Al Jarnow

Considering this was originally presented on a kid's show, 3-2-1-CONTACT, can't you see this video giving some poor tyke nightmares?

Mystery Meat, Human Style

I was catching a bus the other day, and this box was awaiting transport. If you enlarge the photo, you can see that the label says: PLEASE RUSH/DONATED HUMAN TISSUE/NOT SUITABLE FOR TRANSPLANT.

What does one do with human tissue, if not transplant it? Perhaps create a cell-culture line? It's all very mysterious.

As I was taking the photo, a bus driver came by and joked with another employee. "What's that for--the barbecue?"

If anyone has a good explanation, please offer it in the comments!

More Solid When Disturbed

I learned something today about non-Newtonian liquids -- cornstarch and water!! Two different examples!!

Walking on liquid!!




Speaker activated liquid!!



An interesting collection of these on YouTube!!

What's the principle behind this?

Weird Science - I Sing The Body Eccentric

President Obama’s recent fall in approval rating may have an unusual cause, he may possibly be too thin. In a recent study by Elizabeth Miller of the University of Missouri, voters prefer their male politicians to be portly, while women representatives should be more wasp-waisted. In an experiment involving 120 volunteers, people were asked to assess fictitious male and female candidates from a brief bio and a picture, crucially two pictures of each candidate were used, a natural one and one manipulated to portray the person as overweight. People shown the heavier male scored him an average 10% higher for reliability, honesty, dependability and inspiration than his thinner doppelganger, but this relationship was reversed in the woman candidate. In the journal Obesity, Miller puts this down to societal expectation and stereotyping (Telegraph).

Social pressure also crops up in explaining another finding this week, this one by Meridith Young of McMaster University in Ontario, that what single women eat depends a lot on whom they are eating with. After covertly monitoring the canteen behaviour of 470 undergraduates, Young found that women significantly lowered their calorie intake when sat with men compared with all women groups. Moreover, the more men a woman sat with, the less on average she consumed. In the journal Appetite, she puts the discrepancy down to women unconsciously advertising themselves to men, adding "the salad leaves are meant to say, I'm pretty, I'm attractive, I take care of myself" (Guardian).

Of course, we all know what men really like in a woman; that she not appear too powerful. Or so says a study by Brian Meier and Sarah Dionne of Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. In the study, eighty 19 year-olds were asked to rate the attractiveness of a number of images presented in random order, some of which would be repeated. In fact the subjects saw each image twice, once near the top of the screen and once low down. The researchers found that men rated women 1.8% more attractive when observed near the bottom, and women found men 1.5% better looking when higher up. They suggest that their findings might explain why men are taller than their women partners more frequently than would be expected by chance (Times of India).

As to what women really like in men, perhaps not being British should be somewhere on the list. After champagne controversially lost out to an English wine earlier this week, French scientists have hit back at British research that concluded that the mythical “G-spot” did not exist. “Of course it exists,” say French gynaecologists, “you just can’t find it!” The original study by King’s College in London looked at over 900 pairs of identical or non-identical twins in the expectation that the identical siblings should both report having a G-spot more frequently than the others, they did not. The French however claim their cross-channel colleagues have got the wrong end of the speculum, “It is not a question of genetics but of use," said one (Telegraph).

More >>

Weird Science – Above and Below.

Tonight is the night of the Yule moon, also called the “wolf moon” (the first new full moon of the year), and coincidentally will be the largest and brightest full moon of 2010. This is because the Moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle but an ellipse, with its nearest point to Earth some 31 thousand miles closer than its furthest. And occasionally the full moon will coincide with this closest approach, which is enough for the moon to appear 14% larger and 30% brighter than at any other time this year. Incidentally, this also means the previous new moon was very nearly the smallest it could have been, which is why – along with occurring with Earth at its nearest to the Sun – the solar eclipse on January 15th was annular (Space.com).

Also watching the skies tonight may be Luchezar Filipov, Deputy Head of Space Exploration at the Bulgarian Academy of Science. However, Filipov’s interest is not the Moon, but aliens, who he believes are living among us on Earth at this very moment. Filipov and his team claim to be in telepathic contact with the aliens, who he says are friendly, but could not establish a coherent conversation because of our “lack of evolution”. This lack of coherence appears to have only been one way however, as Filipov was still able to state that the aliens were critical of our immoral behaviour, environmental destruction and use of cosmetics and artificial insemination, which they condemned as unnatural – unlike space travel one presumes. The next meeting of minds between Filipov and the aliens is scheduled for sometime in spring this year (Sofia Echo).

But perhaps the aliens are backing the wrong species, because it’s move over Iron Man and make way for Iron Snail. The scaly-foot snail is certainly well protected for its kind, with an iron rich outer layer that deters piercing, a thick organic middle that dissipates the force of an attack and a calcified inner layer that gives the shell sufficient rigidity to resist attempts to crush it. The snail’s armour is so good that it’s attracted the interest of the Department of Defense, who are seeing if any useful lessons could be learned for application in the man-made versions (MIT).

Someone else who could have benefited from some armour is “Macho B”, who was – until his death in February last year, the last known wild jaguar in South West America. Perversely, it wasn’t poachers who did for him in the end but Arizona’s own Fish and Game Department, who deny it was their intention to capture the jaguar despite setting snares around his territory. Now a federal inquiry has concluded that Macho B was trapped deliberately, and the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service is considering whether to bring charges (NY Times).

But even as the jaguar takes one step nearer joining the dinosaurs in extinction, scientists are one step closer to bringing them back, in our imaginations at least. For the first time, a team from China, the United Kingdom and Ireland have determined the colours and pattern of a dinosaur, a metre-long feathered carnivore called Sinosauropteryx. Turns out the bird-like bipeds were orange, with white striped tails and a “mohawk” display crest on their heads. Despite the feathers, Sinosauropteryx was a flightless reptile who most likely used its feathers primarily for display (CBC).

The Return of Dr. X

Do you think Humphrey Bogart proudly highlighted this film on his CV?

Do It Yourself Insemination

Ladies! Is your biological clock ticking away but there's no man in your life? Have no fear, the do it yourself insemination kit is here! But what is it and where does it come from? Well, back in 2005, Britian changed a law that affects the anonymity of sperm donors and has since seen a huge drop in the amount of sperm being donated. This has lead to women seeking fertility treatments abroad, and in a growing number of cases, buying do it yourself insemination kits from the internet. Yes, that means you can buy an unknown man's sperm online and use it to inseminate yourself in the comfort of your own home. The kit (shown) contains a sterile semen container, lubricant, a plastic speculum, disposable gloves and sterile pasteur pipettes. You can read more about the process here and order the kit. (Bonus! You can also order a vibrator for men.) Frankly, I would think you'd have to be extremely flexible to do this by yourself.

Hayley McNeff

A Man with Vision

This is definitely one of those "why hasn't someone thought of this before?" type inventions. Back in March of 1985, Josh Silver, a physics professor at Oxford University, had a conversation with a colleague about optical lenses and the sort of specialized equipment needed to adjust them. And in that moment, he had an idea that will affect the lives of billions - a pair of glasses that can be almost instantly adjusted by the person wearing them. No visits to the eye-doctor. No money spent. The concept relies on the principle that the fatter a lens is, the more powerful it becomes. (Remember the kid in fourth-grade who had glasses thick enough to be from the bottom of a coke bottle?) These glasses consist of hollow plastic lenses, inside which are two clear sacs filled with fluid. Using a small syringe, the person wearing the glasses can add or remove fluid, thus changing the power of the lens. Silver's team has already started to distribute the spectacles. You can read more about these amazing glasses, and the man behind them, here.

Turning a Sphere Inside Out

In case you wanted to know how to turn a sphere inside out without creasing it, this short video shows how to do it. It doesn't make any sense to me, but maybe someone out there can explain how the solution doesn't crease. Another bonus -- it seems to be narrated by two androids.



At least it's interesting to watch. Maybe turn off the sound so you don't have to listen to the narration?

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.