Volcano Tornado!

Noooooooo!!!!

Stephen & Donna O’Meara explain the chaos in above photograph: “As the hot eruption cloud swirls, a vortex is created that spins off rare volcanic cyclones. As red rivers of lava pour into the Pacific Ocean from Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano, huge explosions blast fragments of hot lava and cinder upwards 1,000 feet or more. These pieces of fragmented lava are called tephra –the booming tephra explosions create arcs of color during long exposures. During the daylight hours the hot lava looks black. As sun goes down it begins to glow red and a vast steam clouds form as it meets with ocean water.”

[Visual Science at Discover]

What YOU Need To Know About Space Combat

Cool post by an aerospace engineer about the kind of stuff we all know we spend more time contemplating than we ought to, Gizmodo considers The Physics of Space Battles:

First, let me point out something that Ender's Game got right and something it got wrong. What it got right is the essentially three-dimensional nature of space combat, and how that would be fundamentally different from land, sea, and air combat. In principle, yes, your enemy could come at you from any direction at all. In practice, though, the Buggers are going to do no such thing. At least, not until someone invents an FTL drive, and we can actually pop our battle fleets into existence anywhere near our enemies. The marauding space fleets are going to be governed by orbit dynamics – not just of their own ships in orbit around planets and suns, but those planets' orbits. For the same reason that we have Space Shuttle launch delays, we'll be able to tell exactly what trajectories our enemies could take between planets: the launch window. At any given point in time, there are only so many routes from here to Mars that will leave our imperialist forces enough fuel and energy to put down the colonists' revolt. So, it would actually make sense to build space defense platforms in certain orbits, to point high-power radar-reflection surveillance satellites at certain empty reaches of space, or even to mine parts of the void. It also means that strategy is not as hopeless when we finally get to the Bugger homeworld: the enemy ships will be concentrated into certain orbits, leaving some avenues of attack guarded and some open. (Of course, once our ships maneuver towards those unguarded orbits, they will be easily observed – and potentially countered.)

*Etc

The Freakonomics Blog points out some graveyard humor, describing the origin of this clever headstone juxtaposition.

They belong to chemists buried in the Yale's cemetery. The one on the left of a John Kirkwood, while the right is Lars Onsager, both of whom were brilliant statistical and fluid mechanics. At first glace this looks like the absolute apex of academic one-upsmanship, but as usual, there is a buzzkilling explanation that involves these two guys not hating each other. Kirkwood died pretty young and his widow basically decided to make his headstone a curriculum vitae for some reason. Most people who knew him thought it was a bit odd, but Onsager's wife wanted to do the same for him when he died, but her family talked her out of it. His son Erling wanted to put an asterisk on there, but she vetoed it as being mean-spirited.

But the idea of the asterisk stayed in Erling’s mind, and years later, when the children were adding their mother’s death date to the monument, they also added the asterisk and the “etc.” footnote. “When my mother died, my brothers and sister and I, we all agreed it was the right thing to do,” said Erling.

Erling wanted to set the record straight on his family’s motive for including the notation:

The idea was very tongue-in-cheek. It wasn’t done maliciously. It was triggered by the neighboring headstone, but it was not aimed at it.

And all the people involved seem to agree that both of these gentlemen would have found it hilarious. So revenge downgraded to gentle comedy. It kind of reminds me of Jefferson's headstone, that mentions only that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence, and Virginia Statute of religious freedom and that he founded the University of Virginia -- without bothering to point out that he was the President. Which, if you think about it, seems to say to all the other presidents "Oh, you were the president too? That's sort of cool I guess. I didn't think it was worth making a big deal out of..."

The Unbearable Lightness of Bottles

I don't know how I forgot about this. A few months ago, casting around for something worthwhile to do in Philadelphia, my girlfriend and I headed over to the "museum" area, and settled on the "science" museum. Which, like everything else in that city, has been named after Benjamin Franklin. (Primary scientific accomplishment: inventing the sign convention that makes current a "flow" of positive charge, the opposite of the direction that the negative elections, which are actually the ones flowing, are flowing.) It was not an impressive place. Parts were fun, but kind of sad. Such as the giant heart that you can walk inside. It looks sort of cool and fanciful from the exterior, but once inside is really just a series of dark tunnels. They had a whole electromagnetism section that was nothing more than a collection of poorly functioning freshman physics demonstrations. Like the gold leaf/pith ball thing which most people couldn't figure out how to use and barely worked at all, conveying only the concept that a confusing series of steps could cause tiny pieces of foil to quiver and separate by a tenth of a centimeter.

It was all like this. And I don't think it is just because I have grown up from an easily entertained child into a cynical physics grad student man-child. I've been to the AMNH in New York, and I have a solid recollection of Boston's science museum of my youth as being a great deal more fun. In the words of Michael Scott, "You don't go to the Science museum and get handed a pamphlet about electricity. You put your hand on a metal ball, and you hair stands up. And then you know science." It was like that. They had a show where a guy in a Faraday cage created huge arcs of lightning between Van De Graaf generators. That is how you demonstrate E&M, through fear! Philadelphia, on the other hand had...a giant replica train that moves several feet. There is so much we can learn about the 1840s...

Anyhow, I think I pinpointed the very best moment of our trip. This exhibit, demonstrating the effects of air on plastic bottles:


Behold the majesty of Physics!

Hey look, a cell!

This is what they look like. If you happen to look in false color.

For some reason Wired's science blog doesn't have an actual link to wherever this comes from internet-wise. Real world-wise it was created by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and is to be published in Nature. In this photo is a skin cell, flash-frozen to preserve its normal appearance and electron microscoped from multiple angles to create a 3D image. The color legend goes:

Cell-cell contact: brown, nucleus: blue, microtubules: green , mitochondria: purple, endoplasmic reiculum: steel blue.

So it seems that they weren't just making it up in high school biology.

It Could Happen

Thanks news media! I was just wondering why public understanding of science is so poor, and then I saw this article in MSNBC's science section.

Sex and marriage with robots? It could happen

As software becomes more advanced and the relationship between humans and robots becomes more personal, marriage could result. "One hundred years ago, interracial marriage and same-sex marriages were illegal in the United States. Interracial marriage has been legal now for 50 years, and same-sex marriage is legal in some parts of the states," Levy said. "There has been this trend in marriage where each partner gets to make their own choice of who they want to be with."

"The question is not if this will happen, but when," Levy said. "I am convinced the answer is much earlier than you think."

"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience.

Levy predicts Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize human-robot marriage. "Massachusetts is more liberal than most other jurisdictions in the United States and has been at the forefront of same-sex marriage," Levy said. "There's also a lot of high-tech research there at places like MIT."

Same-sex marriage = human-robot marriage. Finally, someone brave enough to make that comparison!

The main benefit of human-robot marriage could be to make people who otherwise could not get married happier, "people who find it hard to form relationships, because they are extremely shy, or have psychological problems, or are just plain ugly or have unpleasant personalities," Levy said. "Of course, such people who completely give up the idea of forming relationships with other people are going to be few and far between, but they will be out there."

Hey! Half of my family are from Massachusetts and we aren't that hard to get along with!

The possibility of sex with robots could prove a mixed bag for humanity. For instance, robot sex could provide an outlet for criminal sexual urges. "If you have pedophiles and you let them use a robotic child, will that reduce the incidence of them abusing real children, or will it increase it?" Arkin asked. "I don't think anyone has the answers for that yet — that's where future research needs to be done."

Keeping a robot for sex could reduce human prostitution and the problems that come with it. However, "in a marriage or other relationship, one partner could be jealous or consider it infidelity if the other used a robot," Levy said. "But who knows, maybe some other relationships could welcome a robot. Instead of a woman saying, 'Darling, not tonight, I have a headache,' you could get 'Darling, I have a headache, why not use your robot?' "

Child-sex robots. Oh my god. I am not the kind of person who shouts exclamations of disbelief at no one in particular while reading, but for this I made an exception (if only so my roomba could hear). When discussing potential topics was this guy's thesis adviser just like: "Think of the creepiest possible thing you can imagine. Now double it." (I know that is how I ended up working on cosmological neutrinos as an undergrad.)

Furthermore, "Darling, I have a headache, why not use your robot?" Solid gold. Can we please make this a cliché? Nothing would better exemplify the loss of America's collective can-do spirit...

In summary,
Wacky PhD thesis from some European university with low standards? Check.
Ridiculously ill-advised comparisons to actual civil rights struggles like inter-racial and gay marriage? Check.
Repetition of common (but partially misguided) stereotype that all New Englanders want to marry/copulate with robots/quahogs/houseplants. Double check.

Set Your Calculator To 'Stun'

Look Around You is a British parody of 70's and 80' era educational films. I don't think there is anything I can say to add to these, they are basically flawless as far as 70's and 80's era educational film parody goes. Here is the first one on Math.

Further Adventures in Eponymity

I have serious doubts that 'eponymity' is a real word. 'Eponym' is, as are 'eponymous' and '-ist' and so forth. And since 'anonymity' is a word and 'eponym-' is of the same category, it follows that the quality of being eponymous ought to be describable as 'eponymity.' That fact doesn't cause many people to use it of course, but somehow, google searches for eponymity currently turn up my post of a few months ago (among some other things). Oddly, the top result is for a similar thing, a pointer toward this article about naming-afterness in science.

Robert Bunsen, whose name we associate with the burner, was a 19th-century German chemist of some renown. He worked on explosive organic arsenic compounds--leading to the loss of one eye--and, later, on gases from volcanoes, geysers and blast furnaces. With Kirchoff he contributed to our understanding of the meaning of spectra lines. (He also gained note for not bathing--one woman of polite society remarked that Bunsen was so charming that she would like to kiss him, but she would have to wash him first.) Bunsen invented many bits of laboratory apparatus: the spectroscope, the carbon-pole battery, an ice calorimeter and vapor calorimeter, the thermopile, and the filter pump--but not, as one might imagine, the gas burner that bears his name. Rather, the "Bunsen" burner was developed by Bunsen's laboratory assistant, Peter Desdega. Desdega himself likely borrowed from earlier designs by Aim� Argand and Michael Faraday. So why does Bunsen get the implicit credit? --And why do we know so little about Desdega that we cannot add much to his story?

Link.

Kansas: As Dumb As You Think

This Kansan version of the periodic table from the re-Discovery Institute says it all. It's called 'flyover country' for a reason.

[h/t Primate Journal]

Union of Concerned Science Cartoonists

The Union of Concerned Scientists took a break from being concerned long enough to set up a politization of science cartoon contest. You can vote on them. Most are actually kind of dumb, but a few are worth taking a gander at. I still prefer S. Harris for my cartoon needs.

Messy Lines

• A commenter challenged me to draw Africa. There is no way in hell I am going to do that. I will however show an image from a map of the world I drew "from memory" in 7th grade geography. This represents the apex of my knowledge of African cartography. It is pretty pathetic. I mean, 'Togo'? I'm pretty sure I made that up.
  
  All in all it was a pretty cool project. During the year we learned one continent at a time, and how to draw it on a completely blank page and get the orientation and relation of everything correctly. At the end of the year we did the entire globe on one big square in about a week. I can't say that everyone followed the spirit of the 'memory' challenge entirely, but we were not permitted simply to copy anything, or have a book in the room where we drew these, so I remembered it for at least some period of time. As you can tell from this, the final product was not without its mistakes, unintentional and intentional.


• Flash programming tools are apparently available to psych wards nowadays. This is good news, because if they weren't, this game wouldn't exist. "Game, game, game and again game; or belief systems are small clumsy rolling-type creatures" features 12 levels of creepy psychotic rambling fun. As you move your flashing rolling-type creature through the level, meaningless crazy text pops up inexplicably all over the screen, your score (a string of strange arrow-like symbols) steadily rises (or falls) unaffected by your actions, and paranoid scribblings criss-cross the background for no reason. I tried to quote mine it for some particularly salient example of this madness, but it simply wasn't possible, everything that pops up is equally good. Whether this was designed by a schizophrenic, or just made to look that way, it is clear that this person has a future doing Radiohead's web design. [via]
  


• The five-second rule appears to have some basis. This paper written of in this NY Times article, measured whether there are differences in bacteria pickup depending on how long food touches the ground. "Left for a full minute [instead of five seconds], slices collected about 10 times more than that from the tile and carpet, though a lower number from the wood." The article also points out that 60% of people are aware of the rule, so we can at least be glad that we can at least get a majority of people to accept a scientific viewpoint, regardless of what it happens to be.[via]

Left-wingers now regulating Earth's rotation

From the "I hope this is satire" category, a letter to the editors of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, on the far-ranging effects of extending daylight by an hour each day. Regulating foreign and interstate commerce, levying taxation, declaring war, ratifying treaties, approving judicial nominees, and now apparently, specifying the rate of the Earth's rotation...are among the roles of the U.S. Congress.

You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two.

This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?

Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.

Curse these big-government liberals meddling in the amount of sunlight to callously increase Al Gore's dvd sales! Today, more daylight, tomorrow they'll blot out the sun over the red states!

Biochemistry with the Stars!

I am lifting my ban on chemistry humor (?) to show this.
I've always been of the opinion that intractable problems can be solved by cloaking them in the form of a homework assignment or contest. I think the producers would be pleasantly surprised with the results here...

[credit]

100,000th Floor Please

I've been meaning to put something up here about the Space Elevator for years. During that time most people seem to have somehow heard about this rather unusual but brilliant idea. At least most of the ones I know, which is, of course, a fairly unusual crowd in its own right.

The Problem: getting to space. The Solution: climbing a rope. All you have to do is tie a counterweight to the end, and the centripetal force keeps it in geostationary orbit. Then, instead of worrying about the inefficiency and danger of getting into space with rockets, you just have to worry about the inefficiency and danger of getting into space by going up a ~22,000 mile tether.

You would locate the base at the equator and devise some sort of contraption capable of pulling itself up. Although this is certainly harder than launching a rocket, once you figured it out, this method would be a far superior way of getting heavy payloads into space. And not only low-Earth orbit; if desired you could use the rotational velocity to shoot off into space like a slingshot (a rare occasions when the word "slingshot" could be used in a non-idiotic sense in reference to space travel). Only twice a day, your tangential velocity would be in the plane of the solar system, (because of the Earth's tilt) and the directions within the plane would, of course, change over the course of the year. Apparently, one of the main ideas for powering the climber involves transferring energy to it from a massive laser beam at the base. I'm not sure how they would manage to avoid dispersion in the atmosphere, but maybe I've just been looking at stuff written by the wrong people. The other undeveloped technology required is the material for the tether, which has to be very strong and very light, and capable of being made continuous for hundreds of miles. Carbon nanotubes seem to be the popular choice here, since anytime you don't know the answer to something, ponderously replying with the phrase "carbon nanotubes" tends to shut down all further discussion.

Nevertheless, solving the many issues involved in creating a successful space elevator is far less interesting than considering all the ways the project could go wrong. The cable could snap, flinging the counter-weight (probably some kind of space station) off into the solar system at a high rate of speed -- possibly with the payload as well, the falling cable creating an equatorial swath of destruction. Probably, if light and made out of carbon, a lot of it would burn up in the atmosphere, but I can imagine a scenario where it snaps and is then dragged along the ground at an extremely high rate of speed (since the counter-weight of a taut cable would lag behind the ground base). That would certainly be fun. It is also hard to see how you could protect a cable that leads into space from sabotage, considering that it rises vertically for the entire atmosphere. Best of all, collisions with satellites are not only possible but inevitable given enough time. A line cutting upwards from the equator will be intersected by any normal, unaltered orbit eventually.

NOVA has a nice segment going into the basics and showing a rather unusual contest that took place recently to make a solar powered climber. You can watch it here for free.

[And if that isn't enough, there are a disturbing number of CGIed clips demonstrating the wonders of the Space Elevator over techno music or narration by true believers on YouTube. Though I wouldn't recommend any of them.*]

*Update: except for any produced by our commenter from LiftPort, which are excellent.

When the revolution comes, I want to be in the Politburo

As reprehensible and willfully misinformed ordinary global warming "deniers" are, they can't hold a deluded candle to the people who think the whole issue is some kind of conspiracy. I could see where someone who is deeply mistaken or scientifically illiterate would consider his pro-science opponents to be alarmists, or naïve and overcautious. I could imagine simply thinking that they were wrong, and that they were willing to believe anything pessimistic that their crunchy friends told them. But when it comes to the sorting out why every scientist who knows actually knows something about it disagrees, I can't imagine anyone settling on "conspiracy." Conspiracies are an inherently silly concept, but when you apply it to a situation involving a bunch of professors who don't know each other or get anything out of it, it makes even less sense. If that is possible.

Moreso for the politicians who make a big deal out of it; how would you think that they stand to gain by pointing out that there is going to be a world-wide catastrophe unless industry undergoes drastic changes? The polluter people obviously have a lot to gain by stopping you, but it isn't like Al Gore hates cars. A few nutty people might dislike technology for stupid whacked-out reasons, but the vast majority of environmentalists get absolutely nothing for holding this view, other than a deep feeling of unease. Anti-scientific charlatans get the support of these fantastically rich companies, the politicians who shill for those companies, and they also get to feel good about the fact that the world isn't going to end.

This is what I never get about climate change deniers, just what do they think is the point of the supposed conspiracy? Executed somehow by these scientists are so capable of coming to a secret but world-wide consensus to deceive everyone (because if academics are known for anything, it is agreeing), so that they can get...more funding? I don't know. Or what they thing Gore was up to in the 80's when he was the only person who was pointing this out. How is talking about complicated scientific issues cloaked in a message of gloom and despair supposed to make you popular? What is the demographic that is going to love hearing about that? "Vote Gore: Harbinger of inevitable disaster." Yes, that is an uplifting message.

I just don't understand what they think their opponents motives are. They cannot honestly say scientists hate the idea of car ownership or electricity. I figured the charlatans were just sort of in denial and that they assumed their opponents were misguided, or that the climate predictions would turn out to be wrong, even as that became increasingly unlikely. I have just never been able to see, from their point of view, how environmentalists could be perceived to have sinister motives. Even if they were wrong, they would have to be sincere--there is absolutely no reward.

But I finally saw something Friday that cleared up for me what some of these folks are thinking. They believe, at least the more obtuse ones, that global warming is being used as a cover to secretly establish a world-wide totalitarian communist government. Yes, you read that correctly. Of global warming this [successful right-wing blogger] says:

They want to use it to create a world government that subjugates individual nations and people to the irrefutable ideal of preserving the planet. In other, simpler words, their objective is communism -- the replacement of individual free choice and free markets with a collective that has the power to exterminate anyone and anything on behalf of a rational government model that justifies all actions without resort to bourgeois notions of morality.

Once the precedent has been set that there is a planetary cause which trumps human-centric morality, they will be free to rule everyone as they -- and their chosen experts -- see fit. It's important to recognize that modern liberalism has nothing whatever to do with traditional liberalism, which values the individual above all other principles. The real desire of contemporary "liberals" is to establish a ruling class with absolute power over all us ordinary slobs who don't share their peculiar perspectives on social justice.

A scientific cause is the perfect instrument for achieving this objective. The definition of science is that it consists of what has been proven factually true. It cannot therefore be rebutted by faith, values, esthetics, or aspiration. Its status as irrevocable truth empowers the enlightened (i.e., those in power) to censor, punish, obliterate, and overturn pre-existing values without any philosophical backchat. Science allows the substitution of facts for truth, however conceived. If he were alive today, the amoral keepers of the Global Warming faith could wring obedience from Jesus Christ on the subject of recycling and secondhand smoke -- without uttering a single word about divinity, faith, or sin. In the preferred "liberal" model, power belongs not to the good but to the smart. You will learn, despite three centuries of disrespect and rebellion, to genuflect to Yale.

That's why ducking the questions about Global Warming -- "I don't know," "I'm not sure," "I don't disagree in principle," "I don't see the harm in going along," -- is a suicide pact with totalitarianism.

These people are nuts. And they're also winning the battle over what the politics of the future will look like. Global Warming is not a sideshow. It's the incredibly ponderous first step of an assault that intends to remove all individual free will from life. That's why it's imperative that all of us quit making jokes about Global Warming and go to war for the purpose of debunking it.

...Study. And then spread the word. Not laughingly, but as seriously as if your life depended on it. Because it does.

Somehow I am having trouble picturing Commissar Gore delivering a vociferous invocation to the assembled multitudes of Red Square at the installment of his one-world Peoples' Government. The long-awaited fruition of decades of work, patiently making power point presentations and boring speeches, dreaming wistfully of the glorious Workers' Revolution. Climatologists of the world, Unite!

(I don't want to give this creep traffic, so email me [or roll your cursor over this text] if you are interested in the link.)

Photon Allergy

Woman claims skin reaction to wireless internet:

For most people talking on a mobile phone, cooking dinner in the microwave or driving in a car is simply part of modern living in 21st century Britain.

But completing any such tasks is impossible for Debbie Bird - because she is allergic to modern technology.
...
The 39-year-old is so sensitive to the electromagnetic field (emf) or 'smog' created by computers, mobile phones, microwave ovens and even some cars, that she develops a painful skin rash and her eyelids swell to three times their size if she goes near them.

As a consequence, Mrs Bird, a health spa manager, has transformed her home into an EMF-free zone to try and stay healthy.

The walls are all covered in special carbon paint, the windows have a protective film on them and she and her husband, Tony, 45, even sleep under a silver-plated mosquito net to deflect the radiowaves.

'I can no longer do things that I used to take for granted,' Mrs Bird said last night. 'My day-to-day life has been seriously affected by EMF.

'I don't own a microwave. I don't use mobile phones at all. I can't even use a cordless phone. We have a plasma screen TV because the old style one gave out gamma rays, which brought on my reaction.

'I can't even get in my friend's BMW. If I do I immediately start getting a headache and my head starts tingling.

Perhaps I am too skeptical, but I find this hard to believe. Psychosomatic illnesses have been extensively documented, but EMF-based ones? I don't think so. There are people who have a skin reaction to bright sunlight, but that is a very different type of problem and it begins at birth. In fact, allergies in general almost never spring up that late in life, unless some unusual situation brings it about.

Plus, she is all over the place about what she claims to be allergic to. Wi-Fi, microwave ovens, cell and cordless phones are indeed all around the same waveband (UHF and SHF). But there are plenty of other things around there that she does not claim an allergy to, particularly different kinds of broadcast radio and TV. And the proposition that cars are somehow emitting anything around that part of the spectrum makes no sense.

The worst part is definitely "the old style [TV] gave out gamma rays, which brought on my reaction." First of all, no it didn't. Second of all, that is soooo far from microwave radiation. And third of all, televisions emit very little radiation, being a receiver doesn't somehow cause that device to be a "hub" for some wavelength. And if it did, it would never be gamma rays.

It is unfortunate that in a story about a rather dubious medical/science issue the newspaper hardly managed any degree of skepticism. They added one sentence saying that practically all doctors doubt the veracity of "Electro-sensitivity" and then immediately counter it with some pseudo-scientist. Textbook false balance.

Terrible job.

Scientific trading routes

This chart is an immensely complex map of the interconnections between the different scientific disciplines. It was made by comparing the citations of nearly a million articles and assigning a little dot to each distinct area of research. It is basically the same as the sort of continuum I always imagined between them, (though the one I always saw wasn't 2-dimensional). I am surprised that earth science/ecology leads into biology instead of organic chemistry, and did not expect computer science to bridge a gap between physics and social science of all things. I suppose though that there is a difference between the way the different subjects are related content-wise and citation-wise. Even so, it is interesting that the latter almost gives you the former.

They certainly got one thing right: putting astrophysics on top.

Link

Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide!

I recently saw this excellent clip from Penn & Teller's incisive program Bullshit wherein a woman with a clipboard is able to easily get many signers for a petition to ban the chemical compound "dihydrogen monoxide" at an environmental rally. Apparently, this campaign originated back in 1989 and has a pretty large following online. Here is an excerpt from their wacky propaganda:

Dihydrogen Monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year...Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting, and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death.
Dihydrogen Monoxide:

• is also known as hydroxyl acid, and is the major component of acid rain.
• contributes to the "greenhouse effect".
• may cause severe burns.
• contributes to the erosion of our natural landscape.
• accelerates corrosion and rusting of many metals.
• may cause electrical failures and decreased effectiveness of automobile brakes.
• has been found in excised tumors of terminal cancer patients.

Quantities of dihydrogen monoxide have been found in almost every stream, lake, and reservoir in America today. But the pollution is global, and the contaminant has even been found in Antarctic ice. DHMO has caused millions of dollars of property damage in the Midwest, and recently, California.

Despite the danger, dihydrogen monoxide is often used:

• as an industrial solvent and coolant.
• in nuclear power plants.
• in the production of styrofoam.
• as a fire retardant.
• in many forms of cruel animal research.
• in the distribution of pesticides. Even after washing, produce remains contaminated by this chemical.
• as an additive in certain "junk foods" and other food products.

Companies dump waste DHMO into rivers and the ocean, and nothing can be done to stop them because this practice is still legal. The impact on wildlife is extreme, and we cannot afford to ignore it any longer!

The American government has refused to ban the production, distribution, or use of this damaging chemical due to its "importance to the economic health of this nation". In fact, the Navy and other military organizations are conducting experiments with DHMO, and designing multi-billion dollar devices to control and utilize it during warfare situations. Hundreds of military research facilities receive tons of it through a highly sophisticated underground distribution network. Many store large quantities for later use.

It's not too late!

I'm not exactly surprised that people are gullible and scientifically-illiterate, just that they are able to take this ignorance far enough to get other people to be surprised about it. Like the middle schooler who was able to win a statewide science fair by convincing so many people to sign on to the above petition. Or the even better instance of a California city council introducing an ordinance to actually ban the deadly substance a few years ago.

A related sentiment is even more common: my mom is always telling me about how she avoids eating certain foods because they have chemicals in them. These environmentalists are such ninnyhammers, if they ever succeeded what would I put in my cocoa?

Living Simply

If I posted about every single episode of This American Life that I found arresting, this blog wouldn't have some stupid non-sequitur title, it would have an even stupider title more like "Glass-haus." But this story from "Should I Stay or Should I go" concerning two Apple programmers who continued to work on their project, in secret, after being fired, is definitely in the same spirit as a scientific obsession. Two guys had spent a few years trying, with limited success, to develop an elegant graphing calculator at the time they were laid off. But they were unwilling to leave the program they had to devoted those years to undone, so they simply continued to go to work. Every day they sneaked in to use unoccupied machines, lie to inquisitive employees, and work 12 hour days for no money and no recognition on a project that did not exist.

The software ended up on over 20 million computers and became the watershed program of the soon-released Power PC. I was surprised to find out that this is the same program, NuCalc, that I occasionally use for simple graphs. You can listen to the story here at the TAL site for free (skip ahead to minute 27), or read the less-audibly pleasing first-hand account.

When the flute kicks in--that killed me.

Safety first

XKCD, illustrious webcomic, often concerned with the cartoonist's fear of velociraptors, recently received a missive from a paleontologist. There isn't anything I could possibly add, so here is most of it:

Dear sir,

[...] I notice that many of your comics revolve around people (including yourself) with a phobia of Velociraptor. This phobia revolves around Velociraptor overcoming some 70 million years of extinction and the geographic barriers between its home and yours, leaping out of the underbrush and/or through the kitchen, and doing unmentionable things to your innards with its teeth and claws.

I see little point in addressing the substance of your fears, as that’s perhaps best to someone more qualified to deal with the human mind. I hold a Ph. D. in vertebrate paleontology and am somewhat more qualified to address the symptoms. To wit, I would like to help you overcome your fears by successfully defending yourself against Velociraptor.

It is widely known in the field of agronomy (e.g., Avery, 2002) that birds are repulsed by methyl anthranilate, a natural compound found in many of the less sweet fruit varieties. Methyl anthranilate has been used (with some success) as a bird repellent on crops. Now, we know (e.g., Gauthier et al., 1988) that modern birds are descended from dinosaurian ancestors, of which one close relative was Velociraptor (ibid.). Much as lab rats respond to drugs like humans, it is entirely possible that Velociraptor will respond to methyl anthranilate as does the common crow or European starling.

Thus, I recommend you carry around a loaded SuperSoaker filled with Concord grape juice. Fresh-squeezed would be ideal, but from concentrate should be effective as well. This will not only have the theoretical asset of protecting you from Velociraptor, it will have the pragmatic asset of protecting you from thirst.

In appreciation of your Web comic efforts, I will happily waive my consultation fee.

Daniel Snyder, PhD
Knox College