A Man, A Plan, A Trash Can

Apparently, it is now fall.

2011-09-16T23:39:00.001-04:00

Hey! I almost forgot this was here!

Schrödinger's Boss

2010-11-19T12:36:00.003-05:00

I heard an odd little snippet of a conversation today on campus.

It happened, as it usually does, when I was walking by the library cafe to get my daily bowl of noodles.

"Well," said one student to the other, "it all sounds nice in theory, but everyone knows the government can't create jobs."

At first, I just disregarded the statement as something I misheard. For instance, a few weeks ago I could have sworn I heard someone say "I'd much rather buy a bag in Paris than some freaky mushroom-thing here in Charlotte." Probably a mistake on my part (I hope).

But this time, I heard that phrase quite clearly. "[E]veryone knows the government can't create jobs."

The implications of this statement are staggering. My first theory was that there was some Law of Conservation of Jobs I didn't know about, which states that for each unemployed person hired by a government, some private firm fires some poor schmuck to balance things out.

But that would be ridiculous.

So the only other option is that if you are paid by the government to do something, you are not actually employed. Think about it! If the government can't create jobs, and the suggestion that jobs are conserved is asinine, what other explanation is there?

This is terrifying. Suddenly, all the grad students I know who are supported on NSF grants are unemployed.

The friendly lady at the DMV? She has no job!

The construction workers I saw replacing the median barrier on the highway? Shiftless, jobless, hobos.

Oh, no.

I work for a state university.

Since my job is new, and it is paid for with public funds, and the government cannot create jobs, I myself must be uneployed! Quid pro facto! Ipso nunc ergo!

If you'd like to help me through the stress of my sudden philosophical unemployment, I accept cash, checks, and major credit cards.

Dr. Seuss, et al.

2010-11-02T10:53:00.000-04:00

Elsevier publishing has just released a list of upcoming books authored and edited by the Seuss group at Dartmouth College. Titles include:

Applied Combinatorics and Problem Solving in the "Multiple Hat" Problem of B. Cubbins.
If I Ran the Zoo: Biodiversity in the Age of Genetic Engineering
Yertle the Turtle's Social Theories of Revolution and Rebellion
HoP on POP - Catalytic Holmium Phosphines and Degradation of Persistent Organic Pollutants
Case Studies in Subspecies Overlap and Horizontal Gene Transfer in the Asian Star-Bellied Sneetch
Horton Heard A Who - Vestibulocochlear Nerve Degradation in Loxodonta africana pharaonensis

These volumes can be found wherever fine literature is sold.

New Digs

2010-08-19T13:43:00.004-04:00

"You can date students," the lawyer said. "You just can't date your students."

So concluded another session into my orientation into the world of the modern university, further ushering me one step closer to becoming, according to a radio host I tuned into on Thursday's commute, an official card-carrying, Volvo-driving, latte-sipping, arugula-munching member of the liberal elite.

That's right; after five years of toiling in the science mines, I have now attained the lowest rung of a brand new ladder! I am now a real live college professor. How weird is that?

Before you answer - keep this in mind: my primary (and indeed sole) responsibility is now to shape the minds of America's youth, many of which may one day perform tasks from designing artificial blood for a new generation of killer robots, to surgery - perhaps on you - to remove shrapnel from a killer robot attack. So, yeah. Weird.

Do I feel adequately prepared for this awesome task? No, but I'm totally psyched, anyway. Besides, if grad school taught me two things, it's that:

1. Feeling underprepared is normal (normal? more like necessary).

and

2. Always keep a change of clothes in the lab.

So, I'm doing what I did when I first taught in grad school - skimming the book, and crossing my fingers. The difference is that now, the entire course is mine - I'm writing the syllabus, I'm writing (and grading) the exams, and I have no higher authority onto which I can shift questions, concerns, or calls from parents.

The orientation, unlike the one I attended for grad school, was only really two days long. The first day, we learned about the university offices, administrative support, and various facts and figures about the school.

For instance:

There are approximately 22,500 undergraduates here, 3187 of which are new incoming first-years. 99.1% of the overall population are full-time students, and 4.6% are international. The mascot of UNC-Charlotte is "Norm the Niner," as in "fourty-niner." confusingly, this date does not refer to the gold rush of 1849, but to the year 1949, when UNC-Charlotte was absorbed into the UNC system. He's a miner because of Charlotte's history of gold mining, which (doubly confusingly) dates back to 1799, 50 years before the California gold rush.

Also, UNC-Charlotte is on highway 49, which is probably just a coincidence.

At lunch (free AND delicious!), we all divided into tables for a semi-interactive exercise. Each table was given a form with a scenario on it, and we had to discuss it and then share our table's opinion with the room.

Our table got the first (and easiest) scenario, which was about a student calling the course we taught "bullshit" after having received a graded test on which he/she did poorly. Our solution: ask him or her to speak with us after class, and always return tests at the end, not the beginning, of class. The rest were similar, dealing with behavioral problems or mental illness. At the end of lunch, everyone was careful to point out that the student population was wonderful, and not generally enraged or depressed.

A recurring theme during the orientation (and commencement) was parking: parking here, according to everyone, is a nightmare. And really, really expensive. My faculty parking permit cost me three hundred and thirty five dollars, a 558% increase from what I paid before. The traffic and capacity problems come from the course schedule, which shoehorns nearly all the classes on campus into 8 AM to 2 PM, Monday through Thursday. What I found out after I had already paid for my permit was that I could have paid $40 to park at a local movie theater that shuttles faculty to campus. C'est la vie, perhaps next time.

Then we talked about benefits. The highlight of this session was the speaker getting to a section in his PowerPoint slides titled "Leave and Vacation Time." He asked if anyone in the room was hired on a twelve-moth contract, and no hands went up. He said, "oh, well, then, that's easy. None of you get vacation or leave time, so we'll just skip over this." Shortly he realized what he had said, and let us know that, as nine-month faculty, we pretty much had the same amount of time off as the students, so it all evened out.

And will it all even out? Will your dear author survive his encounter with the undergraduates of Charlotte? Will he ever find a parking space? For these answers and more, stay tuned!

Close Encounters

2010-02-18T09:09:00.003-05:00

Weirdness has always been my bread and butter.

I wept inwardly when the Weekly World News went out of business. During my many drives across the country, I've found nothing as invigorating as tuning in to the dystopic nightmare that is the Midwestern AM radio band. I guess that's not surprising, since much of talk radio is pretty much just the auditory version of the Weekly World News. Who wants to listen to homogenized corporate rock when you have some blowhard cloistered away in a soundproof box ranting about how the government encourages vegetarianism so that our children will eat more soy byproducts and turn into french-speaking tree-hugging socialized-health-care-having pantywaisted liberals, soft enough that the U.N. will have no problem coming in their black helicopters, stealing our guns, and sending all remaining red-blooded Americans to work in their acid mines.

Why? To mine varous acids, of course! They have thousands of uses, but are usually used either to fluoridate our water or to dissolve American flags during pagan same-sex mass marriage ceremonies.

I mean, come on - rants about the powers of the shadow government, patriots haunted by soundless black helicopters, and spooky theories about blue-helmeted UN shock troops? It's no more accurate than Red Dawn, but it's also no less entertaining.

Ah, and at night you had Art Bell/George Noory. If the great Midwestern conspiracy theorists measured a seven out of ten on the weird-o-meter, Art Bell took it up to eleven. Insidious soy products, meet tape recordings taken from a Russian mine that drilled all the way... TO HELL.

No, seriously.

And I haven't even mentioned Kent Hovind.

In my personal life, however, I don't think I've conversed with anyone that ranked above a three or four on the trusty weird-o-meter. In fact, it's been a really long time since I've encountered classic, sincere, over-the-top weirdness.

Until yesterday.

It came in the most innocuous form; the phone in the lab rang. It was from the office downstairs.

"Hey, I have a woman on the phone with a call about a chemical she saw on TV, and she's sort of concerned about. I was told that you might be a good person to call about it."

"Of course! I'd be happy to help," I said.

It started innocently enough. Her son had DVR'd an episode of House for her to watch - one where House infects a patient with malaria, presumably to treat his cancer.

I was gearing myself up to give the "that's-not-my-field" speech, when she asked her question.

"Does that have anything to do with the additives that they've been putting on the food supply?"

That caught me off guard. I was momentarily speechless, wherein the mystery caller felt that she should clarify.

"You know, for the last 60 years there's been aluminum and persulfate added to the food, and that coats our organs."

As I was still silent (trying to find a reference point), she let her momentum carry her.

I heard about an experiment that was conducted with a plastic container and salt from a chain store (it stuck to the sides, just like it coats the organs), about how people with coated organs can't reproduce, and that was a eugenic plot to keep certain groups of the population from breeding, "if you know what I mean" (I didn't). The mining of bauxite (a natural source of aluminum) was a sign of what was going on. Because certain genetic conditions can cause the body to become inhospitable to malaria (true), drinking water with a rusty nail in it (because it is rich in iron oxide) can cure cancer (false).

Tutankhamen, former king of Egypt, had malaria and a bone disease. "If only his organs had been coated."

Then, to my surprise, she expressed the belief that perhaps the additives in the food supply were there to keep people healthy.

"Well," she reasoned, "because of the malaria, maybe coating the organs keeps them from being cancerous. I think that's wonderful, people shouldn't be dying of cancer with all this medical science nowadays."

I agreed that the proliferation of cancer was undesirable.

"Well, do you know why House would give that patient malaria?"

I told her I was sorry, it wasn't my field. Perhaps it had something to do with the immune system, being encouraged to fight off the cancer?

She thanked me for time, and hung up.

I think this might be the first time I've ever heard a conspiracy theory about how the government is putting stuff in our food to secretly help people.

It's a strange world out there.

How to Make Kona Coffee Marshmallow Truffles

2010-02-06T19:57:00.003-05:00

This is cross-posted from my Instructable.

There are few things I enjoy more than crafting chocolate truffles at home. they make great gifts, it makes your kitchen smell like chocolate, and nobody can ever believe that they're home-made.

There are many excellent chocolate-based confectionery procedures over on (one of my favorite websites) Instructables. I particularly like simplicity and ease of Scoochmaroo's Easy Truffles , the ever-updating recipes in Ian's Anatomy of a Chocolate Truffle , the artistic humor of Mousewrites' Dung Beetles , and Raving Mad Studios' Velveeta Cheese Fudge , because it's fudge with velveeta in it .

The two drawbacks of hand-rolled truffles are that you have to hand roll the centers (which can take a while and be messy), and that it's difficult to produce multi-flavored and multi-textured candies. So, if you wanted to make a peanut butter and jelly truffle that had separate layers of peanut butter and jelly , it would be quite challenging, if not impossible.

The solution to this is to produce the truffle fillings in slabbed form. Slabbed ganache is exactly what it sounds like - ganache, set into a slab. It's an easy way to make truffles that contain multiple types and flavors of filling together to produce a most interesting chocolate-consuming experience. In this instructable, I'll be showing you how to make kona coffee/marshmallow truffles, but the procedure can be used for all sorts of fillings.

The drawback to slabbed ganache is that it calls for some additional equipment.

I learned how to do this (and more) from Peter Greweling's unmatchable book Chocolates and Confections: Formula, Theory, and Technique for the Artisan Confectioner . The method I use to make marshmallows and to temper chocolate are both from this book.

If you're starting out and want a less pricey introduction to chocolate-making, Andrew Shotts' book Making Artisan Chocolates has a fantastic selection of recipes and a nice, straightforward introduction to tempering. If you want a book that has a good number of recipes for truffles and also an explosion of other chocolate desserts (and dinners!), Jan Hedh's appropriately-titled Chocolate will not disappoint, and is only $2-3 for a used copy.

Required Equipment:

A selection of equipment.

- A kitchen scale, with a resolution of 1 gram.

I can't say enough good things about cooking by weight. Once you get even a little experience with a scale, you'll be amazed at how fast everything gets. Fast... and accurate!

- An instant-read digital thermometer

Temperature control is critical in candy-making. You'll need a fast-reading digital thermometer for making the marshmallow, the ganache, and tempering the chocolate. I have this thermometer , which I like quite a bit.

- Two 12x12x¼ inch confectionary frames

Confectionary frames can be anything that keeps poured liquid or semiliquid centers confined and shaped. Also suitable are caramel rulers, heavy metal bars that are cheap and resizeable.

I had my confectionary frame (which I use in this instructable) laser-cut from acrylic by Ponoko because I like the stability a one-piece frame offers. (Read: I'm too much of a bonehead to keep from knocking caramel rulers around)

... and because I have always wanted to use Ponoko. Laser cutters are awesome .

- A stand mixer with a balloon whisk attachment

This is for the marshmallows. If you're using a hand mixer, make sure to use a durable, stainless steel bowl. Sugar syrup is hard enough to clean up, and you don't want to add molten plastic into the mix.

- A very long offset spatula, a ruler, or something else that can smooth down surfaces.

After pouring the fillings into the frame, they'll need to be smoothed out. A heavy 18 inch metal ruler works perfectly for this. I've lost my ruler, so I had to use an offset spatula.

Forewarning: I lack skill with an offset spatula. You'll see.

- Parchment paper

Parchment paper, like laser cutting, is awesome. It's the perfect surface to spread confections on, as it imparts no flavor to the mixture and is non-adhering.

It has a million other uses, too. You can use it to store cookie dough , to bake cookies on , or even to cook delicious fish inside.

List of Ingredients:

Ingredients. Yay, food!

For the marshmallows, you will need:

Unflavored Gelatin (15 grams)

This gives the marshmallow its desirable properties by trapping the air that will be whipped into the sugar syrup. Of course, this means that strict vegetarians (and vegans) will be unable to enjoy your treats! If you'd like to try making a vegan marshmallow instead, instructables user Randofo has your back .

I have no idea if vegan marshmallows are compatible with trufflemaking. If anyone happens to try it, please leave me a comment!

Water (60 + 80 grams)
Vanilla extract (10 grams)

Vanilla has the power to enhance the other flavors in the marshmallow.

Sugar (240 grams)
Corn syrup (140 grams)

Glucose syrup (combined with invert sugar) is what you should be using, in an ideal world. For those who live in an area where it is difficult (if not impossible) to find pure glucose syrup in grocery stores, corn syrup is an acceptable substitute.

Honey (40 grams)

Honey adds both sweetness and flavor to the marshmallows. Don't skimp on the honey! I used wildflower honey for this batch.

Agave nectar (20 grams)

This ingredient is optional, but I like the flavor. If you omit the agave nectar, add an extra 20 grams of corn syrup.

Nutmeg (1 tsp)

Other spices can be substituted for nutmeg. It is difficult to know how intense the flavoring will be at the end of the process, so be cautious with it. I have made this recipe with 1 tsp of both nutmeg and cinnamon, and found the resulting flavor (in the marshmallow by itself) ideal for my taste buds. In this particular truffle, 1 tsp of spice is overwhelmed by the coffee flavoring in the ganache. Your mileage may vary.

For the ganache, you shall require:

Heavy cream (206 grams)

Use high-quality heavy cream. I use Organic Valley heavy cram if I can get it, because it is thick and delicious.

Bittersweet chocolate (396 grams, tempered + extra for dipping)

Make sure you get a good quality chocolate of at least 60% cacao content. Most professional recipes recommend Valrhona or Callebaut, but I use Ghirardelli. The price is right, and I can buy it in local stores.

You might want to shop around for the chocolate. In my area, there is a shocking price difference between stores: for a 326 gram (11.5 oz) bag, prices here range from $2.50 to $6.50.

Commercial chocolate is always pre-tempered.

Honey (63 grams)
Unsalted Butter, softened (55 grams)

Don't forget to take your butter out of the fridge in advance! Slabbed ganache requires softened butter, so that the chocolate in the ganache remains tempered and workable. Using cold butter will drop the temperature of the ganache too fast.

Coffee (10 grams)

You can either use whole coffee beans cracked in a mortar and pestle, or ground coffee. I'm using Kona coffee (ground) for my batch.

Got everything together? Let's make some truffles!

Step 1: Hydrate the Gelatin

You want to have everything ready to go before you start preparing the marshmallows.

Prepare your first set of confectionary frames. Oil the parchment paper well, or your marshmallow will stick and you will be sad.

Prepared frame, with oiled paper.

Attach the balloon whisk to your stand mixer.

Weigh out 15 grams (about one and a third packets) of powdered unflavored gelatin. Mix this into 80 grams of water in a microwave-safe cup, and set it aside to let it hydrate. Don't worry about timing it, it'll be fully hydrated by the time the sugar syrup is cooked.

Fully-hydrated gelatin.

Step 2: Cook the Syrup

Into a saucepan, measure out:

240 grams sugar
140 grams glucose (corn) syrup
40 grams honey
20 grams agave nectar
60 grams water
1 tsp ground nutmeg

This is what you'll need for the marshmallows.

A quick note: In the picture above, I've laid out all of the ingredients separately. When you prepare these marshmallows for yourself, it is much easier and more accurate to measure them all directly into the bowl.

Weigh out 10 grams of vanilla extract, and set aside.

Mix everything but the vanilla together, and heat it over medium-high heat on the stove. Your goal temperature is 252 °F (122 °C). Stir the mixture occasionally to ensure uniform distribution of all the ingredients.

It begins to boil...

... and it smells delicious.

When the target temperature is reached, pour the syrup into the bowl of the stand mixer and allow to cool (WITHOUT whipping) to 212 °F (100 °C).

Don't get it on you! It's hot!

Step 3: Whip the Marshmallows!

While the syrup is cooling, put the hydrated gelatin into the microwave to melt it. Keep an eye on this! You don't want it to foam over.

A second or two of boiling will leave you with a clear solution.

Fully hydrated gelatin.

Add the gelatin solution to the 212 °F sugar syrup, and begin whipping at high speed. As the mixture is whipped, it will begin to turn from a saucy tan to a lighter pasty white color. Whip it for about 4-8 minutes.

At the start of whipping...

... and about three minutes in.

Remember that vanilla extract you weighed out before? Add it in at the end of the whipping time. Make sure it's mixed in thoroughly.

Once the whipping is complete, pour the marshmallow into the prepared frame. Level and smooth it, then cover with a well-oiled piece of parchment paper. The marshmallow must be allowed to cool fully before you begin to prepare the ganache. In my 63-degree (F) kitchen, this took about three hours. I gave it an extra hour to be safe.

Thick, but still fluid.

Smooth it out.

This would be a good time to clean the kitchen. If you got marshmallow or sugar syrup on something, 10-15 minutes soaking in hot water will dissolve it right off.

Clean up! A clean kitchen is a happy fiancé.

Step 4: Prepare the Cream for the Ganache

Now, it's time to move on to the ganache.

First, prepare the second frame. Peel the parchment paper (carefully!) off of the top layer of the marshmallow, and set the top frame in place. Now you're ready to go!

The finished marshmallow.

To start out, make sure you have two microwave-safe containers, your ingredients, and a mesh strainer on hand.

Ganachey goodness.

Weigh out 20 grams of heavy cream into a microwave-safe container. Mix 10 grams of coffee into the heavy cream, bring to a boil in the microwave, and allow to steep for 5-7 minutes.

Coffeecream!

Into the other container, weigh the 63 grams of honey. Tare (zero) the scale with this container still on it.

Filter the coffee/cream mixture into the honey container using the strainer. The weight of cream will have decreased; add additional cream to bring it back up to 206 grams.

Coffeehoneycream!

Bring the coffee-honey-cream mixture to a boil in the microwave; stir until uniform. Allow the mixture to cool - the target temperature of the cream component is 104 °F (40 °C).

Step 5: Mix the Ganache

Make sure you have everything on hand; your soft butter, the coffee-honey-cream mixture, the thermometer, and your prepared frame.

The key to tempering chocolate is to proceed with caution. I like doing this in the microwave, because it is easy to finely control the amount of heating the batch of chocolate gets.

The method used here is known as "incomplete melting." The goal is to carefully melt out the unstable cocoa butter crystals, seed the remaining batch with a small amount of reserved chocolate.

Weigh out the 396 grams of chocolate. Remove about 20% of it (~80 grams), chop it into smaller pieces with a knife, and set it aside.

Use short (10-20 second) bursts of microwaves to heat the chocolate. Between each period of irradiation, stir the chocolate around to make sure there are no hot spots forming. Do not let the temperature of the chocolate rise above 97 °F (36 °C).

Warm it up...

... but don't get it too hot.

If the temperature of the chocolate rises above 97 °F, it will lose its temper. Angry chocolate is bad chocolate.

Once the main batch is uniformly melted, mix in the chopped "seed" chocolate. It should melt in, seed the batch with the proper form of cocoa butter crystals, and bring the whole lot down to the proper working temperature. You can test the chocolate by smearing a bit on a piece of aluminum foil - it should set quickly, and without white streaks.

Massage the butter into the chocolate, until no lumps remain. Pour the 105 °F cream over the mixture (heat it up if it's cooled too much), and stir in a figure-eight motion until you get a smooth, uniform ganache.

Stir stir stir.

Pour the ganache into the frame and smooth the surface. Allow it to cool a bit, cover with parchment paper, and leave to crystallize overnight.

Puddle of ganache atop marshmallow.

And the prepared layer.

Step 6: Precoat and Cut the Slab

Before the slab is removed from the frame, the ganache layer needs to be precoated (or "bottomed") with a thin layer of tempered chocolate. This keeps the ganache from sticking to the dipping fork, which makes it much easier to dip.

To precoat the bottom, melt and temper a small amount of dark chocolate. Pour it onto the slab, and spread it with the offset spatula (or ruler). Be quick! It will crystallize very fast. Let it rest for an hour or two, then you're ready for cutting.

Now there's chocolate on top. Hooray!

A professional chocolatier would probably have a guitar to cut the slab with, which would make the process fast and easy. In the absence of a guitar, I'd imagine that some sort of MacGyvered contraption with piano wire would work.

In the absence of piano wire and MacGyver, a lightly oiled knife is an acceptable substitute. I bet a pizza cutter would work well, but I have never tried that.

Remove the slab from the frame by working a thin metal object (like your offset spatula) around the sides. The frame should be able to be lifted cleanly off. Flip the slab over (carefully!) so that the marshmallow layer is up.

Work it free...

... remove the frame...

... admire your work.

Cut the slab into pieces with the knife. You can make them as big or as small as you want! I made some big ones for people I really like, and some small ones for people I really like that are on diets.

Some caveats: The knife will need to be cleaned and re-oiled regularly, so that adhesion doesn't ruin your day. This is especially a problem with a marshmallow layer. Also, the knife will crack the precoat layer on the bottom as you cut. Without using a wire cutter, this is inevitable. When you coat the pieces in the last step, the extra chocolate will hide this.

Don't worry, you can always eat centers that turn out looking funny.

I ate about five of these.

Step 7: Dip, Finish, Enjoy.

After all that, the final step is somewhat anticlimactic.

Temper some chocolate.

Dip the centers.

The most time-consuming step.

If additional finishing is desirable (say, if you wanted to press a coffee bean into the top), do it before the chocolate sets.

Leave them alone for 24 hours.

Well worth the work.

It's important to not disturb the dipped and finished chocolate for a while, so that the cocoa butter is allowed to crystallize fully. Touching or moving the chocolates will almost always result in unsightly defects.

Remember to share!

I'd look up the definition for "overreaction," but...

2010-01-26T09:31:00.003-05:00

Books are dangerous things. Terribly dangerous things. Which is why children must be monitored very carefully when they encounter books to ensure that they do not incur any irreversible damage. As Edgar Allen Poe said, "Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality." I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds absolutely terrifying.

Over the course of history, certain elements of society have seen it necessary to prevent children (or, in some cases, other adults) from accessing certain literary repositories of exquisite horror. I'm sure you're familiar with their reasons; kids shouldn't be learning about homosexuality, they're too young to read about sex, there's too much sex in this book, damn this book is sexy.

So, whether it be Harry Potter's graphic depiction of "snogging" (Wizarding slang for "getting freaky"), or 1984's inclusion of the Ministry of Love (think Studio 54 on a busy night), some books earn themselves a place on various lists of shame.

Until now, however, I had not realized that there was a gaping hole in this crusade to protect our nation's children. A loophole big enough that you could throw a dictionary through it. A loophole that is, in fact, the dictionary itself.

Where could any child, if he or she so desired, go to parse all of George Carlin's "seven dirty words" sketch? A dictionary. Where could a child go to learn that "genitals" are, and I apologize for the filth: "The external organ or organs of generation?" The dictionary.

And if that wasn't bad enough, children are particularly vulnerable to the lexophilic agenda of dictionary publishers, which fuels an addiction to word-filth.

For example:

I go to look up "organs," which leads me to "a pair (also set) of organs: an organ. Obs. Cf. pair of bagpipes, pair of virginals."

I look up "virginal," and where does that lead me? "b. virginal generation, parthenogenesis. 1879 tr. Haeckel's Evol. Man I. ii. 28 The so-called parthenogenesis, or virginal generation, of Bees."

Curiosity piqued, I follow "parthenogenesis" down the rabbit hole. "Reproduction from a gamete without fertilization, occurring most commonly in invertebrates and lower plants. Formerly also: asexual reproduction, as by fission or budding."

Asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction. Filth leads to filth, and we should not have it in our schools.

Fortunately, a brave citizen in Southern California has set the precedent for me.

A parent complaint that a dictionary in her son’s classroom at Oak Meadows Elementary contained the term and definition for "oral sex" prompted school officials in the Menifee Union School District to pull all copies of the book from its fourth and fifth grade classrooms last week.

Extra bonus! The offending book was pulled before a single child had to suffer from its sinful content. This is how the system should work. Parents, next time you're volunteering at your child's school, look up "oral sex" in the dictionary. You know, just to be safe.

Since I do not have access to a paper dictionary, I looked the term up in the Oxford English Dictionary online. Not only did it fail to warn me that I was going to be viewing potentially objectionable content, it also gave me free access to a filthy limerick. Parents, shield your children.

Said an airy young fairy named Jess,
"The oral requires some finesse,
While in method the anal
Is terribly banal,
And the trousers will get out of press."

Really, OED? Really? Is this necessary?

Of course, there are some token objectors.

"It is not such a bad thing for a kid to have the wherewithal to go and look up a word he may have even heard on the playground. To me it is brilliant," he said.

You read that right. It's "brilliant" for a child to look up words on his own, unsupervised. Next thing you know, they'll be shooting heroin, because Webster tells them that it "produc[es] intense euphoric sensations."

Kids these days. Honestly.

As an aside - if you want to waste a morning giggling like a twelve-year old, read some of the usage examples that the OED has selected for some of the famous four-letter words.

1568 D. LINDSAY Answer Kingis Flyting 49 in Wks. (1931) I. 103 Ay fukkand lyke ane furious Fornicatour.

Tee hee.

Feng Schuience

2010-01-12T13:25:00.000-05:00

Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art of overcharging for interior design, has been a big hit in the western world. Always anxious to ride the trend, I have developed some guidelines that will be useful for my fellow scientists to communicate their ideas to the world at large.

How to Feng Shui your Posters: A Simple Guide

The poster presentation is a hallowed scientific tradition, dating back to Socrates' presentation of his poster "On the Wisdom of the Wise Men of Athens" at the first Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Athens conference.

As we all know, it didn't go over so well.

The reason that most posters fail to achieve their world-shaking potential is simple - bad Qi.

Qi, meaning "life energy," is the term for (according to about.com) "the energy that permeates everything around us." The closest equivalent that the West has ever developed would be that of the luminiferous ether, but the ether is widely regarded as a ridiculous, outdated, and unscientific idea. Qi is clearly different, however. It's ancient and mysterious, after all.

You can think of Qi as tiny invisible filaments of ~~ether~~ energy pervading and infiltrating every aspect of existence, intertwined throughout the universe like heartworms through a dog. That thrill you get from standing atop a mountaintop? That's Sheng Qi, invigorating your senses. Feel like crap in your office? That's Sha or Si Qi, also known as bad mojo.

As an aside, it's a good idea to check your office for pointy things, as these tend to accumulate both bad Qi and harmful microwave radiation. Also, make sure your office wasn't the former scene of misery of trauma. Many office buildings are constructed on accumulators of Sha Qi, like former cult compounds, slaughterhouses, and hockey arenas.

To assemble a successful poster, one must simultaneously allow for the smooth flow of good Qi and block bad Qi.

Step 1. Pick Your Colors.

Depending on the subject of your research, you'll need to pick a harmonious color scheme. Choosing the wrong colors can seriously affect the energy of your poster. The chart below can help you select a proper color base for your area of study.

If your area of interest is not on the chart, pick the color that makes you feel the most focused and mellow.

If you don't like the color of your discipline, sucks to be you. Qi is a cruel and unforgiving master.

Step 2. Chakra Power

The next thing you need to pay close attention to are your poster's chakras. Chakras are vortices of light that feed the chi into and out of your poster. You can identify the location of the chakras in several ways.

The most reliable is to simply hire a fully licensed and bonded Feng Shui expert to examine the paper you'll be using beforehand. You'll want to put this expense on your grant, as it can be pricey! Make sure you check your choice out with the local Department of Morbid Voodoo before hiring them - you wouldn't want to end up with some charlatan that didn't know what they were doing!

If you yourself are a fourth level sensitive or greater, you can scry the location of the chakras personally. You'll need a willow rod, some incense, a cup of green tea, and a spotter (in case you get over your head). More detailed instructions are available at your local Healing and Wellness center.

For the rest of us, the easiest method is to use ants. Ants are naturally attracted to Qi-flow, and will collect around the chakras of a poster. You'll need a fairly large amount of ants (2-3,000) - I'd recommend attracting them to your poster with small pieces of candy or all-natural organic jam. Once the ants have settled onto the poster, mark the chakra locations with a pencil. Thank the ants for their service and then gently return them outdoors.

Step 3. Layout

The layout of your poster is determined by its chakras. Each piece of paper has its own character, and as such, no two posters will look alike. Take, for example, this image, which represents the chakras discovered on a typical piece of printer paper.

As you can see, the chakras have been numbered from 1 to 7, according to size. Each piece of paper will have seven chakras, which correspond to the seven spiritual centers of the human body. The equivalencies are shown in the chart below.

In order to maximize your good chi, follow this procedure - it's as easy as 1, 2, 3!

1. Place your text/figures in the appropriate location on the poster.
2. Ensure that your text is color-coded appropriately (the title is red, the introduction is yellow, etc.)
3. Apply the color scheme that matches your discipline to the background of the poster.

Here are two versions of a simple poster that was recently presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Alternative-Minded Scientists. The first is the poster as it would normally have been assembled, by a standard western-thinking scientist.

It's easy to see why this poster induces feelings of dis-ease. The title and discussion sections are disconnected, and so appear flat and listless. The Material and Methods section, rich in green heart energy, is placed over the Crown and Root chakras, "shorting out" the energy contained there. The Third Eye is blocked by the introduction, preventing sha qi from draining.

And now, the poster after its chi has been optimized using our method.

Notice how the first poster seizes your gaze, almost violently. This is greatly in contrast to the soft smooth visual embrace of the second version, which allows your eyes to skip gently over each section in a natural and orderly manner. Sha qi, introduced by those who would be critical of this work, is quickly drained through the Third Eye.

Step 4. Printing the Poster

A common newbie mistake is to assume, at this point, that the chi of the poster has been "set," and that it may be printed without any further attention to metaphysical detail.

That couldn't be more wronger.

Recent research has proven that the tiny particles present in printer inks can "imprint" the chi of their environment onto paper when they dry. Forensic mediums can often identify the date, time, and emotional investment put into a document simply by analyzing residual chi patterns in ink, in much the same way that you can tell how old a cow is by cutting it in half and counting the rings.

If the energy of the printing environment is too negative, you can actually invert the polarity of your paper, leading to derision and criticism. What should you do? It's as easy as ONE, two three (without the two and the three).

Orientation, Negativity, and Energy.

1. Orientation

It's a common mistake to orient the printer so that it faces north/south. The most important factor in capturing good energy in the printer ink is the orientation of the axis along which the printer head moves. Orienting the printer east/west insures that the ink collects the maximum amount of meridional energy from the Earth's magnetic field.

2. Negativity

In the average office, there are over 35 sources of negative energy. Angry staff, unpaid bills, bureaucratic miasma. The best way to deal with this is to take the plotter/printer out to a pristine field, or a babbling brook.

However, this can often become inconvenient, since the average mountain stream lacks electrical outlets. When the printer must remain indoors, try to be as nice to it as possible. Play soothing music. Stroke it gently. Burn incense. As it how its day is going. You can never be too careful!

3. Energy

Ensure all outlets are properly grounded, and that the printer is plugged into an adequate surge suppressor. Power surges or outages caused by storms or improper wiring can seriously damage sensitive electronic equipment.

Step 5. Present!

I have led you as far as I can, grasshopper. Now, you are on your own. Your work must stand for itself, judged mercilessly by your peers. So, as you wait for them, clad only in traditional shamanistic robes, levitating several inches above the floor in the lotus position, the words of Dongshan Shouchu when asked "What is Buddha?"

Dongshan replied, "Three pounds of flax."

Namaste.

Santa's Workshop

2009-12-30T09:35:00.000-05:00

David over at Law, Legislation, and Lunacy has a post up that examines the peculiar relationship between Santa and his workforce, the elves. Entitled "Santa the Slaver," it is not particularly flattering towards the Big Man of Christmas.

But can you really blame him for being suspicious of Santa's means? Santa almost by definition lacks transparency, he (as David points out) has no income, and is located in a peculiar part of the world. In addition to that, he commands a vast and completely invisible surveillance network which he uses to determine the behavior of every single Christmas-celebrating child on the planet. Whether he is evil or benign, Santa is not doing himself any favors here.

However, upon considering Santa's odd behavior, two alternative explanations sprung to mind concerning the elves.

The first was what I'll call the Willy Wonka model. Yes, the North Pole hardly seems like an ideal habitat for the elves - but what if where they originally came from was even worse? Wonka rescued the Oompa-Loompas from near-starvation, and pays them in food and lodging. He keeps the factory toasty hot for them, despite the fact that temperatures above 65° can have extremely adverse effects on chocolate manufacturing.

So it could be with Santa and the elves - the elves provide labor for Santa's factories in exchange for food, lodging, and protecting them from the poachers that grind them up to make premium glitter for the wealthy.

Upon further thought, I actually favor a second option; that Santa and his elves are actually two aspects of one superentity.

Think of the parallels between Santa's Workshop and the average termite colony: thousands of workers toiling away with unmatched speed and efficiency, coordinated as small parts of a single organism; an organism that happens to have a massive and distended abdomen. The colony could be milennia old, having originated in the Arctic regions when they were tropical.

These lines from the Night Before Christmas seals the deal for me:

His eyes -- how they twinkled! His dimples how merry!

The compound eyes of an insect can act as small retroreflectors, resulting in twinkling. The fontanelle (or frontal gland pore) of a termite could easily be mistaken for a "dimple" in low light.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf

Santa himself is an elf! This accounts for the difference between Santa and the elves; they're actually small industrious "worker" elves, and the larger "queen" Santa-type elves.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
[...]
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

This passage describes Santa's ability to emit soothing pheremones, probably from his frontal gland port. The "smoke" the author sees is signaling chemicals emitted by Santa to soothe any would-be attackers. The "pipe" is probably an extension of Santa's mandibles, mistaken for a friendly, harmless object in the dim light and while under the influence of Santa's home-spun hallucinogens.

So, "queen"Santa Elves visit homes every year, leaving gifts made out of useless (to them) wood, plastic, and metal. In exchange, they are offered calorie and nutrient-rich cookies and milk to fortify them for the difficult task of birthing the next generation of "worker" elves.

So when children ask you what Santa does with the rest of the year, you can tell them:

He hides in a network of subterranean arctic caverns, laying eggs out of which millions of mandibled, multi-limbed drones will someday hatch to make wooden horses and high-end consumer electronics for the children of the world.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Seems like the War on Christmas starts earlier every year

2009-12-02T10:18:00.005-05:00

Ah, wintertime. The days grow short, the air grows cold, and otherwise-sane people completely lose their minds.

For instance - take this very post you're reading right now. Did you know, that by calling this season "wintertime," I have committed the gravest of sins against America Herself? Of course, it might not be entirely my fault - I may have just had my poor brains addled by the Political Correctness Police, whose sole holiday (damn it, did it again!) mission is to ensure that retailers, government, and EVERYONE ELSE burns the visage of Christmas from the face of our society.

Now, you might be foolish enough to believe that retailers, for instance, are just choosing to offer generic holiday wishes to their customers because they shouldn't be so presumptuous as to assume that they are all Christians who celebrate Christmas. I'm not a business expert, but I gather that the general operating principle here is that alienating customers is not a commercially productive activity.

However, a select group of brave culture warriors has chosen to intercalate itself between poor, defenseless Christmas and those that would cram a lemon meringue pie of tolerance, multiculturalism, and rat poison into the face of baby Jesus.

Fear not, Christmas! Focus on the Family to the rescue!

Fear that you or your family might contribute to the inevitable collapse of society? Sick of blatant commercial pandering to demographics that are not your own?

Then it's time to Stand for Christmas.

Dobson and the rest of the monkey house down in Colorado Springs have compiled a useful website that reports rankings of retailers based on the percentage of users that have had "Christmas-friendly," "Christmas-negligent," or "Christmas-offensive" experiences.

At the time that I'm writing this, Bass Pro Shops is (are?) in the lead, with a whopping 98% friendly rating.

Let's read some of the reviews:

It's great to see them use the word "Christmas" in their ads.

If you visit this website, you'll see this a lot. It seems that, contrary to popular understanding (and to paraphrase a popular saying), "advertising is the reason for the season."

They were very friendly, and helpful, but the most important thing is as I left they did say Merry Christmas.

Staff take note - wishing someone "Merry Christmas" is more important than being friendly or helpful. I recommend you replace your holiday cheer with a good chorus of "Merry Christmas."

Bass Pro Shops are part the fabric that make up this good Christan Nation. ...

Gloria in Excelsis Bass Pro, everybody.

The most negligent retailer at the moment is Lane Bryant (0% friendly, 80% negligent, 20% offensive). Lane Bryant's primary crime? Too much "holiday," not enough "Christmas."

I've never looked at Lane Bryant stuff before. Too bad I won't be getting anything from them, since I do Christmas shopping, and they don't have anything for Christmas!

This commenter raises an excellent point - retailers stand to lose a boatload of money by not informing people that their merchandise is suitable to be given as gifts for Christmas. I mean, if it doesn't say somewhere in their ad that their products make "great Christmas gifts for the whole family," do I really want to take a chance on buying them? After all, I am specifically shopping for Christmas gifts. My friends and family would probably just exchange that "great holiday gift" Watchmen DVD from Best Buy (80% offensive) with a "Christmas stocking stuffer" Watchmen DVD from Wal-Mart (65% friendly). Lane Bryant take note - with this simple omission, you've lost this not-customer's non-business forever.

And now, we'll have to enter the dregs. The Retailers of the Damned (and the Jewish). The Christmas Unfriendly.

Best Buy always ranks low with Focus on the Family. Best Buy knows this, because several years ago they were one of the first retailers that requested that their employees not wish anyone greetings based on any religious observance, which they clearly had no right to do.

Best buy also knows that it has lost the business of Christians forever, so it had better aim its soulless cannons of marketing at other groups. It has the pagans and the sun-worshipers with "Happy Holidays," and the Jews with "Happy Hanukkah." They have the athiests with their sinfully low prices. This year, even Muslims got targeted, by an advertising circular wishing everyone a Happy Eid al-Adha. In fact, a Best Buy spokesperson said the following:

"We respect that diversity and choose to greet our customers and employees in ways that reflect their traditions," said spokeswoman Lisa Svac Hawks in a written statement. "In addition to Happy Eid, you will see greetings of Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa and Feliz Navidad in various Best Buy communications during the holiday season."

What?! Merry Christmas?! They are TAINTING Christmas by combining it with those other holidays. It's as if they've taken a big pot and MELTED TOGETHER all of these different cultural traditions, which is probably the least American thing I have ever heard of, ever.

And they still won't wish you a Merry Christmas in the store (or a Happy Hanukkah or a Joyous Kwanzaa or a Happy Eid, but those don't matter - this is America).

And the Stand for Christmas crowd agrees.

The ad that pointed out the foreign holiday but failed to recognize the Christmas season has caused my family to avoid Best Buy. We, too, have spent thousands of dollars there in the last 3 years - computers, cameras, etc.. but I am now asking around for a better place to do our technology shopping.

No Eid al-Adha in America, nope nope. That there's a foreign holiday.

I gave them negative feedback on a camera I had ordered. In the same e-mail, I asked about using Merry Christmas. The response was "some other people do not celebrate Christmas and we do not want to offend them. So we use Happy Holidays, not Merry Christmas".

Bastards.

My husband and I spoke with several staff members when making a fairly large purchase. Everyone was polite and helpful, but no acknowledgement of what holiday we're celebrating was ever mentioned. It was a disppointing and insulting.

These salespersons should have taken the advice given to the Bass Pro folks. Being polite and helpful only earns you a "disappointing and insulting" rating these days.

Surprisingly, however, Best Buy isn't at the top of Focus' naughty list. That honor goes to the Gap, which is a whopping 82% offensive. Holy heresy, Batman!

Look at some of the horrible, awful things that the Gap has been up to:

I will NOT buy anything else from GAP (which I am a HUGE fan of). By ignoring Christmas and offering "Happy Solstice," a WICCAN witch-warlock acknowledged dedicated day, they have GROSSLY OFFENDED not only ME but the MAJORITY of Americans. I will get the word out to others as well.

Wiccan-witch-warlocks take note - polar fleece is great for outdoor rituals, and the Gap is willing to offend 155 million people (51% of Americans) to attract your business.

The commercials are horrendous. They are completely uncalled for and are most definitely a defiant attack on Christmas....

I wholeheartedly agree. This commercial is an affront to human dignity, and my optic nerves are forever soiled by the photons it has emitted.

Plus, the dam song has been stuck in my head since November.

Moving on...

I could have tolerated Hannakuh and Kwanzaa. But solstice, really? By attempting to please all, you alienate most. Congratulations.

I know how this reviewer feels. It's bad enough that we have to put up with all these consonant-filled nonsense holidays; now we need to pretend that the solstice is part of some sort of meaningful cultural tradition?

And, last but not least:

I'm a manager at a Gap store. As a Christian I feel condemned by reading some of your comments. We're allowed to say Merry Christmas. Please understand that Gap is a business not a church and we have Jews, Muslims, Atheists, and Christians who come into our store. I cannot assume everyone are Christians. The Sunday "church crowd" that comes in is so much more rude and mean than any other time of the week. Please use courtesy and know that you are a representation of Christ even when you shop. Please be nice, retail workers need Christ too!

Er...

Let's just pretend we didn't read that one.

Avoid embarassment with Science!

2009-10-15T19:23:00.003-04:00

It's a story that we've all heard a million times before. A young boy, excited about the fringe research of his parents, climbs aboard an experimental aircraft and careens towards the stratosphere.

Or so we think.

Turns out the kid, perhaps terrified at the impending punishment that comes from unmooring your dad's UFO, was hiding in the attic all along. Whoops.

And you know what? A moderate dose of science could have saved everyone a lot of embarrassment.

About an hour into the incident, one of Colorado's news agencies reported that the "disc" of the UFO had a diameter of 20 feet. Well, a 20 foot diameter helium balloon (905 internal cubic feet) would have more than enough lift to hoist a 40-50 pound 6-year-old.

But the balloon wasn't even close to spherical.

A 20 foot diameter paraboloid (you know, UFO-shaped) that's ten feet tall (which is a huge assumption - the news gave it as only five feet tall) has an internal volume of only 314 cubic feet! This would give it just enough lift to hoist the family cat (~17 pounds) assuming he hadn't been at the friskies too often.

Which Dad should have known, since he designed the damn balloon.

At long last!

2009-09-21T18:16:00.004-04:00

After toiling in the mines of science for what feels like an eternity, I finally have my academic bonafides. My first paper has gone live on the Royal Society of Chemistry's site. Huzzah!

The abstract is free, but you have to be a subscriber to read the full paper. Sorry, taxpayers! The RSC has your research now!

You can, however, see the supplementary information for free. There's some nice crystal pictures! And... er... Flack parameters! Yeah, gotta love those Flack parameters.

Dumpster Fruit

2009-07-18T09:11:00.003-04:00

I was not happy.

Would you be happy? Put yourself in my shoes, coming home from a long day slaving over a hot Erlenmeyer to a house that smells like rotting garbage.

Where the hell is that awful smell coming from?

Is it the trash can? No. Did one of the fuzzy bastards decide that the couch lacked eau de cat piss? No, thank goodness.

I was getting desperate. Did an orange roll under the couch? Did I leave chicken skin in the sink? Did I contract with Waste Management for an auxiliary landfill site in my sleep? No, no, and no.

Let's back up a little bit, here.

My fiance has been in China for the past six months, and before she went, she asked if there was any unusual food that I wanted mailed back.

"Well," I said, "I've always wanted to try some durian."

Let's see how the internet describes the durian.

Quoth Wikipedia:

The edible flesh emits a distinctive odour, strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust. The odour has led to the fruit's banishment from certain hotels and public transportation in southeast Asia.

Typical Wikipedia - a wishy-washy, useless description. Some call it fragrant, some call it disgusting. I'm sure that the odor is just delightful, evoking both the deep appreciation of scores of Wikipedians and an official banishment by governments of some Asian nations.

Let's turn to youtube for a less sanitized reaction to the odor of the durian.

Let's turn to bizarre food expert, Andrew Zimmerman. For those of you without cable, this is a man whose job it is sit down to a refreshing bowl of sheep brains.

The British perspective on the fruit is similar.

Imagine my glee when I received a package from China no more than three days ago.

What's that in the back there?

Durian biscuits!

Upon opening the package, I could practically feel the aroma of the durian slowly enveloping my head.

The rich and unmistakable aroma of damp, aged garbage. If this is how the biscuits smell, I can only imagine how terrible the fresh fruit would be.

Yep, wet garbage. Similar, in fact, to the odor which has my living room in its stranglehold.

But... I put those in a plastic bag.

A bag which is now on the floor.

Torn open.

Stupid cats.

More crystals!

2009-05-23T23:18:00.002-04:00

Once again, the real world intrudes on my internet business. So, here's some more crystals.

See? I do work sometimes!

Crystals!

2009-02-24T18:50:00.004-05:00

People occasionally ask me what I do, and the easiest answer is "grow crystals."

Today, for your enjoyment, some nice crystal pictures.

Always read the label

2009-02-02T19:05:00.002-05:00

So, I was pumping some primo hooch from the stockroom's private reserve when I took the time to thoroughly read the label, something that I have neglected to do for a long time. Here, I took a picture so you can read along with me.

Well, all of the normal stuff is there. A smooth curve between 235 and 340 nanometers, less than 1 ppm benzene, greater than 100 tequila equivalent gallons.

Then I spotted this.

Kosher booze! God would not be upset were you to break into the stockroom at night and pump this stuff straight into your eager gullet.

The paramedics that would need to revive you, however, would probably be less than impressed by your life choices.

This does give a tantalizing look at the production method of this alcohol, which must have started its life as some sort of grain byproduct in order to be Passover-negative.

And then there's this.

Expiration date?! I'd really like to meet the bacteria that can gain a foothold in 200 proof alcohol.

It Begins

2009-01-27T10:27:00.000-05:00

One of the things I've missed most about teaching is blogfodder. Frankly, things that usually happen to me aren't nearly interesting enough to write about.

Well, I could probably wax poetic about my cats, but then I'd be in danger of turning into one of "those" bloggers. I can has actual content, plz?

Look! It's a cat! Inside pants! Knitted pants! Love me, Internets!

As you hopefully inferred, I have the pleasure of teaching again this semester. So far, everything's going smoothly as butter.

What's that? The professor's office, undergraduate labs, and classrooms have all been sealed off because of asbestos contamination? And nobody can find the professor I'm teaching for?

Well, shoot.

The classroom I had to teach in was one of those quarantined because of asbestos. I, and all of my class, got a free day off. Those folks have been pretty lucky, missing one week because of asbestos, and another because of the MLK holiday. I wondered briefly if they'd go for the hat trick and not show up after the class is shuffled off to a random building in the nethers of campus.

My wondering was for naught; the next day, the classroom was open! Turns out that the air quality people had mistakenly identified some fibers caught in their filters as asbestos. Monday may have been out of luck, but Tuesday's class caught both barrels of organic chemistry straight to the torso. The labs were open so that they could be prepped for the teeming hordes that would soon pass through them, and all was well with the world.

All was well. Until I went to teach again - in the same classroom I had been in the previous day - and found the hallway again sealed up. An e-mail was waiting.

"Whoops," it said, "turns out those fibers were asbestos after all."

Of course, I'm paraphrasing. I think the original language was closer to "by reading this e-mail you are hereby releasing the university from any liability pertaining to our inadvertently exposing you to airborne asbestos."

Until the police tape and sealing plastic are removed, my class is taking place in the criminal justice building. I had no idea where it is, because as a grad student, the only three buildings that matter are my building, the undergrad science building, and the dining hall.

Apparently, I shouldn't have felt bad about my abysmal knowledge of the campus geography, because half of my students didn't know where the building was, either. I suppose I should give them the benefit of the doubt; it's not like the time and location of the class were clearly announced by the professor during his lecture or anything, right?

Right?

In a peculiar twist, however, a fair number of students from the other TA's section knew where the building was, showing up even though their classroom had not been changed. I applaud their enthusiasm!

And, as a gift, I present you with this chemistry joke.

Med school? Don't make me laugh.

2009-01-16T08:24:00.002-05:00

marriedtothesea.com

"Clean" Coal for Christmas

2008-12-24T07:58:00.005-05:00

Coal is dirty.

Really, really dirty.

Like, filthy dirty.

Coal, when it's mined from the Earth, is chock full of fun - mostly in the form of toxic heavy metals like mercury, lead, arsenic, and (my nemesis) cadmium. So the first time I heard the phrase "clean coal" I was a bit puzzled. Did the energy folks discover a vein of naturally pure coal? Has combustion technology improved to the point that greenhouse gas emissions are no longer an issue?

No, of course not.

The "clean" in clean coal refers only to soot emission. When a representative from the National Federation of Coal or whatever shady private think-tank is defending it today refers to cleanliness, what they really mean is "a minimum of heavy metals are released into the atmosphere as a consequence of burning."

It's a classic trick of industry. Sell a product as clean by sweeping the waste under the rug, or move it somewhere that people don't care about.

It's a shell game! Guess who the losers are.

So where do all the heavy metals go? Conservation of matter can't be defeated by a clever PR campaign.

(Let's leave off the colossal environmental damage and human cost of mining, for now. It's Christmas, and I don't want my little story to be too depressing.)

First, the coal is washed. Literally. Crush the coal in a solvent like water with a pinch of detergent, and most of the metals are leached out. Next, the coal is burned in a plant that has an active scrubber system. Residual nasties are either precipitated as solids back into the furnace or trapped in a filter. If everything's going as planned, all you have belching forth at the end is perfectly clean, harmless greenhouse gases.

Oh, but you're left over with a heavy metal slurry from the washing, and a toxic, radioactive ash. Fortunately, that can be swept under the rug. Out of sight, out of mind.

At least until fate decides that your town is naughty, and decides to dump more than 23 million gallons of the stuff down your collective stockings. Right now, only 400 acres of land have been contaminated, but this is a larger spill than the Exxon Valdez disaster (about 11 million gallons).

So the next time you see an ad for "safe, reliable clean coal technology," remember what it looks like.

Miscellanea

2008-12-19T11:30:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the Instructables Hungry Scientist contest. My Rum Bubble Surprise won first place! Here's the sexy mixer I won.

The cake below is from a recipe I found on my favorite cooking blog, Smitten Kitchen. It's a chocolate stout (as in beer) cake with a simple coffee ganache icing and white chocolate clumsily piped on top to add a bit of flair. This is (well, was) a good cake. All I need now is to get some fun attachments for it.

There are already some more cool contests up at instructables. The big one, which I have no hope of winning, is sponsored by Craftsman tools - the challenge? Build something interesting using tools. The top prize? A $20,000 Sears gift card. Holy crap. So, if anyone reading this is handy with tools of any sort, it might be worth entering this contest.

So, the other day I was reading some news, and (as usual) there were more infuriating reports about America's Most Expensive Failure Ever. Then I realized something.

"Do you know what this means?!" I shouted at Harry, who had been reading over my shoulder. "We're stuck in the financial equivalent of a zombie movie!"

Harry, being a cat, was uninterested in my not-feeding-him-related activity.

Think about it, though - the hubris of a group of shadowy elites causes a problem which starts small but quickly grows out of control, rapidly and unstoppably spreading across the entire world. Powerless to do anything, the average citizen can only stand by in horror as the lurching undead monster that the financial industry has become moves in, threatening to drive them from their home and feast on their precious vital fluids. In a last desperate attempt, the government marshals its forces and loads seven hundred billion pellets into the Treasury Department Bailout Blunderbuss, only to have the mighty volley absorbed into the body of the beast without even slowing it down.

You need to aim for the head, Congress.

If that's not the perfect plot for a zombie flick, I don't know what is.

I decided to pass on my sentiments about all this to Wall Street, in a manner I thought they'd understand.

The Formula - Part II

2008-11-14T13:08:00.006-05:00

Well, we finally got to see the rest of The Formula in Heroes! Unfortunately, it doesn't answer much.

We get one new molecule on the bottom right - it's adrenaline, which makes sense in the context of Mohinder's earlier discovery. The rest of Maitotoxin is there... sort of. The quality of this image is much better, so it's easy to see where the show has taken some "artistic license" with the molecule (highlighted in blue).

Some of these changes are minor, such as adding a few extra OH groups, or leaving a group or two out, but others are PURE CHEMICAL INSANITY, including whatever the hell they replaced the sulfonate groups with.

As a bonus, though, one of the monitors that half of the formula was displayed on also had a the primary structure of a protein shown.

The top line reads "AlaPheGlyPheMetThrArgValAlaLeuGlnAlaGluLysLeuAspHisProGly" and the second is "AsnLysValHisIleThrLeuSerThrHis."

According to BLAST, both sequence fragments correspond to the gene encoding pterin-4 alpha-carbinolamine dehydratase, an enzyme that people with the genetic condition phenylketoneuria lack.

So, a gene corresponding to a well-known genetic disorder, two steps of Tamiflu synthesis, a colossally large marine toxin (almost correctly drawn), and some mystery equations.

Well, I'm stumped. Your guess is as good as mine.

Need help!

2008-10-27T19:00:00.004-04:00

I know I haven't written anything in a while, but I have a really good reason! I've been working on a little project that's ready to be unveiled, and I need as much help with it as I can get!

The how-to website instructables.com is having a contest called the Hungry Scientist.

Being both a scientist and often experiencing hunger, I decided to enter. The top prizes are quite desirable - I could win a KitchenAid stand mixer!

I have three entries:

How to Isolate Splenda, for all of you that want a little more bang for your sweetening packet,
How-To: Gelatin/Agar Filtration, a method to produce crystal-clear liquid from even the cloudiest of materials,
and Rum Bubble Surprise, a dessert I just invented.

So if you want to help this poor grad student furnish his dream kitchen, please vote for my entries! Up near the top you'll see the "vote" button. You can vote only once per entry (per IP address), but you can vote for as many different entries as you want.

Thanks in advance!

In which science BLOWS YOUR MIND.

2008-10-23T09:18:00.002-04:00

Seriously people, gird your loins. This is some prime-cut top-quality mind-blowing science.

Scotch tape produces X-Rays.

Yes. You read that correctly.

SCOTCH TAPE CAN PRODUCE X-RAYS.

Scotch tape (available pretty much anywhere for a buck or two), held to its roll by van der Waals forces (the weakest in chemistry), can produce x-rays strong enough to image bones when peeled in a moderate vacuum. According to the paper, the van der Waals force is 100 times too small to produce even a single visible light photon, yet here they can get enough light to see out of it.

Also, did I mention the x-rays?

Watch the video.
Aside: Notice that the professor is wearing a radiation badge, but the grad students are not.

This is huge. In the video, they mention x-ray imaging for developing countries. As in, an x-ray machine that can be operated with a hand crank or a bicycle. They even mention that this phenomenon could be used to jumpstart fusion, which is pretty awesome, but that usually doesn't pan out so well. (see also: sonoluminescence)

Just when you think the only questions are the boring ones (where did the universe come from, blah blah blah) science throws you a total curveball. Who thought there was anything interesting left to discover about scotch tape?

Dear John McCain,

2008-10-15T21:23:00.003-04:00

For the third and hopefully the last time, IT ISN'T AN OVERHEAD PROJECTOR.

This is an overhead projector. It's useful for projecting transparencies, and has lately been replaced by digital projectors. It's useful for presenting pie charts.

You can pick one of these up at OfficeMax. It'll set you back $200.

This is a Zeiss Mark 9 planetarium projector. It's a multi-lensed projector that can display fully accurate high definition video of stellar objects over a 180 degree hemisphere. It's involved in what is often a child's first full fledged science experience.

These will set you back a few million dollars, because it ISN'T A FUCKING OVERHEAD PROJECTOR. PLEASE STOP CALLING IT THAT.

I hope that clears up the confusion you seem to have.

Scientists DO have a sense of humor!

2008-10-02T09:36:00.002-04:00

I really like the developing trend of scientific instrument companies marketing their products with hilarious videos. You don't have to be a biochemist to enjoy the PCR Song, and you never have to approach a pipette to fall in love with Eppendorf's boy band.

But it'll be hard to top The Adventures of Ana L'Tech.

The Fundamentals of our Economy Are...

2008-09-24T07:43:00.009-04:00

Some would say strong. Others would disagree. How to decide which is correct? The same way we decide anything in America - with a poll!

Let's ask, for instance, about the economy. Do people think the economy is getting better, staying the same, getting worse, or if they have no opinion what with being cyborgs without the right to own or buy property?

Check out the results.

National economy	Getting better	Staying the same	Getting worse	Undecided

Sep 2008	-	13%	82%	5%

Zero freaking percent of people polled thought the economy was improving. Have you ever seen any poll where zero percent of people chose one of the answers? Admittedly, I've never run a poll about baby-eating versus sunshine and puppies, but I think even that would have at least one percent on the baby-eating side.

Let's put this into context here.

Eighteen percent of people think that the Sun revolves around the Earth.

Wrap your head around that - eighteen percent of people surveyed didn't know a fundamental fact about their own planet, one that was discovered nearly five centuries ago and is depicted constantly in movies, animations, cartoons, and in other icons of popular culture. It's not a matter of doctrine, as is the case for evolution, and I can't think of any sect, religion, or social group to whom this fact is offensive.

But not even one percent of those people seem to agree that the fundamentals of our economy were strong. The best we can get is the thirteen percent advocating for stagnancy.

How about them fundamentals?

The Formula

2008-09-23T14:20:00.006-04:00

For anyone else that saw Heroes last night, I know you probably have the same question that I do. What was it, exactly, that was on the piece of paper that Hiro pulled out of his father's safe?

Well, the big honking molecule looked suspiciously familiar, so after a bit of googling, I found it: Maitotoxin, one of the toxins found in red tide. Notably, this is one of the largest non-protein non-polysaccharide molecules produced in nature. It's ridiculously toxic - the LD50 for mice is 50 nanograms per kilogram.

The other molecules are simpler. The bottom left is caffeine. The synthesis to the right of the caffeine seems to be the beginning of a preparation for a shikimic acid derivative, possibly of tamiflu or another similar antiviral drug. There are sodiums where there should not be sodiums, which bothers me.

Here's the whole picture for you (click to embiggen): maitotoxin in red, caffeine in blue, shikimic acid/antiviral synthesis in green.

I wonder how this will actually come into play in the show. There were virii last season, so the antiviral reference makes sense. Caffeine is likely in there because every pop-culture reference to molecules has to include it. But the maitotoxin? I suppose time (and the other half of the formula) will tell.

Finding truth in the midst of truthiness

2008-09-11T18:17:00.005-04:00

10-22-2008 - Edited to fix a stupid graph mistake!

Staying informed about politics during an election year is like trying to find a tiny nugget of gold hidden inside a marshmallow the size of a small house. You chew your way through the sweet gummy pablum, handfuls of substanceless garbage being shoveled into your mouth, and by the time you get to the gold nugget at the middle, you're just too sick to care.

Only it's even worse than that. In an election, propaganda is being slung about like dung in a monkey fight. The best you can do is to keep your head down and try not to get any on you.

But you can't just get out of the way, oh no. You need to pick the most nutritious marshmallow, the monkey with the sweetest-smelling poo. If you don't, the rest of the monkeys in the monkey house are liable to pick the gibbon with the most prominent nose, who will likely end up getting half of your brethren eaten when he decides to invade the crocodile habitat.

As a scientist, this is particularly frustrating. I like facts, numbers, and other silly things, like statements at least loosely tethered to reality. Frankly, it's important to me to know if politicians (all politicians, not just my politician of choice) are spouting bullshit. For this, I find websites like politifact.com to be a good resource.

For those that aren't familiar with it, politifact takes statements, comments, and ads made by the major candidates (sorry, Bob Barr) and fact-checks them, ranking them from truthful to "pants on fire" dishonest (for instance, Hillary's bosnian sniper fire). Additionally, the pages for each candidate have graphs on them! Graphs! With real numbers!

But not enough graphs. So I took a lot of the raw data on politifact and crunched the numbers for you, as a way of apologizing for not writing anything in a month.

First of all, it seems like politifact is fairly even-handed. They've analyzed 284 statements made by Democrats, 279 made by Republicans, 113 by Obama, and 111 by McCain.

Here's how they categorize those statements:

PolitiFact (pronounced puh-lit’-eh-fact) is bolder than previous journalistic fact-checking efforts because we’ll make a call, declaring whether a claim is True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True or False. We even have a special category for the most ridiculous claims that we call “Pants on Fire.”

And some of the things they look at in addition to simple statements made by the candidates:

We'll also publish an “attack file” – a home for fact-checking the attacks candidates make against each other. We recognize that in a world of political bloggers and “independent” political action committees, attacks don’t just come from the candidates themselves. So we will also check out many claims that enter the public discourse via a talk show host, a blogger or even a fictional character in a YouTube video.

The first thing I decided to look at were the statements made by both McCain and Obama. (with all graphs, click for a bigger version).

The bars represent the statements made by both Obama and McCain as a percentage of their total statements.

The first thing that pops out from this graph (for me, at any rate) is the heavy weighting of Obama's statements towards the true end of the spectrum, as well as his lack of "pants on fire" outright falsehoods. McCain's graph shows that he's uttered only slightly fewer false statements than true ones.

Next up is the "attack pages," which include attacks made by each candidate, as well as attacks directed towards them. First, those attacks made by each candidate.

Whoa. As shown by the chart, attacks made by Obama have been overwhelmingly factual, with an enormous 41% being completely truthful. Remember, these are percentages! Politifact has cataloged a similar number of attacks for each candidate, with 49 for Obama and 54 for McCain. almost 70% of Obama's attack are at least half truths, compared with only 53% for McCain.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the trend is reversed for attacks aimed at the candidates. Remember - this is not just attacks from the opposing candidate, but attacks coming from ANY source.

Only 41% of attacks made against Obama are half-truths or better, compared with 69% of those directed at McCain. This means that of the monkey dung that Obama receives, 60% of it is undeserved. Compare that with McCain - 70% of the monkey dung flung at him deserves to stick.

I know what you're saying at this point, though. "But Jaaaaaaacob, a half-truth isn't worth as much as a whole truth, and a "false" can't be nearly as bad as having my trousers aflame."

And you know what, I totally agree. I'm a big fan of partial credit, as some of my former students will attest.

So, I gave each of the attack columns a "score," by assigning each category a point value. True statements are worth one point, mostly true is worth .75, half truths half a point, barely true is worthless, false statements lose you a point, and telling a whopper loses you a whopping two whole points. Remember - the attacks on each candidate are attacks coming from any source at all.

You may draw your own conclusions from this graph.

In Which the Mythbusters Outdo Themselves

2008-08-01T09:12:00.003-04:00

Mythbusters, otherwise known as the best show on television, is soon to be airing an episode in which the scale of bustage they're engaging in can only be called epic.

You can see the preview here.

Oh, what the hell, I'll embed it for you.

The Mythbusters will be taking on one of the largest, strangest conspiracy theories ever - that NASA faked the moon landing. They'll be doing everything that the moon hoax folks say NASA did, from slowing down footage of bouncing to see if it looks like running in reduced gravity, to planting footprints and a replica flag in a man-sized vacuum chamber.

If I have to break into someone's house to see this episode, I will. I suggest you all do the same.

For more on what the "other side" thinks, go here, where real-live astronomer deals with the most common hoax claims, as laid out so helpfully in that atrocious Fox program, "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?"

Hint: yes, we did.

Dr. Bronner's Sexy Soap?

2008-07-31T09:43:00.002-04:00

If there were a spectrum of soaps, it would begin with Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap, an unadvertised, all-natural, organic, fair-trade, cult-labeled, old-school hippie product.

On the other end would probably be Herbal Essences, which seems to spend their entire marketing budget trying to couple their product with sexy naked women having a... "fun" time showering.

So what am I to think of this "how to" video (might want to wait until your co-workers aren't around to watch that) for Dr. Bronner's soap, released by American Apparel?

On one hand, the Kari Byron lookalike in the ad says that showering with the good doctor will leave your house smelling of peppermint, which is a selling point I think is often overlooked. Plus, the label itself tells us that "coincidentally & yet oh-so-slow, sweet-kisses-whisper-softly into waiting ears, arousing heavenly flames that enlighten renew, brilliant fire blazing through dark, lonesome years." Which is pretty risque for soap, if you ask me.

On the other hand, sexy shower ad and Dr. Bronners? Trying to fit those two concepts in the same space in my mind is giving me a headache.

Additionally, I sincerely doubt that people who need to be reminded how to lather themselves up would be interested in either American Apparel or Dr. Bronners.

So, here's the thing.

2008-07-10T11:24:00.004-04:00

I really want to like you, AirTran. Your tickets are cheap, your website is easy to manage, and you gave me a free flight for drinking soda at Wendy's.

But here's the thing.

You really need to get some better gate agents.

See, after someone is done getting harassed by airport security, the last thing they want to do is deal with a gate agent who doesn't have any idea what's going on.

Additionally, I suppose that he could, theoretically, have been moving more slowly. But that would have required close proximity to a supermassive object, or at least a handle of vodka. Either way, it was an inspiring display of lethargy.

Anyway, I understand that bad weather delays planes, I really do. that's hardly your fault. But when your gate person tells me that I can't make my connection, I really need to be able to believe them.

There I was, waiting in line for the better part of an hour, tantalizingly close to the kiosk. Close enough, in fact, to slap the gate agent were I suddenly seized by rage. You see, I had been told that we passengers to Denver were SOL when it came to catching our connection in Atlanta, and we would need to spend the night somewhere. Fortunately, he didn't get to me, because he abandoned the line to begin boarding. While boarding, I asked him about the status of the flight to Denver.

"Oh, it's fine, you can make it."

This piece of good news was too late for the couple that had cut in line to get served first, who then tried to board the plane. Sorry! You've been rebooked! Karma? I'd like to think so.

The flight was very nice. There was a lovely lightning storm off in the distance, and a woman on the plane transporting a heartbreakingly adorable puppy.

So you can only see the butt of the puppy, but I assure you that it was really cute. Really cute.

When I got to Atlanta, your gate agents there told me that my flight to Denver had already left.

Fortunately, my trust had already been broken. I hauled ass down to the gate, and found that the flight was still there! Hallelujah!

But why, why did you feel that you needed to punish me by taking away my exit seat and putting me into Baby Central? I paid an extra $20 to sit in the window seat of the exit row, the one with no seat in front of it. I did not pay $20 to get stuck in the middle seat, behind a crier and in front of Tommy Seat-Kicker and his brother, Poop Factory.

So just so you know, the next time I fly, I'm not listening to anything any of your employees tell me.

And I want my $20 back.

From my cold, dead hands.

2008-07-08T18:00:00.000-04:00

GreenPinga got me thinking, once again, of the unusual nature of garbage in our culture.

I've written before about the sometimes puzzling attitude that businesses display towards their garbage. Long story short, it seems like most businesses would rather destroy or deface merchandise headed for the landfill so that no enterprising scavengers can get their hands on it. Perhaps for economic reasons, perhaps because they can't stand the idea of someone else having a free lunch, who knows.

As an aside, dumpsters are beginning to show some of the effects of the economic slowdown. I can't remember the last time I had a nice substantial find, probably because as purchasing decreases, so do returns. I'm not discounting the effect that this downturn might be having on the number of divers, either.

Anyhow, Pinga's article relates somewhat to the other question I get asked all the time when I accidentally let slip my "hobby."

Is it legal?

Occasionally, an individual will have such a visceral reaction to the idea of someone rummaging around in their garbage that they simply can't believe such an activity is legal.

That's right. How dare you dig through my trash. How is it legal for someone to pick through my garbage, my waste?

Isn't that interesting? Why feel territorial over trash? Setting aside (valid) concerns about identity theft, what could compel a person to viciously defend against the recovery of a chipped cup, a broken vacuum, or a box full of coat hangers from their garbage? What insanity is it that compels them to defend garbage until it's taken to the dump? It's trash. By throwing it out, you have demonstrated that you no longer care what happens to it.

Well, that's one school of thought.

So socially, it seems that a paranoid attachment to one's own waste is tolerated, if not accepted. But what about the aforementioned legal status of the garbage? Do the former owners of that chipped mug have the right to invoke the protection of the state? Will Johnny Law stop me from adding your broken vacuum to my collection?

In the case of dumpsters, it's an unambiguous yes. Dumpsters are considered private property, and rummaging through them without the consent of the owner is trespassing.

But what about personal garbage? In 1988, the Supreme Court agreed with my view of garbage, stating that:

It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left on or at the side of a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops and other members of the public.

Think of it like WiFi. Don't broadcast a non-secured signal if you don't want people leeching your bandwidth.

One of the dissenting justices, however, wrote:

A search of trash, like a search of the bedroom, can relate intimate details about sexual practices, health, and personal hygiene, as well as reading and recreational habits.

There's a huge difference between the bedroom and the street corner. I, for one, would not expect privacy were I to stand at the curb and brush my teeth, much less if I engaged in "sexual practices." I wouldn't expect my personal papers and receipts to remain untouched out there, either.

Of course, the justices were ruling on an issue far more weighty than whether or not someone like me should be fined for picking Scalia's used rulings out of the bins behind the Supreme Court.

As any fan of television crime dramas knows, police don't need a warrant to rummage through your trash. That ruling is why.

That makes me much more sympathetic to the other side of this argument (nobody wants to be arrested because a cop found an empty dime bag in the trash) but I still have to go with the court on this one. If I were doing something illegal, you had better believe that I would dispose of my incriminating trash in much the same way I rid myself of any trash I don't want prying eyes to see - with fire.

Or, by burying it out in the quarry.

Recently, there's been a disagreement about this ruling. Quoth an Oregon appeals judge:

Garbage cans, like bicycles or cars, are commonly left on or near the street by individuals and, even if those individuals do not take the precaution of securing such items with locks, we would not infer from their unlocked state that the individuals who placed them there intended to abandon them.

Now, I think that's a little ridiculous. By placing garbage at the curb, you are signaling, quite clearly, your intent to abandon all the objects within. You are saying, in effect, "please remove these items from my sight. I wish to have them crushed, incinerated, or buried deep underground." People put couches, televisions, and other large, expensive items on the curb to encourage people to remove them, so why is the trash bag sitting next it so different?

Additionally, how far is your ownership over the trash supposed to extend? Can the police seize it once it reaches the landfill? Can they grab it once it enters the state-run garbage vehicle? Or is the real problem here just that the cops are getting a free lunch from the trash, just like the rest of the scavengers?

You know, it's a cliche, but it's true. One person's trash is someone else's treasure. So this is my message to anyone that's ever thought about releasing the hounds onto some poor graduate student rummaging through your trash can:

Chill out.

You shouldn't be throwing away any personally identifying papers anyway, and it's pretty likely that the only objects of interest in the can are small appliances and recyclables. Don't deprive them of their treasures.

Besides, it's only garbage, right?

Terrorist Fist Jab

2008-06-24T11:03:00.004-04:00

I know, I know, I'm behind the curve on this one. Still, I thought it important enough to bring up. How can Americans justify voting for a politician that so brazenly displays such seditious behavior?

For shame, for shame.

Break out the tinfoil hats

2008-06-19T09:50:00.001-04:00

I love conspiracy theories.

I always have. As far back as I can remember, I've enjoyed reading books that talked about "alternative" theories of history. Aliens built the pyramids, Hitler is alive and well in Argentina, and we never landed on the Moon. Stuff like that. Some of my favorite conspiracy theories had to wait until the advent of the Internet, as the groups that advocate them were both too small and too marginalized to be trusted with a real physical book.

Besides, books have UPC codes on them, which everyone knows are the mark of the beast.

There's all sorts of fun stuff out there. The United Nations has a lot to do with it, apparently feeding into a deep-seated American fear that blue-helmeted troops will flood our shores, take our guns, and force us to drink delicious coffee and implement socialized health care. We'll be herded into camps, where we'll be forced to wear ugly shoes and subsist on a diet of Coq au Vin and delicious European pastries. But we won't fight back, since decades of drinking "fluoridated" water will have softened our resolve and clouded our minds.

Ok, so perhaps I'm paraphrasing a bit.

One of my favorite conspiracies has to do with Denver International Airport. My brother and I used to tell people that if you rode the underground train past the end of the line, you were kidnapped by government agents and replaced with an identical clone.

Come to think of it, we never did come up with a reason why they'd do that. That's probably because my brother rode the train past the end one time, and there's no way I'm trusting some government clone with my theories.

The real surprise came when I discovered that there were people who actually believed much much stranger things about DIA than I could ever imagine.

Turns out you can't go way over budget building an airport in the middle of nowhere on an absurdly large piece of land and then decorate it with borderline creepy murals and hidden masonic symbols without tipping your hand that it's a UN base to welcome the Reptilians to earth after establishing a New World Order.

No, seriously.

Anyway, the title of this post alludes one of the two most famous conspiracy icons - the aluminum foil beanie, the only 100% reliable way to rid yourself of governmental or alien mind control. (Though recently, testing has suggested that the tinfoil hat could be a covert propaganda campaign orchestrated by the Illuminati, as they actually enhance the transmission of some federally-owned frequencies.)

The other is the black helicopter, which occasionally goes hand-in-hand with Men in Black, but is more often associated with the gun-grabbing atheist communist government troop conspiracies (see above RE: UN).

I only mention this because my favorite hometown news source reported that many residents of Denver were perturbed by black helicopters conducting "counterterrorism" exercises without warning.

Here's where it gets weird. In the original story, (now only available via the Google Cache), the Mayor expressed his displeasure at the lack of notification they received. I'll quote it just in case "they" disappear the article permanently.

"The federal agencies sponsoring the ongoing multi-agency training in Denver agreed to make the proper notifications regarding the exercises to prevent surprise and inconvenience to Denver residents," Hickenlooper wrote. "There seems to have been a misunderstanding about the reach and scope of these notifications, and they did not occur in the manner expected by the City."

Now, if you search their website for "black helicopters," the sentiment expressed by the mayor's office is very different.

"We're very, very pleased and honored to have the Special Operations unit here," Katherine Archuleta, a senior advisor to Mayor John Hickenlooper, said in a conference along with a military spokesman.

Suspicious? Oh, it gets worse.

He said that Special Operations teams have done low-profile training successfully in other cities without news releases and briefings.
A 1997 Washington Post article said the Special Operations Command had conducted at least 21 such exercises in U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle over three years.

21 covert black-helicopter missions, and now one in Denver, host of the Democratic National Convention? A dramatic reversal by government officals? "What's the connection," you ask?

“It’s nothing more than Special Operations Command training with local authorities,” said Lt. Nathan Potter of Special Operations Command, which has authority over special forces with all branches of the military.
Potter would not say which branch of the military was flying the choppers over Denver.

The training has nothing to do with preparation for the Democratic National Convention, which will be held in Denver in August, Potter said.

“It’s routine preparation for the global war on terrorism,” he said.

Bam, right there! Official denial equals unofficial admission, that's how conspiracies work.

Here's how this will go down:

First, the Democrats will select Obama as their candidate for the 2008 election, who will (under Illuminati orders) pick Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) as a running mate.

Inouye, as is widely known, is a Reptilian.

Obama will make a stirring speech about working together and hope, which will be the signal for the battalion of black ops UN troops trained and hidden underneath DIA to emerge and swarm across America. The troops, having been ordered to to kill those Americans living in zip codes ending in two-digit prime numbers, will confiscate everyone's guns and precious metals. Resistance will be brief, as secret signals embedded in dream-transmissions will compel most people to cooperate with the troops.

The masons, following an extraterrestrial document buried under the pyramids, will forge the stolen guns and jewelry into a device called the Overportal, which will be located in Hawaii. The Overportal will use the island's natural volcanic energy to bring about the second coming of Galactic Emperor Xenu.

Or, I suppose that it could just be an example of poor intra-governmental communication.

But that's a lot less interesting.

Ode to the Omni

2008-06-17T11:07:00.000-04:00

Recently, I was having a conversation when the venerable Dodge Omni was mentioned. Omni, Prince of Sedans! That brought back memories.

Though the first car I drove was not an Omni (it was an accursed minivan), the Omni is the car I will remember most fondly. It was my dad's car, and by the time I started driving it, it had well over 150,000 miles on it.

Not that you'd know, since the odometer only measured miles in the tens of thousands.

It had a manual transmission, four doors, and an old-school steel frame that held its small body to the road like glue. Though it lacked airbags and a side mirror, it more than made up for that in unquantifiable amounts of moxie. The summers may have been a little hot, since the Omni did not deem me fit for use of an air conditioner, and the winters were a bit cold (what with its erratically functioning heater), but I loved that car. I knew every rust spot and broken door handle on that vehicle. I knew just where to bang the dashboard to make the instrument lights come on, and I knew when to hit the gas at stop signs so the engine wouldn't die.

One day, while I was out dumpster diving with a friend, we happened upon a huge box full of stickers for various ski and snowboarding equipment. The ones that have always stuck with me the most were the ones for a company called Mambosok, perhaps because my friend decided to take it upon himself to apply as many as he could to to the exterior of the car while it was still in motion. Fortunately, the parental units decided it was a change for the better, and allowed us to plaster the entire box of stickers onto the car.

As an aside, I don't think I've ever actually seen a Mambosok product. If the company would like to send me some stuff for all those years of free advertising, I wouldn't complain.

The sticker phenomenon rapidly snowballed from there. Another friend obtained a box of super-reflective "telephone pole" stickers, which gave us numbers (666) and letters (BAD LAD, RAD CAR) to play with. Sometimes I would come back to the car from work and notice that strangers had applied their own personal decals to the vehicle. A Jerry Garcia bear here, a favorite band sticker there.

Then came the two crowning jewels of the Omni's increasingly bizarre collection of accessories. First, two ENORMOUS stickers thrown out by some vitamin store, which had still frames of runners running. They came in strips, about 15 feet long and 2 feet tall. We applied two of them (one male, one female) to the top of the car. Now my car, the Omni, had racing stripes.

Then, to top it all off, we bungee corded a whole 10-point buck deer skull to the front bumper. Perfection.

The Omni seemed to endear itself to strangers. If I left the windows rolled down and it rained, a good Samaritan would roll them up. People would see me entering or exiting the vehicle and cheer for me. "Awesome car, man!"

One day, the really cute cashier at Chick-Fil-A that would always flirt with me found out that I was the guy with the Omni. "So... I saw you driving that sticker car." she said. "Yes, that's my car," I responded, swelling with pride. She wrinkled her nose. "I don't know how I feel about that."

Ah, well. You can't win 'em all.

My favorite group to show off the Omni to were the Taco Bell Ricers. For those of you that might be unaware, "Ricer" is a term for a rich teenager who makes unecessary modifications to his Honda Civic to make it look faster. You know the type - pointlessly large spoiler, five-point seatbelts, neon lights on the undercarriage. Apparently, all the best places they could think of to show off their phat rides were Taco Bell parking lots.

So, there they were, all examining the engines of the other cars like baboons determining which of them has the bluest bulbous butt cheeks, fighting over the opportunity to mate with the choicest of bejeweled lycra-clad she-ricers. We'd roll up in the Omni, ancient radio blasting NPR, the fur on deer skull waving like grain on the prairie. We'd go in, grab our tacos, and, like a practiced pit crew - we'd push-start the car, wave to the ricers, and be on our way.

See, we had better places to be than Taco Bell.

I did have a great plan to affix a temporary cardboard-and-duct tape spoiler to the car, but it proved to be unstable even at very low speed. Plus, I was worried the duct tape would take stickers off.

Over time, the Omni even began to appeal to my scientific sensibilities, as I got the opportunity to observe the various types of stickers responding to brutal weathering that they were not necessarily designed to endure. One band's sticker (Breaking Point, I think - warning, loud music) turned from bright red to bright yellow in almost a week. The racing stripes yellowed and became brittle. Some stickers faded completely.

The Mambosok decals, however, were never even fazed. Those were some tough stickers. The only way they'd ever come off the car was if the paint came with them, which it occasionally did.

Unfortunately, the Omni, like all things, eventually succumbed to entropy. It started innocently enough, when I noticed that the car was mysteriously absorbing oil. It wasn't like it was burning it - there was no blue exhaust, and it wasn't just a leak, since there was never a pool of it underneath the car. Refill the oil twice a month, I can handle that.

Next, the door handles began snapping off. The front passenger door was soon the only one that could be opened from outside the vehicle. And let me tell you, climbing over the passenger seat and gearshift was a royal pain - it was simpler just to leave the window cracked and reach in.

Then, some bastard stole the deer skull. And this wasn't an idle theft, as it probably took him about 20 minutes out in the mall parking lot to saw through the bungee cord and snip through all the wires and zip ties holding that thing on. I'd really like to know what would motivate a theft like that. What the hell do you do with a deer skull? It wasn't like he could risk putting it on his car, I'd just re-steal it. I like to think it was the ricers, claiming a trophy from their nemesis, the Cheap Car Everyone Loved.

Soon thereafter, the engine died. I was driving along, and the temperature meter suddenly pegged. It got a new engine from the junkyard, and had been running quite well when the transmission kicked. This one was a perfect Murphy's Law situation. From my brother's account (I wasn't in the car at the time) it went something like this:

Dad: Hey, we just passed 200,000 miles!
Brother: I hope nothing goes wrong!
Transmission (Breaking): Grrrrrrrnch!

But we couldn't let go, and the transmission was replaced too. My brother was now the primary driver of the Omni, and he witnessed the car's final moments when it devoured its third and final engine.

The venerable Omni now rests in pieces at wherever cars go when you donate them to NPR. He always loved NPR - we figure it's what he would have wanted.

That, and the parents wouldn't let us build a raft and float it into the reservoir on fire, Valhalla-style.

So thank you, dearest Omni, for nearly 300,000 miles of dedicated service. I will always remember you fondly.

Pick a peck of sesquiterpenes

2008-06-05T15:22:00.000-04:00

Sesquiterpenes. Isn't that a nice word? Doesn't it flow off the tongue? I think it does.

Sesquiterpenes are compounds that often also flow onto the tongue quite well. Limonene, one of the major components of citrus rind, is one such compound. Delicious!

A new sesquiterpene was just discovered by some enterprising food scientists that is among the most potent odorants ever discovered! Rotundone, so named perhaps for its rotund appearance, is detectable at levels of 4 nanograms per liter.

Picture an Olympic swimming pool full of pristine spring water - two and a half million liters of it. You would only need ten milligrams - the merest pinch - of rotundone to render the pool pungent. For comparison, capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot peppers, would only be detectable if we threw 2.5 grams of it into that swimming pool. That's 250,000 times the amount of rotundone. Not to mention the inherent hazards of handling that much capsaicin. Yikes.

The potency of rotundone is not the most interesting part of this story, however. The researchers found rotundone in their investigation of Shiraz grapes and wines, as they often have a pronounced peppery flavor.

Grapes, as you might be aware, do not typically taste like pepper.

Rotundone was the answer. After realizing how much the pure compound smelled like pepper, they decided to see if it was in, well, pepper, and it was! Until this discovery, the "peppery" aroma compound in pepper itself was completely unknown! That's the most important compound in one of the most important spices, hidden for this long.

Also, approximately 20% of the panel they used to test the limit at which the compounds could be detected couldn't taste anything - even at 4 micrograms per liter, 10,000 times greater than the detection limit. That means 20% of people could be missing out on the best part of pepper, and think that a good Shiraz is just like any other red wine.

Pity.

Indiana Jones and the Tenure of Doom

2008-06-01T17:56:00.000-04:00

So, I saw Indiana Jones 4 yesterday. So be warned, there could be spoilers in here. I don't know what qualifies as a "spoiler," but there you are.

I've got to say - I'm disappointed in you, George Lucas.

I really wanted to love this movie. I really did. But in the end, even Harrison Ford's overwhelming awesomeness couldn't pull it out of the pit it started digging about halfway through (vines? Come on, George). I'm not going to say it didn't have good moments. After all, there was an atomic bomb, and they did bring back Marion Ravenwood, unquestionably the coolest of his "sidekicks."

But you want to know what I liked the least?

In the end, Dr. Jones gets "promoted" to the position of assistant dean of his university. This is terrible! A hands-on researcher like Jones, "promoted" to an administrative position? This is the academic equivalent of a cop being forced to work a desk, a hacker being forbidden from accessing the internet, or a serial killer in a world without chainsaws.

It would have been less cruel to just stuff Indy into a sack and jam him into the "space between space," if you know what I mean.

So, farewell, Dr. Jones. Please do us a favor and encourage the fruit of your loins to stick with motorcycle repair - I don't want to have to see "Mutt Williams and the Spear of Destiny" or somesuch nonsense.

From the Heavens

2008-05-16T14:39:00.000-04:00

Whilst frittering away my time on the internet today, I stumbled across a link to one of my favorite real life sci-fi weapons project ever: the "Rods From God" kinetic weapons platform.

The idea is delightful in its simplicity: hoist a six-shooter full of tungsten telephone poles into space, wait until they're over your target, then release. The kinetic energy the rods build up while they're screaming through the atmosphere would be equivalent to that of a small meteor. Armor? Pshaw. In a cave? Good luck.

Of course, there are some issues with this. Will the rods survive reentry? How accurate will it be? What if the enemy happens to move after launch? Doesn't Zeus already have a patent on death from above?

My biggest problem is the name. It's that sort of misogynistic phallus-oriented violent language that's made our foreign policy what it is today. I think the pentagon has missed a golden opportunity to clean their image here. Why not call it the High-altitude Unidirectional Gravitational weapon System, or the Low-Orbit Versatile Exterminator? That way, you can say that our government will be sending the evil axis du jour LOVE from God or HUGS from God!

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about those Korean weapons facilities. I have a feeling that God is going to show them some LOVE."

So, to the NSA internet traffic monitoring guys who are reading this: please pass this along to the Department of Defense. I think I could really be on to something here.

Longest Article on Wikipedia?

2008-05-12T12:59:00.000-04:00

Serendipitously, I happened to stumble across a Wikipedia page today that was flagged as "too long." Curious to see what would get an article flagged (as 5,000 words worth of footnotes seems to pass muster), I clicked through. This led me to a goldmine - the list of the largest articles on wikipedia!

Regrettably, I was wrong about my prediction for longest article. At 16,209 words, list of wikipedians by number of edits is dwarfed by the most massive article, which weighs in at an almost unbelievable 45,749 words. The topic? Line of succession to the British throne. That's almost cracking novel length.

Of course, nobody's going to read all 45,749 words, as the article is, for the most part, a list. Thrilling prose like:

Sophia → George I → George II → Anne, Princess Royal → Princess Carolina of Orange-Nassau → Frederick William, Prince of Nassau-Weilburg → Princess Henrietta of Nassau-Weilburg → Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria → Princess Maria Immaculee of Bourbon-Two Sicilies → Archduke Leopold Salvator of Austria

is not going to hold even an above-average internet reader's attention for long. In fact, most of the list of longest articles is just that - lists. Lists of things like atheists (43,534 words), episcopal bishops (26,952 words), Barack Obama presidential campaign endorsements (31,559 words), and US Core Statistical Areas (36,359 words).

The longest "real" article is on Hillary's 2008 campaign (34,308 words). She just barely edged out Barack's list of endorsements, a fact which I'm sure we're going to see her using as a justification to continue into West Virginia. "But... I beat him on Wikipedia!"

The next largest real article in on critical philosophy, clocking in at 32,893 words. This one looks like someone just copied and pasted their dissertation straight into the article. No section headings, no links, not even a real reference section. It's full of jargon and philosophobabble, and stylistically it's unusually unreadable, even for a Wikipedia article.

Kant, it is well known, did not put himself to much trouble in discovering the categories. 'I', the unity of selfconsciousness, being quite abstract and completely indeterminate, the question arises, how are we to get at the specialised forms of the 'I', the categories? Fortunately, the common logic offers to our hand an empirical classification of the kinds of judgement. Now, to judge is the same as to think of a determinate object. Hence the various modes of judgement, as enumerated to our hand, provide us with the several categories of thought. To the philosophy of Fichte belongs the great merit of having called attention to the need of exhibiting the necessity of these categories and giving a genuine deduction of them. Fichte ought to have produced at least one effect on the method of logic. One might have expected that the general laws of thought, the usual stock-in-trade of logicians, or the classification of notions, judgements, and syllogisms, would be no longer taken merely from observation and so only empirically treated, but be deduced from thought itself. If thought is to be capable of proving anything at all, if logic must insist upon the necessity of proofs, and if it proposes to teach the theory of demonstration, its first care should be to give a reason for its own subject.

The 2007 Texas Longhorn football team makes the list at just over 25,000 words. I'm sure there's some joke I could put in here about sports and Texas, but honestly, I just can't see the humor in the fact that this is six and a half times longer than the entry for Claude Monet.

the last real article in the top 50 is on the Iraq War. At 27,662 words long, it wins an award for being the only topic on the list which has a subject that justifies its length.

As a final note, Wikipedians have submitted just over 2,000 pictures of their cats to category:Felis silvestrus catus. At the current exchange rate, this is equal to an article containing a mind-blowing two million words.

Take that, British monarchy!

Ice is Nice

2008-05-07T22:27:00.000-04:00

Some More Advice From the Past

2008-05-02T18:30:00.000-04:00

Tattoos are pretty commonplace nowadays, and almost as common is tattoo removal. Think getting zapped with a medical laser is tough? Try doing it old-school.

See, back in the day, first you'd be mocked as a fool, and then they'd slather your skin with glacial acetic acid and lard, to try to loosen the dye. Then, you'd be treated with potassium carbonate, which, as a pretty strong base, would soften up the skin. And then, once your skin is all damaged and porous, then they'd hit you with hydrochloric acid, just to make sure you fully regret the indiscretions of your youth.

Imagine how they must have felt about more "creative" piercings.

Final Joke 5: The Return

2008-04-30T20:34:00.000-04:00

You know what we haven't had around here in a while? Some high-quality humor.

Talking an exam seems to bring out the best in people. Furrowed brows, lawyer-like semantic analysis of simple questions, neighbors helping each-oth... Wait a minute, I SAW THAT, YOU TWO! EYES ON YOUR OWN PAPERS!

They think they can get away with murder. Honestly.

First up: Baked Alaska.

Substituted naphthalene snowman!

I like this illustration. And naphthalene snowman is a lot easier to write than the formal name, which would be something like 3,8-dimethoxy-2,9-dimethyl-1a,2,9,9a-tetrahydro-2,3-dioxabicyclo[2.2.2]anthra[2,3-b]oxirene. This person would have had to spend, like, a whole hour on writing that. And then I'd have to read it over and over again, trying to figure out if he actually got it right, or if he was just trying to fool me.

And if there was a synthesis proposed for this, I could overlook a lot of mistakes.

Second, we've got some Spanish Mole with Fried Avogadros.

Mooooooooole. Mooooole. Moooooooooole.

I don't know why, but I like the little emoticons people draw. I like tho think that putting that little smidgen of extra effort into drawing the happy face signals that, even if I'm the blackhearted emotionless TA they think I am, at least they enjoyed the joke. And isn't that worth something? Can't they get partial credit for that?

Not after implying I'm a blackhearted robot, nosiree.

Thirdly, Man's Best Friend.

Awwww, look at the doggie! It likes chemistry! And it talks in thought bubbles! This is adorable enough that I'll overlook the fact that dogs, lacking opposable thumbs, would bring death and horror into a laboratory. Five pointsey wointsies for the puppy wuppy!

Who's a good dog? Who's a good dog! You are!

And now for the textual jokes. Haha, get it? Textual? Rhymes with sexual?

Fine. No points for me, either.

What did the redneck chemist say when he picked up his girlfriend?

what you 'aldoled' up for?

Bonus points for originality on that one. Although, I can see that not going so well once he says it.

"Are you calling me an unsaturated ketone, implying that I'm highly reactive?"
"No, baby, no! I'm saying you've got some soft reactive orbitals!"
"Oh, so now I'm fat, am I?!"

It goes downhill from there.

Two chemistry students were playing a game called "marco, pollo." Instead of getting closer toether they were getting farther away b/c they were yelling out "ortho, para." Get it?

Haha!

Yes, I get it. Don't patronize me!

Seriously, though. Not bad. This joke required chemistry knowledge to both understand and to write. Five points for the content, minus two points for not indicating you like your own joke with a smilie face.

Two chemistry student fish are in a tank. After a long exam, one fish finally says to the other, "so... how are we gonna drive this thing?"

This joke is just clumsily slapped together. It's clearly just a regular joke into which chemistry has been inserted. Listen, man, you can't just take two awesome things and throw them together and expect the result to be awesome. I mean, bacon is great, and so is chocolate, but...

You know what, never mind. Full credit.

Previously, on Final Joke...

Bacon plus chocolate equals DELICIOUS

2008-04-28T18:58:00.000-04:00

Mmm, bacon.

Two delicious tastes combined; the smoky decadence of bacon fused with the silky smooth sweetness of chocolate. Mo's bacon bar is most assuredly a unique and flavorful treat.

Bacon and chocolate seem to have a peculiar synergy. The saltiness of the bacon really compliments the chocolate's sweetness, while the rich applewood smoke collides with the slight bitterness of the cocoa in a veritable pileup of flavor.

Alas, I will not be purchasing another, as the price is prohibitive compared to, say, an order of chocolate chip waffles with a side of bacon at IHOP.

Mmm, waffles.

You got steak on my chicken! You got chicken on my steak!

2008-04-23T14:01:00.001-04:00

Science has greatly improved food.

I don't think I'm really going out on a limb claiming that, either. We've come a long way since the days of spear-and-eat. Recently, while continuing to improve our dining experience, science has also been making food awesome.

How many times have you been sitting there, eating a hamburger and thinking "I wish there was a chicken patty fused to this" or "why aren't these noodles made completely out of shrimp?"

Ask, and ye shall receive.

The magic ingredient in all these dishes is transglutaminase, an enzyme that irreversibly binds two amino acids together. These amino acids (lysine and gutamine) are present in very high levels in skeletal muscle, making this culinary voodoo possible. The amide linkages that are formed are extremely robust - they're also present in the "backbone" of every protein, so to destroy them you would basically have to dissolve the entire piece of meat (which, if you're nice, I might demonstrate for you someday).

Anyway, the important part is that cooking won't ruin it!

Presumably, you can buy it straight from Ajinomoto, the supplier, though it's also available from Le Sanctuaire for $88 a kilogram.

If anyone is looking to do any early birthday shopping for me, this is definitely on my list. Shrimp noodles! Chickensteak! Turducken! Bacon wrapped anything! The possibilities are endless.

A Faerie Tale

2008-04-18T12:30:00.000-04:00

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, in a land much like ours, there lived a man named Big Science. Big Science lived in an ivory tower, atop the tallest mountain, where he would often gaze at the insignificant people below.

"Bah!" said Big Science. "Look at them all. Their concerns so unimportant, their little lives ever so small."

Big Science had always hated the people in the village. Many of them had ideas about why - perhaps he had a heart of coal, or wasn't held enough as a child. There were even whispered rumors that he had been tortured in a basement dungeon in the bleak and horrible kingdom of Gradlandia, but that is the subject for another story.

For years, Big Science and the townsfolk coexisted quietly, with him providing the townsfolk with wonders like antibiotics, electricity, and lycra pants. In exchange, the townsfolk would provide a small amount of money to keep Big Science happy, and keep him fed on a steady diet of ramen noodles and Mountain Dew.

One day, Big Science was looking down at the town in contempt, as he so often did, when he had a perfectly fiendish idea.

"Oh, the worms all down there, they spit in my face, with their simple devotion to their petty faiths. Praying to Jesus and Vishnu, to Thor and to Loki... I deserve admiration, not some hokey story."

So he schemed through the week, feverishly creating and discarding plans to destroy the little civilization of the townsfolk and crush any remaining traces of religion. Finally, on the seventh day, he had his plan.

"I'll start off with something so innocent and mild, that they've all descended from animals so wild. Their morality gone, they'll kill and they'll steal, and that's when I'll swoop in to seal the deal. I'll ban all talk of god, we'll start society anew, and if anyone questions me, well, then they're through."

So then he rose to the window, and bellowed his new laws down upon the land. If they wished to continue to have access to antibiotics, automobiles, and the ever-popular Village Idol, they would have to purge their town of any and all religion. He would be providing them with a new bible, On the Origin of Species. And, if any schoolteacher questioned him or so much as admitted to belief in the supernatural, they would be buried to their necks in a pit full of hot coals and cobras covered with razorblades, and bags full of acid-covered fire ants would be poured onto their heads.

As in any cultural revolution, there was some resistance, but they were quickly crushed by the Hammer of Science. And as time passed, the creeping fungus of secularism gradually began choking the kindness and decency out of the town. Without the Bible in schools, students had nothing keeping them from murdering each other. With the happy support of Big Science, horrible people began using Darwin as a justification to do whatever they wanted.

An oppressive shadow had fallen over the land. But all was not lost - a rag-tag band of rebels, led by a fearless former Nixon speechwriter set out to burn Big Science's ivory tower to the ground.

And this time, no amount of facts would be able to save him.

If you liked my little story, you must not have heard about the new movie Expelled. You see, to some people, that's not a fairy tale, it is an accurate account of scientific suppression and an century-long assault on goodness and morality by puppy-kicking grinchly atheist researchers. The movie is the latest in a long line of other creationist assaults on evolutionary biology. It follows in the the classic tradition of creationist assaults - since they can't do science, and evidence isn't exactly on their side, they try to convince people that evolution is responsible for everything from the Columbine shooting to the Holocaust.

Yes, I'm not kidding. The Holocaust. Argumentum ad Naziium, the last stop on the debate train to failure. Godwin's law on a massive scale.

I've been following the path of Expelled for a while now, from the start when they interviewed a number of famous atheist biologists under false pretenses. Not the most auspicious start for a film that's about suppression of inquiry.

The premise behind Expelled, besides the fact that evolution is evil, is that the scientific establishment (also referred to as "Big Science") had been actively persecuting advocates of intelligent design, aka Creationism Lite (none of the facts, all of the Jesus!) Their claims seem to stem mostly from the consistent smackdown they've received when attempting to pass their manure into public schools.

In the beginning of the movie, Ben Stein (the star of the flick, previously of Visine fame) is giving a speech to this extent to a packed auditorium of Pepperdine students. Well, to a packed auditorium containing three Pepperdine students and a boatload of extras, anyway. Be warned, this is probably the most intellectually honest part of the whole film.

The movie discusses several cases of "persecution," but two of them really exemplify the bullshit density in the film.

The first focuses on a man called Richard Sternberg. Sternberg used his position as (unpaid) editor at a tiny biological journal to slip in a paper that supported Intelligent Design. According to Sternberg, his life was ruined by sinister agents of Big Science soon after, getting him removed from the journal and fired from his unpaid research assistant position at the Smithsonian. What really happened was that Sternberg put in his resignation from the journal, and nothing at all happened to his position at the Smithsonian, save for him not showing up to work anymore.

The second is about a professor, Guillermo Gonzalez, who was allegedly denied tenure at a university because of his support for Creationism Lite. Tenure is a complicated decision, based on many things - for science, the two major things you have to have is money and publications. If your publication record isn't growing and your funding situation is stagnant, you don't have a chance in hell.

Fortunately, someone made a nice graph of Gonzalez's publication record, which is pretty clear - what did him in was his failure to continue being a productive scientist.

So, the main thesis of the movie - that science expels intelligent design proponents - is completely false.

One of the big arguments made by the ID crowd is that it isn't actually religious, that it's science. Well then, why didn't they interview Ken Miller or Francis Collins, famously religious evolutionary biologists? In the words of the producers:

[...] that somebody like Ken Miller is wrong. But I mean, you say he would have, his presence would have “confused the film.” The point is what, it would actually had, I mean, it would have, it would have considerably undercut the major point that is made, that really that belief in, in evolution obliges you not to believe in God, and to—

Ouch, that's got to hurt. The producer of your gretest propaganda piece to date admitting it's explicitly about religion? Damn.

Of course, this is right in line with the rest of the film. If one word can be used to describe it other than "dishonest," it would have to be "incompetent."

For example - PZ Myers, who runs the outspokenly atheist/biological blog Pharyngula signed up online to see a screening of the movie in Minneapolis. Expecting that Myers would show up and ask uncomfortable questions, it seems like the producers hired goons to keep Myers out (to expel him, if you will). PZ was removed from the screening, a screening he has signed up for properly for a movie he is featured in, but the goons didn't recognize PZ's guests, who they let in. You know who one of those guests was? Richard Freaking Dawkins. Probably the world's most famous and outspoken atheist, an evolutionary biologist, and also interviewed in the movie.

How dumb do you have be to make a series of mistakes this colossal. First of all, your movie is about unfair persecution and suppression of dissent and you throw out someone interviewed in the movie who dissents? And then, on top of that, you miss the most famous atheist in the world? Irony meter... Melting...

Anyway, I could continue giving descriptions of their incompetence, like plagiarizing an animation from Harvard, or pirating music from John Lennon and The Killers, but at this point it's really unnecessary.

They've been banking on the "any press is good press" theory of marketing, which is probably the only way they don't go to bed sobbing every night. Combine the hugely public fracas I've just described, and add in the astonishing number of bad reviews, too many to list here, and you have a recipe for disaster. Even Fox News panned it.

So, if you've made it this far and are still planning on seeing Expelled, I just ask that you do what I'm going to do.

Buy a ticket to a movie with a superior plot or real intellectual content, and sneak into Expelled instead. Tell your friends about how terrible it is, spread the word about their rank dishonesty and incompetence.

Send the message that intelligence is not only allowed, it's required.

Caveat Emptor

2008-04-15T21:45:00.000-04:00

Boy, it must suck to be a drug user. I'm sure drugs are fun and all that, but is it worth the nerve-wracking participation in an activity that, during any stage, could get you imprisoned and labeled (fairly or unfairly) a degenerate? Plus, drug dealers don't exactly seem to have a reputation for outstanding customer service or a commitment to safety. I can't even begin to count the number of warnings in the news about contaminated or adulterated black-market pharmaceuticals. It's enough of a problem that some companies sell test kits or offer free information about the "brands" of drugs that are the most "safe."

The most well-known example of this was the "paralysis" of a number of IV drug users in the late 70s/early 80s. They had all fallen mysteriously ill after injecting a homemade heroin mimic known as MPPP that was contaminated with another substance called MPTP.

The first case occurred in a grad student gone wrong who was producing MPPP for his own use. Three days after injecting himself with it, he developed severe Parkinson's-like symptoms, which were successfully treated with l-dopa. A little more than a year later, he died of an overdose and was autopsied, and the doctors discovered that his little homebrew experiment had stripped a section of his brain of most of its dopamine neurons. Later cases would further bear this out, resulting in a paper in Science and a fascinating book. This accident proved to be a huge boon for Parkinson's research, as the natural and chemical forms of the disease are practically indistinguishable. If you want more information, there's a good article available in Wired about one of the people affected by MPTP.

Not every case of adulteration turns out to be so useful to science. More recently, another outbreak of Parkinson's-like symptoms was investigated in IV users of methcathinone (cat), a chemical cousin of methamphetamine's.

Meth and cat are both most commonly produced from the same starting material, pseudoephedrine. Meth is made by reducing pseudoephedrine using lithium in ammonia, while cat is produced by oxidation, most commonly with the lovely purple potassium permanganate (KMnO₄).

Back in the day when chemistry sets were still fun, there was a little kit you could buy that contained tubes of potassium permanganate and glycerin. Mixing them would result in a slight delay, then the mixture would hiss, smoke, and burst into flame. I don't think they sell them anymore.

But I digress.

Anyway, perhaps unsurprisingly, this preparation isn't always done properly, and contains leftover manganese. Chronic manganese exposure leads to dopaminergic damage, and the patients exhibit some of the same symptoms as the MPTP-contaminated Californians.

"IV users in strange and exotic places? Bah! Not my problem." You may be saying this right now. I'll never know. I might not even know who you are.

Well, not even you gateway users are safe. Lead poisoning is a pretty damn rare affliction these days, so it was probably pretty confusing when almost 30 young people in good health showed up at German hospitals with severe heavy metal poisoning.

How'd they figure it out? Well,

After8 weeks, we detected a common pattern: the patients were young,were unemployed or were students, had a history of smoking,and had body piercings.

Pierced? Young? Unemployed? They must be toking up, puffing the magic dragon, getting baked, toasted, blazed, stoned, enjoying a sweet 420. It's like... science, man.

I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

Oh, right.

So, eventually the doctors got them to own up, and had some of them bring in a "sample" for "research."

It didn't take them long to figure out what the problem was, as the weed had been "salted" with lead (picture). Some dedicated capitalist had made the connection between lead and mass, and was cheating his customers by artificially increasing the weight of his product.

The current working hypothesis of the police is that becauseof its high specific gravity and inconspicuous grayish color,lead was used to increase the weight of street marijuana soldby the gram and thereby to maximize profits among dealers. Inthe material that was obtained, the lead content on averagewas 10% by weight, which translates into a profit increase ofapproximately 1,000 ($1,500.00) per kilogram of marijuana.

Considering that a kilogram of pot runs about $2000 (according to the US DOJ), that's a whopping 133% increase in profit.

So, we can't trust toys from China, spinach from California, beef from Europe, and now, even our cherished local pharmacologists are trying to their customers for a buck. Is there no end to this madness?

Wikinalysis

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

You all know how I feel about Wikipedia.

Regardless of my suspicion of it as a reliable source of information about anything other than Star Wars minutiae, I have to admit it is a pretty interesting phenomenon. Specifically, I've long been curious about the length of the articles - is there any correlation between word count any anything relevant? does the "importance" of a topic dictate the number of words on Wikipedia? I think it's a decent metric - writing Wikipedia articles takes time (if not effort or knowledge). Someone really has to care about Wil Wheaton to spend an afternoon composing an online biography of him.

In another sense, it's a tough question to ask. For instance, if asked about the relative importances of, say, evolution vs. American Idol, how is one to judge that? I'd have to lean towards evolution (what with it being more important and all), but you'd be hard pressed to find 150 million Americans that don't believe in the existence of American Idol. The length of the two articles differs only by a scant 957 words. So what's more important?

A further complication is the existence of "subarticles" in Wikipedia. For instance, right at the beginning of the evolution article, there are links to a general article on the topic, and a definition of evolution as theory and fact. The remainder of the article is peppered with such deeper links.

Traditionally, questions such as these have been answered through the Googlefight, a high-tech semantic multiplexing analysis which compares the number of Google search results between the two terms.

Evolution is the winner, by almost 200 million results. Sorry, Reuben.

It's possible to do the same comparison on Wikipedia's internal search engine, which gives the same result. So, we have a nice set of data for comparison. Article length versus search engine results.

My collaborator, Tim "Needles" Morgan, wrote me a nice ruby script that would take an input phrase and output the following:

The word count of the Wikipedia article
The number of Google search hits
The number of Wikipedia search hits
And, as a bonus, an "aggregate" score that includes the word counts of all the articles returned by the Wikipedia search.

So, if a search for an article returns five hits with ten words apiece, the "aggregate score" would be 50. So, I picked 30 terms I thought it would be interesting to see some of these results of, and ran them through the Ruby script. I also searched for the terms on SciFinder Scholar, a scientific journal and patent indexing service.

The raw data is available on request, if you're interested.

The graph of the data was much more interesting than I expected. All the data has been plotted to a common scale.

All three of the search engines seem to be much more "selective," with an extremely sharp drop in results after the first one or two hit items. The word count scores, however, tell a very different story. The amount of words counted in articles varies much less, indicating that any old useless piece of information on Wikipedia deserves the full attention of the pedants.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wikipedia and Google didn't entirely agree on which terms were more important. Here's the "top five" for each search result.

Word Count	WikiSearch	Wiki Aggregate	Google	SciFinder
Intelligent Design	Evolution	Leonardo DaVinci	Evolution	Esters
Evolution	Final Fantasy	Oprah Winfrey	Mozart	Evolution
American Idol	Pornography	Evolution	Taxonomy	Quantum Mechanics
Lightsaber Combat	Taxonomy	Quantum Mechanics	Pornography	Organometallics
Oprah Winfrey	Mozart	Mozart	American Idol	Protecting Groups

Things that pop out at me when I look at this:

According to word count, lightsaber combat is only slightly less worthy of dedication than evolution. Fortunately, evolution brings up more pages on the internal search engine, and therefore has a decent aggregate score. I'd really like to know why Oprah Winfrey has more words dedicated to her on Wikipedia than evolution.

Wait, no, I really don't want to know that.

I'm a little surprised at pornography's position on Google, but I imagine that most websites dedicated to that would come up for... er... "different" search terms.

Being a good scientist, I couldn't just stop there. I had selected the search terms myself, based on my ideas of what might be considered important and unimportant. It would be terrible if such a nice graph was just generated because I didn't properly randomize my searching method.

So, Wikipedia did the randomizing for me.

My collaborator whipped up another script, one which would follow Wikipedia's "random article" link, and use the title of that article as the search term for the rest of the data. This allowed me to collect much more data in a shorter amount of time. 2080 different terms, to be precise. This time, visualizing the data produced much less of a trend.

It's clear that Google still displays the highest selectivity. Also worthy of note is the correlation between search results and aggregate score, which is not surprising since more results equals more articles equals more words.

There seem to be two distinct regions on the graph - a region where there's an exponential drop in the term score, and one in which the score remains relatively stable. If we take the high scoring region and plot it alone, the original trend re-emerges!

Ignore "words per article", it isn't supposed to be there.

So that was where the original trend came from - the terms I had selected were all high-scorers, and so only generated this section of the graph.

I know you're dying to know what some of these terms are. Here's a bar chart of the top five scoring terms from each (click to embiggen):
This chart represents the normalized scores of each term from each method added together. The taller the bar, the more "important" the term overall.

The Google scores seem a bit fishy to me. Why would Robert "Tex" William Richards Jr. return more hits on Google than The Destroyer? According to a quick Googling, it doesn't. Three of the five top Google results don't match the collected data, which is puzzling. A randomly selected batch of 20 results from the rest of the Google data comes back good, so why are those ones so far off? Get back to me on that, Tim.

A closer examination of some the top word count terms reveals some surprises. It's an interesting glance into the sort of thing that people like to write and argue about.

Fujiwara no Teika (10,208 words), the top scorer, is half footnotes. Who writes an article that's half footnotes? What Wikipedian has resisted applying the cleanup tag to this bottom-heavy mess?

Critique of Pure Reason (7410 words) is about the book by Kant. Apparently, internet people really like to talk about Kant. I met this guy in college who constantly talked about Wittgenstein. If the people who assembled this Kantian monstrosity are anything like him, I may never be able to take Wikipedia seriously.

List of school districts in Illinois (6826 words). Lists did pretty darn well in terms of length, probably because they're easy. Also high on the list of lists: List of Naruto episodes (Seasons 1-2), List of Serbs, and List of number-one singles in Australia during the 1990s. Love shack, Baby!

Please remember that this is a random cross-section of Wikipedia. Unless my collaborator has a way to scan the entire database for me, I may never know what the longest article is. My guess? List of Wikipedians by number of edits. The only thing more powerful than laziness is ego.

Another category we can examine is what I'd like to call "worthlessness." The Internet contains a lot of garbage, even though it takes time, skill, and a small amount of money to create a web page. Yet it would take anyone virtually no time or skill at all to create a Wikipedia article about their cat. Wikipedians would call that article non-notable, I would call it worthless.

Well, unless it was about my cat, who is awesome.

Since I put more stock in Google than Wikipedia, let's say that a worthless article is one that has a lot of words, but few Google hits. So, what's worthless? Here's some examples that I find funny.

Jim Harris (politician)
The Moment of Truth (Milli Vanilli album)
List of knapsack problems
Linear immunoglobulin A dermatosis
Armenian notables deported from the Ottoman capital in 1915

So, what sort of conclusions can be drawn from this?

I came away with three main impressions:

1. The length of a Wikipedia article has nothing to do with anything.
2. Regardless of its use as a primary source, it's full of juicy, fascinating data.
3. Rutherford was right - if your experiment requires statistics, then you should have designed a better experiment.

I realize this study was sort of casual, and not exactly rigorous. So if you'd like to have a look at our data, I'd be happy to send it along. Also, any suggestions about other data to investigate would be welcomed!

Street Value

2008-03-18T15:02:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking recently about trying to expand the scope of one of my projects, a move that would require me to synthesize a compound or two structurally related to cocaine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the easiest starting point for these types of substances is cocaine itself, which can be purchased from all your favorite multinational chemical companies.

There's only one problem - cocaine is expensive. I can buy a gram of it for $196 from Aldrich, which is way above the two dollar a gram limit the boss likes us to stick to. So I couldn't help but wonder if it would be cheaper for me to buy it from a less... conventional source.

Of course, the problem with trying to determine what would be cheapest is twofold. Not only do I not know any cocaine dealers, but the very nature of the black market for drugs makes it pretty difficult to determine what an "average" price for a gram of cocaine might be. Fortunately, the UN has already seen fit to research that very issue, so I can just use their numbers.

The cheapest option for cocaine purchase from Aldrich comes to $136.50 per gram (for the hydrochloride salt - freebasing will cost you double). According to the UN, the "typical" price for cocaine on the street is about $110 per gram. Not too shabby, Aldrich. I'm more than happy to pay the extra $30 for quality control.

As for other drugs?

Aldrich is significantly cheaper for methamphetamine hydrochloride. At $14.78 per gram, it's a bargain over the street product, costing $160 per gram for 73% pure material.

If you want Ecstacy (MDMA), however, you're much better off going to the street. Street prices for that were reported at $25 a tablet, which could contain up to 100 milligrams of active compound . Purity is a big problem, but if you want the straight stuff from Aldrich, you'd better be prepared to pay for it - $277.50 for 50 milligrams, or $5,550 for a gram. Even more expensive is the chirally pure MDMA, which racks up to an astounding $33,760 per gram.

Of course, this is all moot anyway, because I doubt the terms of my grant allow for such "unconventional" uses of government money.

Logic Problem

2008-03-04T08:43:00.000-05:00

So, a fake gunman with a very obviously fake gun bursts into a classroom and threatens a class. The school has been warned through text messages and e-mail about this.

Let's say that, upon entering the classroom, some twitchy undergrad who happens to be packing heat stands up and shoots the guy dead.

Would this strengthen the case for allowing concealed weapons into classrooms, because a threatening man was dispatched swiftly and efficiently, or would it weaken the case, because an uninformed student overreacted and killed a man?

My two cents: having armed students in the classroom would be terrifying.

I've seen how the average student handles corrosive acids, deadly poisons, and flammable solvents with someone there to give them very specific direction. I've seen students react to startling accidents. It usually isn't pretty.

And you can't wash off a bullet.

Eggsperiment

2008-02-29T17:06:00.000-05:00

So, about a week or so ago I was referred to an article about Hervé This, one of the fathers of the molecular gastronomy phenomenon. Hervé was appointed to a new position at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique by none other than Jean-Marie Lehn, a Nobel-prize winning scientist.

In the article, there was a tidbit that was too enticing to resist.

But what really intrigues me, of course, is exactly how he managed to unboil an egg. He explains that when an egg is cooked, the protein molecules unroll themselves, link up and enclose the water molecules. In order to 'uncook' the egg, you need to detach the protein molecules from each other. By adding a product like sodium borohydride, the egg becomes liquid within three hours. For those who want to try it at home, vitamin C also does the trick.

Try it at home?! Yes, please!

I think that the basic idea here is that when eggs cook, neighboring protein molecules with dangling sulfur groups get bonded together. These "disulfide" bonds can easily be broken by reduction, either with an inorganic reagent like sodium borohydride or the milder ascorbic acid. Break the bonds, liquefy the egg.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, some people have already tried the vitamin C version, without a lot of success.

No reason to reinvent the wheel. If wimpy ascorbates weren't doing the deed, then I needed to amp it up a bit, and go for the borohydride. Sometimes, it's good to have a lab full of chemicals and a boss out of town.

Here are the eggs, before and after. Thanks for the eggs, Maggie!

The egg on top got sodium borohydride sprinkled liberally over it, and a pinch of potassium hydroxide and more borohydride was dissolved in the egg in water underneath.

After an hour, the "dry" egg had a nice fluffy wig of foam on the top. The water-soaked egg had little bubbles of hydrogen clinging to it, and interestingly, was beginning to split. I am not a patient man, so the dry egg got a double dose of borohydride.

After another hour, the wig on the dry egg had puffed out alarmingly. The borohydride was clearly "pitting" the surface, but to what extent the egg remained solid underneath was a mystery. The egg in the water was cracking all over now.

A third hour. At this point, the wig appeared to be stable. The egg in the water was more dramatic. It was clearly beginning to lose cohesion, with little chunks of the yolk starting to escape. Also, it looked really gross.

After a quick rinse, I was disappointed in the amount of damage that had occurred to the dry egg. It was also hard to tell what exactly was going on with the wet egg - was it unboiling? Was it just getting pitted and flaky? At any rate, I wouldn't call this "unboiling," exactly.

Hervé, if you ever read this, you should really publish your procedure, before someone goes and does something stupid like dumping a boiled egg into lithium aluminum hydride.

Life imitates art?

2008-02-28T19:09:00.000-05:00

I have a bumper sticker that says "don't tell the truth, they might cut your funding." It's a standard scientific joke - better throw in some references to nanotechnology or homeland security, so the politicos will have some meat to chew on.

However, it's not so funny when it really happens. Like to a team of scientists who told the truth, and had their funding cut.

The scientists were evaluating the environmental cost of investing in biofuels, like the corn and soybean based ethanol that our commander guy finds so enticing. Long story short, it's a bad idea. This joins the studies showing it's bad for the economy and bad for automobile efficiency. Frankly, I'd rather have cheap food and expensive gas, not expensive food and expensive gas.

The study, by University of Minnesota ecologist David Tilman and others, said that dedicating huge amounts of land to grow corn, soybeans, sugarcane and other food crops for fuel could drastically change the landscape and worsen global warming. Farmers in the U.S., Brazil, Indonesia and other countries will need to clear forests, grasslands and peat lands on a massive scale to grow more of those crops, according to the research, unleashing far more carbon dioxide from natural vegetation than is saved by the lower emissions of the biofuels.

There's some money quotes in that article. For instance:

"The university hurt the farmers' feelings, OK? That's probably the best way to say it," said Jim Palmer, executive director of the two [agricultural industry] groups.

Oh, boo fucking hoo. Apparently, the farmers missed the day in science class that conclusions follow from evidence, not the other way around. They weren't paying the researchers to sit around and write about how awesome biofuels are. Or... Were they?

Ethanol industry officials criticized the study as a simplistic analysis that doesn't include the economic benefits for those who grow biofuel crops or the environmental cost of continuing to rely on petroleum.

Wait, I think there was a typo in that. Let me fix it.

Ethanol industry officials criticized the study as a simplistic analysis that doesn't include how awesome making a boatload of money would be for those who grow biofuel crops or the environmental cost of continuing to rely on petroleum.

This is absolutely appalling. Research funding is not to rationalize damaging behavior. It's not to get some good vibrations going. It's supposed to kick you in the pants and let you know you're doing it wrong, stupid.

Moral of the story? Don't ask the question if you don't want to know the answer.

Damn you, Katie Couric!

2008-02-14T19:08:00.000-05:00

Or perhaps it was Brian Williams, or whoever the hell hosts the other national news channel I get.

There I am, minding my own business, when I hear the TV announce that the US navy is planning on shooting down a satellite. I look at the TV, and the brilliant minds down at the Stock Footage Depot have apparently gotten their wires crossed, because they cut from a missile launching montage to a CGI animation of the Hubble freaking space telescope. I was a bit shocked - I mean, I know the navy could have used that $2 billion - but come on. Who's getting the next missile, the atomic clock?

Soon, though, the Stock Footage guys must have heard swearing from a Nerdly McNerderson like me down the hall, because the picture was replaced by a CGI animation of a missile destroying the correct satellite. Unable to pass up another knife to the ribs of the scientific community, however, the satellite exploded into an expanding red death cloud of "hydrazene".

God help us all if the navy made that animation for their press release. I'd like to think that the people who will be firing a damn missile into space over my head can correctly spell the name of the toxic vapor they're trying to save us from.

Forget research...

2008-02-04T09:32:00.000-05:00

I want this job.

CASTING 25 to 35 YEAR OLD MALE HOST FOR SCIENCE ADVENTURE SHOW

Objective Productions (UK) and The Discovery Channel are in search of a 25 to 35 year old male host for a new adrenalin fueled and action filled show. Our host will take on seemingly impossible challenges with crazed enthusiasm while placing his faith in science no matter how crazy the task appears.

DANGERMAN is a documentary style reality series that replicates the extraordinary stunts performed by daredevils, stuntmen and showmen and explains the scientific principles that make the most amazing feats possible.

Applicant MUST BE A SCIENCE GRADUATE (minimum bachelors degree). You must have an interest and passion for extreme and dangerous sports and related areas.

Please submit a recent photo (from the last six months) along with a bio or resume and letters stating your interest in the show, science, adventure and extreme dangerous sports.

YES! EXTREME SYNTHESIS! OH YEAH!

... TO THE MAX!

I'm not sure that I have a "passion" for "extreme and dangerous sports and related areas," but I would be more than willing to develop one for a job like this. And I believe I have plenty of family and friends that would testify as to my capacity for CRAZED ENTHUSIASM!!!!!, especially when it comes to SCIENCE!!!!!

I can just see the letter to the boss now. "Dear Dr. Bossman, I regret to inform you that I will not be completing my PhD at this time, as I have been recruited to perform science-related stunts for the Discovery Channel. Do not worry about my future in the sciences, as I will continue to perform research on pressing issues such as the quantum tunneling of cars through brick walls, heats of combustion of myself, and novel cannon-assisted methods of overcoming inertia."

I found this via ERV, who points out that the ad does not leave the position open for females - apparently they haven't seen Mythbusters. The world needs more Kari types.

Breakthrough: kids hate clowns!

2008-01-23T01:30:00.000-05:00

I came across a study in Reuters today entitled "Don't send in the clowns."

Basically, some researchers conducted a big survey to try to determine what kind of decor would make the hospital a more inviting place for kids. The big payoff: Kids aren't scared of hospitals, they're scared of clowns.

Some quotes from a better article:

Most children surveyed in a research project funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council said they did not find hospital scary, but even teenagers said creepy clowns should be kept in the circus.

"The artwork is very important and the children said it has to have contemporary resonance -- so no clowns, which children of all ages disliked, seeing them as not quite human."

Wow.

Not shockingly, the powerful International Brotherhood of Clowning and Mime* took offense to this study, as can be observed in this story on Yahoo News. Representatives of Big Laughter were quick to defend themselves.

"I have clowned in hospitals, nursing homes, schools, day care, corporate events, telethons and am a part of many charity events," said Elaine "Daisy D.Dots" Vercellone, who has been clowning for 21 years around New York. "It gives people, kids and adults a reason to be silly, to imagine and gives their minds a vacation if only for a moment."

I've never really understood fear of clowns, myself. As a kid, I was violently allergic to livestock, so we never went to the circus or the stock show, so perhaps that's it.

I've seen It, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, and that one episode of Voyager where the crew is held hostage by a clown, and I just don't get it.

I've also had the rare experience of being on the giving side of clown-terror, and despite what Daisy D. Dots might think about it, it's much much more fun that way. And let me tell you, it's true that people are scared of clowns. Terrified of clowns. I did a lot of jobs in the haunted house, from Dr. Freud to butcher knife wielding predator, and none of them scared people like the clown. One time, I popped out of the clown box to come face to face with a woman who completely wigs out, rears back, and punches me in the face, screaming "cloooooooown! Aieeeeeeeee!!!!"

At the end of the night I told my boss I got punched, and he just nodded and said "yeah. Clown always gets it. People hate clowns."

I'll side with the kids. You wouldn't put up paintings of other scary things, like spiders, closet-monsters, or lawyers. Leave the clowns where they belong, places like mental institutions, batman movies, and congress.

*Fabricated organization.

My Alli

2008-01-21T14:09:00.000-05:00

Commercials for Alli, the over-the-counter weight loss pill, seem to be on TV every time I watch. And I can sort of understand why. Americans have some sort of bizarre affinity for weight-loss products, especially ones that don't require them to do anything. Remember Fen-Phen? Epehdra? Xenadrine? Ever heard of hydroxy-cut?

As a side note, some of the ads for the supplement-type medications are fantastically schlocky, and actually quite amusing to watch. My favorite is the ad for Relacore. That's the one where after describing some dubious connection between cortisol and "belly fat," the announcer bellows at you "stress increases cortisol! Cortisol increases belly fat! Relacore reduces cortisol! YOU NEED RELACORE!" That's some freaking iron-clad logic right there.

Anyway, Alli is a real drug, produced and marketed by real pharmaceutical companies, designed to inhibit the breakdown of fats by an enzyme in the bowels. The ads are slick and professional, and very much conform to the drug ad archetype. Happy people, communicating in inexplicably perfect medical jargon in rooms that have that white, clean laboratory feeling.

What the commercials fail to mention is that Alli is one seriously gross drug. Remember the huge fuss over Olestra, the artificial fat that was indigestible? Olestra really fell out of favor when the FDA required a disclaimer describing the somewhat graphic side effects of large amounts of undigested oil flushing itself through your bowels.

Well, that's what Alli does. It's the antabuse for fat. Take Alli before consuming a bucket of the Colonel's Finest, and you will soon be having an experience that you will regret for the rest of your life. This is alluded to on the Alli web site, under the euphemistically titled "treatment effects" section.

Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work.

And I have to wonder; is that what it's come to? Is our population so desperate for a weight-loss product that an entirely viable and acceptable option is a pill whose propensity to cause oily discharge is regarded as a positive attribute? I mean, it's better than the heart damage and liver failure that ephedra and kava cause, but come on. Has the critical thinking part of the average brain been damaged by a lifetime of advertising and talk radio? If people can't stick to a low-calorie diet in the first place, what makes them think that they'll be able to stick to a low-calorie that comes with a medication regimen and unpleasant "treatment" effects?

And don't even get me started on Restless Legs Syndrome.

Primary, Republican Style!

2008-01-18T08:54:00.000-05:00

Inspired by the cloud of reporters that have descended upon the capitol here, I'm going to pretend to be a pundit.

Yesterday, my university paper endorsed Ron Paul for the Republicans. As many serious problems as I have with him, I think Paul is probably the best of Republican candidates out there. Even though he wants to dismantle the department of education, castrate the FDA, return us to the useless gold standard, and seal our borders. And there's the bit about the newsletters.

But you've just got to appreciate a guy, no matter how scary, that enlivens debates and generates interest and controversy in the process like Paul does. Also, a handful of his positions are just fine with me - he's come out the strongest against the Patriot Act, an issue I find very important.

Besides, what are the other options? Huckabee is absolutely positively terrifying, Romney's as slimy as they come, McCain only pretends to be a moderate, and Thompson seems like Huckabee Lite. All Of The Reagan, With Only Half The Jesus!

Giuliani's more a crappy Democrat than a Republican, too bleeding heart for the Republicans and too much of a fascist for the Democrats.

It's a shame Paul won't win the nomination, as many non-Republicans (myself included) would be quite happy with them choosing a candidate with zero chance of winning the national election. But I'd also be satisfied if he chooses to run as an independent and Nader-bombs whomever is selected on the Republican side.

My pick in South Carolina's Republican primary?

Steven Colbert, all the way.

Defanging jalapenos?

2008-01-15T19:00:00.000-05:00

I'm going to make an admission, probably one of the most controversial pieces of information about myself that I feel comfortable sharing in the public sphere.

I hate spicy food.

That's right, you heard me. When I sit down to eat, I want to enjoy my meal. I don't want the main selling point of the food to be that it's liberally salted with nature's finest chemical weapons. I'd like to able to enjoy the nuances of flavor in the meal, rather than get kicked in the mouth by it. I view very spicy food as the culinary equivalent of sitting next to a yowling baby at a movie. No matter how awesome the movie is, it'll always be ruined by the overpowering unpleasantness of the baby. And look how hot peppers are viewed by young males; like dropping a soccer ball onto your buddy's genitalia from progressively greater heights, eating hot peppers is a test of manliness, which by definition has to be unpleasant and painful.

So wouldn't it be nice if there could be some sort of spray one could apply to the food either pre- or post- cooking that would leave the pepper taste but remove its bite? Chemical degradation is out, everything that I know of that could destroy capsaicin chemically wouldn't exactly be food-friendly.

But... Capsaicin does share a structural feature with proteins, an amide (or so-called "peptide" bond). And there are enzymes out there that chew up proteins at peptide bonds...

So I went to the store and bought some "digestive enzyme extract" capsules, claiming to contain both bromelain and papain, the peptide-destroying enzymes from pineapples and papayas. I sliced a jalapeno up into a few slices of equally massive pieces. One went into a vial full of water, one went into a vial with water and the contents of an enzyme capsule. I licked a third, which was a mistake.

After two days sitting there, I rinsed both peppers and took a small bite of each.

The results were underwhelming. The control pepper was barely hot at all, and the enzyme treated pepper, while not spicy, was covered in slime and tasted like cat food. Stale cat food.

Not a successful experiment.

And then today I find out someone's already solved this problem for me, producing pepper crossbreeds of jalapeños and habaneros that lack the heat.

Stupid biologists. Ruining my fun.

Engrish?

2008-01-05T14:53:00.000-05:00

Which one of these adjectives is not like the others?

"Mom! Mom! I want this toy! It's novel!"

Why Ron Paul scares the crap out of me

2007-12-31T13:15:00.000-05:00

You know, in some ways, I can't help but like Ron Paul. Sure, he attracts followers that range from neo-nazis to ecoterrorists, but he has a blimp. That's awesome. He seems like a genuinely nice fella, and it's refreshing to see a politician voicing strong opinions these days.

But he doesn't worry me because he wants to deport foreigners or return to the gold standard or even because he exhibits borderline "new world order" paranoia. No, I'm afraid of Ron Paul because he is apparently a quack of the highest caliber. Orac over at Scienceblogs has a great post that you might like to read if you want oodles and oodles of additional information about this.

In a nutshell, what Paul wants to do is remove the few teeth the FDA has remaining. Think the FDA is bad at keeping food safe? Think that too many blatantly hazardous drugs and supplements are released into the market? Wait until Paul get a hold of it!

He's big with the health crackpots, too. Mike Adams, who runs a site called newstarget.com says this about Ron Paul:

Only Ron Paul believes in genuine health freedom. He's the creator of the Health Freedom Protection Act, a bill that would reestablish Free Speech provisions for makers of superfoods, herbs, nutritional supplements and other natural remedies. Under the HFPA, those individuals would be able to state scientifically-validated facts about the health benefits of their products right on the bottle! Today, the FDA doesn't allow that. All truthful statements about nutritional supplements are presently censored! (It's a way to protect Big Pharma and keep the American people ignorant about how plant-based medicines can prevent and even cure degenerative disease.)

So, you know how supplements that claim to be good for diseases have a disclaimer on them? Something to the extent of "these statements have not been evaluated by the FDA?" That's a result of a piece of legislation called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, which defanged the agency quite a bit, allowing these folks to sell "supplements" with drug-like behavior without FDA oversight as long as they carefully massage their claims so that it isn't directly stated that it will "treat, cure, or prevent" any disease. But, restricting the claims impedes free speech, apparently. If Jim's Snake Oil wants to claim that their urine-and-vinegar concoction regrows hair, improves virility, and cures cancer, well, that's their right, right?

Keep in mind that to people like Mike Adams, "scientifically validated" means that there existed in some journal somewhere at some time one article indicating any form of benefit. This includes, of course, journals well-known for publishing poorly-designed and questionable studies.

This is doubly concerning to me, because for Christmas I was given a book called Lee's Priceless Recipes, a turn of the century book that contains a fascinating collection of formulae for everything from brass polish to artificial honey. This includes a number of patent medicines, the "supplements" of that day. and it's full of ointments, linaments, and potions that are chock full of lead oxide, lead acetate, mercury chloride, arsenic, and various other unsavories.

For a modern version of this, one only needs to look at "black salve," which I would not recommend searching for, unless you want to have your morning spoiled with images of horrible, disfiguring scars. Black salve is an extract of bloodroot, a plant that produces a compound called sanguinarine, which is aggressively toxic towards mammalian cells. The salve is sold as a treatment for "moles", which really means skin cancer. It was originally used in an interesting type of microsurgery in which bloodroot extract would sit on a skin tumor overnight, and then the tumor and the surrounding skin would be removed, giving it an impressive veneer of scientific legitimacy. Nowadays, black salve, applied at home, can result in some horror-movie disfigurement. Yet the FDA lacks the power to keep these salves off the market because they're supplements, sold as mole treatments.

So there it is. While I like Ron Paul's charming kookiness and originality, I just can't support a candidate that wants to take the government agency responsible for keeping people from feeding me diseased cow brains and insuring that my headache medicine won't dissolve my intestines, and kick it in the groin.

Oh, and there's the evolution thing, too. That's also a problem.

A holiday visit from old Dr. Nick

2007-12-25T12:00:00.000-05:00

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the lab
Not a stir bar was stirring, the flasks dirty and drab;

The glassware was strewn without care by the sink,
In hopes that someone else would clean them, I think;

The grad students were nestled all snug in their coats,
While portions of white powders sat in weighing boats;
And I at my computer, wishing I weren't at work,
Had just settled down for a reaction I couldn't shirk,
When behind me nearby there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the chair to see what was the matter.
Away to the hood I flew like a flash,
Grabbed my goggles and threw up the sash.
Spilled drying agent that glistened like snow
Reflected the greenish light of the fluorescent glow,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

But a red-coated man, in a red fuzzy hat,
With a little filtration, over by the large sink,
Isolating my product before I could blink.
More rapid than eagles the spectra he ran,
And he locked, and shimmed, and identified it by name;
"Now, azides! now, alkynes! now, arenes and vinyls!
On, ketones! on halides! on, amines, biphenyls!
To the top of the graph! to the top of the scale!
Now crystallize! crystallize! crystallize all!"

As insoluble chunks that before the stirring bar fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, break, or at least try,
So up to the counter-top the coursers he flew,
Laying down a fist full of spectra, and my product too.

And giving a nod, up the air handler he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, as he took off with a jerk,
"Merry Christmas to all, now get back to work!"

Sciencedebate 2008

2007-12-15T01:40:00.000-05:00

This is (potentially) good news for this next election cycle.

A group of sciencebloggers has proposed that the public call for a presidential debate, specifically on the issue of science and technology. You can visit their website here.

We have noticed that science and technology lie at the center of a very large number of the policy issues facing our nation and the world - issues that profoundly affect our national and economic security as science and technology continue to transform our lives. No matter one's political stripe, these issues pose important pragmatic policy challenges.

We believe these scientific and technological policy challenges can bring out the best in the entrepreneurial American spirit. America can be a leader in finding cures for our worst diseases, inventing the best alternative energy sources, and graduating the most scientifically literate children in the world - or we can concede these economic and humanitarian benefits to other countries.

I think this is a fantastic idea. Somehow, politicians seem to weasel out of these sorts of questions every time they're asked, crying "But I'm not a scientist! Science is hard!" or trying to divert the topic to something fluffier. The public and the media don't let it go when candidates pull that crap with questions about the economy, defense, or civil rights.

Well, the media used to not let it go.

But you don't need to be a scientist to understand, for instance, that "intelligent design" creationism is disguised religion. You don't need to be a scientist to understand that burning coal releases mercury, and that's a bad thing. You don't need to be a scientist to understand why soaking livestock in antibiotics is a bad thing. I, along with many other people, don't want to have another president elected that isn't a proud member of the reality-based community.

Even though I think this is a fantastic idea (and I am supporting it), I'm not terribly optimistic about the chances of actually getting front-running candidates to participate, for a few reasons.

First, I don't think that many of the candidates would be to thrilled to speak about issues that would limit their opportunities to waffle uselessly. They'll be asked questions about issues on which there is a substantial amount of data, by people who are very familiar with the issues at hand. Clinton's and Romney are out because they'd have to take a firm position on an issue with a right and wrong answer. Giuliani is out because questions regarding NSF funding, open access publishing, stem cell research, and evolution can't be spun into answers about 9-11 or New York City. The topic necessarily takes the spotlight off the issues politicians love because they tug the heartstrings and provoke the atavistic us-vs-them reflex that forcibly disables the rational part of a voter's brain. How will Huckabee make people think he's better than Obama if "moral fiber" just doesn't come up?

Second, half of the candidates clearly don't think their key constituencies are with the whole "science" thing. This definitely includes the anti-evolution handraisers Tom "throw 'em back" Tancredo and Mike "OMG GAY AIDS" Huckabee.

Though it could just as well be to the advantage of some candidates. If they want to show people that no evidence, however concrete, can puncture their little personal reality, what a better way to do it than by throwing an audience of scientists the bird?

Third, the primaries are all happening ridiculously early. I doubt that we'll be able to coax anyone into showing up, as they'll all be too busy pretending that Iowa is important. Come on, they're all busy! The front-runners have more important issues to address, like whether or not Jesus and Satan were brothers!

Plus, science says that the whole corn-as-a-fuel thing is a crock of... uh... corn. Can anyone tell me where that might be a problem? Hint: it's the only state I've mentioned so far.

And finally, I'm just not optimistic enough to believe that the concerned science-literate segment of the population is sizable enough to (strategically) matter to the candidates. With the evangelical vote up in the air, it's more important to make public appearances at church than it is to ask "is our children learning [science]?"

For my own sake, I hope I'm wrong.

My Desk

2007-12-13T15:04:00.000-05:00

This post is primarily for Elisabeth, but its lessons apply to all. Einstein once said "If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?"

So don't feel bad about working in a cluttered environment, or even for not tidying up, because...

... it could be worse.

Can you trust your doctor?

2007-12-05T23:07:00.000-05:00

CNN has posted a video segment called Medicine and Morality on their site that is quite disturbing. The video starts out in an interview with a woman whose doctor lectured her about having sex after denying her a prescription for birth control. Now, one would hope that this woman had some sort of condition that would cause her body to react poorly to the medication, but no. Turns out the doctor was just a hardcore Catholic, and he didn't believe in birth control. This issue has come up in the media before, mostly in the form of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions. Some of them have been easily resolved, but many are truly awful and humiliating.

On one hand, I could almost see the validity of the arguments coming from the camp of the pharmacists slash doctors. They don't want to be put in a position that they think will damn them to hell, and it's their right to not to cooperate, right? Right?

No, I don't think so.

Let's pretend that I work in a bookstore for a moment. A customer comes up to the counter and plops down a stack of Harry Potter books. As a good Christian, I cannot in good conscience assist in the distribution of this moral filth. I lecture the customer on the Bible, and inform them that I won't check them out because of my beliefs. But the customer really wants those books, and we're the only store in a four-hour drive. She calls my manager to complain. I would expect my ass to be canned faster than you can say "incompetent." If I was an atheist blocking the sale of bibles, or a nutcase who didn't like cookbooks, I'd expect the same treatment - either prompt dismissal or a transfer to a different job where I could consistently fulfill my duties without problems.

A pharmacist is not special or privileged. A pharmacist has a job to do, which is to take the prescription slip and fill it out according to the doctor's instructions. If they can't do that, then they shouldn't be a pharmacist.

(C)huckabee

2007-11-19T14:58:00.000-05:00

As much as I completely, vehemently disagree with Pastor Huckabee's positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, civil unions, gun control, the death penalty, the Iraq war, the troop surge, Guantanamo Bay, the tax code, stem cell research, medicinal marijuana, and education, I have to give him props for coming up with the most "out of the box" campaign ad we're likely to see in this upcoming election. That's only counting official ads - The Obama Girl is going to be a hard one to beat in the amateur category.

Huckabee teamed up with the internet's favorite punchline, Chuck Norris, to film a "facts" ad. I know I can't be the only one that enjoys hearing a political candidate (and current governor!) tell us what lies behind the Beard of Chuck Norris.

Also, did you know that Chuck Norris is the only proper noun that is physically impossible to write in all lowercase letters?

Sorry though, Chuck, I still can't overlook the fact that Huckabee feels the president is under no obligation to understand why creationism isn't science.

Quantum Crustaceans

2007-11-16T19:15:00.000-05:00

Crab and lobster - tasty. Damn tasty. Way more tasty than a scum-sucking bottom-feeding cannibalistic armor-plated giant insect has any right to be.

And cooking them is very dramatic. Every food should have a built-in color change that drastic to indicate that your culinary wizardry is going as planned. Wouldn't it be nice if boiled eggs turned bright red when they were perfectly cooked through?

I was thinking about this today, because I came across a National Geographic article bearing a fascinating photo of a mutant lobster.

Half-cooked from birth! When lobsters grow, apparently, the two sides of the body develop independently, and one side has some genetic abnormality.

That got me thinking... I love thermochromism. But it isn't exactly common in foodstuffs. So what is the deal with the Crustacean Color Change?

A little digging turned up the fact that lobsters, crabs, shrimp, and salmon all get that appetizing rosy pinkness from eating plankton, krill, and algae that contain astaxanthin, a carotenoid related to vitamin A, lycopene, and carotene.

Incidentally, astaxanthin is a much more powerful antioxidant than vitamin A. Don't take vitamins, eat more shrimp.

Astaxanthin gives cooked crab and lobster its color.

I was shocked to learn that astaxanthin is also the molecule that colors uncooked crabs and lobsters blue. Unlike seasonal leaf changes, cuttlefish camouflage, and human tanning, there are no separate pigments with different colors producing the change.

Quickly, a primer on color.

There are two things to keep in mind.

1. Color is (basically) created by electrons absorbing certain wavelengths (energies) of light.
2. Electrons are like cats.

Electrons, like cats, don't like to be put in boxes.The smaller the box, the more energetic the cat. Here's an experiment you can do* - grab a cat, and try to put it in a shoebox. Then, grab the same cat, and try to get it to go into any generic room in your house. Note any differences observed. Patch wounds as necessary.

Or, if you prefer to think of electrons as waves, they behave like guitar strings. A longer string corresponds to a lower note, which is lower in energy. Shorten the string, raise the pitch (and therefore raise the energy of the resulting sound waves).

In the terms of electrons, a larger "box" leads to the electron being able to absorb lower energy photons of light, like the lazy reds and yellows. A smaller "box" absorbs more strongly in the high-energy blue region of the spectrum. Why does this relate to astaxanthin? Because double bonds are sort of like Habitrails (warning, flash site) for electrons.

Adjacent double bonds can "communicate" with each other, effectively increasing the area the electrons have to roam in. There's only two caveats - they have to be neighbors, and they have to be lying in the same plane. Astaxanthin, like its sibling carotenoids, has a lot of adjacent double bonds (highlighted in astaxanthin pink).

The lobster accomplishes the color-shifting trick by packing the colorful carotenoid into a protein called crustacyanin. Astaxanthin bound in crustacyanin absorbs red light, and thus appears blue. It's the opposite for the unbound - absorbance in the blue, appears red. How the protein did this was a mystery for quite a while, as the shift from red to blue is very very large, almost uniquely so.

The crystal structure of β-crustacyanin

Image modified from PNAS (2002), 15, 9795 (PDF)

The crustacyanin accomplishes this by performing three simultaneous manipulations to its host pigment. First, as is evident from the structure above, two astaxanthins (highlighted, astaxanthin pink) are brought in close proximity to one another. This means that the "box" that holds the electrons in one molecule can interact with its twin.

Closeup of the two astxanthins bound in β-crustacyanin
Image modified from JACS (2005), 127, 1438

From the top, you can see that each astaxanthin molecule is bound to an amino acid, which forces the six membered ring "head" to lie perfectly flat. The protein also bends the molecules, further distorting the cloud the electrons reside in. These combined effects lead to an absorbance shift of 154 nanometers. Trust me, that's HUGE.

When the lobster is cooked, the protein structure is rapidly disrupted which results in the release of the astaxanthin. This disruption is irreversible, so the lobster remains pink even after it is brought back to room temperature, ready for buttering and consumption.

*This experimental procedure has not been vetted by an ethics committee. No animals were harmed (directly) by this post.

TSA cheats, still fails

2007-11-16T10:03:00.000-05:00

It's been quite a while since I've last thought about airport security, but this story really nicely sums up how much of a kludge we're looking at.

Here's the gist of it: Federal investigators managed to sneak bombs (including liquid explosives) past airport security, even when they triggered secondary screening.

No, wait, that's not the best part. Federal investigators managed to sneak bombs (including liquid explosives) past airport security, even when they triggered secondary screening, and even though the TSA had cheated, warning screeners about the specific details of the tests.

So, three failures in a row. Is failure multiplicative or exponential? I'd like to know if I should suggest the slogan "TSA: Now With Three Times the Failure!" or "TSA: Failure Cubed."

Housekeeping

2007-11-12T16:45:00.000-05:00

Two new links in the blogroll today.

First, there's Smitten Kitchen, which is my favorite food blog. I'd recommend it, the writing is clear and entertaining, and the photos of the food are only outclassed by the quality of the recipes. I just ate a huge lunch, and the pumpkin waffle post still makes me hungry.

Next is Apparent Dip, another sci-blogger. Everything you'd ever want to know about geology... And more! I'd recommend the overturned fireplace - it's a great example of how scientists that enjoy their fields can't ever "turn it off." Nor should they want to.

Also, if anyone is looking for what signifies the beginning of the end of Western civilization, look no further. Is it more sad that this device exists or that I'd be thrilled to receive one?

Sci-Punk'd!

2007-11-11T15:40:00.000-05:00

One of the things that frustrates scientists about the nutbars that co-opt and criticize their work is a total lack of qualifications. For instance, conservative pundits and preachers manage to convince hundreds of thousands of people that evolution, the most interdisciplinary and well-supported theory in all of science, is all a big hoax. They do this despite a complete lack of understanding of even the most fundamental concepts in biology, a fact which is instantly apparent to anyone that studies the life sciences.

It's the same thing with global warming "skeptics." Conflating climate with weather, believing myths about solar activity, and misunderstanding the meaning of "consensus," they take good scientific work and misrepresent it alongside deliberate falsehoods until the public can't tell the difference.

An environmental journalist seems to have been fed up with the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh being treated like experts, and crafted a delightful parody entitled "Carbon dioxide production by benthic bacteria: the death of manmade global warming theory?" (link goes to Google Cache)

Now, anyone with a connection to the internet and a passing familiarity with science would be able to rapidly identify this paper as being more full of crap than an hour of Bill O'Reilly.

For instance:

The paper cites something called the "Kattweizel-Gruhe Cycle," which is not an actual term.

It also states that "difluoroethylene sulphate" is a product from algal blooms. Difluoroethylene is real, sulphate is real, combined they're nonsense.

Then there's some bad math.

Q³uct + 3Ψ = XFº x Δjy {(∑y,ct79 + θtq-1)- λjc +2}

Even though I severely disliked calculus, I can still tell this is the mathematical equivalent of speaking in tounges.

Star Trek couldn't have come up with better sciencey-sounding terms that this bad boy, like concretised diachronic invariance, antedenoidal deterministic yield factor, asynchronistic (counterbifurcated) non-tardigrade log run, and zinc-loaded demi-osmotic membrane.

And there's my favorite article coming up in the back issues of the journal: JP Burley, MM Fisher, CR Burke and J Shirley. Submarine lightning strikes in the Hadean Zone: an unacknowledged cause of fish mortality?: 132-138

Unfortunately, the figures aren't available. I bet they're also great. The point is, though, that those items (amongst others) would instantly signal to anyone with a passing familiarity with biology, chemistry, and mathematics that the paper is, at very least, not credible.

"But Jacob," you ask, "how is a person with no scientific training supposed to know this paper's a hoax?" After all, it did have all the elements to trigger an endorphin rush in the denialists. A bold lone maverick standing against the prevailing opinion, a shadowy conspiracy by the scientific establishment, Speaking Truth to Power. Michael Crichton could hardly have written a better story. How is one to identify this paper as a hoax?

Google much?

Even the most cursory search shows that there is no Department of Climatology at the University of Arizona. There is no Daniel A Klein or Mandeep Gupta. There is no Journal of Geoclimatic Studies. All the citations are fakes.

Yet, most impressively, Rush Limbaugh fell for it, along with many other anti-global warming bloggers. This not only does a great job of exposing their scientific incompetence, but also shows that they are unwilling to take even the two seconds it takes to copy and paste "Department of Climatology, University of Arizona" into the Google Search bar.

It's a great warning to those out there. Learn the terms, study the field, check your sources, and verify your data, or you'll go hook, line, and sinker for a trap baited with bullshit. Hopefully we can prevent climatology from falling prey to the same ignorance that constantly assaults evolutionary biology.

Science at the store!

2007-11-08T22:15:00.000-05:00

So, I was at the store, standing in the checkout line. I was looking over the impulse buy items looking for chap-stick, when I found the most unusual item that I just felt compelled to buy.

Birthday candles... With colored flames! I'd like to meet the person that could resist such an unusual item. I have never seen anything like these. Not at a party store, toy store, or even in one of those teacher's scientific toy catalogs. Why you have these, Piggly Wiggly, I may never know.

This is what the candles look like.

Nothing odd there. Two of each type, and they come in red, orange, green, blue, purple, and white. If memory serves, red is colored with strontium salts, orange with calcium or sodium, green is a toss-up - in fireworks it's barium, but that's sort of toxic so I'd guess boron instead. Blue and purple... That's odd. Blue and purple could be copper, though that isn't exactly a healthy metal either.

Lighting them up, I was pleasantly surprised. The red and green are the best, with strong, brilliant colors, visible even with the lights on. Yellow, while intense isn't really an odd hue for a flame. Blue is all right, though the saturation of the color is lacking. Purple and white could pretty much just be normal candles. They burn really fast. The first and the second pictures below were taken about 45 seconds apart.

If anyone wants to really thrill me at my PhD defense party, you need to put these candles on my celebration cake.

Club drugs, kid's toys

2007-11-07T19:58:00.000-05:00

My labmate told me today about a truly bizarre example of adulterated products coming out of China. You may have heard of it - it turns out that a toy bead, when ingested, metabolized into GHB, a "popular" club slash date-rape drug.

The beads (sold in Australia and New Zealand as Bindeez) actually sound pretty cool. There's this pipette-type dispenser that you use to place the beads on a dimpled plate that keeps the beads in place. Spraying the beads with water fuses them together. Instant sculpture!

From what I've been able to track down, it appears that at some point in their manufacture, a small substitution was made. The dirt-cheap 1,4 butanediol was used in place of the more expensive 1,5 pentanediol. One carbon, two hydrogens different. And since I just got a new fancy version of ChemDraw, you get structures!

Once swallowed, the 1,4 butanediol is metabolized into gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB).

GHB is a really odd drug. It's a natural neurotransmitter, and it has its own receptor, creatively named the GHB receptor. When it binds to its receptor, it acts as a stimulant. However, at higher levels (like when it's accidentally ingested) it binds to the GABA_B receptor, where it has a depressive effect. Apparently, people use GHB as a sleep aid, and it has a "rebound" where people sleep like rocks for several hours, and then, pow! The blood levels drop to where it's only a stimulant, and the user pops back awake.

Apparently, as the story goes, three children in two weeks have been hospitalized for ingesting enough Bindeez to become severely ill. Here's a pretty horrifying quote from a mother of one of the children:

It was terrifying. I couldn't wake her, and then she just started vomiting this thick glue-like substance and all these Bindeez.

Yikes.

I can't help but wonder, though - how many Bindeez would you have to eat to get a decent dose? That quote is about a ten-year old girl. Those Bindeez beads probably weigh no more than 250 milligrams a piece, and I can't imagine much of that is butanediol. How many beads did she eat? What would posses a ten-year-old to eat a handful of beads?

They must taste pretty fantastic, because they're being placed back onto the market with a bittering agent added.

Friends don't let friends eat beads.

Just say no!

Batter Blaster

2007-11-01T17:29:00.000-04:00

I always thought that spray cheese was awesome, but I have a new favorite aerosol food product. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Batter Blaster.

Generally, my naturally paranoid nature would be hoisting the hoax flag at a product this ludicrous (anyone remember ManBeef?), but I saw a man stocking his shopping cart with box upon box of chocolate chip-wrapped pancakes on a stick.

Needless to say, if anyone reading this can mail me a can of this stuff to try out, please please please do so. I'll pay for the can and the shipping. And if you live close enough, I'll even make you breakfast.

Happy Halloween

2007-10-31T19:00:00.000-04:00

With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over a quaint and curious journal, volume four,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a popping,
As of some one gently popping, popping buttered corn.
"'Tis some pump," I muttered, "pumping vapor," then I swore -
"time to fix it, what a bore."

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate cursed pump wrought black oil upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
A chemical which smelled of yarrow - which decomposed before.
For the rare and radiant substance whose crystals I adore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain procedure of each tetrahedron journal
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
"'Tis but a simple substitution boiling in my flasks galore
Some late exotherm causing it to boil more; -
This it is, and nothing more,"

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
I reached out to the flask and with my mind I did implore;
But the fact is I was napping and so gently it was popping,
And so faintly it was roiling, boiling as it had not before,
That I scarce was sure it happened - here I shamefully swore once more; -
Tarry sludge, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no chemist ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the black sludge gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Kugelrohr!"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Kugelrohr!!"
Merely this and nothing more.

Back onto the hotplate turning, all my product black and burning,
Soon again I heard a popping somewhat louder than before.
"Surely," said I, "surely there is something in my crystal lattice;
Let me see then, what there at is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the product and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the fume hood, when, with many a hiss and sputter,
In there foamed a sulfrous slurry of the byproducts I would abhor.
Not the least obeisance made I; in not a minute it was quenched and stoppered;
But, with mien of lord or lady, down to the glassware oven's door -
Removed a tube, prepared a sample, headed through the NMR room door -
Locked, and shimmed, and nothing more.

Then the ebony sludge beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the confidence and assurances that my advisor wore,
"Though my flask be etched and blackened, thou," I said, "art sure no tar.
Ghastly grim and disgusting stuff dredged up from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy composition is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the computer, "Press F4"

Much I marveled this ungainly instrument to provide help so plainly,
Though the data held little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with such a mess as my poor spectrum bore -
The concentration was too low yet it would not dissolve any more,
Quoth the computer, "Press F4"

But the peaks, jutting sharply from the baseline, spoke only,
Of one outcome, as if my soul in that one flask I did outpour.
Nothing more than I expected - not one product was detected -
Till I scarcely more than muttered "Other groups have made this before -
On the morrow they will scoop me, as my hopes have been crushed before.
Should I try this any more?"

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "my product hides in onyx sludge and needs to be purified more,
Caught in some unhappy emulsion held there by a strange compulsion
If I centrifuge and perhaps filter till the emulsion is no more -
Perhaps I will no longer have that melancholy burden bore
And have to purify no more.

But the sludge was not yielding coaxing me into wielding
A column packed with silica I had been avoiding heretofore.
Then, upon the ringstand clamping, I betook myself to tamping
Silica into the column, there was too little so I added more -
Then scooping in the hideous sludge of yore
The clock on the wall read four.

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
Would I be able to complete the column at 5 PM or before?
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
Staring at the TLC plate that the UV lamp gloated o'er,
Wondering at the velvet violet spots that UV light shone o'er,
Shall I press on, ah, nevermore!

"Advisor!" said I, "thing of evil! - leader still, if man or devil! -
Whether tempted to leave, or whether my remaining is called for,
Hopeless yet still undaunted, in this abandoned lab enchanted -
To go home and eat some dinner - tell me truly, I implore -
Should I - should I leave, my work undone? - tell me - tell me, I implore!"
"Get back to work," he said, "it's only four."

"Advisor!" muttered I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, mangy devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant laboratory,
I shall clasp my sainted product which the NMR abhorred -
Clasp a rare and radiant product, with my novel fluorophore?'
Quoth the data, "Nevermore."

Felony Distribution

2007-10-30T18:00:00.000-04:00

It's sad, the state that flea markets have degenerated into. Instead of being a meeting place for the budget-conscious, it appears that they are now a breeding ground for the kind of criminal scum we prefer to believe only inhabits the darkest corners of the world, like the mountains of Pakistan or the basement of Congress. Take, for instance, this heart-chilling report about a couple caught peddling 170 kilos of home-cooked Mexican White to an unsuspecting public.

I think I have a new favorite crime - felony cheesemaking. Move over involuntary manslaughter! I wonder where felony cheesemaking falls in the prison hierarchy. I think that, if anything, people would just feel sorry for you for being booked on such an asinine charge.

Did you know that nearly all cheese-related food poisonings since the 50s have been caused by pasteurized industrial-source cheeses? the FDA recommends that pregnant women and immunocompromised individuals should avoid all soft cheeses in general, so I don't see how this "bathtub" cheese is a particular threat to public safety. Perhaps I just lack vision.

Garlic's Revenge

2007-10-16T12:05:00.000-04:00

So, I had this great idea for a post about the antimicrobial properties of garlic.

In my research across the Tubes, I happened upon an article entitled Recipes for Antimicrobial Wine Marinades Against Bacillus cereus, Escherichia coli O157:H7,
Listeria monocytogenes, and Salmonella enterica. (Thanks, Karla!) "Holy moly!" I exclaimed to myself, startling my labmate. This is perfect. How often do you get a chance to prepare and eat something from an academic journal?

The original recipe was as follows:

Store-bought ingredients used for marinade recipes include cold-pressed garlic juice (Garlic Valley Farms, Glendale, Calif., U.S.A.), oregano leaves (McCormick and Co. Inc., Hunt Valley, Md., U.S.A.), Beringer Pinot Noir 2003 (alcohol 13.9% by volume), and Wente Chardonnay 2002 (alcohol 13.5% by volume). Oregano oil was purchased from Lhasa Herb Co. (Berkeley, Calif., U.S.A.).

The final marinade recipe (red wine [RW]/oregano leaves [OL]/garlic juice [GJ]/oregano oil [OO]) was formulated by addition of 4 g oregano leaves to 66mLred or white wine/saline. The oregano leaves were allowed to soak in the wine for 1 wk, as described previously (Friedman and others 2006c). Garlic juice/saline (30 mL) and oregano oil (50 μL) were then added prior to the bactericidal assay. Oregano oil at the concentrations used was soluble in the wine formulation.

So you see why this post has taken a while - I was waiting for my oregano/wine mixture to soak.

For my recipe, I obtained fresh oregano, cold-pressed garlic juice, red wine (pinot noir, the cheap stuff) and chicken breasts from Piggly Wiggly. Oregano oil was harder to come by - the local organic market had a 5 ml bottle of the pure stuff for $32, but as my NSF grant hasn't cleared, I had to do with a pill-based supplement. 150 mg of oregano oil in olive oil. Much cheaper, close enough.

So 20 g of oregano leaves go into 330 ml pino noir (with 2.8 grams added salt) in a refrigerator for one week. Now I'm ready for the oregano oil and garlic juice.

I should have known that this might not have been a good plan when, upon reading the paper again and again, I couldn't find the numerical ratio of garlic to saline, so I just used straight garlic juice.

150 milliliters of garlic juice.

That is, as I calculated later, the equivalent of 95 cloves of garlic.

Needless to say, the aroma of the concoction was quite potent. So potent, in fact, that the subtle smells of oregano and red wine weren't perceptible over the screaming horde of garlic assaulting my nostrils.

Whatever, this is science. All the great scientists of history sacrificed their personal comfort for the greater good. Dr. Jekyll, Giles Brindley, Kevin Bacon in The Hollow Man. I can endure this.

So one chicken breast was sealed in a plastic bag with the marinade. I left it in the refrigerator, and promptly forgot about it until the next morning, when my girlfriend remarked that there was an unusual strong smell coming from the fridge, and that the cheddar cheese tasted like garlic.

Whoops.

And she was right. The plastic bag could hardly have been considered a barrier to the potency of the juice. From the smell, I might as well have sprayed the fluid all over the shelf. The chicken, now a rich maroon from the wine, had the consistency of warm taffy. I think it was at this point when I decided that, even had I the nasal fortitude to prepare the chicken, it would certainly be unpalatable. And so out it went. Butit is important to pint out that it showed no visible signs of decay. Oh, yeah.

So, in lieu of results from my failed experiment, here is a recipe for garlic-containing Carbonara, modified from Rachel Ray's recipe. It is delicious, and I can assure you it will not contaminate other foodstuffs upon storage.

Ingredients:

1 pound pasta
1/4 pound bacon
1 tsp red pepper flakes
5 to 6 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 large egg yolks
Grated Romano cheese
Parsley, for garnish. I suggest replacing this with another two or three strips of bacon.

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Cook pasta to al dente.

Concurrently, cook the bacon until almost crispy. Add red pepper flakes and garlic and cook an additional 2 to 3 minutes. Add wine, stir up juices.

In another container, beat the egg yolks and add a large ladleful (about 1/2 cup) of the pasta cooking water. According to Ms. Ray, "this tempers the eggs and keeps them from scrambling when added to the pasta." I'd like to add that I wholeheartedly disapprove of such imprecise measurements as "a large ladelful."

Drain pasta well and add it directly to the skillet with the bacon. Pour the egg mixture over the pasta. Toss rapidly - you want to coat the pasta without cooking the egg yolk. Remove the pan from heat and add "a big handful" of cheese, "lots" of pepper, and "a little" salt. Keep tossing the pasta until the egg mixture thickens, 1 to 2 minutes. Garnish with parsley (totally optional) and extra grated Romano.

Consume. Enjoy the rich flavor of diallyl disulfide, courtesy of our best friend, garlic.

Made From Sugar...

2007-10-12T12:25:00.000-04:00

... so it tastes like sugar!

That's the slogan for Splenda, the newest in a long line of artificial sweeteners. Splenda is the baby in the family of things that claim to taste like sugar. It was preceded by household names like aspartame (NutraSweet) and Saccharin (Sweet'N Low). Sucralose was (like many artificial sweeteners) discovered through bad lab hygiene. As the story goes, as miscommunication between the two discoverers led to one scientist tasting the powder instead of testing it. It's a rare lab where a miscommunication like that leads to a billion dollar patent instead of a lawsuit. A similar mistake led to the discovery of etorphine, but instead of being a delicious surprise it almost killed a bunch of people.

Sucralose is an excellent additive for food from a chemical standpoint. It's stable at baking temperatures, so cakes and cookies can be baked with it. This is in stark contrast to aspartame and saccharin, which can break down at elevated temperatures, resulting in odd flavors. Sucralose is also approximately 600 times sweeter than sucrose, so when you open a packet at the restaurant, most of the white powder you see is dirt-cheap "filler" sugars, like maltodextrin or dextrose. As a consequence, a packet of sucralose is not, despite the label, a zero calorie additive. A packet of Splenda will bestow two calories upon you, but the FDA rounds everything down to zero if the "food contains less than 5 calories per reference amount customarily consumed and per labeled serving."

As an aside, I might as well come out and say it - I loathe sugar substitutes. Not because of fears of cancer, but because I can't stand the taste. Diet sodas have always left me feeling ill, even since I was a kid. Splenda and aspartame give me migraines. Horrible stuff.

Anyway...

So, how much is sucralose really like sugar?

Sucrose (table sugar) on the left, sucralose on the right. As you can see, structurally, they're quite similar. The main backbone of sucrose is maintained, but three of the hydroxy (-OH) groups have been replaced by chlorine atoms. On the surface, this does indeed appear to be an exceedingly minor modification, but think about it - if the modification were really that minor, why is sucralose indigestible?

This is why I think their advertising slogan is intentionally misleading - just because a substance is made from something else doesn't mean it shares any of its properties. The marketers have pulled a nice trick here, associating one property of splenda with that of sugar, thereby implying that splenda and sugar are practically the same. I've been working on some carbohydrate derivatives in the lab recently, and I can tell you firsthand that starting with sugar does not a sweetener make (as long as rancid stench is a good indicator of flavor).

A good example of this would be that of 5-fluorouracil, also known as the antitumor drug Adrucil.

Uracil is one of the four "bases" in RNA, replacing thymine from DNA. To make a long story short, 5-fluorouracil inhibits an enzyme known as thymidylate synthase which is responsible for putting the thymines in DNA. Once this enzyme has been inhibited, the cell dies a sad, lonely, thymeaningless death. And that change is an even smaller one than swapping a chlorine for a hydroxy group.

Please take note - I am not saying sucralose might kill you. Just that it's sad when a team of marketers makes such a blatantly chemically inaccurate statement.

On the other side of the aisle, a lot of consumer fear has been directed at sucralose for those three chlorine atoms from people like this and this. Some quotes:

In combo with sodium, chlorine forms a harmless "ionic bond" to yield table salt. Sucralose makers often highlight this worthless fact to defend its' safety. Apparently, they missed the second day of Chemistry 101 - the day they teach "covalent" bonds.

When used with carbon, the chlorine atom in sucralose forms a "covalent" bond. The end result is the historically deadly "organochlorine" or simply: a Really-Nasty Form of Chlorine (RNFOC).

I love the jargon he invents here. Really Nasty Form of Chlorine. As if a "covalent" bond makes an organic chlorine compound just as deadly as elemental chlorine.

Would you drink a cup of pesticides? What about a cup of chemical water? All your aquarium fish will die within a matter of minutes if you add tap water to your fish tank without also adding a de-chlorinator to remove the chlorine. Doesn’t that tell you something about the danger of drinking chlorine? Chlorine in tap water results in cancer and many other diseases, according to researchers worldwide. So if chlorine in tap water is a suspected carcinogen, is it safe in diet colas?

I wonder what a cup of "chemical water" would contain. Water's a chemical too, you know.

This article states explicitly what the others dance around - in their eyes, Splenda might as well be a pesticide.

Dr. Bowen described chlorine as "nature’s Doberman attack dog—a highly excitable, ferocious atomic element employed as a biocide in bleach, disinfectants, insecticides, WWI poison gas and hydrochloric acid."

Sucralose is a molecule of sugar that has been chemically manipulated to surrender three hydroxyl groups (hydrogen + oxygen) which are then replaced with three chlorine atoms. "Natural sugar is a hydrocarbon built around 12 carbon atoms. When turned into Splenda, it becomes a chlorocarbon, in the family of Chlorodane, Lindane and DDT," says Dr. Bowen.

Oh no! Chlorine gonna kill us!

This is something that more people need to learn - substances are not automatically dangerous because they contain atoms that are in other dangerous things. There's as much difference between sucralose, DDT (perhaps the most famous halocarbon), and chlordane as there is between chlorine gas, chlorine bleach, and sucralose. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself.

The structural subtleties might not be readily apparent, but even to the untrained eye two things should be immediately obvious. First, DDT and Chlordane have a much higher amount of chlorine atoms in them, and second, neither of them has any OH groups like sucralose does. Those OH groups make sucralose water-soluble. If you were sprayed with DDT and sucralose, the DDT would be retained in your fatty tissues, while sucralose would be rapidly cleared though your urine. Solubility matters - this is the same reason why you can eat a drum full of Vitamin C (water soluble), while a similar dosage of Vitamin D (fat soluble) would be rather fatal.

Need more reading? Here's an IUPAC PDF that's a short rundown of organochlorine and other halogenated compounds found in living organisms. The first example, a Hawaiian red seaweed prized for its complex flavor, contains nearly 100 different organohalides.

And then there are organochlorines that are catastrophically toxic to people. tetrachlorodibenzodioxin (TCDD) is probably the best example - remember that? It was used to poison Viktor Yushchenko.

Very rarely are food additives unilaterally hazardous. Structure-function correlations are pretty well understood by the chemists that cook this stuff up, which is why you won't be seeing anything structurally similar to DDT or dioxin popping up in your breakfast cereal.

Well, not unless you get on the bad side of the KGB.

So the next time there are scary stories about food additives, wait to believe them until either a reputable group of scientists has checked it out, or the CDC reports widespread cases of sucralose poisoning. Until then, worries about this inoffensive if poorly marketed sweetener should be taken with a grain of salt.

Or, if you prefer, with a packet of Splenda.

Let's play a game!

2007-10-09T20:45:00.000-04:00

Anyone remember Sesame Street? It's time to play "one of these things is not like the other!"

Tylenol Cold and Sinus
Erlenmeyer flasks
Hotel coffeepots
Books of matches
Lithium batteries
Mason jars
Coffee filters

See the connection yet?

All of these items can be used in the street manufacture of methamphetamine. The odd one out, at least in Texas, is the Erlenmeyer flask, which cannot be purchased without a permit from the state. (Thanks for the link, Mike!)

This is absolutely ridiculous. Erlenmeyer flasks, much like mason jars and coffeepots, have a plethora of non-ominous uses. The fact that mason jars are even on that list above further suggests that restricting the sale of Erlenmeyer flasks is asinine due to the ready availability of a number of other glass vessels. "Oh, we'll ban Erlenmeyer flasks because chemistry is scary and confusing. That'll solve the problem, no meth-head would ever think of cooking up a batch in a differently-shaped container!"

Right. These are people that steal truckloads of anhydrous ammonia, risk getting horrifically burned and poisoned by phosphorus and its nasty byproducts, and let's not forget the constant threat of discovery and imprisonment. Clearly, banning a specific type of container will help.

Here's the whole list of unsavory apparatus, from the Texas Department of Public Safety site. I've bolded the items which I personally possess.

(A) a condenser;
(B) a distilling apparatus;
(C) a vacuum drier;
(D) a three-neck or distilling flask;
(E) a tableting machine;
(F) an encapsulating machine;
(G) a filter, Buchner, or separatory funnel;
(H) an Erlenmeyer, two-neck, or single-neck flask;
(I) a round-bottom, Florence, thermometer, or filtering flask;
(J) a Soxhlet extractor;
(K) a transformer;
(L) a flask heater;
(M) a heating mantel;
(N) an adaptor tube.

Seven of fourteen, I must be a drug-making reprobate. Unless, of course, I send them an application including my name, address, driver's license number, height, weight, and eye and hair color. Then, there's these two questions:

1. Has applicant ever been arrested, charged, placed on probation or convicted of an
offense involving either the use, sale, possession, transport, cultivation, or manufacture of a
controlled substance or dangerous drug? _____ Yes _____ No

2. Has the applicant been convicted of a felony: _____ Yes _____ No

Interesting how just being arrested and charged for a chemistry-related offense can pile on the suspicion. What happens if you were just arrested for no reason?

Still, if you're talking about meth, the most likely topic to come up is cough medicine. Recently, all medications with meth precursors in them were taken behind the counter in America's favorite piece of legislation, the USA-PATRIOT act.

The Act allows for the sale of pseudoephedrine only from locked cabinets or behind the counter. The law:

limits the monthly amount any individual could purchase
requires individuals to present photo identification to purchase such medications
requires retailers to keep personal information about these customers for at least two years after the purchase of these medicines.

You may have experienced this. Feeling like crap? Want to to to Wal-Mart and buy a case of Sudafed? I hope you don't mind some random pharmacy clerk photocopying your ID and keeping it on file for two years. I'm sure they'll take good care of it.

Now, the first synthetic preparation of methamphetamine I can find dates back to 1919. Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, the most common raw materials for amphetamine synthesis have been used medicinally for about 5000 years as plant extracts. So while it's both convenient and politically expedient to focus on evil, evil chemicals in (legal) drugs, the raw materials to make meth have been around for thousands of years, and the chemical knowledge to perform that transformation has existed for nearly a century. If you're already not concerned about poisoning, burns, explosions, the police, or buying the proper container, do you really think that moving the Sudafed behind the counter and banning flasks will help?

My synthesis professor once said "any synthesis that you want to do is possible. as long as you're willing to put in the effort, you can always find a way to transform one material into another." A 750 percent profit, with a bunch of addicted customers? If you had to start from dirt and water, the economics of it would still be on the side of the street cooks.

And now, a word from our sponsors.

2007-10-02T17:46:00.000-04:00

Being a grad student isn't exactly the most fiducially sound position in the world, so I've decided to take on some offers I've received from ad agencies. I know, nobody likes ads, but for every person that reads this I get 2/10ths of cent from Coersive Advertising Incorporated. Bear with me - it's still better than AM radio.

--- Advertisement ---

There are only TWO WORDS in the English language that start with B that you need to know. Breakfast... and BORING.

Because breakfast is boring. Eggs? Boring. Oatmeal? Please. Cereal? I'm dying over here!

Well, Formula Foods has your solution.

History has shown us that the best way to solve a problem is to combine two other things. Fire? Boring. Squirtgun? Booooring! And yet, fire plus squirtgun equals flamethrower.

Which is awesome.

We are proud to announce the harnessing of a nutritious breakfast staple, milk, and combined it with the flavor and richness of the average American's favorite food group - meat!

World, meet Melk, the taste craze that's sweeping the globe!

Blended to rich, thick perfection by some of the world's most advanced food processors, Melk provides all of the nutrients of a tall glass of milk with the go-getting protein and taste of your favorite porterhouse steak, restaurant hamburger, or mom's blue-ribbon meatloaf. Guaranteed to contain no more than 5% brain and nervous tissue!

The Science of Flavor Perfection

Nothing like a tall, cold glass* of Melk to refresh you on a hot summer day. Fries up great to provide a quick midday snack. And the kids love it!** Tell them to use it on their cereal instead of plain old boring milk!

Melk can be purchased at your local grocery or meat market - just look for the tall, black box in the refrigerated section! Comes in chunky, smooth, and slurry for the distinguishing consumer. Look on the side for a coupon for the free Melk cookbook, containing recipes for new classics like Melkloaf, Melk and Potatoes, Melkaroni and Cheese, and the Melk Breakfast Smoothie.

*Consuming raw or undercooked meats, poultry, seafood, shellfish, or eggs may increase your risk of food borne illness, especially if you have certain medical conditions. Melk is factory-treated with powerful antibiotics to eliminate harmful microbes, but the risk of harmful or resistant pathogens can never be reduced completely. Some individuals with liver, kidney, or autoimmune diseases should consult a doctor before using Melk.

**Not for children under sixteen years of age.

--- Advertisement ---

I wonder...

2007-10-01T18:11:00.000-04:00

Why isn't it Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde? Jekyll and Hyde were, for all practical purposes, the same man. Wouldn't Jekyll's doctoral degree apply equally to Hyde?

No wonder he was so pissed. If people would have just afforded him the title his alternate self had so rightly earned, perhaps he wouldn't have killed all those people.

You want me to shower in what?

2007-09-26T23:45:00.000-04:00

There are probably a cool million miracle cures coursing through the intertubes at any given time. Cod liver oil, raw foods, algae. Some people even try to convince you that sitting under colored lights will cure you.

The nice thing about all of these is that they seem to have all evolved from some common distant ancestor (I'd guess leeches), so they share a set of readily identifiable traits.

1. Single, simple things - the cures only sound plausible if they're totally simple. Usually only one substance or device is required for the desired effect.
2. Broad-spectrum - that simple thing cures everything from Alzheimer's to flatulence.
3. Just a taste of science - enough to give it a veneer of legitimacy, but not anything that holds up under closer scrutiny. Recently, this usually takes the form of mentioning quantum mechanics. If it's not a paper about physics and it uses the words quantum, ion, or harmonic, just put it down and back away slowly.
4. Claims that pharmaceutical companies ignore/suppress knowledge of the cure to keep themselves in business. Sometimes they actually say that these aforementioned companies hate you, and want you to be sick.

One thing I love doing when my work isn't going so well is to wander the science section of our library and look for books that should probably be shelved elsewhere. Most recently, this was a book called Garlic - The Unknown Miracle Worker. This book is half garlic as miracle cure, half advertisement for the author's treatment technique, a Frankenstein-esque contraption called the "Flow-Leben." From what I've been able to tell, the Flow-Leben is a series of high-pressure nozzles surrounding a chamber in which sits the sick person. They're sprayed with garlic extract, and it... Well, I'll let the author summarize it.

FLOW-LEBEN is the only system in the world by which we can obtain the maximum effects from garlic. The first unit was completed in 1970. It in this clinic, various concentrations of garlic-water solution are sprayed on the bodies of patients by means of atmospheric pressure compressed air (2 to 7 lbs.) shot through atomizing nozzles. Hydraulic pressure is employed in the newer models. This process stimulates the body's metabolism and removes cholesterol from the blood. Various functional disorders are eliminated and skin diseases are also cured by the germicidal effect of garlic.

Why is this? Why did he start investigating garlic?

As I daily keep an eye on the medicines now overflowing the market, I am greatly shocked. They are mainly composed of synthetic chemicals. Undoubtedly, they will cause unwanted side effects. Even if nothing shows up immediately, some adverse reaction may appear later. It may take as much as two generations for before some side-effects clearly appear. But this possibility is cause for even greater concern.
I have I have been thinking of this problem very seriously and very deeply. And I have found a solution. It is GARLIC.

Emphasis in original.

And here's some pictures of his device.

Scary, no? These look like something the Joker might use to poison someone. He even has an attractive young assistant demonstrating that it is perfectly safe.

The book claims that the treatment is completely odorless, but I don't buy it. To use, you shower, take a dry sauna, and then get garlified!

But can it treat conditions other than skin rashes? I'll be charitable, and give them those. Garlic does posses some remarkable medicinal properties, and it does cross the skin well, so I think ringworm isn't so outlandish. But here's some other things it says it can treat:

This "FLOW-LEBEN" has remarkable effects on traffic victims. It's especially effective in curing "whiplash." Previously, nobody had a really good treatment for this injury. The patients who have been cured by "FLOW-LEBEN" clearly reveal the miracle effects thus obtained.

[...]

One of my friends visited me concerning his father's paralysis. It was fortunate that his father's paralysis had just begun. No medicine, however effective, will produce results if it is applied too late. He followed my instructions, and in no more than half a month, his paralysis gradually went away.

The whole book is filled with this. Garlic, apparently, can cure everything from a stomachache to alcoholism to paralysis and whiplash. Helpfully, if you have no access to the Shower of Pain, you can prepare garlic for internal consumption! There's even a nice figure to demonstrate the positive effects on a weary stomach.

What's a weary stomach, anyway? Why is it important that the garlic be on top of the water, but under the food? I don't the stomach actually looks like that.

Anyway, in case you want to do this to yourself, here's how you do it:

Peel, chop, and grate the garlic.

Measure out an appropriate portion onto what looks like seaweed, and wrap. Ubergarlosushi!

Er... Take with water.

You can also make a garlic paste and apply it to leaky joints.

Think how much a fist-sized chunk of garlic paste would smell. This is most assuredly not a treatment you could use and then walk around in public with.

So there you have it. Weary stomach? Pop a garlic. Whiplash? Garlic compress! Paralysis? 30 ccs garlic, stat!

I need to spend more time in the library, clearly.

Postscript: I've decided to write more regularly on this here blogamajig, so you can look forward to a nice post on why garlic, while not a miracle cure, is quite an interesting foodstuff.

They Just Don't Get It.

2007-08-31T14:23:00.000-04:00

Via Pharyngula (see the sidebar for a link), I was pointed to a site called Capitol Hill Coffee House that seems to be a deep repository of conservative essays on all sorts of subjects. The one that I landed at originally was about open-access scientific papers. The fuss all started with the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006, which would would require that "federal agencies develop public access policies relating to research conducted by employees of that agency or from funds administered by that agency."

Long story short, there are a whole lot of people, (scientists, non-scientists, and politicians alike) that think the taxpaying public should be able to view research that they pay for. You can access laws written by congressmen, you can see government documents via FOIA, but if you want to read an NIH-funded study on the efficacy of Vioxx, you have to shell out hundreds of dollars for a subscription to a journal. This bill would change that. It would require that any papers that "have been accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals and result from research supported, in whole or in part, from funding by the federal government" would have to be freely accessible by anyone. This is a hugely popular idea among scientists, because it would mean that their work would be seen by more people, and that more people would have access to real science. No more mysterious ivory tower stuff; if the Washington Post, say, prints an abysmally biased paper on global warming, you could go look at the data for yourself. Even if you didn't get what they were saying, it would still be there.

The people that don't like this idea are the publishers. Why? It would be expensive. They don't want to lose their enormous profit margins. The argument is one we've heard before from such talented bullshit artists as the MPAA and RIAA. If it's free, we'll go bankrupt! Woe is us! No, you won't.

Getting back on topic, it seems that the ultra-right wing paranoids have also found something to dislike. At the Capitol Hill Coffee House, you can read this article on why allowing open access to journals will destroy The Jesus States of America.

Starting out there's some quotes by Michael Crichton, so we know we're in for a rollercoaster read. Eventually, you'll get to the meat of the article.

What emerges [from governmentally funded research] is research that often reflects the outcome of whatever cause or theory government bureaucrats are advancing.

Some of this research is published in peer-reviewed scientific and academic journals, and while some good science is achieved, there is no way of knowing how much government-funded research exists to advance various social and political agendas.

So right off, they miss the point. Research can be "gamed" a bit to minimize or distort reality, but data is data. That's the point of peer review, to weed out questionable studies with unusual conclusions. Additionally, open-access would greatly help with this "problem," as it would make the raw data freely available to the skeptics!

This bill literally forces publishers of medical, scientific and scholarly journals, which invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year in their publications, to give away their work. There is something inherently wrong in that. The Open Access bill is, in this respect, an unconstitutional “taking” of intellectual property by the federal government.

The problem with this is that it isn't the work of the journals. This author clearly does not know how publishing in a scientific journal works. Here's how it goes:

1. Scientist does some work. Let's pretend he's proved that homosexual marriage would end poverty in America.
2. Scientist writes his work up, and he submits it to a journal for review.
3. The journal editor, who is another scientist, reviews the paper to determine if it is appropriate for the journal. In the vast majority of cases, journal editors are unpaid volunteers.
4. The editor likes the paper, and sends it to the peer reviewers. Did I mention they're also volunteering, and not being paid?
5. The paper bounces back and forth between the reviewers and the author for a while.
6. The paper is accepted for publication. The author sometimes has to pay a fee to the journal for color or page count.
7. The article appears in the journal. A bad news article is written about it, and the blogosphere is rife with chaos.

The only thing the journal has to pay for (in most cases) is the actual publication cost, plus the amount to maintain a web-accessible version. The actual content of the articles is obtained for free, usually having been paid for by the government. The ones that could be said to be engaged in taking would be the journals.

Another way to further debase the process that supports questionable science is to create “alternative journals.” It should come as little surprise that liberal financier George Soros, through his Open Society Institute, is a big fan of “open access” and alternative journals.

Obligatory jab at Soros. Open access journals apparently suffer from that liberal bias we've been hearing so much about lately.

In 2002, Soros gave $3 million dollars to the Budapest Open Access Initiative, one of whose objectives is to “assist in the establishment of alternative journals that are committed to offering free and unrestricted online access to published articles.” Open access to bogus research could result in the easy dissemination of the social control agenda behind global warming and other “theories.”

Free and unrestricted access to information = COMMUNISM. The government wants you to be able to read scientific papers because it'll make the population weak-willed and easy to control.

Also, how much you want to bet that one of those social control "theories" is evolution?

The author closes with some more words about the government being boneheaded and mistake-prone, and how it would favor government-funded research over privately funded research. You know, because research by Merck into the safety of its own products will be of far higher quality than that of a government grantee.

And here's the kicker, a point I've seen echoed many times about this issue.

This system has worked for a very long time to winnow out ultimately bad or junk science and should be left alone to continue that process.

Apparently the common belief is that open-access means the abolition of peer review. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. People need to know tat this policy will not, for better or worse, have any effect on the content of the journal. The The only thing that will change is the availability of the information. No journal is foregoing peer review. No journal will be any more beholden to the government than they already are. The only thing that will change is that the people who paid for the research will be able to see where their money goes.

And isn't that always a good thing?

Label your containers!

2007-08-27T17:50:00.001-04:00

One of the first things that's drummed into your head at safety training is to always properly label everything in your workspace. Wouldn't it be awful if someone graduated and left some unlabeled heavy metal waste, and it accidentally got mixed in with the organic waste, causing a trace amount of cadmium to enter the atmosphere?

Yeah, that's the way they phrase it, which is not very inspiring. Needless to say, we all have stuff sitting around that would probably love a comprehensive label. I think I have a better example for them, though.

Today, the undergrad that works in my lab was cleaning out the hood of the post-doc he formerly worked with. Said post-doc told him he could throw out pretty much everything that was in the hood, save a few experiments The Boss needed.

One of the things in the hood for disposal was a small vial, containing about half a gram of bluish powder. It was unlabeled, but grouped with another bunch of vials containing uninteresting metal salts. He uncapped it, and flung the powder into the solid waste container.

The solid waste container is mostly full of things like old gloves, filter papers and wipes, and boring metal salts. So, you can imagine his surprise when the powder instantly burst into flames, engulfing the top layer of trash in the waste container in a massive fireball. He thought quickly, smothering the fire so nothing (and nobody) got hurt, but it was still a quite unpleasant surprise.

So please, people. If you're going to leave pyrophoric powders around, please label them. Or better, don't leave them around. The undergrad you save could be your own.

Six Scents

2007-08-23T19:00:00.000-04:00

Because lists are fun and easy.

These are a few of my favorite and least favorite laboratory smells. If being a chemist nets me nothing else, I'll at least be able to say I had an interesting olfactory experience.

First let's hear about -

The Good - Smells which make me regret I do all my work in a fume hood.

1. p-Bromobenzaldehyde dimethyl acetal

This was a first step towards a compound that I eventually made via another route. Its starting material, p-bromobenzaldehyde, smells faintly of cherries. The compound itself smells like cherry jolly ranchers. It is sweet, light, and not the least bit unpleasant.

2. Tetraethyl orthosilicate

This one smells like you crushed up pine needles and mint leaves. It's a little strong, but not overpowering. The fact that it has such an identifiable smell is nice, as the vapors are quite hazardous to the eyes. Plus, it has silicon in it. Cool.

3. Vanillin

Big surprise here - this smells like vanilla. It's a rich, complex smell that you'll know quite well if you have purchased synthetic vanilla extract, which is mostly vanillin. It's not quite all the way to the sublime and heavenly scent of real vanilla, but it's damn close. There's a recrystallization lab I've run where vanillin is one of the compounds to be purified. I always left that lab craving cake.

4. Phenol

Unpleasant in higher amounts, but I like it when it's dilute. Strong, sweet, a bit biting. It's a little industrial, but still not so bad.

5. Trimethyl orthoformate

Fruity and ethereal, this is another compound I like working with. It's hard to describe exactly what it smells like, but it leaves one with the general impression of ripe, sweet fruit.

That brings us to -

The Bad - Smells which make my labmates regret our only scale is outside a fume hood.

1. 1,3 Dithiane

As far as sulfur compounds go, this one isn't that bad. It's a bit like eggs that have just gone bad, combined with sort of a light sweetness. Being a solid helps it not fill up the lab with stink so fast.

2. Tert-butyl dimethyl silyl chloride (TBDMS-Cl)

At first, TBDMS-Cl doesn't smell bad at all. The first notes to waft to you smell just like a pine forest. Then as the smell get stronger, you begin to notice an off note - the smell of mildew and soil. The combination quickly becomes overpoweringly strong, leaving you with a shooting hadache and a sickened stomach.

3. p-Thiocresol

There's a bottle of this monster sitting in my hood right now. The bottle stinks too much to be placed in the unventilated cabinet where it's supposed to live. Smells like rubber heated to the point of melting, but not yet on fire.

4. The Fridge

I don't know what it is in there that makes it stink, but it does the job well. Pungent, reminiscent of acetylenes and phosphorous, it can instantaneously escape the fridge when opened and fill the entire lab. It laughs at baking sod and bleach.

5. Ethyl phenylacetate

Another compound used in the labs here, it smells like feet. Hot sweaty stinky feet. Old overwarn shoes, the way your socks might smell if you never washed them. It's piercing and awful. One of my students spilled some on me, and I contaminated my office chair, car seat, couch, and girlfriend with it. It took about a week before I wasn't smelling it every morning when I drove in to work.

6. Toluene

One of the more common solvents. The smell is thick, oily, and oppressive. It's not awful in an absolute sense of the word, I just particularly dislike it.

And now we descend into the world of -

The Ugly - smells which make me regret I have a sense of smell.

1. 1,5 Cyclooctadiene

The Big Daddy of stench in the inorganic lab. Heavy, oppressive, and sickly sweet. Even a tiny drop on a wipe can cause a lab to be uninhabitable until it clears. This smell just flat-out makes you nauseous.

2. Trimethyltin Anything

The waste from a reaction called the Stille coupling has assorted tin compounds in it. Yep, a metal that stinks. This is a hard one to describe, I don't think I've ever smelled anything like it. It's almost physically offensive, sharp and penetrating. It smells horribly poisonous, probably because it is.

3. Acrolein

Chemically, acrolein is the smallest unsaturated aldehyde. It's a great starting material, and it reeks. You may have heard of it in the news as a cancer-causing component of potato chips and other fried foods. See, when fat is heated too high, the glycerol part of the fat dehydrates to form acrolein. So a major note in the acrolein bouquet is burning fat. This one also has a smell that feels painful. Piercing and disgusting.

4. Pyridine

My dad told me a story about a pyridine experience when he was an undergrad. Someone dropped a full four-liter bottle of pyridine in one of the chem labs above, the result being that the computer labs below filled up with the oily, dead-fish aroma of pyridine. Since it's toxic and a reproductive hazard, they were politely asked to leave.

5. Phenylselenol

I have to confess, I've only smelled but the smallest whiff of phenylselenol. The reason for this is that the aroma is considered so objectionable that we store it in our sealed glove box. And the little sniff I got of it let me know in no uncertain terms that it is in the right place.

6. Erin's Drybox Special

Another one in the drybox. Erin, a girl in the next lab over, was working with some kind of sulfur and amine containing compounds. Both of these are stinky enough in their own right, but together they were reminiscent of bathing in stinky gym socks next to a burning pile of tires and rotten fish. She was exiled to our drybox because the smell was unbearable, even though she was working in the hood. She did one experiment in there almost a year ago, and everything we remove from it smells like it's been rolling in her broth of death.

And for those that are interested, Security at the airport didn't bother me at all. Not one word about my fireworks book, lab equipment, or deodorant. My chap-stick grenade was well below the 3 ounce margin of safety, and I guess blood's only a hazard when it's a liquid - frozen blood is A-OK.

TSA, A-OK

2007-08-16T18:38:00.000-04:00

Another short trip, another pass through airport security. I'm quite curious to discover what the screeners will find most objectionable - my deodorant, which contains 2.25 ounces of gel but is in a larger container, the books and scientific papers with (possibly subversive) science content, the bizarre-shaped piece of lab equipment (that was headed for the trash) I'm toting along as a gift, or the fact that once again I've been working with azides.

If I were ranking these on the actual threat they could pose, it'd look like this:

1. Azide residues on my pants (explosive residues, no doubt.)
2. Lab equipment (it's heavy! I could bludgeon someone!)
3. Odd papers/Books (protection by the 1st amendment emboldens terrorists, or haven't you heard?)
4. Deodorant (It's a gel! Noooooooo!)

If I were to rank them on what I expect to get "secondarily screened" for:

1. Deodorant
2. Lab equipment
3. Papers
4. Azide residues

Secondary screening is a virtual certainty, as I'm flying on a free ticket. Care to place any bets on which item(s) will get me in trouble?

Curious...

2007-08-14T21:38:00.000-04:00

I've seen some strange things dumpster diving. It's pretty much a sure thing - eventually you'll run across stuff that you didn't even know you could own, much less need to throw away. I've seen dumpsters containing lightbulbs as big as your head, gigantic motors of unknown origin, spiral staircases, and a metric ton of hostess products.

Today, however, I saw the strangest thing I have ever seen set out for the trash man.

Click for a bigger version.

That's right. Boxes that once contained frozen human blood. A LOT of frozen human blood. Eighty pounds of human blood per box. Eight boxes means 640 pounds, which is about equal to the amount of blood that you could extract from a DC-6 commuter flight between DC and Chicago. That's a lot of blood.

There are a lot of unanswered questions here. Why would someone throw out eight blood boxes? Where did the blood go? Who was the blood for? Why were these boxes thrown out behind a law firm? (Lawyers = vampires? It's been suggested before...)

I must confess, upon seeing these boxes, I coveted one. When else will I have a chance to own a waterproof, insulated, reinforced box with built in handles and such awesome labeling? Probably never. But there was also a sensible voice, wanting to know how much blood you'd need to spill in one of these boxes to merit trashing it.

Damn you, sensible side.

Sweets for the Sweet

2007-08-08T23:59:00.000-04:00

I love candy.

Then again, who doesn't? The experience of a sweet treat melting in the mouth is among one of nature's finest pleasures. It doesn't matter if it's a minty hard candy, a jellybean which reproduces the flavor of another food with eerie accuracy, or anything that's been designated fit to wear a glorious coat of chocolate. It's all good.

Chocolate. Chocolate is perhaps the most enticing food in the great domain of candy. It can be tooth-achingly sweet enough to do battle with sugar-coated sugar cubes, but it can also be bitter, rich, and complex enough to complement the most gourmet of foods, and not just as a dessert. It can be found covering an almost bizarre selection of other foods, from salty snacks like pretzels and chips, to other candies like caramel and gummi bears. Though I have not personally seen chocolate-covered jellybeans, like fried coke, I'm sure it has been done somewhere.

The god Quetzalcoatl was aid to have brought a cocoa tree, the Ambrosia of Mexico and central America, that he had stolen from heaven. The Mayan people revered the cocoa pod; few things were more important in their culture. Montezuma, ruler of the Aztecs, was supposed to have drank 50 cups of Aztec cocoa a day, served to him in golden vessels. Columbus was the first European to encounter cocoa, but Cortez was the one that made it popular.

Besides being delicious, chocolate is a veritable treasure trove of interesting chemicals. It seems like every year, chocolate provides some team of researchers (who, by the way, have got to have one of the best jobs in science) with another potentially healthy compound. The typical chocolate bar contains, amongst other things:

- The neurotransmitter serotonin, thought to be responsible for well-being.
- Theobromine, caffeine's friendlier cousin. Theobromine is a more powerful cough-suppressant than codeine, and is the ingredient in chocolate that is dangerous to dogs.
- Salsolinol, a dopamine-like natural alkaloid that seems to mimic the effect of MAOI-type antidepressant drugs.

I wish I could get a job where I studied chocolate. My lab smells like death.

Another unique facet of chocolate is the fact that it needs to be tempered, much like glass and metal alloys. The fats in cocoa butter can solidify in six different crystalline forms (known more technically as polymorphs), numbered I through VI. These polymorphs are separated by melting point, with I melting at 63° F, and VI melting around 95° F. The higher melting polymorphs are desirable for a number of reasons, not the least of which being you'd like your Godiva to be a solid at room temperature. Form V is the most desirable, as its melting temperature (92.8° F) is right below (as Listerine might say) the temperature of the inside of your mouth. Solid at room temperature, liquid in your mouth. Can't get much better than that. V and VI are also resistant to blooming, an unsightly and non-tasty chocolate affliction. Blooming refers to when the cocoa butter fats separate from the chocolate and rise to the surface, leaving the candy looking speckled or streaked. Gross-looking, and the taste is altered as well.

Boy, all this chocolate talk had made me hungry. I'll leave you with the recipe for one of my favorite chocolate desserts, Pots De Cream.

Pots De Cream

This chocolaty dessert is somewhere between a mousse and a pudding. It's everything a dessert should be - rich, unhealthy, and delicious.

You'll need:

Six ounces semisweet chocolate chips (about a cup)
Two tablespoons sugar
One egg
One teaspoon vanilla
Three quarters of a cup of milk
And just an itsy bitsy pinch of salt.

You'll also need a blender.

Put the chocolate, sugar, salt, egg, and vanilla into the blender, and give them a little chopping at low speed. Heat milk until it starts boiling, and then pour it over the chocolate mix in the blender. Cover, blend on high for a minute (it should be a homogeneous liquid), then pour into small dishes (or wineglasses, for a touch of the elegant) and chill at least three hours.

If you serve these without whipped cream, Quetzalcoatl will devour your life essence.

Think Different

2007-08-07T20:52:00.000-04:00

Honestly, Apple. I can live with the megalomania of your chairman, the smug sense of superiority that oozes from your fanboys like slime from a hagfish, and your continued attempts to keep your users from altering the immaculate beauty of your perfect designs.

I could even be paid enough to overlook the one-button mouse.

There are two things, though, that I can never overlook in the epic battle between the evil giants of Microsoft and the evil midgets of Apple, though. The first one is the hockey puck mouse. You could have at least covered it with poisonous spines, then I wouldn't have been stupid enough to think it was usable.

The second? Well, take a look for yourself.

For Pete's sake. Glass? An element? I learned the difference between elements and compounds in fourth grade. Also, they could have at least altered the molecular weight of the "element" glass to reflect the formula. As it is, the only thing that's right about the right half of the image is that 14 does indeed follow 13. And I'm supposed to drop $1200 on a precision piece of equipment made by some folks that think a) glass is just SiO₂, b) glass is an element, and c) that I wouldn't notice?

Come on, guys.