Entries Tagged 'science' ↓

In a recent article, Faux Fox News disclosed that political activists planning to protest at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Denver will have to contend with the Crap Cannon, a sonic weapon that generates an infrasound frequency causing victims to involuntarily defecate! Supposedly, this weapon generates a brown note, a low frequency sound that causes people to lose control of their bowels due to resonance.

According to Faux Fox News, some activists are scared shitless concerned that the Denver police department is armed with such a diabolical device.

We know this weapon and weapons like it have been used at other large protests before. –Mark Cohen, co-founder of the activist group Re-create 68

There’s just one small fly in their, er, ointment; the existence of the brown note has never been scientifically proven. In fact, this urban myth has even been recently busted on the popular Discovery Channel show Mythbusters.

Still, the concept of such a weapon has seeped into popular culture and has been featured in an episode of Southpark as a sound played in a world wide recorder concert that caused the entire population of Earth to suddenly defecate. In the popular comic strip Transmetropolitan, the main character, Spider Jerusalem, totes a pistol-shaped “Bowel Disruptor” used to defeat and otherwise humiliate his enemies.

It’s almost as if we want the brown note myth to be true.

But what has me rumbling is that Faux Fox News published this story at all. Given their right-wing conservativism and well-known pandering to the lowest common societal denominator, I suppose it’s no wonder they’re gushing over the opportunity to spin a story so that the evil Democrats will be using a defecation weapon on brave protesters. I think their editors are combining their metaphors, throwing something at a fan to see what sticks on the wall.

And it smells like doody.

Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food. — Austin O’Malley

I have an erratic memory. On second thought, erratic is the wrong word; I have a very selective memory. My problem is that I don’t get to select what I remember.

If I’m asked to pick up three things from the store on the way home, I’m lucky to remember to stop at the store. If I do stop, I won’t be able to recall at least one of the items. If I borrow an item, I’ll place it next to the door so that I’ll remember to return it; it will still be there a month later. I don’t recall what I had for lunch yesterday, nor the name of the movie I saw last week. If you introduce yourself to me, it’s guaranteed that I’ll forget your name within 30 seconds.

On the other hand, I will remember your face forever. I retain almost every joke I ever hear. My recall of useless trivia is near legendary. Van Gogh cut off his left ear (he was right-handed). Neville Chamberlain was the British prime minister whose policy of appeasing Hitler was supposed to ensure "peace in our time". There are 63 known moons orbiting Jupiter.

I can tell you immediately that the first 12 digits of pi are 3.14159265359. The first 12 digits of the natural log e? Why, it’s 2.71828182845. Avogadro’s number is 6.0221415 x 10²³. And, of course, the speed of light is 186,282.397 miles/second. Doesn’t everyone know these constants off the top of their head?

I recently watched an episode of "The Human Mind" on the Science Channel in which the 2003 World Memory Champion (yes, there apparently is such a contest) was featured.

Of course, I can’t recall his name.

The man was given 10 shuffled decks of cards which he memorized in order. He was then asked to name the 103^rd card…the 17^th card… the 484^th card, etc. He correctly named the card every time! In fact, he then named all 520 cards in sequence!

How did he do it? He used what was termed a "location" technique. He lives in London and before demonstrations, he takes a ritualized walk through the city — always the same path, visiting the same sites. As he examined the decks of cards, he married the sequence of cards into his memorized walk. In addition, he uses imagery for each card; the two of clubs becomes a teddy bear, a 10 of diamonds becomes a saw. So, if those were the first two cards and he began his walk at Big Ben, he would visualize a teddy bear with a saw at Big Ben.

I was discussing this technique with my business partner and he mentioned that in the Hannibal Lecter series of books, Lecter describes his "memory mansion" which he decorates with treasured memories — another location technique.

In the same episode, an Oxford University study was profiled in which grade school children were given a daily pill for several months. Most of the students experienced a marked increase in their academic abilities, concentration, imagination, and memory. What was the magic pill? An Omega-3 supplement.

So, if you meet me in the near future and feel that I’m eyeing you in an odd manner, it’s probably because I’m picturing you as an octopus at Starbucks. And that smell? It’s because I’ve overdosed on Omega-3 laden fish oil.

If you’re trying to remember a happy memory, don’t think back to a time when you were ALSO thinking of a happy memory, because man, how long does this go on?!  –Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

File this entry under "what I learned today".

From the show Understanding on the Science Channel:

If you were to represent the entire electromagnetic spectrum (from radio waves to gamma rays) as a 2500 mile long roll of movie film, the section of visible light would be one frame of film. Amazingly, most of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by stars falls within that one frame.

I’m reading a sci-fi novel titled The Quiet Pools by Michael P. Kube-McDowell. The story started a bit slow, but now has my complete attention; it’s an extremely well-written story with multiple threads of conflict. And the story touches on many themes ranging from marital and parental relationships, to the psychology of mob violence, to humans as Von Neuman universal constructors.

The plot revolves around Project Diaspora, the building and staffing of a colonizing starship sent to seed the universe with mankind. Much of the conflict occurs between the two camps of humanity that support or oppose the project. However, the twist that has really grabbed my imagination is the selection process for the 10,000 colonists. The colonists are subjected to DNA testing and are secretly screened for the "Chi sequence", a genetic sequence of three genes A-B-C where A controls Ambition, B controls Breeding instinct, and C controls the Call. The three genes create 8 combinations that determine the type of person.

Of course, a reader’s immediate thought is to stock the ship with people who have all the genes, the so-called Chi-positives. But no, the author argues that would be impossible, that Chi-positives are difficult. They are the glue, and have you ever tried to build something from glue alone? A large part of the project is dedicated to determining an optimal genetic mix on the ship; the only group completely excluded are the Chi-negatives — the empty people. The population mix is described as:

[the ship] needs a core of stable, loyal, dedicated people who know their plac in the plan. It needs a leavening of creative types to keep the vision alive and deal with the unexpected. And it needs wise, unselfish leadership.

From the table above, this equates to a mix of BCs, ACs and Chi-positives. But when the ship arrives at a world suitable for colonization, it will need kings and adventurers and nestmakers to build empires, explore, and make homes. Since these people will not be needed during the trip, they will be carried in gamete banks — egg and sperm banks, to be "created" as needed.

As you can undoubtedly see, this is a cool and disturbing concept, fraught with promise and peril. What a great fulcrum for conflict.

I haven’t finished this book and I already highly recommend it. I’ve already given away one of the big ideas/twists of the book, so I’ll wind up this post before giving away any more.

I recently viewed an exhibit about the Hubble Space Telescope at the S.C. State Museum. I’ve always been fascinated with astronomy, physics, and science in general. To be honest, though, I found the exhibit shallow and disappointing; however, the exhibit did impress upon me, once again, the sheer enormity of space.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah", you’re thinking, "we all know space is big. DUH!" And you’re right. Everyone does know the distances are huge, but I don’t think they really comprehend the size. For instance, Alpha Centauri is the nearest neighboring star to our Sun at only 4.3 light years away. Only 4.3 light years equates to 25,265,838,509,316.77 miles! That’s 25 trillion miles! Then again, somehow the concept of a trillion doesn’t convey the magnitude (pun intended) of the number. Imagine a stack of paper 25 trillion sheets high. Any idea how tall that stack would be? A sheet of standard copier paper is 0.0038" thick so a stack of 25 trillion sheets would be 1,499,368 miles high — or a little over 6 times the distance to the moon!

As I said, it’s 25 trillion miles (4.3 light years) to the nearest star other than the Sun, but this is a mere speck compared to the size of our galaxy. The Milky Way is 100,000 light years in diameter, over 23,000 times the distance from the Sun to Alpha Centauri — 587,577,639,751,552,790 miles. Now that corresponding stack of paper is 34,485,464,000 (34 billion) miles high, roughly 7.5 times the radius of our solar system!

The farthest astronomical object yet discovered is a galaxy estimated to be 13 billion light years distant. That distance is 130,000 times greater than the diameter of the Milky Way. Now the corresponding stack of paper is 4,483,110,320,000,000 miles high — over 177 times the distance to Alpha Centauri!

It’s not just distances that are mind-boggling. It’s estimated that the Milky Way contains 200 billion stars. And the Milky Way is just one of an estimated 125 billion galaxies! In all, the estimated number of stars in the known universe is 10²¹ — that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Interestingly, depending on whose estimate you use, that’s roughly equivalent to the number of grains of sand on Earth.

…as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore… –Genesis 22:17

The Argentine ant is one of the most invasive species in the world. Normally a very aggressive insect, this ant has formed supercolonies in various parts of the world. A supercolony is a group of nests where individuals from different nests do not view each other as invaders and instead actually tolerate and aid each other.

The definition of a supercolony as a “group of nests” is an unbelievable understatement. The largest of these supercolonies is in Southern Europe and stretches for over 6,000 kilometers! Another 600-mile long supercolony exists in California. And yet another 100km supercolony has been discovered under Melbourne Australia.

And the Argentine ant is not the only ant that forms supercolonies. Apparently the yellow crazy ant (yes, that’s the real name) has invaded the Christmas Islands and is forming supercolonies that are decimating the famous native migrating red crabs.

Scientists “discover” these supercolonies by collecting ants from different areas and pitting the ants against each other in a miniature version of a gladiatorial arena. If the ants tolerate each other, they’re exhibiting the same behavior as ants from the same colony; therefore, scientists classify the ants as belonging to a supercolony.

At first, scientists speculated that supercolonies were largely due to a lack of genetic diversity; ants invade a new area with no predators and lots of food and spread like crazy, so all of the ants would share a common colony lineage. At least, that’s the idea.

As it turns out though, the ants do vary genetically. Scientists now speculate that when the ants invaded and found no competition, they lost the diversity in the genes that are involved in recognition and thus don’t recognize each other as different.

As someone who lives in the South, I pray fire ants don’t learn this trick.

I’m an avid watcher of the History Channel. On a recent show about the Manhattan Project, the claim was made that the world’s death rate from war dropped dramatically with the creation of nuclear weapons. Before then, the rate had been on a continuous (and even exponential in the 20th century) rise throughout history. But that with the advent of nuclear weapons the war death rate dropped dramatically and has stayed at a (relatively) low level ever since. The unstated conclusion being that the threat of nuclear weapons has imposed some type of restraint on humankind’s propensity for war making.

How interesting! As someone who grew up during the nuclear age with the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction preventing the US and Russia from engaging in major military conflict, I had never thought of the Bomb as a lifesaving device. Nuclear arsenals as a boon to mankind. What a concept! Our doom as our salvation.

Legend has it that J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project, guessed this effect and named the first atomic test Trinity after being moved by the poetry of John Donne.

If you’re interested, a quick trip to Google revealed this paper by Alex Roland, a professor at Duke University, in which he discusses the relationship between technology and war. His paper provides some of the statistics supporting the death rate argument.

I entered the world on this date 45 years ago, and so I’ve been thinking a good bit about the nature of time lately. Time is an absolute tyrant in my life and it’s my most limited resource. I can always make more money, but I can’t make more time. That’s why your time is the most important gift you can ever give and why needlessly consuming someone’s time is the greatest theft. I jealously guard my time because as my life has matured, my responsibilities and time commitments have naturally grown correspondingly. So, I’m busier than ever yet I have less and less time. The faster I go, the faster time passes.

Albert Einstein thought a lot about time and stunned the world with his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. The first postulate of his theory states that the speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of their motion relative to the source of the light. The second postulate is that all observers moving at constant speed (not under acceleration) should observe the same physical laws. Apparently, Einstein was also a great inspiration to rock-and-roller Gene Simmons.

Imagine a spaceship traveling at half the speed of light. If the spaceship turns on its headlights, an observer on the spaceship will measure the speed of that light at 186,000 miles/second. Paradoxically, an observer on Earth will also measure the speed of the spaceship’s light at 186,000 miles/second. Since velocity is expressed as distance divided by time (v=d/t), it stands to reason that if the velocity of light is the same for both observers then time and/or distance must vary. This is indeed the case; experiments have proven that both time and distance vary with speed. In fact, the faster you go, the slower time passes.

Ironic, isn’t it?