (which NASA did today), the digital abacus is a shining example of excellent technology used for non-excellent purposes, a glaring example of a waste of good mindpower and scientific intellect, more art than science acumen. A gag gift. If you're going digital, buy a freakin' calculator.

What's next? Talking slide rules for the blind? Electronic finger counters? Holographic rulers? The digital abacus LED readout mocks all that is noble and timeless. Its tickertape printer is a waving flag of innanity. The sleek, waveform shape defies the stark utilitarianism of its predecessors.

Oh, sure, the abacus (or the soroban, for you Japanese folks) is still used in many parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa (HERE is a video on how to use it, and HERE is a video of someone using one for complex addition). There are highly-trained people (abacists) who can use it faster than most people would use a calculator. There are people who stack cups faster than I can, too, but I wouldn't say I'm jealous when I put away my washed dishes.

But, hey, I shouldn't knock something that's still in use after 4500 years (apparently invented in Babylonia). And when the next asteroid knocks the Earth back into the Stone Age, guess which counting device will still be around. The digital abacus will still be useful, even if it doesn't have batteries for the LED readout.

But don't expect me to give up my Texas Instruments science calculator anytime soon!

The Scale Of Things

2008-02-03T10:42:00.000-08:00

My professional life has been spent attempting to see things not normally visible to the naked eye. Peering through magnifying glasses, dissecting microscopes, high-end light microscopes, even transmission electron microscopes, trying to see sub-cellular structures and even localizing individual protein complexes. I never tire of it. Yet no matter how small the structures are that we study, we find there are ever smaller magnitude objects to find.

The same goes for large structures. No matter how far out we look into the universe, galaxies continue to appear. We are such a tiny part of that universe that we easily disappear in the immensity of it. When I try to comprehend how individual proteins fit into that grand scheme, it makes my little, confused head whirl.

So it is with a great pleasure I recently discovered this nifty webpage devoted to comparing the sizes of everything from quarks up to the known universe, from Angstroms to light years. When you visit, feel free to click around on things and scroll back and forth:

http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/feelnikon/discovery/universcale/nano.swf

And, while we're on the topic, here is a similar little journey called "Powers of Ten" which takes you from the edge of the universe down to the sub-atomic level (likely you have seen it, made in 1977 by Charles and Ray Eames, but still excellent):

http://www.stage6.com/user/air44/video/2068223/Cosmic-Voyage-HD---(Power-of-Ten)(a plugin is required, but it is worth it !)

So, if you have a hankering for feeling insignificant in the grand scheme of things, please, give these a click!

Helping The Environment -- With Dynamite!

2008-01-30T23:33:00.000-08:00

Ah, the Great Outdoors! The rich smells of vegetation, fresh air, conifers, flowers, and – cordite. Yes, with the miracle of modern explosives, we can blast our way to a better tomorrow.

Case in point: Last Fall the Nature Conservancy restored wetlands in the Klamath Basin of Oregon by blowing up two miles of levees:

Video and article: http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/oregon/about/art22854.html

In a move that would make the inventor of dynamite proud (Alfred Nobel – yes, for whom the Nobel Prize is named), the Nature Conservancy restored wetlands along the Williamson River. Blowing a river levee sky-high allowed the Williamson River to dump into the Williamson River Delta wetlands, which had been bypassed for agricultural reasons in the 1950s.

Oh, but no one thought about the lowly Lost River sucker fish, whose newborn fish fry required the delta to grow in. Without the delta, these tender, baby fish were dumped directly into Upper Klamath Lake, which could be as much as three degrees colder ("It’s like bringing a fish home from the pet store and dumping it into a cold tank without letting it get acclimated,” says Matt Barry, director of the Williamson River Delta Preserve), and with little cover to hide from predators. Now these fish are endangered. And, by hurting the wetlands, bird species like cranes and terns weren't able to get the habitat they needed. Also, the lake's water quality dropped, in part because wetlands weren't there to absorb pollutants.

Now these little fishies will have a nice, warm, decaying marsh to live and grow in, and their bird friends will have food (the fish!) and homes of their own. Home sweet wetlands.

So let's give an explosive "Hurray" to these naturalists and things that go Boom! It's not everyday you get to blow things up in the name of helping nature.

My Aunt Marsha

2008-01-29T00:25:00.000-08:00

My Aunt Marsha passed away in her home last Sunday. One of my mother's sisters, she would have been 66 this April.

When I was a very small boy, I couldn’t pronounce my aunt's name. Instead, I simply called her "Aunt She", a name that stuck. My memories of Aunt She are of a free-loving woman who had a great fondness for fun and laughter. She and her husband, my Uncle Chuck, literally had the 17th hole of their golf resort as their back yard. I think they drove their golf cart more than their cars. My teenage summers in the hot, humid South were spent in large part in their heavily air-conditioned home, lounging by the poolside of the resort, soaking in her hot tub, or meandering along the curving, manicured fairways from hole to hole. I would sometimes drive her golf cart for her. Spending the night with them, I would stay up much too late and watch movies on HBO, via their satellite TV (of course, they were among the first to get such a novel system). She enjoyed games, particular card games and Scrabble. She loved gambling, and cigarettes, and Southern food (and it showed). Even the jobs she held reflected her interests in her last couple decades: manning the resort's Pro Shop, working at a liquor store, or working at a cigarette outlet.

But good health isn't something that comes easy to my family. We are prone to circulation and heart problems, weight problems, and other such conditions which aren't amenable to cigarettes, Southern food, or, well, fun livin'. Aunt Marsha had heart attacks, bypass surgery, circulatory problems, and kidney failure.

She is survived by my Uncle Chuck. They were childhood sweethearts, married just out of high school. In an age of high divorce rates, particularly for her generation, a forty-seven year marriage is nearly unheard of. There are lessens to learn from that. She had one son, my cousin Chris (who also has had severe heart problems), and two grandchildren, Lauryn and Christopher (see picture of Marsha with Christopher). Aunt Marsha doted on her grandkids like all good grandmas should.

Despite all of her love of living, she wasn't prone to vanity or ego. She didn't want flowers sent or anything, but there will be a memorial service Friday at the community center there at her golf community. I live half a continent away, so this blog post will have to do, I guess, for showing my love for her.

If I could learn lessons from the life of my Aunt Marsha, it would be that we should never be afraid to enjoy the fun things, and to live for today, but that temperance is sometimes a good thing. I don't get enough exercise, but I don't smoke, and my food is usually organic and reasonably healthy (despite my urges). If I'm lucky, maybe I'll live longer than she did.

Rest in peace, Aunt She. I love you. And when you reach the Great Golf Course in the sky, play a round for me. Perhaps I'll drive your golf cart when I get there.

Did T-Rex Cuddle With Adam & Eve?

2008-01-24T22:21:00.000-08:00

What do you think of when I say the word "museum"? School groups of bored kids shuffling from one exhibit to another? Fossils? Rocks? Your grandma's house?

How about dinosaurs living in the Garden of Eden?

No? Neither do I. A museum is a place of learning, where geeky scientists attempt to cause a little bit of scientific learning to absorb into the brains of a typically uninformed public by making what they think will be compelling displays of scientific data or artifacts.

I was amused the other day when a friend of mine (Thanks, PeaceFrogs!) sent me the following link that interviews the founders of the Creation Museum in Kentucky while it was being built back in '06:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wzjjxi7f0Oc

If you believe what the Creation "Museum" is telling us, you would believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs coexisted with Adam and Eve in the Garden, and that dinosaurs climbed onto Noah's Ark two-by-two along with lambs and crickets and lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) and they all lived happily and non-carnivorously for 40 days and 40 nights with Noah's soon-to-be incestuous family. Funny, I don't remember reading about dinosaurs in Genesis!

Oh, sweet T-Rex, if only you could cuddle with me at night and keep me warm like you did Adam and Eve in their innocent, Platonic beds!

To teach these "lessons", they use animatronic dinosaurs playing alongside happy little animatronic children dressed in caveman garb and a giant T-Rex tromping through the Garden of Eden.

Yes, and though the Creation "Museum" hides in a shroud of scientific inquiry, like the Intelligent Design mumbo-jumbo they espouse, nary there will you find reference to any peer-reviewed papers in any journals of geology, biology, or ecology. But for the low low price of $19.95 per adult ticket, you, too, can enter the "museum" and partake of such scientific activities as a tour that highlights "God's judgment of the Tower of Babel" or a seminar entitled "Security for faith-based organizations".

Here's a rather amusing interview conducted with the director of the museum and a bona fide scientist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HajP5pE4BE0.

Wow. Just goes to show that no amount of evidence from tens of thousands of published scientific articles each year will change the irrational mind of zealots. So I have to ask what's really on display at the Creation "Museum" – the supposed "evidence" that dinos laid down with the lions and the lambs, or the white-bread, wide-eyed fundamentalists who cheerfully enter the "special-effects theater complete with misty sea breezes and rumbling seats" and swallow the Bible as literal fact, then file off to the gift store to buy more propaganda illustrating how us evil, godless scientists are lying to them with devil-inspired scientific inquiry.

I wonder how they would react to "museums" inspired by other creation myths, such as that of Hindu or Greek mythology. Would T-Rex be shown hatching out of the creation egg with Brahma? Would velociraptors be depicted strutting around on Olympus with Zeus and Epimetheus? How preposterous would that be? It is no less preposterous to me than the Creation Museum's version.

But, hey, who am I to rain on their holy theme park? Praise Jesus and pass the tickets!

Image ruthlessly adapted from HERE and HERE.

MLK Day 2008

2008-01-21T11:22:00.000-08:00

A part of me wishes that one day I could do something so extraordinary for our society that I could have a day set aside for me once a year for people to reflect on my great achievement and, of course, get a day off from work or school to do so.

But then, in order to do that extraordinary thing, I would of course have to sacrifice my sense of privacy, my family life, my day job, and probably get killed by some fanatic who disagrees with whatever noble thing I'm trying to accomplish. Let's face it, there are loonies out there, at every level.

So let's take a moment on this day to think about one of those great figures who sacrificed everything, including his life, to make the world a little kinder and equal: Martin Luther King, Jr. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_luther_king).

Even though my evil global biotech conglomerate does not officially recognize the importance of King's birthday as a symbol of their commitment to equality and diversity, I took the day off. I'm spending it with a group of ethnically, racially, and physically diverse children, including my own, and going for a hike in the woods. Along the way, we'll be reading King's acceptance speech for his Nobel Peace Prize, given for his commitment and action for non-violent change toward equality:

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html

Please join me in taking a moment to appreciate the great diversity that is our country, and recommit ourselves to honoring the equality of all mankind on this very small, very connected world of ours.

Don't Eat That Berry!

2008-01-20T00:29:00.000-08:00

I've always been a fan of exotic parasites (as you may have told from previous posts), including in non-human systems. There are lots of yummy stories out there, of worms and such that invade various systems in the body. But the most fascinating to me are those where the infecting organism actually changes the behavior of its host to help it transmit to the next phase of its life cycle.

Consider the lowly pill bug (= roly-poly or doodlebug). There is a little worm, or nematode (or roundworm), which depends upon the pill bug and the European starling for its life cycle. After growing in the starling as an adult (and not harming the bird), it lays eggs in the gut. The droppings containing eggs are eaten by pill bugs. The larvae hatch inside the pill bug and grow inside. Once the pill bug gets large enough, the nematode affects the pill bug's behavior causing it to leave its warm, dark, humid nests and go wandering about in full sunlight and over all sorts of revealing terrain. In response, birds like the starling are more likely to eat the little bugger, thus insuring that the larvae is passed on to the starling to grow to adulthood and continue this fascinating little arrangement. Go HERE for more details.

Another example of a parasite changing the host's behavior involves a parasitic fluke and the little killifish. The fluke grows in horned snails. When mature, it swims out into its marsh and latches onto a killifish's gills, then enters the poor fish and goes to the fish's brain. Yow. Not surprisingly, the fish starts darting around, jerking, and flashing (wouldn't you??) and is four times more likely to be eaten by a shore bird. Once eaten, the fluke enters the system of the bird, lays its eggs, and the droppings are eaten by more horned snails, where they hatch and grow. Go HERE for more details.

So examples of parasites changing the behavior of their hosts to get eaten is not so uncommon. But now some researchers have stumbled upon an altogether different mechanism. A parasite of an ant species makes the ant look like berries, which are yummy to birds:

http://www.physorg.com/news119712765.html

Some Panamanian birds, innocently pecking away at nice, juicy berries, are inadvertently murdering helpless little ants now, and getting themselves infected with parasites. Not because they like ants, but because the ants are eating a particular species of nematode that, upon laying its eggs in the abdomen of the ants, cause the ant abdomens to swell up and turn bright red like local berries, thus fooling the birds. Nifty. (Another really cool bit of this story is that these ants also have the ability to glide, changing course mid-flight if they fall off of tree limbs!).

So if you happen to be going to Panama's Barro Colorado Island, be careful which berries you eat!

Last I Looked, The Earth Still Orbits The Sun

2008-01-15T23:04:00.000-08:00

In pretty much any conversation about how science and reason are separate from faith and religion, inevitably the topic of Galileo and his heresy trial come up. Back in 1633, as almost anyone not still living in the dark ages knows, the great scientist Galileo published his findings that the earth rotates around the sun, contrary to Church teachings (that the sun rotates around the earth). The Inquisition found him guilty of heresy and forced him to recant his findings. It is a glowing example of how religion and superstition have no place in scientific and emperical studies, and how meddling by religion into areas of science leads to setback in understanding our environment, the universe, and the natural laws that guide them. Sorta like Intelligent Design mumbo-jumbo.

So it is with a very troubled brow that I read today an article on CNN.com about how Pope Benedict XVI is being told to stay away from the opening day of La Sapienza University in Rome, where he was scheduled to talk. Why was a prestigious world leader banned by protests from faculty and students alike?

Because he claimed back in 1990 (then as Cardinal Ratzinger) that the trial of Galileo was "reasonable and just":

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01/15/pope.protest/index.html?iref=newssearch

Quoting a philosopher, he has said "At the time of Galileo, the Church remained more loyal (or faithful) to reason than Galileo."

Excuse me? Did I just fall on my head? Did he just say in no uncertain terms that belief in an Earth-centered universe was reasonable and that scientific evidence should have been ignored and publically ridiculed? Has the Pope forgotten the last 370 years worth of scientific evidence supporting the modern understanding of our cosmos?

Oh my. And this is the man who followed a pope who said that the Theory of Evolution was a valid and church-supported theory. What's next? Are we to revert to alchemy and witch-burning, Your Holiness?

Personally, I had rather higher hopes for someone with "rat" in his given name.

Grow Your Own Heart

2008-01-14T00:54:00.000-08:00

Okay, picture this potential scenario for the not-so-distant-future: You've spent your adult life overweight, eating poorly, no real exercise, smoking, heavy drinking, and with a family history of organ-affecting ailments like heart disease (sorta like me, except for the smoking and heavy drinking parts). Then one day – Bang! – your transgressions come slamming home to you when you have a heart attack. You're rushed to the hospital and saved in the nick of time.

From then on you're stuck on massive heart medicine, maybe have a bypass or two, or even require a heart transplant or artificial heart, right? Maybe not.

They may be able to grow you a spankin' new heart!

That's right. While you are kept alive with more traditional methods, the hospital can simply order you a new heart. They would take a cadaver's heart (or maybe even a pig heart) and "decellularize" it. In other words, they would pump detergents into the donor heart to kill all of its cells, leaving behind only the extracellular matrix – a sort of natural scaffold. Then they would infuse that scaffold with your own stem cells that had been differentiated into heart cells and repopulate the scaffold with them. After a few weeks, the heart would be pumping and ready to transplant into your body. Because they are your own cells, rejection is not as likely, and you could go on your happy, gluttonous way.

Some scientists from the University of Minnesota Center for Cardiovascular Repair recently took the first real steps toward this science fiction-esque scenario:

http://www.physorg.com/news119445798.html

Scholarly paper, published online in Nature Medicine on Jan. 13: http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nm1684.html

They infused "scaffolds" of rat and pig hearts with live progenitor cells from newborn rats. The cells differentiated into heart cells then organized themselves and proliferated around the scaffold. After only four days the tissue started having contractions. After eight days, the heart was beating. It's alive! ALIVE!! Mwa ha ha ha ha!

And what this tell-tale heart tells us, in its rhythmic way, is that we may be able to do this with other organs. We can already make artificial blood vessels, skin, and bladders. Now we may be able to make not only hearts but also kidneys, livers, and other "complex" organs. Heck, pretty soon the scaffolds will be artificially grown, too!

Why, there could be no end to the partying, folks! Slam down another bottle of Jack Daniels and huff another pack of cigs, we're living the high life! If you wear out your organs, just order up new ones!

And as for me, seeing as how I already have a mild heart problem and have family with heart and circulatory problems (an aunt and a cousin have had bypasses, and my maternal grandfather died after multiple heart attacks), I guess I can take heart that I may have another option pumping for me in the future.

Image taken from HERE.

Thinking On The Nano-Scale

2008-01-10T01:40:00.000-08:00

It's an amazing time in the history of technology, isn't it? It seems every technogadget is getting smaller: cell phones, music players, computers, devices that do all three, your bank account as you purchase them in a vain attempt to keep up with the modern age. Of course, none of these wondrous inventions would be possible without our intrepid physicists working out ever better ways to build things on the nano-scale, such as tiny optical switches, flash memory cards, and even nanotube radios. They are pushing the limits of the infinitesimal for computers and structures made from just a few atoms or molecules.

Sure, sure, sure. Yawn. You material scientist physicist-types are amazing. Now go do something truly useful like, oh, how about making the world's smallest toilet:
http://www.desco.be/Desktopdefault.aspx?tabid=315

Yes, the nano-toilet is one of many nano-sculptures that startles the imagination and makes one wonder, "How is it physicists can have so much time on their hands?" Need to take a really, really small dump? Now you can, as long as your nano-crap is no larger than a red blood cell.

The nano-toilet joins the ranks of other completely useless gee-whiz nano-inventions, which includes the world's smallest guitar, smiley face, and Hebrew Bible.

But my personal preference is this lovely sculpture, based on Rodin's "The Thinker": http://www.nextnature.net/?p=883

I guess you have to think very small thoughts to be on par with this great sculpture, which can quite nicely tuck away into any pore in your body and wear those passing red blood cells as a toupee.

But I always felt sorry for The Thinker. I mean, just think about it, he's naked, he's in a slumped posture, and he's sitting on a freakin' irregular-shaped rock in full view of everyone. How uncomfortable is that? How the heck is one supposed to be pensive under those conditions? Is there any place a naked man in a slumped posture can sit comfortably and think about things?

Why, what better place for a nano-thinker to sit and think than a nano-toilet?

Images taken from HERE and HERE and ruthlessly altered in Photoshop.

Once Bitten, Twice Extinct

2008-01-04T01:25:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, when I was thinner, younger, and as wise as your average 20-year-old, I did some ecological research in the wilderness areas of Idaho, backpacking through the Rockies. On one particularly hellish hitch into the woods (during which I suffered acute mountain sickness, was abandoned by my crew leader, and was briefly lost in the wilderness – see previous blog post), my crew and I collected data from a high mountain lake. We arrived at the pristine, picturesque little lake just after dusk and pitched our tent right next to the shoreline, bedding down for the night. The next morning, we realized our dire mistake. Upon unzipping our tent to go take a whiz, we were immediately assaulted by a horde of mosquitoes.

Now, I've been victimized by mosquitoes many times, but this was nothing like I'd ever experienced before. In seconds, all exposed skin was completely covered by these little, black and gray devils. Off! spray had no effect. The only thing we could do was cover ourselves as much as possible with clothing and rain suits and soldier through it.

And then I had to take a dump in the woods. Oh, man! I've never been so creeped out in my life. That was the fastest sh*t I think I've ever taken. My ass was one giant itching sore after that. As I rushed through the process, I couldn't help but wonder how many mosquito-borne diseases I was contracting through my butt. Even if the odds were one in a million, I'm sure I was bitten more than that. It really made me feel sorry for people who live in tropical or swampy regions where mosquito infestations like that were the norm. No wonder diseases like malaria and dengue fever wipe out huge number of people in the tropics each year. It's a wonder humanity doesn't go extinct in those regions (or take a dump outdoors!).

So it should come as no surprise that even the dinosaurs were not immune to the horrors of the not-so-humble mosquito. In fact, two leading entomologists are suggesting that insect-borne diseases may have contributed to the demise of dinosaurs:

http://www.physorg.com/news118591469.html

George and Roberta Poinar, husband-and-wife entomologists at Oregon State University, have made this argument in their book, What Bugged the Dinosaurs? Insects, Disease and Death in the Cretaceous, which has just been published. These authors are more famous for their work studying ancient insects preserved in amber, and are very well-regarded in their field. I had the honor of working in the same department as Dr. Poinar, for a year and a half, back when I was an entomologist.

Now, likely you're all familiar with the idea of a gigantic meteor hitting in what is now the Yucatan area, causing a catastrophic climate change which likely was the leading factor in the dinosaur die-off known as the "K-T Boundary" at the end of the Cretaceous Period, but one perplexing thing about that has been that the die-off wasn't immediate. It still took thousands of years for most of those dinos to go extinct, and many took much, much longer. Though the meteor theory would be a good kick-off to weaken species, something like disease states would be good candidates for finishing the job. And there is evidence in fossilized dino crap of infections by nematodes, trematodes, and protozoans that could have brought disease conditions and viruses to these reptiles. These sorts of diseases were likely just emerging, so the vertebrates would have had little resistance.

So, basically, the Poinars are suggesting these lumbering beasts were the victims of getting bitten in the ass by bastardly, disease-ridden little mosquitoes and other biting insects and killed because of it.

I can sympathize. My ass still itches just thinking about it!

Images adapted from HERE and HERE.

A New Way To Burn Fat

2008-01-01T00:39:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, guys and gals! It is midnight here at the very moment I type this. As I write, fireworks and, sadly, gunshots (!), are going off all around my home.

It's the best day of the year to forget all those "issues" you've accumulated over the last 365 days: the debt you racked up, those Christmas cookies going to your thighs, the bosses who passed you over for promotion again, your secret love of Britney Spears' music (and her thighs) – you know, the usual.

Yes, it's time to look forward to the new year and to make resolutions that, you swear, you'll actually live up to this time. Losing weight is always on the top ten list of yearly resolutions, given that 66% of American adults are overweight or obese. Maybe you'd like to help your environment this year, such as by advocating alternative fuels? Or perhaps you'd like to help do something heroic, such as setting a world record?

Well, good news! Now you can do all three of those resolutions at the same time! All you have to do is get liposuction, then donate your fat to be rendered into biofuel for a speedboat that will set a new world circumnavigation speed record:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=503419&in_page_id=1770

Are you tilting your head in wonderment? Please, please tell me that the previous paragraph wasn't the most surreal thing you've read all year!

What better way to make a statement about saving the world, eh? A New Zealander by the name of Pete Bethune is about to attempt to break the world speedboat record for circumnavigating the globe, and he's doing it in a deliciously alien, futuresque trimaran boat called Earthrace. The kicker is that it is 100% powered by biofuel. Ah, but what makes this story so lip-smackingly yummy is that he is making a tiny portion of that biofuel out of his own liposuctioned fat tissue! But he wasn't a very fat man (he has donated only enough fat to render about 100 milliliters of biofuel), so he is enlisting the additional fat tissue of at least two other, more obese people. In total, so far, they have 10 liters of human fat (picture, if you will, 10 one-liter bottles of your favorite soda).

Now say in unison: Ewww!

That's enough rendered biofuel for only a little more than 9 of the 24,000 nautical miles around the world. It's the thought that counts, don't ya know. Bethune hopes to beat the previous record of 75 days, set in 1998 by the British (and badly named!) boat, the Cable and Wireless Adventurer, an equally-cool spaceship-looking trimaran.

So, did you want to suck off some of your fat for the sake of an environmental message and world record? No? Come on, it's so little for such a big reward!

We've all got to have goals, after all ….

Mad Scientist

2007-12-28T00:32:00.000-08:00

Ah, the scientist is a quiet creature, given to working long hours in a sterile lab. Humming equipment and bubbling concoctions are his only company as he contemplates his experiments and reviews reams of data. He adjusts his taped-up glasses then shuffles to his office for a momentary caffeine break before returning to his diligent work. He is a humble being whose greatest excitement comes with those rare eureka moments when experimental results come together.

NOT. Is that really what you think we're like?

Well, okay, maybe a little. Fine, maybe a lot. But most scientists I know are cynical beasts who work when they have to, long into the night amidst noisy machines, piles of hastily organized papers, and scribbled lab books, but enjoy a good beer as much as the next fellow and can be prone to all the weaknesses, passions, and emotions as the next guy. And you've got to watch out for those "quiet types," don't ya know!

Take for example one biochemist gone bad. Larissa Schuster ran a chemical company with her husband, Timothy. Their marriage went south back in 2003, so logically the only option she had was to KILL HIM WITH ACID!!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-12-3963774793_x.htm

Yes, that's right. For the low, low price of $2000 she hired a lab technician, James Fagone, to help her taser her husband and knock him out with chloroform. Then they dumped him into a barrel and, while Timothy was still alive and breathing, poured hydrochloric acid over him, dissolving him alive! Yikes!

But they screwed it up. Not only did they fail to dissolve all of the body, but Schuster rented a storage unit in her own name and put the half-dissolved body (legs still sticking out of the barrel) into the storage unit where it rotted and attracted attention. Thus she and the lab assistant were caught.

Too many late nights in the lab breathing fumes! Tsk, tsk. Typical chemist – thinks she can solve (or dissolve) her problems with chemical reactions. Better living through chemistry!

But the real moral of the story is this: there are a lot of really, really desperate lab assistants out there! Can you imagine how that conversation went?

Schuster: "Hey, Fagone, you wanna make some extra money on the side?"

Lab Tech: "Hmm. I don't know. I'm underpaid, like all lab rats, but your tone makes me think twice."

Schuster: "I'll pay you $2000, and you'll get to dissolve stuff with acid."

Lab Tech: "Cool. I'm in."

First degree murder may not be worth playing with acids and solvents, but I'll bet their fellow prisoners will be giving them plenty of breathing room as they serve out their life sentences!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some lab work to attend to…. and there's acid around.... Mwa ha ha ha ha!

Image of John Carradine from Invisible Invaders taken from HERE.

A Nuclear Reactor In Your Garage

2007-12-26T22:53:00.000-08:00

Are you tired of living on "The Grid"? Do those pesky electric bills get you down? Is solar energy just too "'80's"? Well now Toshiba has the answer to your energy woes! Introducing the Micro Nuclear Reactor:

http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html

Yes, that's right! At only 20 feet by 6 feet, this 200kW nuclear fission reactor can fit in your own garage. Now that's handy! Handling dangerous nuclear material is as easy as flipping a switch. Nifty. And it can power an entire city block or apartment complex. Why, you'll be the envy of your entire neighborhood. How's that for empowerment? What's more, you won't even have to be on the electrical grid. Sell it back to the city. Snap!

But wait, there's more! Using reservoirs of radioactive lithium-6 instead of those snarky uranium rods and cooling towers we're used to seeing, the entire process in the Micro Reactor is self-contained and can produce energy for 40 years. When it's finished, just ring up Toshiba on the iPhone and they'll come and pick it up. Why, that's disposable energy to you and me! Who cares where they take it after that! At half the cost of standard electricity, you'll be singing all the way to the bank.

Power your own little island or impenetrable fortress like a James Bond villain if you like. We'll help! You'll be seeing this radioactive dream in Japan in 2008 and in Europe and America in 2009. But don't wait! Order yours now!

Happy Holidays, Damn It!

2007-12-24T22:51:00.000-08:00

What's all this nonsense I hear from political candidates and radio talk show hosts upset about how "Christ is being taken out of Christmas"? One radio DJ lamented that he hated to hear "Happy Holidays" said to him at the check-out line. "Say Merry Christmas, Damn it!" he said on air, and loudly proclaimed that he says so to those people. And then there is presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, neo-conservative extraordinaire, and his pal Mitt Romney, who refuse (like the current president) to recognize that there is a separation between Church and State, endorsing "Christian values" as a political agenda and, to paraphrase Mr. Romney, people who aren't of a prominent faith would not be included in his presidential cabinet (as if Mormons are so prominent - little more than Muslims, to whom he was really referring). These same pundits are getting torqued all out of shape because certain town squares have decorations of all faiths instead of just Christian on the town Christmas tree.

Well excuse me for being an atheist.

I have close friends who celebrated Hanukkah, and other close friends who celebrate Kwanzaa and the Winter Solstice, instead of Christmas. Saying "Merry Christmas" doesn't get them bent out of shape, but it isn't exactly a meaningful compliment to them, is it? "Happy Holidays", general as it is, at least gives some measure of pleasant holiday feeling.

Now, I celebrate Christmas. Not because I apply any belief at all to the idea of virgin birth, God, or miracles, but because it gives me a good excuse to celebrate the meaning of love, friends, and family, and to express that true blessing with gifts and, of course, massive quantities of glorious food.

Nobody's taking "Christ out of Christmas" for the Christians. The neo-cons just want to maintain control. But our government is at least giving some measure of our constitutional right to be protected from others' religious intolerance by either keeping religious symbols out of the public square or being all-inclusive, and those (like myself) who work in public relations sorts of positions are being tolerant and inclusive by using a more generic yet still festive greeting. In my job, I work with people from cultures and religions from all over the world. If I say "Merry Christmas" to all of them, I'd bet at least a third of them would shrug and say thanks even though it had no real meaning to them, and some of them would be outright offended.

To you, my merry blog reader, I extend my warmest holiday feelings. However you celebrate the season, please go out and party hardy, open your gifts, and keep your family in your thoughts and arms at all times.

But if you wish to challenge yourself, and those you should happen to meet in public, I'd like to extend also this special assignment: Greet everyone you meet or respond to them with "Happy Solstice" and see what the result is. Sure, you'll get some odd looks and the occasional evil eye, but most people will probably give a wary thanks and shrug it off. Maybe a few of them will stop to think about how very personal the holidays are to each different religion, and thus how very special their own celebration is. Maybe, just maybe, there will be one or two who embrace diversity. At the very least, the "fake" feeling you get by doing this assignment will highlight how much the season means to you and how personal it is to you and your loved ones.

Happy Holidays!

P.S., if you are wondering what the heck this image is about (which was on my favorite holiday card sent to me this year), visit information about the Flying Spaghetti Monster and His Holy Noodly Appendage HERE or HERE.

Image taken from HERE.

How Many Trees Die Because You're Divorced?

2007-12-24T02:18:00.000-08:00

Ah, life is grand. I'm livin' the nuclear family dream. I've got my 2.1 children and 2.1 cars. I've got my average house with its average (slave debtor's) mortgage. I'm working a stable career with a heartless company. I've spent too much for Christmas. And, despite being short, round, forgetful, and hairy like a beast, I haven't been awful enough for my lovely wife to leave me yet. We've been married for over 12 years. Yeah, over 12 years! Can you believe it? And neither of us have been married (or divorced) before.

In this day and age when, in the United States, we have an average divorce rate of about 50%, most ending within the first 15 years, young folks tend to be a bit jaded on the whole marriage thing (statistics information). Many of their parents were Baby Boomers, the "Me Generation", who suffer the highest divorce rate of all demographics. Maybe it's a good thing Americans are marrying later, on average.

Shakespeare wrote in Twelfth Night, "Journeys end in lovers meeting," but as Pauline Thomason said, "Love is blind – marriage is the eye-opener."

When the honeymoon is over, the love handles start coming on, and the enthusiastic and oh-so-Leave-It-To-Beaver "Honey, I'm home!" hug is replaced with a quiet shutting of the door, a couple aspirins, and a "Hey, what are you getting out of the freezer for supper?" Sadly, some folks open their eyes and discover that the snoring lump sleeping next to them on the Posturepedic isn't quite what they bargained for, or worse. All too often they give them the boot, the Big D, the marital sayonara. DIVORCE.

But wait! If this is you, my fellow blog reader, you may want to add one more thing to the social, emotional, economic, religious, parental, and physical strains that await (or afflict) you, your spouse, and your children around the dark corner along the divorce path. A recent study found that divorce actually hurts our environment:

Story: http://www.physorg.com/news115925227.html

Research abstract: HERE

That's right. If you are divorced, you are likely contributing to the misuse of our planet's precious few resources, thus forever increasing your already sky-high guilt factor. According to the two authors of the paper, which studied individuals from a number of countries, households of divorced individuals have more rooms per home per individual, thus requiring more heat and light, and thus more resources to power them.

To quote the paper: "In the United States in 2005, divorced households spent 46% and 56% more on electricity and water per person than married households. Divorced households in the U.S. could have saved more than 38 million rooms, 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, and 627 billion gallons of water in 2005 alone if their resource-use efficiency had been comparable to married households. Furthermore, U.S. households that experienced divorce used 42–61% more resources per person than before their dissolution."

Yikes. So, what does that equal in terms of pollution? How much greenhouse gases were made by all the coal that was burned? How much acid rain? How many dead trees and tumerous fish? Come on, I've got to have a figure for our angst to feed upon!

And that doesn't even take into account the growing numbers of single adults who have yet to marry, or widowed individuals who live longer and don't remarry. Just think what the neoconservatives will say about this one! All those ultrareligious Focus On The Family nutjobs and preaching presidential candidates. The authors also found that when divorced individuals remarry or return to their previous cohabitating married lifestyles, their energy consumption returns to average.

But, unfortunately, we don't all marry wisely, and people change. And there are a lot of really, really bad people out there who hide their true natures. Sometimes divorce is simply unavoidable. So what are all you divorced people to do to reduce your impact on the Earth and save your environment? Wear tie-dye and join a commune? Move back in with Mom? Go crawling back to their deadbeat or philandering spouse? Jump back into the hot, smarmy date circuit in search of a ring again?

No, of course not, dummy. Just live wiser. Living alone without the benefit of someone nagging at you doesn't mean you have to forget to turn off the lights or use less water, and now that you no longer have an extra person to throw away your money for you, do you really need that third bedroom for all those craft projects you never had time for while you were slaving away for that slug you used to be married to, a formal dining room to collect dust bunnies, or a second bathroom frequented only by your cats and the occasional tub spider? No. Live simply. Live in a smaller space. Let your hair hang down and live a little more like a hippie. Dig it?

As for me, I'm going to sit with my 2.1 children and my lovely, long-term wife tomorrow night, drink hot chocolate, and turn off all the houselights except for the Christmas tree. And as I enjoy my Leave It To Beaver life in the flickering woodstove flames of my energy-conscious lifestyle, safe in the self-riteous assumption that my marital bliss will last forever, I'll drink a toast to all you divorced-types and hope you'll be reducing your energy consumption this fine holiday season as you write out your alimony checks by holly-scented candlelight. Cheers.

Image taken from HERE.

To The Moon, Alice (And Everyone Else)!

2007-12-20T16:30:00.000-08:00

So what's up with everyone wanting to go to the moon again? Why did it take thirty years for nations to suddenly perk up their collective ears and decide to go back? Is it just a question of technology catching up with the will to go? Honestly, I'm confused.

On Christmas Eve you will be able to walk outside in that nippy cold air and see above you a brilliantly-lit full moon. It will be riding at its highest point between now and 2023, making it gorgeous to view (not far away in the sky you'll see Mars, at its closest point to Earth for the next nine years). When you see the cratered surface of that great rock in the sky, I urge you to put aside your concern about frostbite on your fingers and ponder the value of going back to the moon. How much is it worth to us to return? And what are the implications of our friendly and not-so-friendly allied nations returning there with us (or without us)?

Recently China orbited the moon with its Chang'e-1 lunar probe. It has returned its first image of the lunar surface, but already there are allegations that the image is a re-touched photo taken by NASA in 2005. Go figure. And as for sending men back to the moon, China may actually beat us there, aided by the European Space Agency. It'll be close.

Surely you are well aware of the United States' plans to go to the moon again, and then mars (I posted on this topic about a year ago). I considered it a diversion from more serious issues, and still do, but we can't let other countries one-up us, now can we, and give up our dominance of space? NASA's contractor, Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne Inc., is this month beginning the testing phase of the old Saturn rocket J-2 engines in preparation for final design work for the new J-2X engines that will power the ARES rockets. We've sent lunar probes in the meantime, though, including the Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions.

But are you aware of the other countries with their eyes on the moon? If you don’t follow space news, you may not have heard it all. Japan, for instance, just put its Kaguya SELENE-1 probe in orbit around the moon, and there has been talk of setting up a lunar base, perhaps by 2030. India, too, will be launching a lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1 (Indian government video), next year, and has just installed tracking antennae for the mission. Russia, too, has revived it's long-dormant plans to put cosmonauts on the moon.

The question remains: assuming any of these nations are serious about returning humanity to the moon, will it be another space race, or a joint international endeavor?

Personally, I don't have a lot of faith in government programs to take us to the moon. It takes too much political capital to keep up that kind of funding. I don't doubt that some nations may succeed in getting to the moon and even setting up a small base, but I doubt they could maintain it for long. It'll be another Apollo, basically – heroic, but short-lived and poorly justified.

Rather, I have more faith in private enterprise. The Ansari X-Prize showed us that, with a little financial encouragement, a private company could launch a manned spacecraft (Spacecraftone) into orbit without the assistance or overbearing bureaucracy of government entities like NASA. Now, as you may have heard, Google has joined with the X-Prize Foundation to sponsor a new competition, the Google Lunar X-Prize, for private ventures to successfully land a rover on the moon, roving at least 500 meters, and returning images. It's worth $30 million to the winner. Additional millions can be won if they rove further, take images of Apollo hardware, discover water ice, or survive the lunar night (about 14.5 Earth days). This month the first entry for the X-Prize was announced. Odyssey Moon, based in the Isle of Man, the tiny crown-dependency of England (which has structured its tax laws to attract space exploration businesses), was the first private organization to pay the $10K registration fee. Odyssey Moon has hired Canadian technology firm MDA as its prime contractor on the project.

Said Ramin Khadem, chairman of Odyssey Moon, "Explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries who set out to find new worlds were probably asked why they were doing it," Khadem said. "Look at the riches and wonders they discovered." He added, "We are out to complement, not compete with, China, Russia and the US."
I wish them luck, as well as the other entrants. I wonder, though, how far it will go. My hope is that private enterprise will find a good balance with national enterprises. As with any other program, only the proper balance (where private enterprise has the greater share of freedom) will, in my view, lead to a successful and lasting venture. Thinking back to the last great phase of mankind's exploration, one can call up examples of the Hudson Bay Company or the Dutch East India Company, where such private entities were able to profit while furthering the needs and rewards of their representative nations.

Only time will tell if any of these folks are serious, or if they're just lunatics. In any case, enjoy the full moon on Christmas Eve. There's a decent chance that when it rides that high again, brave men and women will be living there.

Update (12/26/07): Today Japan’s Kaguya lunar orbiter went into full operation: http://www.physorg.com/news117879564.html.

Image taken from HERE.

Been Sick

2007-12-20T14:42:00.000-08:00

I'm on the upshot after suffering a rather nasty stomach bug, with all the most horrendous symptoms (gut pain, fever, nausea, diarhhea, exhaustion, loss of appetite). God, I hate throwing up! I'm the sort who would rather endure stomach pain for days rather than just ralph and get it over with.

As I write this I'm eating a few spoonfuls of "Amazon Valley Chocolate" ice cream from Haagen-Daz, my first "meal" in over two days other than a small apple yesterday.

Then this morning my little daughter woke up with half her face swollen from an infected lymph gland. Now my lovely wife is coming down with the same symptoms I've had. Umpff. At least I'm on vacation. 'Tis the season.

Update (12/22/07): Other than a little lingering appetite loss and minor stomach pain, my wife and I are back to the usual state of disfunction, and my daughter's swollen jawline is returning to its normal beauty.

Get Mooned To Get Healthy

2007-12-14T23:26:00.000-08:00

"By the light of the silvery moon,
I want to spoon, to my honey I'll croon love's tune.
Honeymoon, keep a-shining in June,
Your silvery beams, will bring love dreams,
We'll be cuddling soon,
By the silvery moon."

"By the Light of the Silvery Moon" by Ray Noble with Snookie Lanson
(hear the music HERE)

In honor of Tantalus Prime, from his spacey comment to my last post, I will bring you not one, but two posts on Earth's nearest celestial neighbor, the Moon. Lucky, lucky you, Tantalus. This is the first of those.

Yes, the Moon, that wonderful, lifeless, rocky sphere up in the sky that shines down like a magnanimous eye, spawning lunatics and poets alike. Some even believe that the moon possesses a special supernatural power that can be tapped to heal us.

Consider, for instance, my own mother. In a previous post I reported how she had once cast a sort of spell to help remove a wart on my finger. Whether it was the magic or not, I do not know, but the wart soon disappeared after being there for over a year. How fitting, then, that my Mom found this interesting little story:

A couple in Arizona have built a 5-story tall parabolic mirror which they use to collect and focus the moon's light, with the intention to heal those who bask in that light:

Article: http://features.us.reuters.com/techlife/news/N04633430.html

video: http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=71792&videoChannel=7

That's right. For a mere $10 each, over a thousand people so far from all over the world have paid to stand up to 15 minutes in their underwear in the focused light of the moon, soaking up its "healing rays". According to the article, people with conditions as serious as cancer and asthma have gotten shone upon by the couple's "interstellar light collector" and claim that their symptoms have lessened. The Chapins (who built the device) shelled out $2 million (yes, million) of their own money to build this monolithic mirror.

Said the inventor, "If it could affect plants and animals ... I thought, 'what could the amplification of that light do?"'

Well, Mr. Chapin, here's what it can do, from my skeptical scientist's viewpoint: it reflects light. Nothing more, nothing less. But, hey, if it makes people feel good, more power to them.

Said one "moonlighter": "You feel almost like you are in heaven," said Aranka Toniatti, a cancer patient who has driven from Colorado twice to stand in the moonlight. "It's a gorgeous feeling."

I have to admit, if I lived near the big moonlight contraption, I'd be tempted to shell out ten bucks just to say I stood in focused moonlight. It's a novelty, after all. And I have enough of an open mind (as do all good scientists) to give it at least a moonbeam's width of serious consideration. But that's a pretty thin width, and I think I'd have to be on moonshine to believe it.

One Year Of The Angry Lab Rat

2007-12-04T00:29:00.000-08:00

Yay! Today marks the one-year anniversary for The Angry Lab Rat blog.

It's been a fun year. I never imagined I would so greatly enjoy serving up a mulligan stew of bizarre science, odd inventions, nutty nature, medicine on the edge, and my own ramblings about doing science while working in an evil global biotech conglomerate, and having you enjoy this dreck in return. Science has presented no shortage of interesting stories to bring you, if you don't mind seeing it through the warped, Monty Python-esque binoculars of a somewhat near-sighted and grumpy lab rodent. 168 posts worth! The site has been hit almost 26,000 times (mostly Google searches by, I'm certain, scantily-clad women who have a fetish for short, hairy men) from an amazing 122 countries. Wow. People will read anything!

Which stories have been hit the most? According to my blog tracker, among the most popular have been Be Stung By Jellyfish – For Fun!, Fish That Will Eat You Alive And Make You Healthier At The Same Time, China Is Trying To Kill Us, How To Remove Your Gall Bladder, and, one of my favorites, The Beer Launcher.

But bullocks to the hit counters! It's Reader's Choice time. Tell me, my loyal readers, what subject (such as those listed to the lower right of your screen) would you most wish me to write about in my next post?

Image taken from HERE and made into a poster HERE.

Space Bacteria Will Slime You Harder

2007-12-02T01:01:00.000-08:00

It sounded like a B-rated science fiction movie plot: Microbes Return From Space Three Times Deadlier Than On Earth.

Back in September, results were announced (and scientifically published) from an experiment where infectious Salmonella bacteria, sent on the shuttle and cultured in space for only 24 hours, then returned to earth, were three times more deadly to lab rats than their non-astrobacterial counterparts:

http://www.physorg.com/news109867213.html

ABCNews audio article:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/audio/2007/09/25/2042336.htm

Yes, my antibacterial-soap-washing friends, don't handle uncooked chicken in space. Those buggers are trouble!

My latest issue of Scientific American has a great article on page 34 ("Deadly Orbits") about this case. The researchers, based at the University of Arizona, closely examined the bacteria and found that the space bacteria had much higher levels of an RNA-regulating protein, called Hfq. Hfq caused many key genes to activate, which made the bacteria more infectious.

But what turned on the Hfq? Micro-gravity? Gamma rays? Little green men? Galactus?

No, sorry, something much less impressive: "low-fluid-sheer". When Salmonella grow in an environment where there is little fluid sheer, or turbulence, such as in a glob of fluid floating in the weightless environment of space, a slowly-turning flask on Earth, or "sheltered corners of the digestive track", they form what is called a biofilm, a colony of bacteria that work together to protect themselves from antibiotics, soap, and the body's immune system, often creating the sort of slime that forms on your meat or, for other bacteria, on your shower doors, baby pacifiers, your teeth (plaque), or nasty bacterial infections. Thus formation of a biofilm makes them more deadly and harder to eliminate.

And what are the implications? Will the Salmonella quickly spread from space to your cutting board and become The Blob, oozing through your home and neighborhood to kill you and all your other non-vegetarian friends? No, but long-term astronauts may need to be more careful, and perhaps the medical community will be better able to treat bacteria that infect our gut.

I can see Hollywood going crazy with this: The shuttle returns to Earth, and a single bacterium from a space-borne biofilm, mutated in space, takes a ride on the shoe of an intrepid astronaut, then into some corner of a Cape Canaveral locker-room where it grows and divides until it spreads across the world, infecting and killing any living thing it comes in contact with, until the astronaut hero teams up with a sexy know-it-all blonde scientist and an awkward science geek to find a quick fix that kills all the bacteria for good.

You'd watch that, wouldn't you? No? What if I cast Bruce Willis as the astronaut? I think it would make a great "bio" film.

Image from HERE, altered for my amusement.

Pop-Up Extortion

2007-11-29T22:29:00.000-08:00

Several years ago I had a teenage relative come stay with us for a week or so. Forgetting how very horny the average teenage boy is (am I really that old??), I neglected to turn on the parental controls for internet access that came with my internet program. Oops.

Part-way through his visit, I discovered some very interesting pictures on the computer. When I approached him about this, he at first denied he had downloaded them from porn sites, but eventually confessed. He promised not to continue doing that, as long as I didn't report it to his mom, but before I could figure out the parental controls, he did it again. He was barred from further unauthorized computer use, and yes, his mom heard about it.

Once he left, I figured that was the end of it. Oh, no. That was just the beginning. Next came the phone bill. It turns out he had visited porn sites that charged for every download. More than $200, in total! You'd better believe we made his mom pay the bill.

But even that wasn't the end. The real nightmare came when we realized viruses and Trojan horses had been downloaded to our computer with the images. We discovered the problem when we found our computer dialing onto the internet on its own, without us even opening the dial-up window! Turns out it had done so many, many times, because the next phone bill came with even more charges. Lucky for us, my lovely wife was able to talk the phone company into dropping the charges and blocking those phone numbers from our phone system. We invested in some heavy-duty firewall and antivirus programs, and the nightmare finally came to an end.

It left me wondering how many others have these problems and are too embarrassed to raise a fuss about it, unwilling to admit that they've been shaking hands with Mr. Johnson to the pervy sort of stuff on those sites.

Well, with pornography still the number one business on the internet, and given the sleazy nature of that business, it shouldn't surprise anyone that a new form of online extortion is being used by those sites.

As reported today on PhysOrg.com (HERE), one porn site (which will remain unnamed) is now offering a free, three-day membership to anyone that wants it. After pressing an approval button and not reading the fine print, the customer does indeed get three free days to "tit"-ilate their senses by viewing women's bits and pieces, but when the three days is up, streams of pop-up windows invade their computer, regardless of whether they are online or offline. The pop-ups won't stay minimized, and remain on top of any other windows. The website then tells the customer – get this! – that they can remove those annoying pop-ups if they pay $80 for a 90-day membership. If they pay, they then can remove the pop-ups with a special file. If they don't pay . . . well, I guess they'd better start liking pop-up windows. I hope their sticky little three-day thrill was worth it.

Oh, how cleverly legal and evil of that porn site! I imagine other sites are already catching on. The victims agreed to this deal when the approved. One can argue that they got what they deserved. But I guess I still feel a tiny bit of pity for them and their lusty libidos. After all, men are horny little devils who can barely control themselves (I should know, being a man). Men are such pigs!

But even if they manage to control their slippery little urges, who knows? Maybe they had a teenage relative come visit and they forgot to engage those parental controls on the computer.

It's been known to happen.

Image taken from HERE.

Goodbye, Nimbus

2007-11-28T09:00:00.000-08:00

Back in 1996, my wife and I had been married only a year when we moved to the state we currently live in. We immediately went to the animal shelter and adopted a kitty cat, a loving, young, dark gray cat that looked like a little rain cloud. We named him Nimbus.

Two nights ago, after 11 years, our little rain cloud passed away, dying quietly at home.

Within a year of first bringing him home, Nimbus developed a case of irritable bowel syndrome. The vet prescribed him steroid pills, without which he would not be able to keep food down. I gave him a pill every night for 10 years. The steroids kept him alive, but they slowly poisoned him, too, until, a month or so ago, he had kidney failure and stopped making new blood cells. Dialysis wasn’t a reasonable option, so we knew the end was coming. I’m just happy he went without pain, at home, and didn’t have to be taken to the vet to be euthanized. He spared us that.

When we brought him home as a kitten, he was so thankful that he went back and forth between our laps, purring and being loved. He could jump incredibly high while chasing ribbons and strings, doing flips and jumping from a sitting position so high his paws would touch the top of a door. Then one day he landed wrong, hurting his leg. He hardly jumped again after that.

Nimbus was a big cat, comparatively, but very much a lap kitty, and would bug me for attention any time I was sitting, particularly if I wanted to read. And he was very soft. He would sleep by my head every night, whether I wanted him to or not. I’ll miss that.

Though we got three other housecats after Nimbus, Nimbus was like our first baby, through six years of infertility treatments, then the adoption of our two children.

He’s being cremated, and I imagine we’ll bury his ashes in the flower bed, near the bird feeder.

Goodbye, my Nimbus. We love you.

Name That Critter

2007-11-25T22:53:00.000-08:00

When intrepid scientists discover a new species, how the heck do they name it? Everything's gotta have a name. After all, science can't describe a species and the implications of its existence by always referring to it as "that onion fly that Dr. Pocketprotector found in Walla Walla" or "that little brown bug".

Most species you'll hear about have a common name (such as the Great White Shark), but because common names differ by region or language, or multiple critters can be called by the same name, all known and identified species have a scientific name which belongs to no other species (such as Carcharodon carcharias). As with nearly everything in science, scientific names have a particular structure to them. Using what is called binomial nomenclature and latinized spelling and (usually) Greek origin, the name has two parts: the first is called the "genus" (which is capitalized), and the second is called the "specific name" or "specific epithet", and is uncapitalized. Both are italicized. The science of identifying and naming life is called Taxonomy.

The genus is usually reserved for known groupings of creatures, but sometimes something is found that is novel enough for a new genus, too. With the specific name, though, anything goes. Scientists usually name the little bugger after some descriptor. For the Great White Shark, the scientific name is derived from the Greek words for "sharp (or jagged) tooth", but names have been made based on words from local languages, people names, or even puns.

For instance, there are at least three species named after Gary Larson, cartoonist for the Far Side, including a beetle, a butterfly, and (my favorite) an owl louse (Strigiphilus garylarsoni). Another is named after an alcohol (the blue agave plant, named Agave tequilana, is what tequila is made from). The chigger, Trombicula fujigmo, is named after the WWII slang for "fuck you, Jack, I got my orders". If you've ever been "bugged" by this irritating pest, you'll know the name fits. HERE is a neat page of other funny or original scientific names. The taxonomist who makes the discovery of the species gets the right to choose the name, but in modern times does not name it after himself. It is accepted practice to name them after someone else. I have personally known taxonomists who named new species of diatoms after each other, for instance. "Hey, Roger, if you name Species X after me, I'll name Species Y after you."

A new trend, though, is auctioning off the right to name a new species. In this day of ever-reduced funding for academics, universities are getting creative for fundraising. Just the other day, a new species of butterfly was named for the winning bid of $40,000:

http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/odd/2007/11/23/ODD.Butterfly.Naming.Rights/

HERE and HERE are the announcements from when the contest started.

The Florida Museum of History discovered a rather large and ornate butterfly (see picture) mislabeled in a collection of other Mexican butterflies. After determining that it was previously unidentified, they announced the contest. On November 22, the winner was announced. The winner, from which the butterfly was named, was the late Margery Minerva Blythe Kitzmiller of Malvern, Ohio, on behalf of her grandchildren. The common name will be the Minerva owl butterfly. The scientific name will be Opsiphanes blythekitzmillerae. Doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, in my opinion, but naming a butterfly after her is a fitting tribute to someone who "wrote poetry, played piano, and sang." Since most butterflies of this size and appearance have likely already been named, and this is the first new species in this particular butterfly family to be named in a century, this is an honor not likely to be repeated anytime soon. Proceeds from the auction will go to research on Mexican butterflies.

But this isn't the first time a little beasty's official name has gone on the auction block. A Bolivian monkey was named for $650,000 in 2005 (by the World Conservation Society), after The Golden Palace.com, an online casino company that won the rights. HERE is a link to the Golden Palace monkey's homepage. I urge you to visit. It's a real "hoot"! And 10 previously unknown fish were named for a total of $2 million just this September, including a shark for $500,000 (article HERE).

What is science coming to? The stuck-up, overeducated scientist in me is appalled, but the snarky lab rat in me is smirking. Before long, academic institutions all over the nation may be opening up Departments of Taxonomy as more of a source of income than for the sake of scientific curiosity.

I wonder if there are any unknown rodents out there that are yet to be identified. Do you think they would name one after me? The common name could be, of course, the Angry Lab Rat, and the scientific name could be Rattus iratuslabus. Kinda rolls off the tongue, if I may say so.

Image taken from HERE.

Turkey Day Drowsiness, But Don't Blame The Gobbler

2007-11-22T00:22:00.000-08:00

Oh, yes! Pass me a wing and pile on the taters, baby! It's Turkey Day!

I have a soft spot for Thanksgiving. After all, believe it or not, I had relatives on the Mayflower, on my paternal grandmother's side of the family. Yes, those fairly clueless Plymouth pilgrims who were my family managed to make it in the new world thanks to Native American friends like Squanto and the Wampanoag Tribe, and were so thankful after their first harvest in 1621 that they fed and entertained the natives for three days, after which the Wampanoags went hunting and returned with 5 deer as a return gift (STORY). I doubt the native peoples would have been so giving had they realized the cultural devastation that would eventually be wrought upon them. I wonder what the Wampanoag word for "sucker" was?

But, hey, who am I kidding? I mainly enjoy having time off (I get today and Friday off, plus the weekend, plus a vacation day on Monday – 5 days!). Time to eat heavy, kick up my feet in front of the tube, let the children run free and crazy, and maybe find time in the ensuing days to do some projects around the house and yard. And you'd better believe there will be naps in there somewhere.

You've probably heard the reason why you're so sleepy after eating all that turkey, right? The story goes that turkey meat contains an abnormally large amount of the amino acid tryptophan, which induces sleepiness by producing the "sleepy" brain chemical serotonin. So, if you eat lots of turkey, you'll be drowsy. For some reason this myth comes out only around Thanksgiving time.

Although it's true that our little gobbling friends do possess a lot of tryptophan, the tryptophan is not easily transported from your bulging, overfed gut to your brain, and even if it makes it to your noggin, you would need to "ingest quite a number of turkeys" to get enough tryptophan to cause drowsiness, according to Dr. Carol Ash of Somerset Medical Center's Sleep for Life Center in Hillsborough, N.J.:

http://www.physorg.com/news114876658.html

More likely, the article says, your post-gluttony sleepiness is the result of overeating, alcohol consumption, and not getting enough sleep in the days before, not to mention sitting on your ass watching people called Jets and Cowboys running up and down a field with an oblong leather ball.

My lovely wife, though, suggested an additional cause for Thanksgiving sleepiness. "Don't forget the poor women who do the cooking have to get up before dawn to start the turkey, prepare all that other food, and finish cleaning the house for all those guests."

But if you still wish to believe those hapless birds are the cause of your snoozing, be my guest. Call it the dinosaurs' revenge (after all, modern birds like the turkey are direct descendants of two-legged dinos like T. rex and velociraptors, as evidenced by the shared "wishbone", or furcula -- STORY).

I'll take a dino wing, please, with my 2000- to 3000-calorie meal. And you'd better warm up the pie. I want it to melt the whipped cream when I eat it.

And if anyone asks, I'm still blaming the gobbler for the naps.

Image taken from HERE.

Science Cartoons!

2007-11-21T00:09:00.000-08:00

I couldn’t pass this up. Below is a link to a webpage with galleries of science-themed cartoons created by the famed Sidney Harris. Enjoy!

http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery.htm

Ever Get That Lost Feeling?

2007-11-17T01:55:00.000-08:00

You know that feeling you get when you know you're lost? I'm not talking about the I-wonder-if-that-was-the-turn sort of lost. I'm talking about the sort of lost where you intended to visit a friend in the suburbs but instead find yourself in the bad part of downtown, and the locals are following you. The sort of lost where fear starts creeping in and you wonder if you'll make it out alive.

I had that happen once. I was backpacking in the Rockies of Idaho, doing work for the Forest Service in a wilderness area there, and found myself suffering Acute Mountain Sickness, though we didn't know what it was at the time. Apparently I'm especially sensitive, as the altitude was only about 8000 feet or so. It started with a buildup of fluid in my lungs, then headache, then fatigue, after having been at that altitude for a day or so, and (luckily) we were headed back down the mountains. My crew and I were on a rather long and hurried hike out of the forest to meet a deadline, so most of them had gone on ahead, leaving my miserably stressed and uncompromising crew leader with me, pushing me to go faster. But my condition deteriorated. I was becoming dizzy and disoriented, and hiking very slowly, sometimes needing help. Frustrated by my slowness, and despite the fact that we had seen black bear cubs disturbingly close to our position (and their mom was surely around), she decided to leave me behind to hike at my own speed. Bothered by her, I decided I'd rather agree than continue dealing with her. Big mistake.

Soon I found that I had left the trail, and backtracking, could not find it again. I had shortness of breath, a feeling of lethargy, and difficulty keeping my footing on loose rock with about 50 pounds of gear on my back. Evening was coming, and all around me were big, snow-covered mountains and valleys of thick forest. At one point I threw myself against a boulder and wondered through blurring eyes whether I'd be able to go on. I did, of course, and eventually found the trail again. Alarmed by my absence, one of my crew members came back to look for me and helped me the last several miles. Once we were at a lower altitude, my symptoms quickly dissipated.

Yesterday it was reported that an 18-foot, 12-ton Minke whale had been found beached 1000 miles up the Amazon River in Brazil:

http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/science/2007/11/16/Brazil.River.Whale/?cvqh=itn_lostwhale

As I write this, intrepid volunteers are trying to keep the whale alive and moist by tossing water on its back and trying to roll it back into the water.

Minke whales live in the ocean, of course, so what the hell is it doing way up in the middle of a jungle? Talk about lost! I wonder what was going through its mind as it swam upstream, its fellow whales long since left behind. Did the fresh water go to its head, the way altitude did to me? Did it beach itself in despair, analogous to how I had thrown myself against that boulder? Or was it just clueless, thinking something like, "Hmm. Did Bob tell me to turn right or left at the coral outcropping? Funny, I don't remember him mentioning anything about piranha. And I'm starving. Bob had better have some krill left for me."

Who knows? But if the big baleen sea mammal makes it back to the ocean alive, won't he feel stupid! I can only imagine the exchange between him and his whale pals:

Bob: "Hey, Minke, where the hell were you? You were supposed to bring the plankton!"

Minke: "Oh, you know, I was passing by Rio de Janiero and decided to stop in and take a closer look at all those thong-wearing human women."

Bob (leaning his blowhole closer for a sniff): "Is that river water I smell on you?"

Update (11/20/07): I'm happy to report our lost little whale in the Amazon is alive and doing well, thanks to the hard work of volunteers (updated news article HERE). Folks have pulled him off the shore and into a penned area in the shallows. Soon, Mr. Minke won't even have to swim back to the ocean – he'll have a ride on a boat, because there are "too many tributaries that could confuse him." Lucky for Mr. Minke, the world's largest river has people with the largest heart, or at least they've got a love for large-ish sea mammals. It's okay, Mr. Minke. Don't blubber. We know you appreciate them….

First image taken from HERE.

Second image taken from HERE and courtesy of AP.

Move Over, Sol, There's A New Kid In The Solar System

2007-11-15T23:16:00.000-08:00

The sun is no longer the largest celestial body in our solar system.

That's right, something's bigger than the sun. Is it Saturn? Not even close. Jupiter? Keep dreamin'. The skyrocketing deficit of the United States? Almost.

No, it's a comet.

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/faculty/jewitt/holmes.html

But not just any comet. This one is an exploding comet, named 17P/Holmes. The comet's nucleus is a mere 2.2 miles in diameter, but explosive outbursting has created a dust cloud coma an amazing 900,000 miles in diameter. It's elementary, Watson. The sun's diameter is only 870,000. As of November 9, as detected by astronomers from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, comet Holmes became the largest celestial object in our general vicinity, and the comet dust cloud is expanding. (see the bright blue-colored dust cloud compared to the sun in the picture. In the lower right inset is the planet Saturn, for comparison). In October, Holmes had an explosive outburst that created an unprecedented half-million-fold increase in brightness.

Oh, sure, 17P/Holmes will only be around for another five, six years, tops, then the dust cloud will dissipate as the comet moves away from the sun and the sun will return to being the king of the solar system. Numero uno. The burning king of fusion. And what is this comet upstart, anyhow? A big cloud of dust? A flashy upstart? Old Sol laughs in its general direction. Why, if it weren't for the sun's heat, the comet's cloud wouldn't even be there, and 17P/Holmes would be just another tiny snowball hurtling through space.

Enjoy your size while it lasts, Holmes! One day you'll be tiny again, and you will be banished to the depths of space for another 100 years!

The Privy Prop

2007-11-09T23:01:00.000-08:00

Go ahead, call me sexist, but one tiny thing that bothers me is the belief that men are indecent for not lowering the frickin' toilet seat when they're done pissing so that the women of the household won't "fall in" or have to lower it for themselves.

Gasp! How could I not be a gentleman?? I'm flushed with embarrassment.

Hey, shake it off, gals. This is supposed to be an enlightened time when the feminist movement has declared men and women to be equal. Oh, sure, women still have to fight the good fight, what with discrepancies in pay and promotions and such, but can't you at least give up the stupid toilet thing? This practice is circling the drain, like opening doors for women or pulling out a chair for them at restaurants.

You know what? How about we reverse the expectations on this one and have men start insisting that women raise the seat after they've gone "wee"?

I don't know about you, but I cringe every time I have to grab the seat and raise it. What kind of poo kooties are lurking there on the porcelain where my thumb and fingers touch it? Ew! Oh, sure, I wash my hands every time when I've finished. Still – yuck! Let's let women do some of that nasty touching for a change.

So I've had my heart set on one day getting one of those fancy toilets you hear about now and then with automated seat-raising and lowering buttons (along with stupid stuff like built-in radios and such). But those are out of my price range. I've heard about little handles you can glue onto the seat, but in my paranoid little mind I still imagine poo-contaminated flush-air wafting over it with each flush, and those aren't exactly available at the local department store.

Now, through the imaginative mind of a 9-year old boy named Jake Wulf, we have a solution: the "Privy Prop."

Story: http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/odd/2007/11/03/ODD.Privy.Prop/

Tired of being hounded by his mother to lower the toilet seat, this innovative little boy saw one of those step-lever trash cans and decided to design a similar device for toilet seats. With a little help from his dad (an equipment designer) and using a school "Invention Convention", he successfully built a working prototype. Just step on a lever and the seat raises. Step off, and it lowers. His prototype won the contest and went on to a regional competition, then was featured at the Iowa State Fair. After word got out about it, the Ellen Degeneres Show called and had him on air today.

Not bad, little Jake! One small squirt for Man-kind. Unfortunately, the family apparently has no intention to patent or mass-produce the device. We'll see.

Personally, I'd love to have one. No more poo-kooties on my delicate digits.

Oh, by the way, our family's "default" toilet position is with both the seat and the lid lowered. Sigh.

Now China Is Giving Date-Rape Drugs To Children

2007-11-08T23:08:00.000-08:00

I'm shaking my head right now. How many Chinese products need to be recalled because of lead poisoning, dangerous swallowable magnets, or faulty construction before our industry leaders and government officials realize they are slowly turning our children into mindless lead-poisoned vegetables one drooling lick of an Elmo doll at a time? The recalls just keep on comin'.

Yes, you have likely heard the most recent deadly Chinese toys to come to our Dollar Store and Wal-Mart shelves.

First, there are the Aqua Dots (CNN article). These lovely, candy-colored beads are an arts and crafts dream and oh-so-edible-looking. Your trusting, naïve small child can arrange them in whatever colored patterns they like on a nifty grid then spray them with water, and the glue coatings on them instantly glue them together into a semi-permanent craft project to be treasured by proud parents everywhere. Why, it's so novel, it was named Toy Of The Year in Australia. The only problem is that the supposedly inert glue is actually a chemical which, when ingested, gets metabolized into the date-rape drug gamma-hydroxy butyrate, commonly called GHB. That's right, a few of these beads, when ingested, become the equivalent of a rapist's dream. But overdosing, which happened to a number of children here and in Australia, leads to vomiting and coma. Luckily, no children have yet died. Apparently the manufacturer had not intended this chemical be used; it was the bright idea of the Hong Kong manufacturer to use it and save themselves some cash. And where, exactly, could one purchase these beads, prior to the recall of all 4.2 million units of them? One outlet is, you guessed it, Wal-Mart, lover of all things Chinese, cheap, and plastic.

Oh, it doesn't stop there! Today, two more recalls were announced. Dangerously high levels of lead were found in the faces of 175,000 Curious George dolls and in some 51,000 Dollar Store children's sunglasses. Lead poisoning in Chinese children's products? It's becoming such a skipping record hardly anyone is noticing anymore. Hell, I'm actually so wary now that I'm refusing to buy Chinese-made products for my kids. Of course, Chinese products are so commonplace now it's almost impossible to avoid them.

But wait! Don't we have a Consumer Product Safety Commission to oversee that these things don't happen to our lovely little nearly-toxin-free children? Why, yes we do! The only problem (and here's another skipping record!) is that the commission that is supposed to oversee our safety is headed by someone who comes from the very industries they are supposed to regulate (ARTICLE). Acting chairperson Nancy Nord, appointed by President Bush, is a former lobbyist for Eastman-Kodak and the leader of a consumer lawyer organization. Her predecessor, Hal Stratton, was also accused of unbecoming ties to Industry. She has opposed extending more protections to whistleblowers as well as better reporting of faulty products to the public. Prominent Congressional Democrats are calling for her resignation, in part for failing to stop these waves of faulty and toxic Chinese products, and in part for scandals on her part for conflicts of interest with Industry, including 30 trips paid for in part or in full by consumer industries to such locations as China, Spain, and a golf resort at Hilton Head, S.C. The fox is running the henhouse, folks.

Oh well. At least all these toxic products make us belatedly realize the benefits of governmental checks and balances and good, old fashioned, high quality American-made products. I just fear how many more children will be poisoned before our industries finally pull out of China.

Creep at Nightclub: "Hey, Baby! What ya drinkin'?"

Attractive and Tipsy Lady: (covering her drink) "I'm watching you, Buddy. I don't trust you any more than I'd trust a Bush appointee."

Creep: (acting hurt) "What? I'm just asking! Really, you can trust me. Here, I've brought this nifty arts and crafts project we can do together…."

Update (11/9/07): (LINK) Today China announced that it had suspended export of AquaDots and had started a thorough investigation. This comes as seven other children in the United States have fallen ill. The dots were supposed to have been coated with the nontoxic compound 1,5-pentanediol but had instead been coated with 1,4-butanediol, which metabolizes to GHB when ingested. 1,4-butanediol is 4- to 5-times less expensive.

Update (11/10/07): HERE is a news video where a mom tells what happened when her toddler swallowed just a few of these AquaDots.

Image taken from HERE.

Goodbye To A Language Pioneer

2007-11-06T22:24:00.000-08:00

I love it when the natural world thumbs its nose at Mankind's egotism. Consider, for instance, the belief that out of all the animal kingdom only humans are advanced enough to communicate beyond random grunts, territorial chirping, and mating calls. The more science studies animal communication, the more we realize how very complex their languages are. Dolphins and whales are a common example. But even there we like to believe that their language is restricted only to communicating that they're hungry, or horny, or found a good patch of krill. How could we possibly know they aren't waxing poetic about the place of dolphin-kind in the universe? Are we prepared to believe they may have complex thought? Could they even be more advanced than we are in some manner? Sacrilege!

In fact, I'm willing to believe that some animals consider us as being below them. If you don’t agree, ask any cat owner.

A week ago, the world lost the first non-human animal to prove us wrong.

Story: http://www.blogger.com/www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/10/31/signing.chimp.dies.ap/index.html

Washoe was a chimpanzee who, in 1966, became the first primate to be taught American Sign Language. Previous attempts to teach chimps how to verbally communicate all ended in failure. But chimps communicate with gestures in the wild. Why not train them as if they were a deaf human baby? What would be the result? The little chimpanzee immediately began picking up our language, signing the word "toothbrush" when she saw the implement in a bathroom, for instance.

By the time she died on October 30 after a short illness, at the long-lived age of 42, Washoe had a vocabulary of 250 words and had taught sign language to each of her four children (who are 29 to 31 years of age now). She has been housed at the University of Washington's Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute, where a memorial service will be held on November 12.

Here is a website for the organization that oversaw Washoe and continues to study and take care of her offspring, "Friends of Washoe": http://www.friendsofwashoe.org/.

Washoe was only the first. Likely you have heard of Koko, the signing gorilla (HERE), who, like Washoe, regularly communicates complex thoughts and emotions and has been the continuing source of fascinating studies, documentaries, and articles.

But, hey, Mankind is still God's chosen children. Right? Right??

Sometimes I wonder if the world might be better run by chimps. Sure, they fight each other now and then, but when I read the headlines on any given day I really wonder which is the higher primate. Besides, chimps have sex just to say "hi". That can't be a bad sign.

So what is Washoe's legacy? Simply put, she put us in our place. For the first time one species learned to communicate with another species using their own language. That's monumental! After a year of French in high school and another year of German in college, I still couldn't hold a conversation in either language, and that was with members of my own species.

And what were Washoe's last words? I'd love to find out, but I'm willing to guess it was something to the effect of, "Humans so dumb. Can't learn single word in Chimpanzee!"

Yep, I'm A Loser, But You Still Read Me

2007-11-06T21:11:00.000-08:00

God damn! Where the hell have I been for over a month??

After my long hiatus, during which I have settled into a far less stressful and time-consuming job at the same evil global biotech company and divested myself from a increasingly distracting non-profit volunteerism, I am now able to turn my attention back to -- well -- YOU! And the wonderful world of science news, of course.

Yet, despite having been gone from the bloggosphere, my site actually is still getting hits. 230 yesterday, for instance! Go figure. You guys will read anything, I suppose!

Anyhow, I've been amassing lots of good stuff for you, so here goes . . . .

I've Been Interviewed

2007-09-21T22:39:00.000-07:00

I must be famous. I've been interviewed by BlogInterviewer.com. Here is the published interview:

http://bloginterviewer.com/education/angry-lab-rat-anonymous

When you visit, be sure to cast a vote for me. The top three blogs with the most votes receive $25, $15, and $10 respectively at the end of the month.

Yowsa! I'd be rich. Rich, I say!

And The Winning Hole Is ....

2007-09-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

Back in June I published a post on some rather . . . um, how do I put this . . . novel methods of extracting a patient's gall bladder from the body. Instead of slicing open the abdominal cavity, leading to significant pain, scarring, possible infection, and slow healing, some doctors decided it would be a better method to pull the organ out through an already-existing orifice. Yes, choosing a hole already made in your body. Less scarring that way, quicker healing, and less pain. Which orifices do you think they chose? There are only so many you can choose from! The question is, which of your holes do you respect the most?

Doctors considered removing the gall bladder from the anus. That would be one hell of a dump! But, sadly, they apparently rejected the idea.

Instead, one set of doctors removed a patient's gall bladder through the mouth (HERE). Yum!

Another set of doctors removed another patient's gall bladder through (drum roll, please) her vagina (HERE)! Yow! Congratulations, it's a bouncing baby bladder!

Yet, for some odd reason, these options just haven't caught on in the medical world. Gee, I wonder why?

Well, now a different hole has been tried, and it's catching on. More and more hospitals are pursuing it. Quick! Run over in your mind which hole you think it is – I'll wait.

Did you figure it out? I'll give you another moment.

Yes, it's the belly button. That wonderful little spot in your rotund tummy which serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever after the day you are born.

HERE is a video of news footage on the procedure.

Is yours an "inny" or an "outy"? Well, it doesn't really matter when you want to have large organs yanked from your innards to your outards.

So far, surgeons have removed not only a gall bladder through this half-inch incision, but, according to the video, an ovary, a uterus, kidneys, a spleen, and an appendix, and have performed corrective surgery on a hernia and a colon.

I don't know about you, but I'm a bit relieved. I would MUCH rather have organs come out that way than through the other holes.

So the next time you're in the shower and look down at that little hole of yours (no, not THAT hole, you nasty person! Your belly button!), give it an extra little soapy scrub. You never know, it may not have finished serving its purpose on the first day you breathed!

Yes, I'm Alive!

2007-09-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

Oh man, have I been gone a long time or what?! My life has suddenly become a swirl of new job, a business trip, children, home chores, and a non-profit organization I'm in that's in chaos. Ugg.

But hey! You haven't lost me yet. I'm still kickin', as hairy and smelly as always! Time to get back to the blogosphere!

The World's Largest Bubble Bath

2007-08-29T18:49:00.000-07:00

I love bubble baths. I've loved them ever since I was a little boy and my mom would put Mr. Bubble bubble bath powder in my tub. It was pink!

I'm still a kid inside, and I put the same fruity purple bubble bath gel in my baths as I put in the baths of my little children (do they still make Mr. Bubble??). Why not? And besides, my bathtub is ridiculously shallow, such that when it is filled to nearly overflowing, my big gut still sticks out of the water. Having bubbles around gives me a sort of "insulation", keeping my gut warm. Now isn't that handy? And I have the added bonus of coming out of my bath smelling like grape jelly.

But somehow I don't get the same fuzzy, silly feeling when I saw this little news clip, but I still think it's way cool. Nature has made the world's largest bubble bath:

http://www.comcast.net/providers/fan/popup.html?v=489416179&pl=490651047.xml&config=%2Fconfig%2Fcommon%2Ffan%2Fhome%2Exml

Just north of Sydney, Australia, the ocean produced a rare phenomenon. A stretch of some 30 miles of beaches and shoreline businesses were inundated with massive amounts of sea foam produced, according to oceanographers, by natural processes of sea salt and plant decomposition.

Now THAT'S a bubble bath!

But it still doesn't seem complete to me if it doesn't have a fruity scent.

An Experiment On Memory Retention

2007-08-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

I'm busy preparing for my new job these days, a job I'll start in less than a week. Other than organizing and packing eight and a half year's worth of office crap and moving it from one building to another in some semblance of planned chaos, preparation requires only one thing: STUDY.

My company sells nearly 3000 products, not counting the ones sold at other sites globally, and I will have to know or be able to retrieve obscure facts about nearly every one of them at a moment's notice to help the customers. The one best way to do this is to read and be able to regurgitate the product literature, especially the tome-like company handbook that we distribute to customers.

It's over a thousand pages long.

I have one of the worst memories of anyone I know, at least for common day-to-day stuff. If I have to shop for more than three things in one trip, I'd better write a list or I'll have hell to pay from my lovely wife, who never ceases to remind me of my particular handicap, especially if I go to the store for cheese and come back with four bags of not-cheese groceries. My memory is better for work-related topics, but not exactly stellar, and though my long years of developing products has given me a strong basis of wisdom to grow from, it is still a daunting task to absorb so much product data.

I was thinking about this tonight as I pulled out my company handbook, when my wife proudly exclaimed that she had just finished the 759th (and last) page of the final book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Then it occurred to me how one might better be able to retain large amounts of data: Fiction.

Children's books do it all the time – teach lessons by incorporating them into the text and pictures of a fiction book.

I told my fantastic idea to my wife, and she immediately scoffed at the idea. "An adult ought to be able to study information without having to have it in story form." But I wonder. I can recall exquisite details about nearly every book of fiction I have ever read. It seems most any Harry Potter fan out there can do the same. Just ask one what Lord Voldemort's real name is, the name of the spell that scares away the Dementors, or who Mrs. Norris is.

So I am devising a test, and I'm wondering what you think of it. As a writer of fiction, I imagine I could convert your average textbook chapter into a reasonable story that contains the same facts. Of course it would be much longer in order to accommodate all the data plus a tolerable plot and dialogue, but I'd be willing to read extra if I was sure it would help me retain the info. My test would have one group of volunteers read a couple textbook pages, and I would have another test group read a work of fiction which contains the same information plus some sort of reasonable plotline. Sure, it wouldn't be able to compete with J.K. Rowling, but I'd bet that incorporating the data this way would allow it to be better processed in our brains. I'd then test the volunteers on what they read just after the reading, a day after, and a week after, to determine the retention rate. I'd put my money on the fiction-readers.

Do you agree? Would you volunteer for this test?

Image taken from HERE.

Now I've Gone And Done It!

2007-08-19T00:46:00.000-07:00

I've finally done it. It became official last Friday. I've managed to escape the oblivion of being the eternal lab tech by leaving my job for a slightly better one which has nothing to do whatsoever with developing cutting edge new science products or experimentation into the Great Unknown. I start in a week.

Oh, don't worry, you Angry Lab Rat blogophiles, you eager readers of biotech woes and ponderings in breaking science news, I am still with the same evil global biotech conglomerate, assimilators of all smaller companies that have anything at all even somewhat similar to our products. "We are the Borg. You will be assimilated." And I'll still be blogging to you on the exciting world of science news and oddities.

I didn't even have to move to change jobs. In this industry, the best way to get a promotion and raise is to move to another company. But I don't care to move. Rather, I've chosen the second-best method: I've changed departments.

Technically I won't be a "lab rat" any more, as I'll be hanging up my lab coat for a long time, possibly forever, though in some circles I'll still be considered a scientist.

I've left the comfy confines of my lab bench and corner office in the R&D department and taken up residence in a cubicle. Yes, I said cubicle. I didn't think it possible, a few years ago I would have scoffed at the idea, but I am now even more a part of Dilbertworld, awash in computer hell and dealing directly with customers as a technical assistance person. You know the ones, the people you call when your product craps out, fails to meet expectations, or completely befuddled you because you didn't bother to read the product manual. Why bother reading such a long document when you'd rather have the pleasure of listening to canned music while waiting on the phone to ask a live person? Well, now I'm that person. And, no, I don't work in India. At least, not yet. [My evil global biotech company has a facility in India (and in China, too!), but so far they've only outsourced our R&D work, oddly enough].

Yes, I'll be The Helpful Guy, like the ones you see on TV commercials for computer or phone companies, headset placed firmly on the temples, smiling and perky (and usually female), answering in a pleasant yet competent voice, "Technical Services. How may I help you today?" When you see them on TV, you get the feeling that they must be morning people, as happy-go-lucky as June Cleaver, and the sort that goes home to read product manuals while listening to fizzy 80's pop rock. If that persona is what makes you feel good about talking to me, be my guest. If you call me, feel free to imagine my appearance any way you wish. No, I'm not short, fat, and extremely hairy. Are you kidding? Think Brad Pitt, baby! Really, I couldn't possibly be exaggerating. It's a good thing all you'll experience is my voice. If you saw me in person, you'd have to jump my bones. That could make answering your technical question difficult, to say the least.

I'm reading your mind right now. I know what you're thinking. I have that super power. It's what will make me good at my new job. Some of you are wondering what parasite crawled into my noggin and affected my judgment. Or you're wondering how many solvents I've been sniffing in the lab. Or you think I've simply lost my mind.

These are valid concerns. But losing one's sanity can be relieving, in a sort of escapist way. Solvents don't bother you once they burn away your nasal membranes. And brain parasites only hurt when they bore through the skull; once they're in the brain you don't feel them any more.

Think of all the aspects I'm losing: a nice office all to myself, a couple active lab benches, the chance to play with really cool and expensive instrumentation, the snooty glamor of being able to claim I'm a "scientist", and, oh yeah, the ability to invent and develop cutting-edge technologies to help the scientists of the world make the next breakthrough discovery.

It's that last point that led me to get into biotech to begin with. Unfortunately, the way programs are currently run at my company makes innovation very very difficult for folks in my position. And in the past two years changes in the company and my role in it have actually pushed me back about, oh, four years in my career development, to the point that lab rats like myself almost never have the ability to make programs of their own innovative ideas. It makes me feel a tad bit like Harry Potter living at the Dursley's, afraid to show even a hint of my true nature for fear of being beaten back into bland submission. Add to that the extreme overload of work and the expectation that, despite having a family, you should work late hours, come in at night, and work on the weekends in order to meet expectations. No thanks. Been there. I've served my time. This will be the first job I've ever had with set hours: 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, Monday - Friday. Pinch me, I'm dreaming.

Sure, I'll be in a cubicle and dealing with the occasional clueless or even mean customers, and I'll have to be able to pull random specific details out of my ass about any of the nearly 3000 products my company sells within a few minutes of answering the phone (or email) for whatever obscure method the customer is using, but I'm willing to take it for the chance to come home at a reasonable hour and have free weekends, for the same pay and benefits, and working with a close-knit team.

And there's another great benefit: I will become The Great Guru.

. . . at least about my company and its products. After eight and a half years of working at my company, I know a great many details about the products, many dozens of which I invented, developed, or been part of R&D teams on. But that pales in comparison to the huge expanse of additional knowledge I will gain in only a couple years of answering random questions and coming up with correct answers about any of our products, and getting PAID to learn as much as I can about them, and the wide myriad of differing techniques our customers use them for. This is precisely why people who go into my company's Technical Services department go on to business management, program management, and R&D group leadership positions within the company. They are The Great Gurus of the company, without whom my company would suffer. And you'd better believe they get paid a whole lot more than I make now. The two folks who returned to R&D after being in Tech Services for a few years are now walking encyclopedias worshipped by other R&D staff. When one recently threatened to leave the company, the company leadership (one of whom had also been in Tech Services at one point) bent over backward to keep him, giving him a sizable increase in salary and a special position invented just for him so he would stay.

That makes a cubicle seem a LOT more appealing. I wouldn't mind being worshipped a little.

Besides, the Tech Services folks get free donuts. I'm a sucker for free food.

Images adapted from HERE and HERE.

Will It Ever End?

2007-08-15T13:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, for the second time in a week, another massive recall has been issued for Chinese-made toys. This time it is for 11 million (yes, million) toys which have been contaminated with lead-based paint or have small, swallow-able magnets:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/14/recall/index.html

Included in the recall are “Sarge” character products from the movie “Cars” as well as Polly brand toys.

These were made by a different Chinese manufacturer than the previously-recalled toys (as I reported in my last post, a co-owner of that company hung himself in a warehouse over the issue).

Also, an unknown number of Chinese-made vinyl baby bibs have been recalled due to high lead content:

http://www.redding.com/news/2007/may/03/wal-mart-issues-vinyl-bib-recall/

These bibs date back to 2004, and have 16-times the amount of lead allowed in lead-based paint, which is already very toxic. Hell, you might as was well use it as a fishing sinker with that sort of lead content. The lead is there as a “stabilizer” and can only cause harm if the bib is compromised. So your baby would have to have teeth and gnaw on a new bib to get poisoned, but if the bib is old and worn, or ripped, well, let’s just say he’ll be riding on the short bus later, if he survives. These bibs are predominantly sold through Wal-Mart.

Gee. Why am I not surprised.

Heck, it seems if you buy crappy Chinese-made toys and baby products, you might as well just tell your kid to chew on some lead pipes and get it over with.

“Here you go, Sweety. I got this from under the kitchen sink. Scrape it with your teeth, now! That’s a good boy.”

So let’s say you discover one of your kid’s brightly-colored Diego toys is lead-contaminated. What do you do? It’s the love of his life. The gleam in his eye. He plays with it, shows it off, sleeps with the frickin’ thing. How could you possibly be so cruel as to remove it??? Lucky you, there’s now a quick guide: HERE.

It’s a sad state of affairs, I think, when Chinese-made toy recalls have become so prominent that CNN releases a “how-to” on how take a toy from your baby. But that’s the world we live in.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go unscrew one of my lead pipes from the kitchen ….

Update (8/17/07): Now Toys-R-Us has pulled Chinese-made vinyl baby bibs from its shelves due to the lead content (STORY).

Images adapted from HERE and HERE.

Chinese Suicide And Cute Furry Monsters

2007-08-13T14:29:00.000-07:00

Unless you’ve been living in a cave in Afghanistan, chances are you’ve heard about the numerous and increasing examples of recalled products from Chinese manufacturers. I recently posted a list of many of these toxic, hazardous, or misleading product warnings, everything from tires, to toothpaste, to toys. It seems China is trying to kill us.

Then it seemed they were trying to kill each other, when they executed their food and drug chief over these scandals and the bribes he was taking. Another official, who was at the heart of the recent dog food melamine poisonings, has been detained and may face the same fate.

Now they’re killing themselves:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/08/13/china.toymaker.ap/index.html

One of the most recent massive Chinese product recalls was for 967,000 Elmo, Big Bird, Diego, and Dora toys that had been painted with lead-based paint. Any children who may have stuck these toys in their mouth could have poisoned themselves, causing vomiting, anemia, learning disabilities, neurological conditions, or even death. I’ve paid close attention to this one, given that I have two small children who love those products with a cult-like devotion.

But I haven’t heard of any children actually known to be injured by these toys.

Nonetheless, Zhang Shuhong, co-owner of the Chinese company that manufactured these toys, Lee Dur Industry Company, hung himself in one of his warehouses this weekend. According to the article, it is common for disgraced officials to kill themselves in China. Hell, it’s probably better than letting the government execute you!

I can only guess what was going through his mind at the time of his death (other than a sudden desire to breathe and a wish that he’d used cheaper rope). Doubtless Zhang had lamented his role in potentially poisoning thousands of children to make better profits, though, ironically, it was his best friend, the paint manufacturer, who is probably the source of the issue. Had Zhang known the paint had lead? It remains to be seen. If he’d been in America, he would have simply professed ignorance and blamed his best friend. It’s the American way, don’t you know.

Now, being the father of young children who fawn over everything that bears the likeness of Elmo and Diego, I suspect there may be another cause to Zhang’s suicide: Elmo Overload.

Yes, overload of all things Elmo. Nothing new to parents with small children, only magnified. Can you imagine it? Going to work, day in and day out, seeing the little red monster everywhere you look, hearing that high-pitched laugh with every movement of every crate. Heck, he probably dreamed about Elmo. Only in his dreams the little beastie’s fur was probably blood-red, it’s laugh echoing across the caverns of his mind, its silly little voice chanting demonic curses. What’s the number of the day, Zhang? 666! It’s enough to drive a man to suicide.

I’m guessing Zhang isn’t the last Chinese official to face death over these scandals and recalls, either at their own hands or those of the government.

In the meantime, I recommend checking the source of your imported products. Oh, and don’t go sucking on any Diego toys, okay?

Image taken from HERE.

A Missing Meteorite, Aliens, And The Largest Impact Ever

2007-08-10T12:39:00.000-07:00

Get this. A meteorite weighing over 3 tons has gone missing:

http://www.physorg.com/news105962110.html

The gigantic meteorite was found on a 2004 expedition to investigate the famed Tunguska Event, a massive explosion over remote Siberia back in 1908 that was 1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima H-bomb explosion. No one has satisfactorily explained the explosion, and theories abound: everything from a meteorite to a miniature black hole. It leveled trees for 830 square miles. The strangest thing is that the explosion happened 5 to 10 kilometers above the surface of the earth.

The gigantic meteorite was housed in the yard of the Tunguska Event Foundation in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, and went missing in June during a move to a new facility. How does a 3 ton stone get stolen? Not easily.

Oh, but the story gets much, much more interesting…..

Foundation director Yury Lavbin had led the expedition that found the meteor. On that expedition, he also claimed to have found the remains of – drumroll please – an alien spacecraft!

http://www.physorg.com/news819.html

After revising the trajectory of the Tunguska meteor based on new data, Lavbin and his colleagues were able to trace more precisely where any meteoric debris would wind up. What they found in that location was a large, “blocklike” object made of gray, shiny metal. They managed to chip off a piece of it and conducted metallurgical analysis. From the article: “Preliminary analyses show that it is a compound of iron silicate with unknown material.” Follow-up studies continue.

Fascinating. Remember, scientists must, by practice, keep an open mind about things. Even though UFO’s seem outlandish, there is lots of evidence every year in photographs, video, credible witness testimonials, and even trace evidence which would lead me to believe there is something very real going on that cannot easily be explained. Certainly a lot more evidence than, say, a belief in God, for instance. But I'll reserve my belief until he presents his findings in some peer-reviewed publication, or actually presents his "spacecraft debris" to the doubting public.

And I think it’s a little too soon to go around saying that aliens collided with a meteor to save Earth, eh?

Addendum: THIS website provides a skeptical UFOlogist’s view of the whole UFO claim. In it he carefully lays out his rationale for doubting the claim unless better evidence is put forward. I’m inclined to agree.

Saving Bridges With Chip Flavorings

2007-08-07T17:25:00.000-07:00

I’m not a huge fan of potato chips. For one thing, I have an MSG allergy. Eating even a tiny amount of synthetic MSG gives me a raging migraine that can last for days, and nearly all brands of potato chips include it. But of the few varieties of chips that I can eat, one of my favorite flavors is salt and vinegar. Oh yes, salty, crispy, tangy. Snap, baby! But do the chip companies actually pour vinegar over the potatoes? No, they add flavoring in the form of sodium acetate.

Now a Jordanian researcher has found a very interesting use for this puckering chemical: concrete sealant!

http://www.physorg.com/news105695773.html

Concrete is very porous and breaks down when water enters all those pours, rusting out the steel innards and, during cold weather, freezing, expanding, and cracking the concrete.

Awni Al-Otoom of the Jordan University of Science and Technology coated concrete with sodium acetate. Sodium acetate, normally a crystal, swells when contacting water. Thus when he applied the water, the sodium acetate at once absorbs the water and blocks further entry of those water molecules into the concrete through that pore. Ingenious. When it dries, the crystal dries too, opening the pore and allowing water that got through to evaporate out. The study is detailed in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.

This is, of course, of particular timely interest given the dramatic destruction of the bridge in Minneapolis. Was concrete fatigue at fault? Probably not given it was a mostly-steel bridge, but who can say for sure at this time, since there were concrete portions?

So, in the future, you may be able to cross bridges knowing that the flavor of your chips is protecting your ass as you cross.

I wonder if, as you are crossing, you stop and lick the concrete, would it taste like your salt-and-vinegar chips?

Image taken from HERE.

Yep, Still Due To Morons

2007-08-06T15:21:00.001-07:00

If you’ve read this blog for long, you know my fascination with a mud volcano in Indonesia called Lusi (HERE was my last post on it). Lusi erupted in May 2006 after morons from a natural gas drilling operation called Lapindo Brantas drilled a borehole without adequately protecting the hole from collapsing the surrounding strata. As a result, hot water and mud shot up through their hole to form a continuously bubbling mud volcano.

The mud from that volcano has now submerged 10 square kilometers, displaced up to 30,000 people, covered homes, highways, train rails, and factories, and resulted in the death of 13 people when a natural gas line exploded. Repeated attempts to staunch the flow have all failed, including diverting the mud to rivers and throwing down gigantic concrete balls and chains. Nature has refused all attempts.

Lapindo Brantas has attempted to claim that the volcano was not due to their own stupidity, but rather to an earthquake that happened a couple days before.

Now a geologist (Professor Richard Davies of Durham University's Centre for Research into Earth Energy Systems) has shown conclusively that their earthquake argument is full of hot air (or hot natural gas if you like):

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070731125741.htm

The report was published in the journal GSA Today.

I love it when morons in positions of authority get caught trying to worm their way out of responsibility. This study ought to be the last nail in the coffin for Lapindo, who is trying to get out of paying for the damages by claiming the volcano was “natural.”

But look on the bright side, Lapindo. Maybe you could open a mud spa resort!

Brought Back To Consciousness

2007-08-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

Six years ago a man was assaulted and brain-injured to the point of being put into a minimally-conscious state, unable to eat, and only able to intermittently communicate using slight movements of his eyes or thumbs. Recently, scientists put electrodes in his brain and, through the miracle of mild electrocution, have given him a partial recovery:

Article: http://www.physorg.com/news105194778.html

Scientific abstract from the journal Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v448/n7153/abs/nature06041.html

The 38-year old patient, whose name was not given, now has the ability to speak a few breathy words at a time when asked for a reply, and has recited the first half of the Pledge of Allegiance. He can chew now, so they took out his feeding tube and can feed him the normal way. And he can make more complex movements with his hands and arms, though his tendons and muscles have atrophied from lack of use over the years. To do this, the scientists inserted electrodes and gave electrical stimulation in short sessions. Now he is stimulated constantly.

I would love to know what his first words were, but I could hazard a guess. Here's a top-ten list of things I might want to say if I were in his shoes:

1. "What the hell are you doing to my f*ckin' head?"

2. "Scratch my back, quick! Ahhh!! That's been itching for years!

3. "Get me a bacon cheeseburger, and make it snappy! I don't know how long this will last!"

4. "I've been staring at a blank ceiling for six years. Hang some posters of pin-up models, already."

5. "We're at war in Iraq? I thought the idea was to fight Osama bin Laden?"

6. "So how does Harry Potter end?"

7. "Damn, I'm horny! Let's electrically stimulating something else.…"

8. "Would it kill you to put a TV in here? I've been SOOOO bored!"

9. "How about lowering the voltage a little? My fillings are sparking."

10. "George W. Bush is still president?? Quick, put me back under!"

Be Stung By Jellyfish -- For Fun!

2007-08-01T00:20:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a desire to help science – as a human guinea pig? No? Oh, come on, you know there's an inkling in there that you'd like to subject yourself to some sort of diabolical testing for the betterment of mankind. Heck, you don't have to be a starving college student to enjoy the subtle pleasures of being exposed to strange pills, electroshock experimentation, dietary disruptions, or psychological manipulations for laughable compensations.

Consider, if you will, a recent call for volunteers to be stung by jellyfish:

http://cosmeticsdesign-europe.com/news-by-product/news.asp?id=78577&idCat=0&k=AC-suncare-Nidaria-Technology-sunscreen-jellyfish

Another source of the story: HERE

Norwegian researchers at the University of Oslo are looking for volunteers to help them test a sunscreen that can also repel jellyfish stings.

From the article: "The study, sponsored by AC Suncare, a Norwegian sun care company and manufacturer of the product, will test the efficacy of an anti-jellyfish sting sunscreen developed by Nidaria, an Israeli technology company." The protectant is mucus-like in consistency and is supposed to mimic the protective coating on clownfish, which live in the tentacles of stinging anemones without being harmed.

As long as you are over 18, not pregnant, asthmatic, or have skin allergies or diseases, you can sign up. Oh, and you have to be hairless on your inner arms. Seeing as how I'm as hairy as a frickin' caveman, I guess that leaves me out. Shucks. But maybe YOU could still sign up, eh?

Should you join their research, one of your arms will be coated in regular sunscreen and the other will be coated with sunscreen plus jellyfish protectant. Then – oh lucky you – both arms will be subjected to stinging jellyfish tentacles. That's 2000 stinging jellyfish needles for every square millimeter of your supple flesh that comes in contact with a tentacle. I can just see you willingly lowering your arms into a giant tank packed with pulsating jellyfish.

When I was about 13 years old, my family and I traveled to Panama Beach, Florida, on vacation. On my first dip into the ocean, I waded off the bone-white beach into the surf. Literally the second wave to hit me, some sort of jellyfish wrapped around me and then washed away. Instantly I was hit by blinding pain. Looking down at my torso, I saw red whelps developing, front and back. It was as if someone was shoving about a thousand red-hot ice picks into my quivering teenage skin. I shouted to my mother and managed to make it back to the beach. Knowing the secret of how to treat such stings, my stepfather ran to a nearby store and bought a container of meat tenderizer, then ran back. Mixing the meat tenderizer powder with water into a paste and applying it to the whelps, the pain quickly dissipated. A decade later, I learned why. The enzymes in the meat tenderizer, which are used to break down the protein matrix of meat to make it tender, also broke down the proteins that caused the stinging sensation. Now, having experienced jellyfish stings, I can say I would rather not re-experience the sensation – over and over again – even in the name of science.

And what, per se, do the intrepid volunteers of this study get in compensation for their sufferings? Good pay? A glamorous all-expenses paid trip to Oslo? A night with beautiful Norwegian women?

Not even close: Three bottles of anti-jellyfish sunscreen.

Wow! Let's not get too extravagant! Hell, it would be less embarrassing to claim you're just doing it for fun than to boast about being compensated with three lousy bottles of anti-jellyfish sunscreen which has yet to be shown to work.

And let's hope they have plenty of meat tenderizer around the lab.

Image taken from HERE.

Oscar The Cat, Harbinger Of Death

2007-07-28T15:52:00.000-07:00

There's a cute little cat in Rhode Island that can predict when someone is about to die.

Go ahead, roll your eyes. "Sure," you say. But the story was compelling enough to make it into the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine:

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/4/328

Video article: HERE

The cat's name is Oscar, and he resides on the third floor dementia unit of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, where he was adopted as a kitten two years ago. He's cute, but he doesn't have a loving personality. In fact, it turns out he shuns most human contact. Except, that is, when you're about to die. Each day he makes his rounds like the doctors do, examining each patient for a few emotionless seconds then moving on to the next one. Many of the patients are so far gone they don't even realize they've been visited. But if Oscar stops and curls up in the patient's bed, the nurses and doctors have come to recognize that the patient will die within a few hours. Apparently he even becomes loving, nuzzling the dying patient and purring. At first they thought it was coincidence, but after the thirteenth death, they realized the cat was more than fluffy, cute, and aloof, he was actually a harbinger of death. Oscar has now predicted 25 deaths this way, sometimes surprising the doctors.

The article presents this as a good thing. Maybe it is. After all, it gives the nurses enough time to contact the patient's family and get them there. It also means the patient doesn't die alone; he at least will have a cat there to see him off.

I can only imagine the effect it has on the other patients, though. Good thing Oscar isn't very personable; I doubt the patients would care to have him jump on their bed and be best pals. If he spends much time there, your clock may be ticking. I'm a cat person. My family has four of them, all indoor cats, but I'd think twice about having mister-not-so-cuddly in my household pride of felines. If curling up on your bed and purring means you're going to die in your sleep, I shudder to think what coughing up a fur ball on your leg at 3AM would mean.

No, I think Oscar has definitely found his calling. Is it supernatural, or does Oscar only respond to a natural sense of smell or the behavior of nurses or patients? Who knows. Whatever the case, keep it up Oscar. Meow!

Image taken from HERE.

Science Salary Survey

2007-07-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

The results of a survey on scientist salaries was just released in the current issue of Microscopy Today:

http://www.microscopy-today.com/MT2007_Salary_Survey.pdf

I’m always leery about these surveys. Not because I think they are inaccurate somehow, but because I always seem to fall at the lower end, or less, of whatever bracket fits me. That just makes me angry at my cheapskate company. But, seeing as how this particular survey is most suited for me, given it falls in my particular line of work, I took the bait. As usual, it makes me none too comfortable to see the results.

First they compared salaries by discipline. I’m in the biological sciences. Naturally, they fall lower than either physical sciences (like nanotechnology) or traditional sciences (like chemistry and physics). Bio peaks around $51-60K, where the others plateau at higher salaries. Okay, I’m used to it. Next!

Then they looked at salary by institution type. Academic falls lowest, peaking around $51-60K. I’m glad I left academics. I don’t enjoy starving for my hard work. But Industry scores only slightly higher at the next bracket, $61-70K. Fine. I’d live with that. But Industry also has a second peak, much higher, at $91-110K. Those would be the “Big Talking Heads” who run the company. Yay them. Government work earned a bit more, but the best of all were vendors and suppliers. Their salaries just keep going up up up. I’ve had a few chances over the years to take positions with some instrument manufacturers selling and being a tech for their products, but I just couldn’t stomach the idea of traveling all the time.

When they looked at salary by title, there weren’t any real surprises. Students earn slave wages, while corporate managers get the biggest slice of the pie. You should see the graph! Professors earned a pretty good salary, peaking in the $91-110K bracket. Pretty good, if you can weather the process to get there.

The kicker came with the comparison of salary versus educational degree. No surprise that doctorates earn more than bachelor’s, which earn more than high school. But what surprised me is that there is really no difference between bachelor’s and master’s level. So that extra two years I spent earning my master’s degree didn’t really do anything for me in terms of potential salary. So if you’re going beyond a batchelor’s, skip the master’s and head straight into a doctoral position (which most folks seem to do anyhow, it seems). And what about post-docs? Forget it. If you think you’re going to get more money by earning your doctoral then post-doc-ing around the country, there was no significant difference there, salary-wise. Maybe you’ll be more hire-able in certain careers, though.

Years of experience only mattered for the lowest and the highest pay brackets. All those in the middle were pretty mixed, meaning that if you’re a newbie, you ain’t getting’ squat, and if you hang in there long enough, at least 26 years, there’s a slim chance you’ll move up in the pay bracket. But given the volatile nature of science careers, I laugh at your chances.

So there you go. If you’re a scientist, now you’ll know approximately how much you’re worth, or not worth, compared to 624 respondents to the survey. Now go buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and make yourself feel better about the years you spent in academics and the loss of social life to get you to your lab bench. Then use this info to ask for a raise. You can do it!

Image taken from HERE.

The Lab Vending Machine?

2007-07-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

Here’s the scenario: You’re working late at night in the lab, trying to beat the deadline imposed upon you by your tyrannical manager and the irrational business types. It’s the weekend. You’re all alone at work. You’re at a critical step in your protocol. You open the fridge to grab that all-important enzyme for your gene splicing experiment and – oh my god, it’s gone! That f*ckin’ lab tech Bob down the hall borrowed it without asking and didn’t return it again! You run madly through the halls of your lab building, frantically throwing open lab fridges to look through other people’s badly-labeled reagent boxes trying to find your vial, or anyone’s vial, of your precious enzyme. Resigned to failure, you stumble back to your lab to figure out how to save your experiment, your project, your deadline, and, while you’re at it, your miserable career in biotech (or doctorate project or whatever is most applicable to you if you are in science).

Well never fear! Before you start contemplating hiring a hit man for Bob, now there are vending machines for your precious reagent!

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1184297126249120.xml&coll=7

Yes, you too can enjoy the modern marvel of vending machines. It’s not just for cola, chips, and soggy sandwiches anymore! With the press of a button combo and a swipe of a payment card, a bag of your favorite enzyme or E. coli bacteria will neatly screw out of the chosen slot and fall to the opening like a bag of pretzels, any time of the day or night.

Of course, that little vial of reagent costs a heck of a lot more than 75 cents. Try up to $200.00. Careful with your button-pushing!

It’s important to note that the lab vending machines are situated directly next to the cola and chip machines. Given the groggy state I’m in during those late-night lab “emergencies,” I’m just as likely to choose the wrong frickin’ machine and wind up munching on a vial of DNA while shaking potato chips onto my lab samples. Mmmmm, GFP-transformed bacteria. [insert slobber sounds]

And what do you do if your all-important, $150-bag of enzymes gets hung up on the dispensor? Shake and bang the vending machine, of course!

Ya gotta love convenience-technology.

Image from HERE.

Eaten Alive By Maggots

2007-07-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

Here’s an eerie story for you. A guy named Aaron Dallas recently had five fly larvae removed from his head:

Video news segment: HERE

Article: HERE

Yes, Dallas went to Casa Beya, Belize, to assist with a mountain bike race. When he returned to the U.S. he noticed that he had some bleeding bumps on the back of his head. The bumps grew. Then they started moving! The pain was unbearable, and he could hear them in his head, emitting popping and chewing sounds. Initially the doctors thought it was shingles. Finally, the doctor removed five live botfly larvae, each about as big as your thumbnail.

Ick. Yes, maggots were growing in his head and eating him alive. Doctors thought they were placed there though a mosquito bite. Dallas’ wife (ironically named Midge), took it all with a bit of humor.

(From the article): "I told him, 'I will love you through your maggots,' she teased. She's even made a three-minute short film titled, ‘Aaron's visitors from Belize.’"

Where’s a can of Off! when you need it?

Eat A Cow, Kill The Earth

2007-07-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

I never liked cows. I grew up next to a cow pasture, and just down the road from a large dairy farm. They’re nasty, smelly, sluggish beasts. Sure, they’re docile animals, they give us milk, they get carved up to give us all sorts of interesting edible meaty bits. That’s cool. I don’t mind a nice thick burger once in a while, dripping with potentially E. coli-infected juice and swarming with mad cow prions. It’s, you know, yummy. You can’t taste the mad cow if you douse the cooked flesh with plenty of A1 sauce.

But then there are all the studies of cow farts.

Yes, you’ve probably heard about it, those jokes made about silly scientific studies, lab rats like myself shoving pipes up a cow’s derrière to measure the methane output from eating a bucket of feed. All those studies about the contribution of cattle fart methane to the ever-alarming global warming problem (like THIS study). Yes, global warming is real. Every scientist knows it. And every politician knows it, at least those whose political party name doesn’t begin with “R” and end with “epublican.” What is a self-respecting carnivore like me to do? Where’s the beef? I needs my cow flesh, thank you. Get in my belly!

A soon-to-be-published paper in Animal Science Journal sheds a little more light on the problem:

Story: http://www.physorg.com/news103983167.html

As the article says, “A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of beef causes more greenhouse-gas and other pollution than driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on back home, according to a Japanese study.”

Yes, feeding your favorite bovine creates a noxious cloud of methane that winds up wafting up into the atmosphere and trapping solar heat in our world, causing accelerated polar ice melts, entire ice shelves to break off of polar ice caps, the destruction of high mountain glaciers, and alarming ice dams cracking, just to name a few outcomes. Think of it this way: every time a cow “gets the flutters” another few inches of coral bleaches, another chunk of glacier melts, and some poor tropical frog kicks the bucket. And it’s all because you and I had to have beef meatballs on our spaghetti.

Additionally, the process of producing and transporting all that feed and meat adds up too, in emissions due to gasoline and other power sources. From the article: “That one kilo (2.2 pounds) of beef also requires energy equivalent to lighting a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days. The energy is needed to produce and transport the animals' feed.”

There are all sorts of other crazy global warming solutions, but most aren’t very realistic beyond having our industry-happy government actually put more restrictions on gas-belching factories and trying to change the sorts of fuels we put in our cars away from the extremely-profitable market of war-ravaged crude oil. These things aren’t likely to happen in a speedy way, either. You don’t like paying a day’s take-home wages for a full tank of gas? Tough. Oil industry execs are laughing at you. So what can we do about the cow fart issue? Short of lighting the farts of every bull and heifer in the world, the best solution would be to stop eating meat entirely. That doesn’t sit well with people like, well, ME, who choose to use our canine teeth.

But there’s a solution for people like me. We don’t have to buy our beef or burgers from mass-market outlets like Safeway or McDonald’s, where the beef comes from cows that had been penned up by the hundreds in horrible conditions, fed cheap, “gassy” foods, slaughtered, frozen, and shipped from as far away as Brazil. You can, instead, invest a little bit of your time to find local stores and organic stores that sell meat produced locally, fed on grass and healthy feed, and most likely leaner and better for you anyhow, with no hormones or antibiotics.

As the PhysOrg.com article says, “A Swedish study in 2003 suggested that organic beef emits 40 percent less greenhouse gases and consumes 85 percent less energy because the animal is raised on grass rather than concentrated feed.”

So, to celebrate this, I’m going to consume some Kosher, non-hormone-injected beef hotdogs tonight. I’m not going to ask what parts of the cow went into them, but I can rest assured that the intestines that are now mashed up with other parts and wrapped in a conveniently-edible tube and put on my bun had 40% less cow farts flowing through them than their mass-raised cousins in Texas.

And when I’m done eating, I’ll be sure to hold my farts in.

Addendum (7/24/07): I just realized my last paragraph was inaccurate. Seems “kosher” hot dogs do not include any of the hind parts of a cow, including the intestines, and thus no natural casings, either. HERE is more info on the Hebrew National hot dogs I ate.

Image taken from HERE.