Science Has Bad News For Goth Chicks - Vampires May Not Be Real

Groundbreaking - and heartwarmingly unessential - research done by University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou has attempted to confirm what a generation of suicide girls has always feared - that vampires do not exist. His reasoning? On Jan 1, 1600, the human population was just over 530 million people. If one vampire existed on that day and bit one person per month, and then each new vampire also bit one person per month, by 1605 the entire planet would be nothing except vampires. Now, I am okay with there being no vampires, though I think the world would be poorer without that cinema classic, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. And, without vampires, I would not be able to spend 4 seconds scouring the internet and find pictures like this: So we can't just let someone claim they have wiped out a millenium of folklore by doing simple ( very simple ) math. First, let's deal with the premise behind his numbers. Professor Efthimiou's research assumes that each vampire bite results in another vampire being created. People, if there's one thing I know, it's vampires ( and Thai transvestites, but hey, that is a post for another time ) and I need only point you to the definitive work on the matter, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, to state unequivocally that vampires don't always create more vampires. They only create vampires out of people they really like, or who have waistlines like Vampira: Yes, she looks as all women should look; like a sexy, zombie skeleton. Additionally, back in 2000, in the British series Ultraviolet, it was clarified that vampires wouldn't feed themselves to extinction any more than we would keep on killing buffalo until they were almost gone. This was on TV, people. If you can't believe what you see on TV, I can't reason with you. Professor Efthimiou's simple and surprisingly jingoistic math and logic errors mean that there is still at least some statistical chance that vampires could exist. However, there is also some statistical chance I am a Chinese jet pilot. Yet, since the chance exists that vampires are roaming the earth, it can't hurt to have a vampire slayer handy. Everyone goes for Buffy. I'd rather have a little Faith.

The Science of Relationships II: Keeping Magic Alive

Sexy Scientist is a rare and powerful card People are not always sure there is a science to relatonships until I spend a minute explaining it to them. Everything in the universe is about inductance. Inductance has lots of gobbledy-gook definitions that require you to know what a lot of other words mean, so physics definitions don't always help, but inertia is part of the lexicon and everyone knows what that is. Inductance is like inertia, except for electricity. You know that inertia means. It takes some effort to get something moving but, once you get going, it is actually easier to keep it going. So it goes with relationships. With inductance, you have more electrons in one place than another and they are induced to go somewhere else, like when I went green by using fruit for all my electricity. There's a metaphor for relationships in that also. Romantic inertia is obvious for men in statements like "it's always easier to get a girl if you already have one." Romantic inductance is obvious for women because a woman knows that if she takes her vagina into a bar full of men that have no vaginas, the vagina-lacking men will be induced toward her until equilibrium is reached. Seriously, you can make an inductance metaphor for almost anything in life. 1 Relationships have inductance, and we'll get to that in a minute, but first we have to overcome romantic inertia, which means you need a girl. Science can help here also. Before you can create romantic inductance with her you need to overcome her inertia about you. Girls love to laugh. There are some spectacular women who have dated some ugly men because women are on a higher intellectual plane than men and will overlook a lot of things for a guy who makes her laugh, including your Star Trek "SET PHASERS FOR FUN" t-shirt with barbecue sauce on it from dinner three nights ago. Here are some personal favorite opening lines to interest that science chick: - Oooooh, your IQ is 140? I likes 'em beautiful and dumb! - By looking at you I can tell your measurements are 36-25-36 which, by the way, are all perfect squares. - According to the second law of thermodynamics, you're supposed to share your hotness with me. - But enough about me, let's talk about mu. - What do you say we skip this nerd fest and hit an all-night symposium on Maxwell's Equations? If those don't help you. I don't know what will. They are gold, I tell you. Barbara Eden is the most magical enchantress ever We discussed additional nuances of finding and keeping your perfect mate in the now legendary Mens Guide To Dating A Geek Girl v 1.0 so I won't duplicate that here but at some point you will go beyond the initial stages and be settled into a comfortable relationship. It's not all balloons and ponies then, my friends. But science can help here as well. Relationship 2.0 We've covered the introduction to relationships and how romantic inductance and inertia works and now we need to discuss what happens after you have been together for a while. Every relationship has lulls. People have moods. Sometimes she gets tired of devastatingly perfect sex and just wants some of that Baskins-Robbins Gold Medal Ribbon® ice cream instead. Sometimes you want to play XIII on your Xbox even though you beat it three times. It's a pretty good game. Those are all okay. It's not the highs and lows that will clobber you, it's the fights. Fights are called 'negative energy' by touchy-feely types because they are not sure what language means yet they have the right idea. The phrase "give a little to get a little" is more electrically correct and, because life is all inductance, they are words to live by. If both of you are giving up some electrons, a nice flow of elecricity is maintained. Fights interrupt the flow. No electricity is moving. This means you have to overcome inertia all over again. Fights are a problem because people tend to think in terms of getting reactions instead of in terms of what they actually want. People don't always communicate well in fights and they magically expect the other person to know what they mean. We're in the world of physics. If you want sorcery, get drunk in the bar at 2AM and see what a combination of alcohol and magic will convince you about the girls still there. If you want better fights, you have to take the confusion out of it. I talked about making a game out of your relationship once before but, since I am developing that one for Christmas 2007, I won't discuss it here. Instead, we'll stay in our 'magic' theme and use a commercially available game, like MAGIC: The GATHERING. Sexy Enchantress always smells nice and is mostly hairless. She also bakes a great pie. Games have rules. Games have numbers. No one can blame the game they can only blame bad luck if they lose, so this takes away a great deal of the emotion. If you don't like the results, get better strategy and rely less on luck. In MAGIC: THE GATHERING you have some basic colors which, not surprisingly, can correspond to people and emotions in relationships. Green is very earthy and natural. Women are quite good with earthy and natural, even plastic women. White is logical and organized. That sounds like men - plus we like swords. Red is angry and Black is, basically, your dark side. Yes, there is even room for a dark side in your relationship at times and when you pull out a Black card, at least she knows what kind of make-up sex you will be having. I have included two sample cards here and that's all the work you're going to get for free. Knowing the basics you can each make your own deck and go at it the next time you feel like fighting. Trust me, it's better than throwing things. Now go make some magic happen. 1Try it for yourself with any physicist or electrical engineer. Let them talk for 45 minutes about whatever they want and then, at the end, say "You know, it's all inductance when you get right down to it" and they will take a swig of beer and nod their head, looking forlornly in the distance, convinced you are the smartest person they know.

Go Green By Switching To Fruit Power

It confuses some people that I can be an environmentalist and a Republican. It's confusing because Democrats are handed a checklist of "coalition of the oppressed" platforms they have to believe in, so they don't understand picking and choosing positions based on logic and common sense. Republicans don't much care if you are for ice-picking fetus skulls or paying high taxes, as long as you have an oil well in your backyard and all of your TV channels parent-blocked except Fox News. Republicans have a pretty big umbrella that way, mostly because rich white guys can only buy so many votes and thus they have to broaden their appeal. Don't write me emails about this girl in the picture. For left wing chicks, this is the best you're getting. So people are confused that I can think Al Gore is an opportunistic shill mobilizing the left with deceit and still care about good old Mama Earth. Well, I do, but instead of asking someone to nationalize Exxon or fly airplanes all over the world telling people they should ride bicycles, I do practical things. Small differences add up to big effects. And I can show you how to make a difference too. Everyone likes to talk about making a difference but no one is really sure what works. Carbon credits? Scam. Carbon offsets? Scam, only liable to make you rich, so worthy of consideration. But while you get rich selling carbon offsets to suckers on Craigs List, how can you legitimately lower your carbon footprint yet maintain the decadent western lifestyle you've come to enjoy? The answer is simple, my fellow environmentalists: fruit power. Electricity, you see, doesn't have to be generated using smoke-belching coal-fired plants. It can also be generated using nuclear power, a key reason why the French picked CO2 to be the global warming culprit instead of methane, which they generate in substantial quantity, or using wind power and even ocean waves. The French solution to air pollution Electricity can also be generated chemically, like in batteries. But ordinary batteries use things like sulfuric acid and even in diluted quantities it can melt your skin and make you sterile so it's probably better not to mess with it. The answer to generating delicious electricity while enjoying Mother Nature's awesome goodness is the magic of electrolytes. An electrolyte is basically something with some free ions hanging around that can conduct electricity, like an acid or a base. Sulfuric acid is really, really acidic which is why it's in batteries but lots of ordinary foods have enough acid to do what we want if they are properly motivated, including many fruits. One of the best fruits to use is a lemon, because it is high in acidity. Because it is high in acidity it can react quite well with an active metal, like zinc, and that reaction can produce electricity for you. If you ever built something like this from a science kit, they talk in mumbo jumbo about 'zinc electrodes' and 'copper electrodes' and what not. I don't have 'zinc electrodes' around the house. I don't even have any lemons. What I did have was a few pennies, some aluminum foil, a battery powered stopwatch and apples. Make electrical juice from your apple juice It's easier than you think. For this LCD stopwatch I used: 4 pennies 2 apples 4 wires with alligator clips - okay, I did have those and you might not but any copper wire will do. 4 squares of aluminum foil, each the size of the face of an apple. 1) Cut the apples in half. Put each half face down on the aluminum foil. 2) Insert a penny in the top of each apple section. 3) Run a piece of wire from the penny of the apple on your far left to the + terminal inside the stopwatch. 4) Run a piece of wire from the aluminum foil on the apple piece of your far right to the - terminal inside the stopwatch. Astute conservatives will recognize the May 14th issue of NATIONAL REVIEW. 5) Run a wire from the aluminum foil of that first apple to the to the penny on the next one and repeat those connections until they are all connected to each other. If you haven't messed this up, your stopwatch will be lit. If you have messed this up, you probably shouldn't be allowed around a campfire singing "Kumbaya" ( Democrats ) or around firearms ( Republicans ). So now I am generating electricity with no carbon footprint at all. The problem is doing anything requiring more than 1.5 volts is going to take a lot of apples wired in series, so as you can see in the picture of my new menu below, I have had to make some dietary changes. It's just one of the many sacrifices I have to make to cure global warming.

Girls Give Hope To Ugly Guys Everywhere Part VI

Science articles, even in the casual world of the internet, take a great deal of research. It's not always easy making science look easy. As all of you know, my articles are meticulously detailed, well thought out and ergonomically terrific in almost every way. That doesn't happen by accident. But sometimes revelations for new articles happen by accident, like when I am researching something else. While I was researching the most important article in the history of the internet I decided, in the interests of maintaining my impeccable credentials, that I needed a picture of a hot girl in a river. I keep a substantial folder of supermodel endorsements and pictures for occasions like this. But I didn't have girls that fish so it took some time. And then I stumbled across this picture: And the happy accident came to me - because women have proved, once again, that they are intellectually and emotional on a different level than men. Namely, because they will date some really ugly guys. You may have missed Part 1, where I talked about Christina Aguilera marrying a guy so ugly that even with my five medical degrees I can't figure out what's wrong with his teeth. In Part 2 I discussed Evangline Lilly getting engaged to a Hobbit, Part 3 had me trying to figure out how the druggie from Friends was nailing Piper Perabo and Part 4 had me back to Christina because she looked even hotter and he looked even sillier next to her. Those were all outrageous examples of well-meaning women not caring enough about the looks of their men - and we want to discourage that kind of progressive thinking - but then we hit Part V, where David Spade and Heather Locklear took this to some higher level of insanity. Still, even a guy the size of my forearm like David Spade being with Heather Locklear didn't prepare me for the shock of seeing 5'10" tall, platinum-blonde, blue-eyed best-thing-to-come-from-Sweden-ever Victoria Silvstedt with ... wait, who is this guy? I thought she was married. Okay, maybe she got divorced. So that's why I interrupted my usual science humor to write Part VI, because some things cannot be explained by science, like why I am eating protein shakes and writing with the dark humor of Pynchon to stay attractive to women(me - LS) and it turns out all I needed was a penis made of heroin-laced chocolate. Or whatever that guy must have to get Victoria Silvstedt. Yeah, but who wouldn't? You can call her enlightened if you want. You can call her the opposite of shallow if it helps. She could call herself the Emperor of Nebraska and if anybody doubted her she could just whip out her picture and say, "If I'm not the Emperor of Nebraska, then why do I look this friggin' hot?" And then everybody would shake their heads in awe and mutter amongst themselves that she must be the Emperor of Nebraska. Seriously, can someone explain why I am writing this article and he is throwing Victoria Silvstedt around a Motel 6?

Smart teens don’t have sex (or kiss much either)

High intelligence is the best protection against early sexual activity during adolescence, research has shown. Can it be that intelligent kids don't need free condoms to be convinced they shouldn't have sex? Well, yes, that may be, but it may also be that smart kids just can't get dates. Virgin by choice? Or she just can't get a date? To reach this conclusion about intelligence and sexual activity in teens, researchers in this year 2000 study at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and McGill University took two separate sample groups in the 7th to 12th grades. Both studies used the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) as an intelligence measure and confidential admissions of sexual activity. Their results showed a distinct bell curve. Teens at the upper and lower ends of the intelligence distribution were found less likely to have had sex. And even once they started being sexually active, the more intelligent ones postponed the full range of partnered sexual activities until later than the rest. So it's really only the average intelligence kids we have to worry about. That means the guys on the football team couldn't get laid either? I bet you feel a lot better knowing that. What the study leaves out is whether or not the kids in this study could have had sex. It's easy to correlate intelligence with not getting sex if you don't ask about willingness. Jason Malloy at Gene Expression wrote: One reason we might guess that smarter people in high school, or in more challenging colleges or majors, delay their sexual debuts is because they are delaying gratification in expectation of future reward. Sexual behavior (or at least the investment needed to procure a partner or sustain one) may compete with time/resources required for other goals, and intelligent people may have more demanding goals. Which is a nice way of saying intelligent teenagers don't have sex, but they could. He also happens to be a biologist so he may be, you know, rationalizing things a bit. Mr. Malloy also notes this survey from Wellesley that says 72% of biology majors were virgins. Do you believe 72% of biology majors could have sex but still don't? Granted, I think biology students are enlightened ( though not as enlightened as math students, with 83% virginity ) but they can't be that enlightened. University of Georgia Assistant Professor Joe Sabia addresses this in the upcoming issue of Economic Journal: ... estimates show that sexually active adolescents have grade point averages that are approximately 0.2 points lower than virgins. However, when information on the timing of intercourse decisions is exploited and individual fixed effects are included, the negative effect of sexual intercourse disappears for females, but persists for males. In other words, the large majority of biology majors are males and an even larger percentage of them make up the gene pool * of virgins in these results. That means girls, even among biology majors, can get sex whenever they want - and they're all intelligent enough to know it. Further reading: Teenage Scientists Have Redefined Sex In Order To Have Less Of It. * Clever, ain't I?

The Spanish Celebrate Cinco de Mayo By Annexing Mexico

Presidente del Gobierno José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain said the Spanish Republic has decided to celebrate Cinco de Mayo by revoking Mexican independence: "It has always been a common misperception that the 5th of May is a celebration of Mexican independence from Spain. This is not correct, is is actually a celebration of victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, but we know that no one can really be proud of defeating the French so the mistake is understandable. In truth, we never agreed to Mexican independence anyway so we are simply revoking it." Almuneda Fernandez is Spanish, not Mexican, but it still might be nice to annex her Reporters asked Zapatero how the Mexicans might react to claims they are still owned by Spain. "We have been fascinated for some time by Mexican claims that California, for example, was stolen from them by America. We had California for 300 years and Mexico had it for 20. So in the spirit of fairness, we will also be annexing California. "We wish the Mexicans a happy Cinco de Mayo. It was a great victory for Spain and we remain proud of it. We encourage our Mexican subjects to call the new governors we are sending from Spain traditional names like 'Don Raphael' and we ask you not to bother with the whole Zorro thing this time - unless it's that George Hamilton version. He was pretty good."

Music, Math and Models

I've said a few times that music is math. I've also said a few times that I'm a Chinese jet pilot and that Halle Berry wants to bear my children so it's probably hard to know when you should take me seriously and when you shouldn't. But let's go back to this "music is math" stuff. On that part I'm not kidding. At the end of the day, a lot of things can be math, including music and supermodels. A few months ago I did an article on how Phi, the famously named Golden Ratio, could even tell us who would be a supermodel. It contained excellent science, humor, Elle MacPherson, Carol Alt and Heidi Klum , yet still left some math questions unanswered. In that article I mentioned the golden ratio in music, namely that the octave, fifth, and major and minor sixths are ratios of consecutive numbers of the Fibonacci* sequence, making them the closest low integer ratios to the golden ratio. But that doesn't make a ton of sense until we get a little more basic, mostly because math doesn't exist in the real world, it isn't a hard science like physics. So we'll figure out how math is music but first we'll show how music is physics. And, in proper attention whore fashion, I can show off some of my guitars. Taylor 814CE. This and my Martin D28 are my go-to guitars. This has a cutaway so if I am playing up the neck I use it. As a stringed instrument the guitar shares common harmonics with all of the other stringed instruments. What makes the guitar different in sound from the others are shape, materials, the nature of the strings - oh, and being in the hands of Eric Johnson. Because a guitar string is elastic and fixed at both ends, it creates waves. It doesn't matter so much what waves are but if you want to know, a wave is the frequency times the length of the wave. v = f x λ Let's talk about the speed of that wave, v. That v is determined by string tension and linear mass density (mass/length) µ, measured in kg/m. Here's the concept you need to know to figure out how a string will make specific sounds: The wavelength of a standing wave on a guitar string is twice the distance between the bridge and the fret. Guitar strings are basically the same so you have to vary the tension and the size of the strings if you want cool sounds. You have to vary both because if you only varied the tension, for example, the high strings would be tight and the low strings would be loose. It's just better for playing to have all of the strings with the same tension (T ). Some mathematical magic: the strings are a perfect fourth apart in pitch ( except for the G and B, 4th and 5th strings counting from the top down ) so any monkey can calculate how much the mass density ( µ ) has to increase between strings for the tension ( T ) to remain constant. Even Al Gore can't get this one wrong. So here is the only math you need to know: v = square root of (T/µ) You then make individual notes by using the frets. The ratio of the widths of two frets is the 12th root of 2, about 1.059. The twelfth fret divides the string in two exact halves. Every twelve frets represents one octave. So that's how guitar makers know where to place the frets based on the size of the neck. Taylor 714. No pickguard, so it's only for fingerstyle. Pickguards are for sissies. Yes, I look like a dork. Try having someone take a picture of you while singing and see how you look. I guess that's enough gorey detail for Part I but for Part II we can talk about harmonics and the way they translate physics into the math in this whole 'music is math' concept. *Also what I named my favorite sexual position of 2002. Final gratuitous guitar girl shot. Because you've come to expect it.

The Science of Orgasms

I read an article from Men's Health talking about how women get aroused during exercises. Specifically, hanging leg raises. "Coregasm" they called it, because some women can, apparently, have an orgasm while doing these exercises. Aside from the fact that it's a really cool term, I was a little jealous. Men need to do some real work to climax. Sure, we all know women have it easier in that regard, much like they have it easier than men in all aspects of life, but women can get off while exercising now? As if they need any more advantages. Anyway, I had never heard of it and I have dated some fit women, including a few for whom I am certain sex was just another way to "feel the burn." I never had one tell me she could could get off while lifting weights though. So I decided to do some investigating. As most of you are aware, I am something of an expert on female orgasms, and not just because my intellect and humor are the causes of more web-based rubouts than Brad Pitt and George Clooney combined. It's also because I do the research. You'll recall I wrote an article on whether the Theta waves in female orgasms would kill men and I even reverse engineered the female orgasm including how a calibrated vaginal stimulator works, for those of you unlucky enough to have never dated a scientist. So I am the perfect person to answer this question for you. It turns out there may be some science in this, though I think most female orgasms usually involve a combination of alcohol and magic. First, we have to know why some women don't get them to know why some do. A lack of orgasms during intercourse with non-scientists is quite common - around 50% of women don't have them that way. Most studies agree that orgasms correlate to the contraction strength of the pubbococcygeus, or PC muscle. Women who don't have orgasms tend to have weak PC muscles. The pubbococcygeus muscle is surrounded by four other pelvic muscles but they work as a system. A healthy PC muscle, the kind a woman who does a lot of ab exercises or hanging leg presses probably has, is very rigid while a weak one is not.* A strong PC muscle makes these orgasms much easier. That means a woman with a strong PC muscle can have an orgasm almost any time this muscle is stimulated. Abdominal exercises, friction from clothing, reading this article. But why would it be limited to just the gym? I thought. "Coregasms" are fine but truly fit women can do it anywhere. Watching An Inconvenient Truth, for example, might give them a "Gore-gasm." Standing outside Tiffany's? A "Store-gasm." Graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows? A "Smore-gasm." Women have it so easy and I could go on all day. But you have other things to do and I need to go buy a trampoline with all of the money this research is going to make me. Miss Earth 2006 is enjoying her Goregasm even now. *Men, I would rather light a candle than curse your darkness - if you want to help her, the PC muscle is located about 2 inches within the vagina and runs circularly. Bonus: it contains most of the nerve endings in the vagina and is the primary source of sexual feeling, so even you can't mess this one up.

Queer As Fish: Estrogen in Pittsburgh rivers

There's a lot of "Can X make you gay?" articles being written these days. This fellow says soy is making you gay and even the New York Times wonders if you have a gay car. Now a study from the University of Pittsburgh says that fish from Pittsburgh rivers contain substances that act like estrogen. Estrogen. The female hormone. So you'll have to forgive me for the topical television reference, but when a show called Queer As Folk is set in Pittsburgh, 'fish' is going to jump in there rather naturally. We're supposed to make girls go fishing. Fishing is not supposed to make us into girls. Since fish are sentinels of the environment, say researchers at Pitt's Center for Environmental Oncology, and retain chemicals from their habitat within their bodies, their experiments show that feminizing chemicals are making their way into the region's waterways. Their study also says these chemicals caused increased growth of estrogen-sensitive breast cancer cells. Wow, you can become a woman and get breast cancer. Fishing in the 'Burgh sounds better and better. "We decided to look at pisciverous fish, those that eat other fish, for this project because we know that they bioaccumulate contaminants from water and their prey, which may include toxic metals, farm and industrial runoff and wastes from aging municipal sewer systems," said Conrad D. Volz, Dr.P.H., M.P.H., principal investigator, department of environmental and occupational health, University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. "The goals of this project are to use fish as environmental sensors of chemicals in the water and the aquatic food chain, and to determine the origins of these chemical contaminants," said Dr. Volz. The study examined white bass and channel catfish caught in the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. These fish are among those commonly caught as a food source by local anglers. The laboratory of Patricia K. Eagon, Ph.D., co-principal investigator of the study, found that extracts from the fish acted like estrogen, a female hormone, by binding to estrogen receptors – the proteins within cells that render the cells sensitive to estrogen.* "We know that there are hundreds, even thousands, of chemicals in the environment that can have estrogenic activity," said Dr. Eagon. "These chemicals usually come from industrial pollution, farm animals, farm chemicals and municipal water treatment plants. What surprised us most in this study was that these estrogenic materials are present in such easily detected levels in local fish." Mmmmmmm ... fish. Someone get that girl out of there. According to Volz, the next step in their research is to identify the sources of the estrogenic chemicals. "These findings have significant public health implications, since we drink water from the rivers where the fish were caught. Additionally, the consumption of river-caught fish, especially by semi-subsistence anglers, may increase the risk for endocrine-mediated health endpoints like some cancers and developmental problems." They drink from the river in Pittsburgh?? If they are doing that, they have a lot more to worry about than growing breasts. Source: University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences.

Practical Science Part I - Bugs Bunny and Beer

Anyone can tell you, the surest test of your science chops is your ability to make a kid understand it. Science, at its most fundamental, can be understood by anyone if explained properly. Science is, for the most part, conceptual. The math is relatively unimportant as long as you understand why things work the way they work. Bugs Bunny, I want my 4 hours of research back I bring that up because it's not always kids doing the learning. Most science questions I can answer pretty easily. I have a broad base of knowledge and one of those brains that recalls everything. In the age of Google that's relatively unimportant. Today, sub-literate sock monkeys who can barely spell their names can cite sources and keep a whole bookmark file full of facts in order to look smart. Luckily, most of them write about politics rather than science ( Huffington Report, RadioAmerica, I mean you ) so science is usually populated by people who know what they're talking about. That's not to say we can't be stumped. I had a recent question I couldn't answer without some significant research. I figure if I don't know the answer, maybe you don't either and we can all get a little smarter. So here it is: Why does the fat opera singer's head shrink when Bugs Bunny sprays Alum in his throat? This came up during the classic "Long-Haired Hare", after Bugs has had just about enough of Giovanni Jones breaking his banjo. Well, I wasn't sure. I never used Alum, I have no Alum in the house. I know they used to put Alum in water, 2500 years ago, and it would work pretty well today. Did the coagulating symbolize this head shrinking? I wrote a chemistry acquaintance but knew I wouldn't hear from him until morning. It doesn't help to have two smart people in the house. "Maybe Alum was the chemical used by Jivaro tribesmen to shrink heads in the Amazon," Lady Scientist offered. Actually, that made perfect sense. Bugs Bunny cartoons were always topical and almost every movie matinee serial had some tribesman or another as a villain, so shrinking heads using Alum may have been well known to kids and adults then. I did some research - I might as well have chewed some Ayahuasca. They apparently boil these 'heads' ( skin with the skull removed ) in Chinchipi juice and water. I spent an hour reading on the taxonomy of native plants in Ecuador but I couldn't find anything that said they had anything similar to Alum in them. Dead end. But I am not a total tease so here is the recipe to make your own shrunken head. I suggest you use a dog or something rather than attack your neighbors: 1. Slit the head at the back from the base of the neck to the crown. Peel the skin from the skull. Throw the skull/brains into the river as a sacrifice - to the spirit of the Anaconda. These people were vicious but they knew what they were doing so even if you're in upstate New York I suggest you fly to Ecuador and find a river. 2. Turn the face inside out and remove all fatty tissue. 3. Tie a rope to the top of the head through an incision. Lower the head into a pot of hot water and Chinchipi plant juice. Simmer for up to two hours, taking care not to leave it in too long or the hair will fall out. 4. Sew up the back of the neck and the eyelids with thread and seal the lips with three bamboo pegs. I suggest you go to Pier One and chop up some furniture in front of a sales associate to get these pegs. When you explain why you need it, they will let you alone and you pulled a great prank. 5. Insert hot pebbles into the neck cavity and whirl the head around by the hair to keep the stones from burning the flesh. Then do it with hot sand when it shrinks too much to use stones. It will take about 20 hours, over 3 - 7 days. 6. Polish your shrunken head up. It will be a little larger than an orange. Brag to your friends Congratulations! Your first shrunken head. Anyway, South American tribesmen were clearly a dead end. I went back to Chemistry. Alum has been around a long time so a lot of things get called Alum. Aluminum Sulfate is used in water but that seemed awfully obscure. Kids laughed when they saw the head shrink and I am betting they didn't know about Aluminum Sulfate. Deodorants, astringents, spices - this stuff is everywhere. Finally, I swallowed my pride, gave up on science, and cheated. I called my mother. Cash: "You remember in cartoons when they would use Alum and someone's head would shrink, right? It had to be common knowledge then but I can't figure out why they used that image to represent what Alum does." Science Matriarch: "You did it a hundred times when you were a kid. When we made dill pickles we put whole cucumbers in the jar with Alum and water and it makes them shrink. It's a pickling spice. Everyone did it back then but I don't think people make their own pickles any more." Cash: Oh. I should have known that. I didn't get this sweet eating dill pickles, though." Science Matriarch: "You also went to basic training. You don't think they still put saltpeter in the food? Alum kept your libido shrunk for 8 weeks too." Yikes. Satisfied that I had done hours of research for ... nothing ... well, not nothing but something that every 7-year old knew in 1949 ... I decided to grab a beer. I take a sip. It is cold. Really cold. It says "Miller Genuine Draft" and "unique cold-filtering process." "Wait. What's so great about cold-filtered beer?" I thought. And I found out. But this is already way too long so it has to wait until Part II.

An Equation About Easter Miracles - Should Captain Carrot Quit Smoking?

I got some questions from a writer named Captain Carrot, i.e. a stranger, who deduced that, because I write this column for free, I must also be available for free science consultation and/or general life and relationship advice. Here is a sample: I am 27. Should I try to stop smoking, or will I regret it later in life? Most of you know me well enough by now to realize that, unless you provide webcam proof you are a supermodel, I am unlikely to even bother learning to spell your name. Yet something in his plea struck me. Maybe because it's Easter Weekend and I feel bad that Jesus died so most of you could tell George Bush how much smarter you are than he is, or maybe it's because I feel a twinge of guilt at Photoshopping a picture of myself in a picture as a half-Crusader/half-Crusaded warrior of the 12th century, or maybe it's because I am saddened that this poor monkey can't even decide for himself whether or not he should ingest carcinogens that we've spent trillions of dollars telling him he should not ingest. It doesn't matter. I felt his pain so I answered his call. However, I am a busy man - if I am to have an orgy of unprotected sex with supermodels this weekend to celebrate the Resurrection of the Messiah, I need to make a coke run. And don't let me forget to buy a grape for them to share when they have the munchies. One of my pals is Garth Sundem author of Geek Logik: 50 Foolproof Equations For Everyday Life. Garth is a good guy and he loves to do this kind of stuff - for my kid's Christmas he even made him a custom equation ,"How many homeruns will you blast in high school even though your father chased the breaking stuff way too often" - but I am sure he has a life and doesn't want to do this. I even looked in his book and, surprisingly, he never covered this subject. So in his stead, I will do it. I don't know how to do LaTeX input here so I am forced to do this in crappy HTML text and it won't look all pretty and nice. But for free, you can't complain. Because this question has more than one variable, you can't really solve it, you can only converge on a perfect answer. Nonetheless, I can at least tell the Captain how to decide if he should commence with the DTs: Should Captain Carrot Shake That Demon Weed? Q = H/D + F(S-8)/(C x 0.2) Where Q is Quitting, namely whether or not you should. H is for Halitosis, namely how much quitting would improve your breath on a 1-10 scale. 1 being "it always smells great anyway" and 10 being "peanut butter and onions would be a nice way to describe my breath" D is for Difficulty, namely how much fortitude you have with 10 being Job ( staying in our Biblical theme ) is impressed by how much aggravation you can withstand. F is for Family, namely the number of Family members who reminded you to quit smoking last week. S is for your marital Status. 5 for happy and 10 if you are married. C is for Cigarettes, namely how many you smoke per day. From there, it is simple. If Q >1, you should quit. And what the heck, since it is the season for sacrifice I will also answer your question on whether or not it is possible to insure through genetic manipulation that your child is exceptional at science : It is possible. Namely, by having me impregnate your wife.

Happy Easter

Be sure to enjoy a wholesome Crusade. I know I will: Even if you don't admire my Photoshop skills, you have to admit I don't look as silly as a British guy who signs up to be crucified and then claims God told him at the last minute not to do it. Maybe I'm crazy but I bet God didn't have as much to do with it as watching nine Filipinos before him get whipped and nailed to crosses. That would make me get down on my knees and have a religious epiphany too. How did the crowd react? They boo'ed him, of course. If I go all that way to see radical Catholics re-enact the Crucifixion you can bet nothing would make me happier than seeing some smarmy British journalists take some spikes to the hands.

Girls Gone Green

I saw a press release about a global warming 'virtual march' ( we'll get back to that ) and a tour being conducted by Laurie David ( married to "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David and thus an expert on climate science, also founder of the website that put out the press release ) and Sheryl Crow called the "Stop Global Warming College Tour" beginning April 9th in Dallas. I was itching to find more information about it and, other than discovering they were going to show clips from Al Gore's movie ( yeah, no college student will have seen that ) and Sheryl Crow would sing a few songs at each stop, the only interesting thing I came across was an article in something called the Post Chronicle where the author makes a joking reference to a "girls gone green" tour likely being a better idea. You know, kind of like "Girls Gone Wild" except the beads they get are made of hemp - and they hopefully won't be chunky sorority sisters on drunken binges. You mean they haven't done something like that yet??? No one would ever have heard of PETA if they didn't go on trial for killing homeless pets and get aging supermodels like Christy Turlington ( perhaps NSFW ) to pose naked in their advertisements. The lack of hot girls in environmental causes is a much bigger story than figuring out what a "virtual march" is ( though I did find out the answer: you give them your email and you have done your part to save the planet ) so I set out to find out just how important the environment is to beautiful women. Not all that important, it seems, as you can tell by the roster below. So here's what we have, and you can bet the pictures take up a lot more space than the content because there is so little content to be found. Gong Li - Okay, the environment is a big winner on this one. Sure, "Memoirs Of A Geisha" stunk but it wasn't because Gong Li was anything except flawless. "Things will become really terrible if we don't take environmental protection more seriously," said she. Looks like that and she's smart too! Petra Nemcova - The name was vaguely familiar but I actually thought she was the girl who got her leg bitten off by a shark. Turns out she was in the big tsunami a few years ago and her boyfriend died, catapulting her to fame and making her an expert on the environment. The only thing that has fewer hot women than the environment, it seems, are tsunamis, so she was an easy winner here. Plus, she already broke her pelvis so it's unlikely you will hurt her much during sex. Persia White - I never heard of her, so we are really reaching now. She was a bit player on some TV show or another. It doesn't matter. She has a tattoo, which makes her look 'edgey.' College age numbskulls like girls who look 'edgey.' We're trying to motivate people who have plenty of time on their hands to 'virtual march' for Laurie David so I'd say she appeals to a good target demographic. After this it goes downhill quickly. You can save your time, and your eyesight, by simply submitting this to Digg and going to lunch. But for you masochists out there ... Daryl Hannah - My dad loves Daryl Hannah. Looking at this picture from 20 years ago, I can understand why. Looking at her now makes me think "Kill Myself" more than "Kill Bill." However, after this the only girl under 70 left was Christie Brinkley. This is a family site, so I am not putting up a picture of Christie Brinkley. So you are starting to see the problem - the environment is not getting more attention because hot girls don't care enough. Instead of putting on non-concerts and virtual marches, I think Laurie David and Al Gore should be devoting more time to getting attractive people on their side. Well, attractve women on their side. Because male environmentalists like holding on to the hope that at some protest or another a hot girl will be in evidence. Female environmentalists have the same hope. In conclusion, I did find plenty of non-hot girls who care, like in the final picture. Lady Scientist saw this draft and said, "Is that the Indigo Girls?" "Yes," I replied. "Lesbians, you know. Shows my tolerance." "Right," she said. "I notice you are always very tolerant of lesbians." I don't know what point she was trying to make but I am happy she recognized my overall inclusiveness.

Who Funds The Chocolate Consensus?

In case you were hiding under a rock, there was the scientific equivalent of an earth-shattering thunderclap that emanated from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meetings held February 15th-19th in San Francisco - to be honest, they pretend everything they say is big news, you can see 20 articles from it on Scientific Blogging - but I mean this was legitimately big news. Was it that they took their own vote and decided that there is global warming after all? No, someone jumping on the climate change bandwagon is nothing new. Was it that your astrological sign can tell you what medical problems you will have? That one was a lot of fun but still not it. No, the most surprising news was that chocolate makes you smarter. Now, if you're anything like me - an outrageously sexy scientist outside but inside an irascible prick who likes to puncture junk science - this probably set off some alarms. America has, I am told, a terrific obesity problem but a scientific group says eating more chocolate is smart. So I looked into this and found that a segment of researchers claim that not only does chocolate make you smarter, it might protect against cancer and diabetes(!) plus keep your arteries flowing smoothly. Heck, one scientist even went so far as to write an article on 10 scientific reasons to love chocolate. That's a whole lot of reasons to eat chocolate. Yeah, I smell corporate porkbarrelling. Except for that last article. At least 7 of those 10 were really good reasons. And chocolate is yummy. Anyway, I did some research and here is what I found: Mars,Inc. has spent the last 18 years funding chocolate studies. So what, you say, they're in the chocolate business so they need to research it. Well, Philip Morris is in the cigarette business and Exxon-Mobil is in the oil business but if they said smoking cigarettes and burning more oil actually improved our health, you would be a little skeptical. Right here in California, at UC Davis, Mars,Inc. funds 20 investigators and created a chair in the nutrition department. That's right, the nutrition department. Mars states they have spent $10 million on research just at UC Davis since 1997. In fact, on the entire "Neurobiology Of Chocolate" panel at the AAAS meeting, only one of the researchers was not funded by Mars. One of the panel's organizers is Harold Schmitz, who just happens to be a visiting professor at UC Davis and the Chief Science Officer of ... Mars, Inc. Wow, what a coincidence. Carl Keen, chairman of the UC Davis nutrition department which gets all that money, said, "If I have a choice between a company paying for something or my tax dollars paying for it, I'd prefer the company pay." No kidding. Very Republican of you. Do you think they would give you all that money if you weren't producing research they like? Merrill Goozner, director of the integrity in science project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, isn't buying it. "This is the nutrition department, for crying out loud. I think taxpayers would be pretty upset about that." Goozner co-authored a paper called Relationship between Funding Source and Conclusion among Nutrition-Related Scientific Articles so this is a topic of interest to him. The conclusion in that paper? Studies funded by industry were four to eight times as likely to reach conclusions in the financial interests of sponsors. Virtually unmentioned during the panel discussion was the fact that most of the chocolate people actually eat is low in flavanols and high in sugar. Instead they described how Kuna Indians in Panama have almost no diabetes yet consume chocolate every day. As if the chocolate and not the exercise involved in being a native is what kept them in shape. What's next, a study showing that coffee plus chocolate cures Alzheimers? We'll see. For now, Ian MacDonald, professor at the University of Nottingham Medical School and member of the Mars Nutrition Research Council ( he is also funded by Mars ) says consumers should only eat moderate amounts of chocolate. When asked how much "moderate" was, he cited half a "Snickers" bar. Who makes "Snickers"? You guessed it. Now I have to get to work making this a full-length article. The Hershey's people think I make some really good points here.