Proven By Science

my eyes! my eyes!

these are, in fact, my eyes! DO YOU SEE? (click to enlarge)

healthy yay! — the whitish crescents on the optic nerves are a sign of short sight, as are the “dark matter” tesselations patching the red areas

Food Science Day 2007 Experiment #2: Cavary Ham

Not on the list AT ALL when we entered the laboratory, this piece of pun based was invented on the spot. As with any great inventions it had necessity as its mother and sous chef. We had bought a bit too much Ye Olde Oake Ham. Now some of you might rightly say that the amount “too much” would be any amount, but we had something in store for the ham. But two tins was too much. And so we wondered what else we could do with this processed mean product (45% meat!). And our eyes alit on the bottle of pink Cava that some of the female scientists had brought to celebrate success with.

It was already open. The day was already a success.

Carvery Ham, someone shouted. (OK, it was me. I own too many Carter records). Carvery Ham, everyone else said with a question mark at the end. Whatever could he mean? And then the poor pun filtered in their head and excitement reigned. … read on …

Resisting Entropy - Mars Planets and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Food Science Day 2007 Experiment #1)

Mars Planets: the atomisation of the Mars Bar. An entropic dis-integration, the tendency of all things to become more chaotic, in confectionery form. I’m trying to resist the impulse to tie this stuff up to no-such-thing-as-Society atomisation because that’s not how we do things, right? And Mars Planets are better to share than a proper big Mars Bar, after all, for reasons of ease and hygiene. Nevertheless, my friends, here’s our chance to take a brave and random stand against entropy, to roll back the ticking clock of chocolate-coated chaos.
 
Each packet of Planets is a little black pod of chocolate covered spheres: two thirds filled with a Mars Bar constituent (light Milky Way nougat, caramel) and then one odd third filled with malteser-ish wafer. The question is: can we re-integrate a Mars from these ingredients?

… read on …

the politics of naming: the decade right now passing

various attempts bin made, nothing stuck yet: the noughties, the naughts, the 00ze…

oddball composer, pol-blogger and er “hayekian leftist”* stirling newberry suggests: the thousands, embedded in this (interesting, hyper-compressed, typically cloudy, two-part)** essay on why decades do indeed have characters (provided you tinker somewhat with their end-points) and that “if you aren’t paying attention to fashion, you aren’t paying attention…”

*erm actually my econo-grasp is no WAY good enough to be attempting to label ppl who do understand economics — this stab is totally based on me liking the sound of SN’s idea that an oil-based market is useless when it comes to the valuation of information-based equity, stated but not justified in this comment here, but
A: i have no competence to judge the usefulness of any of this, as opposed to merely likin the sound of it :(
and B: i am probbly makin like 10 bad assumptions in this footnote alone :( :(
**haha hey who does that description remind you of :( :( :(

The Scandal Of Skinny Water

So in the fearless tradition of FreakyTrigger food scientists the years over (Food Science Day III coming soon), it was not enough to just boggle at the existence of Skinny Water from poor billboard ads. No, i had to try some and report back.

So I tried some, and am reporting back.

PRICE: £0.99 from Superdrug

TASTE: It is just like one of those flavoured waters from Tesco’s. Except pleasantly pomegranate flavoured, and without too much artificial sweetener sharpness. Actually rather nice for a flavoured water (akin to saying one of the more comfortable circles of hell). But pretty refreshing and cooling when cold. … read on …

Jump, They Say

Sorry, I don’t mean to turn this into the wacky world of inventions but these things keep nagging me from the edge of my consciousness. I’ll give you more on “The Scandal Of Skinny Water” later, but first let us look at the following statement. Bear in mind that when foreigners say “Jump Rope”, they mean Skipping Rope:

“JumpSnap founder, Brad LaTour, is a regular guy just like you, who struggled with his own weight for many years. He knew jumping rope was the best form of exercise to burn calories and lose inches, but tripping over the rope was incredibly frustrating. That’s why he invented JumpSnap. What started as the ropeless jumprope has grown to become so much more. “

… read on …

Diet Water!

There is a very cheap looking advert on a bus stop on the Seven Sisters Road which I mentioned last night in the pub for Skinny Water, a diet water drink. I was pooh-poohed as is the usual way when I said Diet Water, so I took the details. And here it is: SKINNY WATER. Made by Bio-Synergy, a company name that SHOUTS PSEUDO-SCIENCE, Skinny Water is (and I quote):

“A low-calorie water, enhanced with a unique combination of ingredients to help (YOU) lose and maintain YOUR weight. Skinny Water contains selected essential nutrients, which combine the benefits of hydration with vitamins, minerals, and clinically tested natural ingredients that suppress appetite, block carbohydrates from converting into fat, and increase fat burning, without stimulating the nervous system.”

A LOW CALORIE WATER!!!! OMG. … read on …

Disgraced National Hero Has Chance To Become Hero Again (If It Weren’t For The Disgrace)

Remember Woo Suk Hwang? Of course you do. He was the South Korean scientist who got the first stem cells from a cloned embryo. This is a big deal, what with cloning being a bit of a hot topic, and stem cell research even more of a hot topic in certain countries. It was a massive deal in South Korea where Dr Hwang was made a national hero for beating the rest of the world at this immensely difficult task.

Except it turned out that during the period of peer review (which should have been done before the announcement) his results could not be replicated and he was outed as a fraud. He had actually been using embryos created from his female research assistants. National hero become disgraced, South Korea hides a bit and gets so sciencephobic it makes a film about a genetically mutated monster: The Host. (Which would be good enough for me if it was the only upshot). So far, so BAD SCIENCE cautionary tale. You don’t go straight to the press without checking your results, you cannot fake the scientific community*. … read on …

MTV takes on Michael Moore

It’s nice to see MTV putting long-form reviews online. But when it’s as hapless and baffled as Kurt Loder’s review of “Sicko” one begins to wish they hadn’t.

Loder, you may remember, is the éminence grisé of MTV News — the laconic, jaded one who was a little older than everyone else and so tasked with all the big stories — Courtney Love, global warming, stuff like that. Or you may not.

In his review, Loder says that Michael Moore has “cherry-picked facts” in his film and resorted to “manipulating interviews”. Indeed, the headline of Loder’s piece says that Moore’s film is “heavily doctored”. Moore is a “brazen” “con man”, “never more so than in this movie”, we learn.

Strong words. (If printed in England, they would probably earn MTV a law suit.) The gauntlet thrown, the reader naturally assumes Mr. Loder has come armed with a few facts of his own — a corrective to Moore’s distortions.

But Loder can produce just one figure of Moore’s that sounds fishy — that 18,000 Americans will die this year alone for lack of health insurance. “How does he know?” asks Loder. … read on …

PLAN 10 FROM OUTER SPACE.

We are very firmly of the opinion that Humans are the best animals at Freaky Trigger, and it is nice to see that yet again this is proved by looking at the energy efficiency of our walking style. As this hopefully trustworthy BBC report* has it, walking on two legs like a human is four times more energy efficient than the lolloping gait of a chimpanzee. Which perhaps factors in to that most difficult part of human evolution, namely just how vulnerable we are as wee nippers. No walking, communication, higher functions. Is the price to pay for the complex movement, the complex talking and other complex shit we humans do. Is out first year of life just booting the software?

What is nice about this story is that it is a feel good story on how we are naturally energy efficient creatures. If monkeys rules the Earth i daresay thair standby buttons would use more energy that a human appliance running on full. Indeed such is the natural urge for energy efficiency that I often find myself spending an extra hour in bed JUST TO SAVE ENERGY. Which makes me wonder, this so called profligacy with energy that Al Gore is shouting at us about. It seems unnatural. Almost as if the energy inefficiencies are not due to humans at all. But rather the meddling hands of evil aliens. Its no dumber the Plan 9.

*”Hopefully trustworthy” will be appended to every FT source until the BBC stops lying.