Science Gets You More Sex - Again

It looked like a close one for the credibility of science this past week. First, we had the International Astronomical Union acting like a bunch of retarded cats and adding 3 new planets but then demoting poor Pluto. This made scientists sad but we persevered by heading to the local pharmacy, because Cheez-Doodles are on sale there. While there, a group of girls approached. "You look like a scientist," one said, "Explain string theory to us. That gets us hot." Now, the last thing I wanted to do was crush these girls' hopes of getting their own scientist by explaining that my chick looks like one of them, except she's an engineer and would pull their hair and make them cry for even suggesting such a thing, so instead I softened the hurt by saying, "Sorry girls, the pharmacy is all out of Magnum XL condoms, so I can't have sex with you." Imagine my surprise when these girls revealed to me that the FDA has approved the 'morning after' pill so they could have sex with scientists any time they wanted in a consequence-free environment. Scientists, like all men, want to know the easiest, bestest way to get sex.* My advice to fellow scientists used to be, "Go to planned parenthood." This got me some confused looks so I would explain; "Well, you know those chicks are having sex, right?" Now I can just tell them to head for the local pharmacy - because science is nothing if not helpful in telling people they have to go from point A to point C. The problem has always been the steps between A and C, point B - talking to women. If only mathematicians could solve the 'cocktail party' problem - conversation - we would really be getting somewhere. Wait, they did. Oh, no they didn't. They made progress in how to duplicate the ear's ability to separate sounds in a cacophony of noises instead. Well, that is nice too, though we hoped it meant how to see a hot supermodel at a party and have a good opening line that doesn't involve cocaine. One for three on science achievements isn't bad, I suppose. *Other scientists, I mean. Clearly I just need to buy Lady Scientist some flowers and a sambuca and she turns into a hellcat.

How Mathematicians Started World War 3

Russians, Americans and Chi-Coms all squared off against each other. Organized deception, intrigue, insults, reclusive personalities ... another day in international politics? Not this time. It's mathematicians. You think scientists are strange? Try to figure out mathematicians some time. It starts with a bit of mathematical fluff called the Poincaré conjecture, encompasses certifiable silliness in the name of string theory and ends with a million dollars. You just don't get more intrigue than that. Forget for a moment the big picture issue here, namely that string theory has become popular among people trying to get gullible civilians excited about science and a hundred years from now it will only be remembered by nostalgic history students who will regard it with the same quaint fondness that medical students have for skull drilling and leeches. Mathematicians think this issue is important and mathematicians, like shrill harpies bleating about global warming or evangelists wearing signs telling you the end of the world is next week, only feel important if they are impacting the game. And getting grants. To be fair, while there are some bad things about mathematicians there are good things about math. What do we like about math? Well, math begins with a hypothesis and uses logic to arrive at a conclusion. If the logic is good the hypothesis gets promoted to theorem. If a theorem is to become a proof, it goes under anonymous review and if it's published, it's passed the test. A proof of a theorem is definitive so, unlike law or science, there isn't a lot of qualification and revision. When it is finished, it is finished. It all sounds very elegant and it is, because life is easy for mathematicians. Math results from people having to do other things and not having a current way to do them. Take Newton, for example. He didn't want to invent calculus, he wanted to know why apples fell on his head and mathematicians of his day couldn't help so Newton created the math to do it. Math guys never have to worry about falling apples. This lack of consequence is why mathematicians have pretty much claimed every other year for the past hundred plus years that they have solved the Poincaré conjecture. In the real world, if scientists are wrong, rockets blow up. In math theory, if you are wrong ... you have bad topology. Oooooooooh, bad topology. How does this all relate to string theory? Well, without topology and manifolds you can't have string theory, so you can see how the science needed a win in order to maintain its bullshit quota. So first, what is the Poincaré conjecture? Physicists like to believe we can condense most anything to a form a 12-year old can understand but math doesn't always work that way. So the closest I can get is to tell you that if you take a connected three-dimensional space and it's enough like a sphere that each loop in the space can be tightened to a point, then it really is just like a three-dimensional sphere. Sounds like bullshit, right? Well, yeah, but the math guys have a point on this one. Without the kind of 'rubber-sheet' geometry topology brings, there are a lot of simulations physicists couldn't do. Anyway, back to the drama. When a reclusive Russian math whiz put up a paper on the internet that seemed to solve Poincaré, all hell broke loose. For one thing, he violated the normal process and just went ahead and published it without that whole anonymous review process. Plus, the Poincaré had become such a famous problem with so much money being thrown at it that it would be better for mathematicians if it were never completed. And if it would be completed, it would be completed by the right person. The right guy, to some in China and certainly to himself, was Shing-Tung Yau. Yau had been working on this for years, mostly with his good friend Richard Hamilton, with no results to-date. Having been handed a lot of money to analyze the newly-published papers of the Russian, he got two fellow Chinese to begin work. In April of this year they submitted their finished paper but instead of affirming the work of the Russian they stated that they had to re-do it all - which meant it was now their work not his. They were gracious enough to credit the Russian with having “brought in fresh new ideas to figure out important steps to overcome the main obstacles that remained in the program of ( Richard)Hamilton.” Shady? Yeah, a little. The Russian was disgruntled enough to turn down a major award for his thinking - I don't know the guy but I am betting he is pissed that the award is the kind of concession prize someone dangled to make him feel better when he loses credit for the proof - but he's not so disgruntled he will turn down the one from the Clay Institute that pays a million dollars for solving the unsolvable problem. Especially if it turns out the Chinese team will get it instead. Is Yau a crook? Like proofs, claims about who solved Poincaré should be treated with skepticism until mathematicians have had a chance to review the circumstances thoroughly. Until then you can believe Yau but, as he once said, without proof, "it’s not math—it’s religion." Since I know this is all complicated and a little silly, I have created this handy graphic so you can follow along. You're welcome. Paranoid conspiratorial tone and condescension lifted, in part, from this article in The New Yorker.

Can't Get A Date? Science Has The Answer

Want to know the best result of a vigorous debate about evolution? It's now okay to talk about how people are different without getting into all of that touchy-feely "you're special too" hoopie. Let's take mathematicians, for example. They have always been toilet monkeys for scientists but in public we had to be nice to them and nod our heads at what they said even though we could do everything they could do ( scribble gibberish on a chalkboard )and we did it with a lot more style. It's not us being mean to say it now, it's just data. Fellow scientists who aren't concerned about being politically correct are finally laying it out there about differences between men and women too. I don't know about you but this scientist did much of his young schooling in the 1970s when the popular theory was that there were no differences between men and women and if you raised them the same, they would be the same. This was baffling at the time but, hey, if important scientists said it, it had to be true, right? That's why I believe those evolution guys today when they say that micro- and macro-evolution are the same thing and that evolution doesn't require actual evidence, like fossils. Well, it turns out common-sense people without science degrees may have been onto something after all and scientists are just now getting it. Science has discovered there are some things that women like to do because of their brain differences; flirting, gossiping and getting all up in our business, for example. No kidding. I hope "baking me pies" is somewhere farther down that list. So if women's brains are fundamentally different from men's now as compared to the 1970s when we were all the same, maybe it's because they are evolving differently. I'm going to reveal some research here for the first time which shows that not only are women evolving at different rates than men, they are actually devolving in some areas. Take this example. We'll call her "Carol." As you can see, Carol is evolving nicely in some ways, with the blue eyes and the blonde hair and the flat tummy that all women will one day have. Yet either evolution is a fickle mistress or some higher power is having a laugh at us because, as you can see by this evidence, not only are women still hairy in some spots, they are getting hairier. Clearly this is deviating from the evolutionary plan of having women smelling pretty and being mostly hairless that we all want. So what is the solution? Evolution experts aren't sure and say some changes won't matter at all but some do. Giraffes, they say, evolved long necks to reach food but having Carol shave her arms wouldn't make a bit of difference. So we can't use any chemicals except Miss Clairol to change the hair aspect but we can use lots of chemicals to modify the brain functions. Research is just beginning so we don't have many concrete solutions but Louann Brizendine offers a few ideas in her book, The Female Brain. She suggests testosterone if a woman has a low sex drive, for example. I would think shots of Jäger would be a lot cheaper but I am not a neuropsychiatrist. She also talks about chemical treatments for mood swings but as long as those pies keep on coming, I am not too concerned about moods. Anyway, this sounds like an important book and you can order it here to support science. I hope this helps in your everyday lives because understanding the crucial differences between the sexes can help you get what you want in your relationships with women, like some peace and quiet.

Showing Science Some Love

Useless Men Show the love. And that's it for science love this week. What's up with that people, are scientists not funny? Not enough hot chick pictures? Do we need to show skin ... ummm ... again?

USA Scientists Extend Universal Dominance, Make Black Holes Their Bitch

A team of scientists led by Rudy Schild at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics have kicked other countries in the crotch by wrecking the notion of black holes everywhere. Dr. Schild's team suggest in The Astronomical Journal that a quasar they observed is powered by a dense ball of plasma called a MECO (magnetospheric eternally collapsing object)and, since black holes have no magnetic field, black holes would therefore cease to perhaps exist. Governments in Europe immediately rallied to the defense of black holes. It is estimated that authors in at least 15 other countries were working on novels whose scientific premises were based on the existence of black holes and that those science-fiction novels would be in jeopardy if black holes were no longer possible. Other experts contend that if black holes are found to no longer maybe exist, those authors could make emergency revisions and fall back on string theory to satisfy their bullshit science quotas. Sure, it's fine if foreign authors lose some writing time but what impact will this research have on the US science fiction industry? If the US no longer has black holes: 1) Card Walker's family can stop taking grief about his greenlighting the movie that almost ran Disney out of business. His heirs can now say 'if the physics was bad, how could the movie be good'? 2) Smug scientist Kip Thorne will have to stop milking his design for Carl Sagan's Contact to get free beer at college rathskellars. 3) Stephen Hawking will have to make a Fifth Law: we suggest, Oops, those first four were wrong. Scientists outside the US are almost certain to fight in a way their armies cannot. Gerry Gilmore at Cambridge University's Institute for Astronomy said the theory was "almost certainly wrong" and had yet to convince most scientists. Those are fightin' words, for scientists. Still, the most scathing indictment by a a scientist ever came from Wolfgang Pauli, Nobel Prize Winner for 1945 and the guy who helped obliterate Japan in a nuclear holocaust, when he said about a colleague's paper, "This isn't right. It isn't even wrong." Less well known is his quote about Rita Hayworth that same year, "That is oh so right":

Quick Scientific Hits

Enjoying your Ipod? Why not just chain an Asian kid to your radiator and make them work for you? Scientists will find it a lot tougher to get laid because of this website. Hate the game, not the scientist. Your kid will never need to watch Thomas The Tank Engine again. Why? Because I am making a kids' series called "The Little Spaceship That Could" and it will be about Voyager 1, because it just keeps going and going and going. People keep asking me about the three new planets and how we will remember them. I am more concerned about how kids will ever take astrophysicists seriously again. Can you hear a kid asking, "What do you mean last week there were 9 planets and now there are 12? I am supposed to believe you people about vague things like the definition of a point or what a magnetic field is or how there can be Evolution without actual fossils and you can't even figure out how many planets there are?" I agree it's a huge blow for science. But back to the issue of how to remember the names of these new planets. It's easy. Just make two more sword and sorcery TV shows about lesbians: Because there's nothing young scientists like more than shows about lesbians where they can learn things too.

Teenage Scientists Have Redefined Sex In Order To Have Less Of It

We've talked about this before. Not only do I think kids today are smarter than we ever were, I pretty much can't wait for them to run the world. Nothing ... and I mean nothing ... in the corporate world compares to trying to get laid as a teenager. And not only are kids today having sex like cocaine-fueled bunnies, they are convincing researchers they're having less of it. That, my friends, is scientific brilliance. But there's confusion in the scientific ranks about all of this and I will tell you why; it's because teenagers are so smart they redefined sex to fool researchers so they can have more of it. First, the data. Item 1: a new study found that students who think about sex and listen to music about sex actually have more sex than other students. How can that be true? I thought about sex all of the time as a teenager and I can assure you that thinking about sex - and I even went so far as to post pictures of mostly-naked girls in my bedroom as a hint - actually did less to make real naked women appear. This is why scientists were secretly happy when well-meaning teachers put sex education in the curriculm. Nothing makes it easier to get laid than showing girls what they would be doing if they were 'grown-ups' - that is the kind of subtle peer pressure we could never have dreamed up. Thanks National Education Association! And yet, it has worked perfectly for teenagers who get to have buckets of pre-marital sex and blame us if it goes badly. But wait for Item 2 - another study says that students are having a lot less sex than they used to have. How can they both be true? Science will tell you how. Because kids may be book dumber than they used to be, but they are a heck of a lot street smarter. We can have studies that give opposite results due to the problem of calibration. What do I mean? The second study uses 1991 as the reference year and, as everyone knows, that was the year before the election of President Bill Clinton. Now, this site is about science, not politics, but scientists will go on record as saying they like Bill Clinton for the same reason students taking surveys about sex do; he redefined what sex means. The study says in 1991 54.1% of students were having sex but today, even with all of that music in the first study and free internet porn, only 46.8% of students are having sex. How is this possible? It must mean that sex education really works, right? Well, no, it means that the one time teenagers listened to their elders, it was when the President told them some kinds of sex weren't really sex. In the 1991 study, it was sex if it involved two people and orgasms. In the intervening 15 years it changed so that it isn't sex if you don't know the girl's name until your sixth orgasm. That means I was a virgin before I met Lady Scientist.* No wonder Paris Hilton thinks she is celibate. I know this all sounds a little confusing. Given this new paradigm you probably want to know what the current definition of 'sex' is, in case you have to take a survey. Well, it depends on what your definition of 'is' is. Conclusion: Not only do I think the future is safe in the hands of such smart kids, I am cashing in my 401K. I think my Social Security will be worth millions in their capable hands and I'd like to buy a big trampoline for the yard right now. *That's right, you took my flower. Now bake me a pie.

Attention Supermodels

A bunch of us scientists will be attending Snakes On A Plane this weekend so if you'll dress up as snakes we will dress up as planes and give you rides.

When Bad Science Hurts Good Women

Nothing drives me crazier than bad science which gets published in big forums as reliable. No, I don't mean the silliness they publish as science on ScienceBlogs.com. I mean actual science, only badly done, and this one published in a news service. This German study says redheads get the most sex, not blondes. Now, common sense tells you this isn't true because, as all scientists know, blondes rule. Heck, my awareness of this fact is so keen I have developed some sort of allergy and/or eye affliction that prevents me from even seeing brunettes.* But let's not use me as an example, let's approach this scientifically. Exhibit 1: Sarah Mason, blonde cutie and a terrific actress: Exhibit 2: Evangeline Lilly, brunette and also a terrific actress: Tell me what you think. The blonde is more attractive, right? ( editor's note: someone wrote me an email and said the picture of Evangeline Lilly appeared empty to them. I guess that 'not able to see brunettes' allergy is more common than previously thought.) So how did this study go so wrong? It's easy. The study was done in Germany, where there are lots of blonde women, but they are German women. The redheads in the study were currently living in Germany but moved there from other countries and therefore were less ugly than German women. Had they included the country of origin in the initial study the results would have been as expected. So we have reaffirmed that 'Blondes have more fun' is scientific law but also have lent support to the 'hotter women of any hair color will get more sex than German women' theory.** I am happy we were able to solve another mystery of science together. Should you have more blondes to include in the study, please don't hesitate to do some fact-finding of your own. *What affliction is it? The medical term is 'LadyScientistreadingthisovermyshoulderwithafryingpaninherhand-itus.' **Except women who dye their hair orange. The jury is still out on that one.

Moon Landing Footage "Missing", Replaced With Episode Of Futurama*

Almost any kid today can spot bad CGI a mile away. Have a kid watch Raiders Of The Lost Ark, for example and, when that fighter plane crashes into the tunnel, kids will start giggling because it looks so fake to them. How is this possible? Eyes are trained by experience like anything else and special effects are a lot better today. This is why NASA now has to pretend they lost the footage from the original moon landing. There are two things that all scientists know: first is that Adolf Hitler was an avatar of Vishnu and is even now communing with Hyperborean gods in an underground Antarctic base from which he will lead a fleet of UFOs to establish the Fourth Reich; and second is that the moon landings never really happened. Sure, they showed stuff on TV but NASA had an excuse for the odd visual quality even then - their equipment was not "compatible" with the TV technology of the day, they said, so the original transmissions had to be displayed on a monitor and reshot by a TV camera for broadcast. "We've got all the data. Everything on the tapes we have in one form or another," NASA spokesman Grey Hautaloma said. Uh-huh. I guess we'll just go ahead and drink your Kool-Aid then, Grey. How does one lose 700 boxes of precious film of the most important scientific achievement of the U.S. space program anyway? Hautaloma then said it is possible the tapes will be unplayable if they are found because they have deteriorated over the years -- a problem common to magnetic tape, he notes. How very convenient. Since we're dealing with how technology can make us believe almost anything these days, I submit these pictures of Heidi Klum in September's Esquire magazine: Okay, Nazi aliens are in a remote Arctic base and a group of guys with the computing horsepower of a Commodore 64 put a man on the moon? Maybe I can buy that. But asking me to believe Heidi Klum looks like this without an airbrush is too much to ask. *Which Futurama episode did they find in its place? "Roswell That Ends Well" the one where the crew is mysteriously flung back in time to 1947 and President Truman orders that Zoidberg be taken to Area 51 for study. When they tell him that Area 51 will be used for the fake moon landing, he orders that NASA be invented for that instead.

Zany Scientists Make World's Most Expensive Pair Of X-Ray Glasses

Nothing says funny like X-Ray glasses. And scientists are nothing if not funny. Take those fun-loving guys at Stanford University's Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Menlo Park, California. They know that Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois will be shut down by 2010 and that Austrians are determined to have the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operating in Geneva by 2007. That means the pressure is on if the USA is going to be allowed the privilege of paying around $9 billion for the International Linear Collider (ILC), which should begin engineering in 2010. The guys at SLAC knew they needed to be bold. To quote from the greatest movie ever made; "No bucks, no Buck Rogers." So what did they do to make a bold splash and get Americans excited about physics again? Did they hire Elisabeth Shue and have her invent cold fusion to solve all of our energy problems? No. Did they build attack ships and set them on fire off the shoulder of Orion or watch C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate? No again. Did they at least turn their particle accelerator into giant X-ray glasses and take naughty pictures of Adriana Lima through her clothes? Not quite. Instead, they turned their particle accelerator into giant X-ray glasses to see some old writing by a Monk. ( insert sounds of crickets chirping here ) Apparently this writing was significant because it was done 1000 years ago and then erased a few hundred years later. It doesn't seem to matter that, even if it was done 1000 years ago, that's still 1300 years after Archimedes lived. So I'm thinking he didn't add a lot of creative mathematics in those 1300 years he was dead. But those SLAC guys wanted to be certain they weren't missing anything important in the works of Archimedes. I will help them with all they need to know: a floating body displaces its weight and a submerged body displaces its volume. Me, I think they should have turned the ol' glasses on Adriana. I bet she would get a "Eureka!" out of most scientists.

Scientists Reverse Evolution, Reconstruct Ancient Gene

Oh, they didn't mean Gene Simmons. Instead they mean they have reconstructed a 530-million-year-old DNA strand by piecing together key portions of two modern genes descended from it. Well, maybe reconstructing Gene Simmons is next. I have been hoping to return to those days when Kabuki masks, shaved legs, and platform heels were COOL on men.

From Wondermark

Wondermark

Important Dating News For Our Young Male Scientists WorldNetDaily is outraged at the modern culture of promiscuity that is exemplified by the number of female teachers seducing their young male science students. Yes, the cockblockers in some newspaper are trying to make it harder for you to get laid. As if getting laid in high school isn't already difficult enough they want to take teachers out of the dating pool. Now, we can't all be lucky enough to have Pamela Rogers as a teacher: Click here to see the best video any teacher outside a Van Halen video ever made. Fortunately WorldNetDaily publishes the whole list of teachers who will have sex with students in one easy-to-read compilation. So, young science students, you know where to move. Thank me later.

Parting The Red Sea - Science Explains That ( And The Rest Of The Bible Too ) James Cameron, who wanted us to suspend disbelief long enough to buy into robots from the future and aliens in our oceans, is worried people might actually have belief in something he didn't create through the magic of film; specifically that the Old Testament God ( not the 'be nice to each other' New Testament one ) was willing to whack some Egyptians when the Jews left there 3000 years ago. I don't know why that's so outrageous ... Mel Gibson was willing to whack some Jews last week and look what God did to him - yeah, that's right, Disney is now shopping his movie about Aztecs. Or Mayans. Or Incans. Whatever. To back up his theory, Cameron invents a chain of events so bizarre and unlikely ... well, if you can believe the stuff Cameron theorizes, I should be able to convince you the friggin' Easter Bunny heaped 10 plagues on that Pharoah guy. Now maybe there is truth to it and some volcanoes in Greece caused the water to part and magically un-part once the bad guys were stuck in the mud. Cameron has no insight as to why such a fortuitous coincidence happened at just the right moment and neither do I. All I can say about that is, when I was a kid and I got a birthday cake and I asked where it came from, my mother told me she made it. When I got older I discovered the cake was really made of flour and some water and an egg. This newfound knowledge of the composition of the cake did not invalidate the existence of my mother. Maybe James Cameron will go back to making movies some day but I wouldn't hold my breath. Until then, get ready to go see Crank. Because it has Jason Statham, who is a legitimately good action hero? Of course not ... is the name of this site "Science And Legitimately Good Action Heroes?" No, it is "Science And Supermodels" and that means you should go see it because it has Amy Smart in her underwear. She can't part the Red Sea but scientists definitely detect some movement when we look at her. Magically, Amy Smart just happens to be 30 this year. Her ability to make pie crusts is unknown at this time. James Cameron is worried you might believe in a diety moving some water. I am worried that we can't even define what a magnetic field is yet a guy in Holland will charge you $1.5 million for a bed that floats on one. James Cameron remains strangely silent on this issue. That, my friends, is the power of belief. So anyway, back to the title of our post ... if James Cameron didn't part the Red Sea and God didn't do it, how does science explain it? Easy. My mother did it. Thanks mom.

Britney Spears = HOT

Women Cheat Us Again - This Time By Using Evolution It's no secret what makes the world go round; it's not money or politics or governments. It's vaginas. Sure, we can pretend that men run things and women can pretend that men run things by griping about a glass ceiling or whatever, but scientists know the truth. And it's not enough that women have all the advantages in life - never having to hit on girls in bars at 2AM, having doors opened for them, getting to date scientists - no, now women have conscripted evolution to help maintain their world domination. I picked up this month's issue of ESQUIRE, partly because IEEE SPECTRUM was on my nerves ( we'll get to that later this week ) but mostly to find out who the 'Sexiest Woman Alive' is and to be baffled why 2006 fashionistas think that men want to wear pants that are too short combined with suit jackets that are too tight. And there it is: "What It Feels Like... To Have Two Vaginas." At first I was like, 'Whatever - getting multiple vaginas happens every other weekend when you're a scientist' but I still glanced at it. Turns out the article isn't about an orgy of unprotected sex with cocaine-fueled supermodels at all. The girl has two vaginas. First things first, I demanded Fernanda Tavares submit to an inspection. I don't like being the last to know: Nope, not her. Okay, let me preface things by saying the word 'vagina' itself makes me laugh - mostly because I have never heard a woman use it. I have heard women refer to their vaginas on far too many occasions but they always use some other term and one of the terms they use is either offensive ( my official position, if asked by reporters ) or sexy as hell so I like to use the word 'vagina' because, to me, it's just much funnier that way. But the girl in this article isn't kidding. Sure, we had heard of this phenomenon but I assumed it was like a Unicorn or Paris Hilton only having sex with two men in her life - stories that are only believed by kids and reporters. But she apparently does have two of them and, because she has two, she has two periods and she even lost her virginity twice - worse, she beats me to the joke about not saving at least one of them for marriage. Okay, sure it's interesting, you are thinking, but how is it worthy of science's most important blogger? Because, my male friends, two vaginas seals our doom. In a perfect world there would be three women for every man - I'd be getting me some pies baked then I can tell you - but the world isn't perfect. Without numerical superiority, men are at a disadvantage because we lack a vagina ... and thus we are always trying to get them. To wit: Trojan War? Helen of Troy had apparently the greatest vagina ever. Christianity? I can't make jokes about the Virgin Mary or I will go to Hell but most of you are probably going anyway, so you can do it yourself; Immaculate V----A. Discovery of America? Queen of Spain's vagina. Renaissance? Mona Lisa's vagina. Psychoanalysis? Freud's mom's vagina. Atomic Power? Pick a vagina and apparently Einstein had it. I could go on. So now instead of there almost being a sporting chance ... a guy wins, he gets a vagina ... women are using evolution to gain even more advantages. Because as they continue to evolve, women can then allocate a man to each vagina. What's next? Then I'll be having to bake the pies. That's it, I am writing me a letter to Congress before this gets out of hand.

James Van Allen R.I.P.

What Is The Anagram of ... Solomon Hercules Atlas Zeus Achilles Mercury? That's right.  It spells S-C-I-E-N-T-I-S-T, baby.  Sure, you are used to me being a science guru and, on occasion, a Formula One race car driver who solves mysteries on TV, but unless you are a long-time reader you are probably not aware I am also a superhero. I discovered I was a superhero this one time when a guy cut me off on the highway and I followed him off the exit and then we stopped at a red light and I bench-pressed his car and slept with his girlfriend. I knew then I wasn't like other scientists ... namely, because I could get a date. Like all great superheroes, I have a secret underground lair. It's called "The Lab." And I have a cool costume, but I can't show you that because you already know my secret identity. There are critical times when some emergency calls and I must go from being mild-mannered scientist to superhero quickly. Usually the emergency involves alcohol and strippers but sometimes it involves cats being stuck in trees and stuff. Even if it's a minor emergency like a cat I go anyway - because you just can't take the superhero out of scientists. It would be like taking the chicken wings out of Syracuse.* So how do I go from ordinary lab to secret underground lair "The Lab" when those emergencies occur?  Well, you've all seen Batman and the bat pole and the bat cave and all that stuff.  My process is remarkably similar. I just twist these breast-shaped knobs and a hidden passageway opens up and inside "The Lab" I go: Originally those were sold for shampoo but I filled mine with Gatorade and, let me tell you, they work just fine. Things like those cat-stuck-in-tree emergencies I can handle with no problem. When it happened yesterday, I simply said to the old lady, "Just wait, he'll come down when he's hungry." "How do you know?" she asked. "Well, have you ever seen a cat skeleton in a tree?" I replied. That was an easy one but cats in trees don't come along every day. Sometimes things really get difficult and when that happens a good science superhero needs a hottie science teacher/superheroine by his side. The hottest science teacher superheroine - okay, the only one - is Isis who, coincidentally, has made this site for the second time in two weeks. It's okay, because she looks like this: I can't speak for any of you but when she says "Faster zephyr winds" that way, the little Billy Batson in me goes SHAZAM all over again. *Email I got within 5 minutes of posting that sentence: I think it's Buffalo. My reply: No, it's chicken. Spicy chicken.

Making Scientific Sense Of The News This study says obesity harms more women than men while this study says hungry men like fat women. Do I need to spell that out for you? No, it isn't that hungry men like to eat fat women, it's that hungry men know fat women have food in the house. Claire Forlani, on the other hand, isn't worried about being too thin or not having a man, she lays awake at night worrying about water. She says there isn't enough of it and she can't sleep because she thinks about it too much. Says Claire, "I have this daily moment of imagining life without water and it terrifies me." I am with you, Claire. I lay awake terrified about a world without actresses saying dumb things. Then I wouldn't have anything funny to write about. Al Gore, on the other hand, thinks more water would be bad so he is against global warming that would melt any ice. Scientists that are employed outside government or schools and thus have to work for a living don't really like what Al Gore is doing with science. If Al Gore had been tribal leader 3,000 years ago and the tribe got big and we started running out of animals to hunt, Al Gore would have said we need to hunt fewer animals. Scientists would have said we should grow our own livestock and forget hunting. Then every hungry man could find the fat woman of his dreams and we wouldn't need politicians. Thus, scientists don't believe that smarmy know-it-alls flying fuel-guzzling jets all over the world to tell us we should be riding bicycles is a good thing. Not all women lie awake at night thinking about Al Gore in a fur loincloth circa 1000 BC or Claire Forlani's water issues - some think about other things. Carnie Wilson lies awake at night thinking about donuts. But they don't make her afraid, they make her horny. We already answered why hungry men like obese women and I think Carnie Wilson answers how obesity harms women more than men. If Carnie Wilson keeps thinking about those donuts, she will never date a scientist. We refuse to rank second to pastries on the horniness scale.

The Science Of Freak Magnets Know what I love most about science? We have been using magnets for years in all kinds of applications, even multi-billion dollar industries like semiconductor and microprocessing, but no one knows what a magnetic field is. If you ask a physicist (ahem - a different physicist ) you'll get answers like "a magnetic field is a region in space where a magnetic force can be detected." I would say that's a logical fallacy, namely begging the question, except every journalist in modern America has transmorgified the petitio principii fallacy into something meaning 'demanding that the question be asked.' But kicking around journalists can be a topic for tomorrow. Or, if you simply must see me kick around journalists, try here and here and here. Go ahead. I'll wait. So while we can't define what a magnetic field is, we can certainly define what it does, namely by the effect it has on its surroundings. Which is good enough because that's all we have for freak magnets too. A freak magnet, at least according to those who claim to be one, is someone with an unnatural ability to attract crazy people. You're likely to dismiss the 'freak magnet' phenomenon as a bunch of cat ladies bragging about how much attention they get - namely because they go out of their way to get the attention. We all know girls ( and, let's be honest, it's always girls* ) who go out of their way to make eye contact with men only to pretend surprise when the men talk to them. The uglier the girl, the lower she will go. I have one friend who makes eye contact with a homeless guy that smells like urine and has a fake eyeball which is really just a ping-pong ball and a pupil he drew on it with a Sharpie. I'd have believed she didn't want the attention until I found out she gave him the Sharpie. Obviously as scientists we don't want to dismiss this whole notion out of hand. There are chemical processes in play that make animals jump on some people more than others so there certainly could be a magnetic field that makes some people more attractive to total nutcases. Since we can't define what a magnetic field is it's certainly not possible to define all of the things it isn't. And what makes supermodels so drawn to scientists? It's not regular Gaussian magnetism and it's ( mostly) not freak magnetism. I guess it's just animal magnetism, baby. *Because if a man does it, it isn't out of the ordinary. It's just a guy trying to get laid.

Science Offers To Explain To Paris Hilton What Celibate Means I am not just being flippant - either she truly doesn't know what it means or she found a journalist as dumb as she is. I guess there's even money on that one. "I'm not having sex for a year. ... I'll kiss, but nothing else," says Hilton who, when not being confused about the difference between celibate and chaste also stated to the British edition of GQ magazine that she has had sex with only two men during her lifetime. Let's give her a break on that one. I know that most women who have only had sex with two men happen to have videotaped the affairs and thrown them on the internet. She went on to say she is "very shy" - which is why every picture you see of Paris Hilton involves her drunk and dancing on tables at 2AM: I would post more pictures but I figure if you really want to see someone who looks like a cartoon cricket of questionable gender, you can just rent Pinocchio.

Science Determines Scientists Are Smarter Than You The August issue of Scientific American tries to figure out why some people are better at things than other people. This, they contend, will help us teach better. I don't know why they bothered. I can answer that question in four words: I am smarter than you.* Now, that isn't a value judgment, it's just the way it is. We all went to school ( well, most of us, unless you live in a third world country, like Canada ) and we all applied ourselves in ways that we wanted to apply ourselves. Some people concentrated on getting an education, some focused on nailing chicks. Then there's scientists, who were lucky enough to be skilled in both. What this study claims they want to accomplish is to improve teaching but what they really want is to try and make equal opportunity mean equal outcomes. Science knows this is not practical because we're all unique - just like everyone else. No one can quantify why someone who claims to be a connoisseur in wine is barely more skilled than the average monkey at actually knowing one wine from another or why some truly stupid people are gazillionaires in business so they focus on what they can study; chess. We all know lots of dumb people who are great at chess so clearly expertise in that game can be taught. I am terrible at chess, mostly because it lacks originality these days - there is one, and I mean ONE - opening you can win with today. Unless you're a grandmaster up against that wine-sipping monkey you aren't going to win with Giuoco Piano in 2006, and that's just a shame. I played chess once in 2005 and that was only because it was against this opponent: For chess, that's a supermodel. It's okay, there aren't many supermodels in science either.** But if studies like this teach us how to teach people better, it means we can teach more people to be better teachers - and that means more teachers who look like this: That science-teacher she-cat Isis always made my little Captain Marvel go Shazam on brisk Saturday mornings. No wonder I grew up so smart. *Get it??? **However, should you know a science supermodel, send along a pic and contact info and we will do a special 'Supermodels Of Science' posting. You'll get a free t-shirt and she'll get an orange smoothie.

Dear BlogExplosion;

Thank you for taking the time to look at my website. After repeated spam emails from you, I finally signed up for your service* and I am thrilled that you spent 7 seconds at my website. I couldn't be more proud than to be in the same elite company as blogs like "Hiring A Nanny" or "Nanny In New York" or "Ramesh Thiruchelvam's 100 Words." However, I am confused by your email denying me entry into your esteemed circle of sites because you "are no longer accepting blogs that primarily contain advertising, or promote business opportunities." Time is relative, of course, any scientist will tell you that, so I truly believe that in those 7 seconds you looked at all 1400 posts I have written and determined there was no content, humorous or otherwise. I have no complaint about that. But I'm a little torqued up that you accuse me of promoting 'business opportunities.' Sure, I have offered to let supermodels take pictures of themselves and send them to me or show up at my house for orgies of unprotected sex, but that was all for FREE. Not business. I hope that clears the matter up and I wish you the best in your future endeavors. Best, Your Friends In Science *Disclaimer; they were for sale a few months ago and I made a bid for them but I never actually tried to use them before. That's sometimes how business works. Go figure.

Turns Out The Aryan Brotherhood Are Scientists Too When people think of scientists, they don't often picture neo-Nazis or whatever exactly the Aryan brotherhood is today. Because neo-Nazis are often bald and moody and disdainful of people they feel are inferior ... Uh oh.  Well, not all scientists are bald. Never mind that for now. We're usually not inclined to make the Aryan brotherhood honorary scientists because of that whole setting-people-on-fire thing they do but science is nothing if not objective so we have to give them credit where it's earned. What did they do to earn such lofty status? Well, they got scientifically old-school by breaking out cryptography from the time of Shakespeare.   A few things still hold up from those days; Shakespeare, Sir Francis Bacon's binary alphabet, and the world's first super-hottie, Queen Elizabeth I: Now there's a queen scientists can get behind. Anyway, these Aryan's didn't make honorary scientist status by putting on a Shakespeare play or dressing up like Cate Blanchett, they did it by using cryptography. Some of you may not know what cryptography is ... or the binary system. Science will give you the 60-second explanation. Instead of using 10 numbers before it goes to the next column, a binary system uses two. Mentally to imagine 695 you keep dividing by 10, right? You have 6 in the hundreds column, 9 in the tens column and 5 in the ones column. In binary instead of 10s you use 2. It ends up being a long number ( 001101100011100100110101 ) because using 10s chews up a lot more numerical real estate but it's quite useful if you have something that can only go On or Off ( like your computer ). So what Sir Francis Bacon invented was a binary 'alphabet' ... it consisted of 5 binary 'characters'( A and B rather than 0 and 1, but it's the same thing ) to represent each letter and the 'key' you would use to decipher the code was determined by the font he used. It was quite lovely:   So these guys used this cryptography to ... well, basically to plan the murder of other inmates, which isn't that great, but we're not too happy with what Al Gore does with science either so sometimes you just have to let things go. Invisible ink, cryptography.  Ahhhh, it takes me back to those halcyon days in the schoolyard.  I know that hot girl Mary was really writing me love notes and not just handing me blank pieces of paper.   I just haven't figured out the code yet.

The Science Endorsement: Final Fu

Don't get me wrong, the show is complete crap, even if it does have young Ernie Reyes. They don't even use AAU rules, which would be bad enough ... they have more like pussified AAU rules, which is like being the shortest guy in a family of midgets. I never liked AAU tournaments because you couldn't punch to the face. They were okay with you doing a hook kick and spinning someone's head around like a scene from The Exorcist, they just don't want you to do it with your hands. So why endorse some crap show on MTV2, of all places? Michelle Spencer, that's why. She's too young for scientists though, like most women, she will insist age doesn't matter. But she looks like this and that's all she needs to make us happy from a distance, really: Well, that and the ability to make pie crusts. Because pie crusts are a b%tch. She's majoring in nutrition at UNR so you know that means she can throw together a terrific pie. And a pretty good kick. She lives in Reno so maybe we have to waive the age thing, just this once.

Science Is Not A Business For The Squeamish Or for the sensitive. To wit, I still haven't cracked the top 50 science blogs but I think it's mostly because I don't shriek about evolution or global warming. There are blogs on that list that haven't been updated since April so how many people link to you can be misleading. Science ... real science,not academia, where people have lots of time to blog ... isn't for the squeamish. If you've been in the private sector, you know they expect results. Take this example. It's an email I had forwarded to me from one of my applications engineers; "XXXXXX, I got the inductance results on the subset of our package and your explanation of why they were different than I expected and, I have to tell you, they hit 8.2 on the bullshit Richter scale." It went downhill from there. Now, to help you calibrate, this guy was a consultant and his whole mission in life was to get a contract at the expense of the people actually employed at the customer's company. Naturally, science had to come to the rescue. The consultant was using some software that calculated partial inductance rather than loop inductance. Rookie mistake, but you can't go all elitist on him about that so I did my best to mediate and called the customer. "Well, Cash," says he, "I have different software giving me different capacitance and inductance. Some are giving me loop inductance, some are giving me partial. Just tell me; which one do I trust?" "Which one matches the measured data?" I asked. He laughed at that. Then he laughed a little more, this time nervously. "Are you serious?" "I am. Your test guys are setting up a problem and your simulation guys are setting up a problem. They may not be setting up the same problem so as long as you're hitting your 50Ohm target I guess it doesn't matter which one is the most correct. It will make the test guys happy if you match their measured data." He's a young guy heading a big project for the first time. "I am not sure that will work," he says. "Welcome to the world of science. Sometimes accuracy isn't the most important thing, perception of accuracy is the most important thing. And you want the best results - that you can get. But you need to stop trying once you reach the performance spec. "Like this example. I read over the weekend that PBS fired a girl because she was in some fake commercials 7 years ago. "On the one hand, I thought, "Yayyyy, PBS finally took a moral stand" and on the other hand, I thought, "Why couldn't they start with Bill Moyers?" So PBS now has the perception of looking out for your kids even though your kid loves the girl they fired and isn't likely to be googling her on the internet. And, since you're a healthy American male, I bet your little sproutlet enjoyed watching her jump around in her pajamas before bedtime too." "You lost me." "Well, it doesn't matter. You asked which results to go with. Use the loop inductance. Partial inductance was just invented to get quick and dirty answers. Any consultant should know that."