Silver Jacket

Bloggy Blog

  • I like my humour dry and my yolks runny.

    Chakras_cancerFor a few years there has been a recipe on the Internet that describes how to cook an egg using two mobile phones. Here it is. Basically, you place two phones on a table, place an egg between their antennae, and call one phone from the other. Assuming a power output of two watts, the egg should be cooked in three minutes. Oh, you’re also supposed to play a radio in the background at "a comfortable volume."

    As far as comedy goes, this piece is pretty dry. I can see people missing the joke completely. (Especially those suspicious that cell phones cause cancer or harm chakras.) Well, it has been making the rounds again, and I was surprised this week to find that a couple of my favorite bloggers who happen to write professionally about science and technology are among those who missed the joke. (I will not name names, as they have already been shamed by their readers.)

    Okay, without doing any research whatsoever, here are three easy ways to use your own common sense to debunk the hoax.

    1.) If mobile phone antennae can cook an egg, why don’t you feel the slightest heat from them on your ear after using them for even an hour? You’re better off using heat from the battery.

    2.) Microwave ovens have several HUNDRED watts, and THEY take several minutes to cook an egg. How could a phone cook one in the same time with two watts?

    3.) Have you heard of cell phone towers? Cell phones communicate with them. Cell phones do not communicate directly with each other. That’s what walkie-talkies do. (Bonus, not as obvious: Cell phones don’t send data solely in a straight line to cell towers either. Do RAZRs have homing devices that know where the towers are and aim transmission straight to them as you bumble about? No, they emit signals in all directions.)

    If you do a little Googling, you’ll find more technical reasons why the gag won’t work, but any one of the above three should be sufficient.

    So before you go fiddling with the radio stations on your hifi, wondering why your egg is still cold (would smooth jazz work better?), please recognize that not everything you read on the Internets is true. And if you’re really worried about brain tumors, forget phone phobia and stay the hell away from any radio playing Beyoncé’s new single, "Check On It". That shit is toxic.

  • When Ledes Mislead

    CuckoosnestGood science writing for a popular audience needs to be (at least) two things: entertaining and informative. Starting your article with a catchy headline and a snappy opening is always good, as long as they’re not misleading. Yesterday I encountered a prime example of snap over substance.

    It’s an article in Wired News about an emerging treatment for depression.

        The hed: "Shock Therapy, Version 2.0"

        The lede: "Shock treatment for depression is making a comeback, and it no longer resembles a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest."

    Here’s the thing: The article is NOT ABOUT SHOCK TREATMENT.

    It’s about repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS. In rTMS, a device that causes a focused magnetic field is held against the head.

    Shock treatment is electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. In ECT, an electric current is briefly applied to the head to induce a seizure. (The therapeutic aspect actually results from the seizure, which lasts 30 seconds, not the jolt of current that triggers it, which lasts half a second. Originally, from 1933-1938, the seizures were induced by injecting chemicals.)

    The article says rTMS and shock treatment are "based on the same therapeutic principle." But they are very different. rTMS: magnets. Shock treatment: seizures. rTMS is not the "comeback" of shock treatment. It is a replacement for shock treatment.

    ShocktherapyI might also note that shock treatment has already had a comeback–the comeback began in the 1970’s, and ECT is still in wide use. To boot, it has not resembled the scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest since the early 1950’s. Patients are now given an IV carrying an anesthetic and a muscle relaxant, so they’re not awake, and their bodies don’t shake.

    Now, why would rTMS replace ECT? Both are safe and effective. In the short term they’re even better than Prozac. But ECT has this nasty side effect of memory loss and confusion.

    My mom had several sessions of rTMS in 1999 (with Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone, the leading American researcher in the field), and I could sit in the room and talk with her during her appointments.  Shock treatment, on the other hand, fucks you up. Between 1997 and 1999 my mom had 28 ECT sessions. In 1997, she had six sessions after doing her Christmas shopping for the year. Christmas morning, we would open gifts from her and she would say, with genuine surprise, "What a great gift! Who gave you that?" We could only grin and say, "You did, Mom. Thanks."

    Actually, it was quite funny.

  • Driven to Distraction

    CarphoneI was reading the DMV’s California Driver Handbook yesterday and found a chunk devoted specifically to the use of cell phones while driving. It is vaguely titled "Dealing With Technology." (And oddly categorized under "Avoid Highway Gridlock.") The handbook notes, "Use your cellular telephone in the following safe and responsible ways:", followed by several bullet points. Such as:

    "• Don’t engage in distracting conversations."

    Okay, that’s common sense. But does it rule out phone sex?

    "• Take advantage of your cellular telephone’s features."

    Awesome. My phone has Bowling AND Sky Diver. I never have time to play those at work.

    "• Be sensible about dialing."

    You hear that, kids? NO DRUNK DIALING while driving! It could lead to distracting conversations.

  • Chuck Norris Breaks Rules, Craniums

    Chuck_norrisChucknorrisfacts.com is a list of hyberbolic factoids enumerating how Chuck Norris can manifest paradoxes and intimidate God, often with the use of his trusty roundhouse kick.

    A couple nights ago my friend Liz and I got wacky on IM and started trading new ones back and forth. I've salvaged a few of mine, fixed the typos, and decided to add them to the canon. Read on for the semi-humorous sleep-deprivation-supplied souvenirs.

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  • Frozen Dinner

    HufuLast night PBS broadcast an episode of NOVA titled "Deadly Ascent." The NOVA crew climbed Denali (Mt. McKinley) in Alaska with a team of researchers and mountaineers to figure out why our bodies break down at high altitudes and low temperatures.

    The team carried lots of extra food in their packs, because a storm could pin them down for days. To make matters more volatile, the team included one Dr. Howard Donner. I could see it in their eyes: no one wanted to run out of munchies in the wilderness with a Donner.

    Of course, their fears may have been unfounded. Last week a pair of archeologists revealed that they could find no evidence of cannibalism among the Donner Party. Using electron microscopes and DNA tests, they analyzed thousands of bone fragments at the Alder Creek campsite where the Donners spend 4 winter months in 1846-1847, but, alas, none of the bones belonged to people. The undramatic findings do not bode well for the archeologists’ negotiations with CBS regarding the upcoming series CSI:Alder Creek.

    Even without people eating people, the NOVA episode contains some level of adventure. But my favorite Denali account remains Art Davidson’s autobiographical tale of the peak’s first winter ascent. Even the book’s title gives me the chills: Minus 148 Degrees. (That’s with windchill, but still…)

    [I feel somewhat odd categorizing a post about the Donner Party under "Travel" and "Food and Drink," but what’s done is done.]

  • Voyage to Uranus (For Adults Only)

    RidingrocketsEver wanted the inside scoop on the NASA shuttle program? This month, astronaut Mike Mullane, who’s gone spaceborne three times, reveals some of the dirty details in his new book, Riding Rockets. Reuters published an interview with him today.

    On the business side of things, he claims the shuttle is "the most dangerous manned spacecraft ever flown, by anybody." (Obviously he hasn’t experienced Captain Whizbang’s Olde Time TNT Caboose to the Stars.) On the whimsical side of things, he provides TMI regarding the depth of his preparation for astronaut selection. "I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses." Hallelujah.

    Today, that level of preening might designate Mullane a metrosexual. But in close quarters, internal hygiene is not so trivial. In an account by astronaut Harrison Schmitt of his 1973 trip to the Moon, Schmitt describes a stinky side effect of lunar life support:

    All of us had to live with hydrogen gas in the water used to reconstitute various foods (basically the same as today’s trail foods)… Although the convenience of having a continuous supply of fresh water should be obvious, hydrogen going into our guts with the food had to come out, much to the discomfort of crew mates.

    (Overall, accommodations suited Schmitt better than some of the camps on his geological field trips in Norway and Alaska. "Certainly you had no black flies or mosquitoes to bother you on the Moon," he told me recently.)

    On Mullane’s website, we find the following bold announcement: "Riding Rockets is written for adult readers. It is inappropriate for children." For a more tame tale, check out Sally Ride’s To Space & Back, written for young readers. (Full disc: I work for her.) But, as it turns out, kids are interested in poop too. (Who knew?) Sally’s book has a full-page photo of a shuttle shitter. And when she speaks to kids, the most popular question is, "How do you go to the bathroom in space?" Very carefully.

  • Double Trouble

    2006_01_12t122656_323x450_us_nuclear_ira_2

    Macarena3_1
    BREAKING: Los del Río, the Spanish music duo responsible for the tragic Macarena outbreak of 1995, is revealed to be German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

    Link: Reuters Photo

  • Astroturf

    Kelly_dressHow great is this:

    •Article title: "Our Vaginas, Ourselves" (NYT Mag, January 1)
    •Choice line: "The future as I see it is also – how to put this? – reforested."
    •Author’s name: Daphne Merkin

    That photo, by the way, is of my friend Kelly, taken right before our outing to the Days of Our Lives party. (She’s the one on the right.)

  • Robots Are People Too

    ImethimatAnother thought on Natalie Angier’s exegesis of cuteness. (Recall: "The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby…")

    The anthropomorphism of robots is especially revealing of our instincts and cognition. Eight years ago I went to a talk titled  "Emergent, Situated, and Embodied: alternative AI and the aesthetics of behavior." (I got a woody from the title alone. I know, I’m dork.) Here’s what I wrote about it afterward:

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  • Have you hugged a colon today?

    HealthycolonNatalie Angier had a great article in the Times yesterday about cuteness. But pay close attention to the following sentence. Don’t worry, the first read-through is just a dry run.

    The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

    First, I’m all, "My detector isn’t set THAT low."

    And then, I’m all, "Oh, I get it."

    Remember, people, unambiguous punctuation is your friend. (By detailing panda feeding habits later in the article, Angier also comes dangerously close to reënacting the "eats, shoots, and leaves" offense that sparked a book of that name.)

    But wait, you know what? Colons, the squishy kind, CAN be cute. The deuce says one thing, but the Dooce says another.