Posts filed under 'Featured Content'
Some time ago I came across this short video showing an enthusiastic young man and a den of poisonous Brown Recluse spiders. It was a charming video, and I took it as a one-off, so it’s my great pleasure to discover that it’s just one of a huge cache of nature-doc videos put together by Amanda Stueckel and Dylan Cebulske, under the title Herping With Dylan. Here’s their re-worked version of the aforementioned spider video:
Seeing the team in action, it’s not difficult to say what’s great about these videos: it’s everything! Dylan is an engaging, informed, and animated host; Amanda’s direction and photography is superb. But what really draws me in is the unbridled passion of two young people for their project. At first I was worried by the sight of Dylan casually handling venomous serpents, but then I realised that this boy knows what he’s doing. How well does he know what he’s doing? Well enough to handle venomous serpents, that’s how. Did I mention how much Dylan loves cotton-mouths? That guy frickin’ loves cotton-mouths.
Even with millions of dollars of production money, exotic locations and incredible photography of rare beasts, it’s enthusiasm that sells a documentary to the audience and that’s something Amanda and Dylan have in spades. I’d much rather watch this than a lot of the animal documentaries on air.
It’s incredible to think that less than five years ago this wouldn’t have been possible, but the availability of cheap hardware and a free distribution means that entrepreneurial young talent like Amanda and Dylan don’t have to wait for some network to discover them – they can set about making entertaining TV in their own backyard. That’s not to say I don’t wish them the best – hopefully soon their videos will catch the attenton of some TV execs and the pair can share their love of all things creepy and crawly with an even bigger audience
February 20th, 2009
After a lot of wrangling, the RSS feed is finally working smoothly, and hopefully will stay that way. Currently the main feed incorporates SciencePunk and SciBlog articles, and the del.icio.us feed. I know everyone has their own way of reading the sites they love, so here is an exhaustive list of the different feeds from SciencePunk… If you want something not supplied below, leave me a comment and I’ll work on it. You might also like to use Yahoo! Pipes to build your own unique feed, selecting specific topics or combining certain feeds.
In other news, SciencePunk.com now boasts a whole new section: Off Topic. This will be a repository for all non-science content, and hits off with an article explaining why the new Bet365 Bingo advert is reminiscent of the John Carpenter horror film They Live.
February 1st, 2009
In case you hadn’t noticed, SciencePunk has seen a lot of changes over the past week. This is due to a couple of major developments:
- I’ve been invited to write for ScienceBlogs
- SciencePunk has gone turbo-upgrade to version 6!
I’ve been planning an upgrade of the SciencePunk.com site for a long time, especially as I was never really happy with it being a ‘blog’ – I want it to be a full-tilt playground of kickass science. Now I’m one step closer to that goal: it’s SciencePunk v6, baby! Didn’t you wonder what that stry /v5/ on the old site meant? Now you know. For fun, I’ve also unlocked the old SciencePunk v4 – check it out for some vintage web 1.0 awesomeness.
In place of the single blog ‘loop’ there are now several – a featured articles section (for meaty pieces), the start of an awesome science videos channel, the regular blog (streamed in from a new home), a quick links Del.icio.us feed and more lovely stuff to be added. The page is wider to fit in all this new content, and I have a nice new logo that I might stick on shirts if enough people ask. It’s all about the brand, baby.
The regular blog is now hosted at ScienceBlogs.com, home of some very esteemed science writers, and me. Hopefully this new home will expose me to more readers, one of whom may see fit to give me a job. Being unemployed is not fun.
Because I’m a mother-trucking code ninja, if you’ve signed up to the RSS feed you should still be getting updates. Even better, you will be receiving updates from all parts of the SciencePunk empire – this site, SciBlogs and Del.icio.us, so there’s no need to update your bookmarks. If you notice any problems then please for the love of God tell me, I’m not psychic you know.
Go check out the new site, hit all of the buttons, and report any bugs you find. If you any have comments, criticisms or further suggestions, please add them below.
Thanks everyone for your support, SciencePunk wouldn’t be awesome without you.
January 24th, 2009
Environmentalists are expressing surprise and optimism at the news that the outgoing US President George Bush has passed an executive order creating a Texas-sized conservation area in the Pacific Ocean. Normally, if I see the words ’size of Texas’ and ‘Pacific Ocean’ I think, “Oh no, here we go with that stupid floating island of garbage story again”. But fortunately for me this new story still has some interesting twists.
Continue Reading January 9th, 2009
A: Yes.
As reported today, a mother-of-five died from a cerebral edema after drinking four litres of water less than two hours. Jacqueline Henson was following a diet plan which recommends that dieters drink up to four litres of water throughout the day. Normally the concentration of solutes in the brain is kept slightly lower than the blood, but if someone drinks water excessively, the blood is thinned, creating a gradient that forces water into the brain as a result. This causes the swelling known as edema, which the brain is especially sensitive to because it is enclosed in the skull and cannot expand. The result can be brain damage or death.
The condition is known as water intoxication. Athletes are at particular risk because they lose electrolytes (such as salt) through sweat. The body needs these electrolytes to help balance water flow throughout the body. ‘Isotonic’ drinks such as Lucozade are designed to replace both the water and the electrolytes lost during exercise.
Sadly water intoxication is not a well-known phenomenon and people continue to fall victim to it. Earlier this year Dawn Page was awarded £800,000 after suffering permanent brain damage following advice from a self-styled nutritional therapist to drink large amounts of water whilst cutting down on salt. Last year Californian mother-of-three Jennifer Strange died from water intoxication after taking part in a radio competition where she was made to drink large volumes of water.
In the case of Jacqueline Henson, the coroner recorded a verdict of accidental death.
December 11th, 2008
Elephants are the world’s largest living land animal, which poses something of a problem when you need to make one of them the world’s largest dead land animal. Although much-loved by circus audiences and Roman conquerers, often there comes a time when an elephant needs to be killed, either because it is sick or in pain, has become dangerous to itself and others, or simply because it won’t hand over its tusks. When this happens, how do you fell such a mighty animal with a minimum of pain and fuss?
1) We’re going to need a bigger gun…
As colonial hunters explored Africa in the early 1800s, they found their guns woefully inadequate for killing large, thick-skinned game such as rhino and elephant. In the age of low-explosive gunpowder, the only solution was to build a bigger gun – up to a massive 4 gauge (24mm bore!) with projectiles weighing 130g. (Compare that to a modern sniper round, at a puny 7.62mm diameter.) However, these ‘elephant guns’ still weren’t up to the task, and trying to take down an elephant with one was a hit-and-miss affair (ho-ho!). True pachyderm-stopping-power only arrived with the advent of high-explosive ’smokeless powders’ such as cordite. The Nitro Express line dominate the big gun market until ivory hunting died off in the mid-20th century. Today, the aptly named .600 Overkill is the largest available hunting round, and is designed specifically for elephant hunting. It is powerful enough to penetrate 6 feet of solid oak and the torque of the massive round spinning down the barrel can twist the rifle from your hand.
2) The Gargantuan Gallows
Erwin, Tennessee, holds the dubious honour of being the site of the world’s only known elephant lynching. In 1916, an elephant named Mary belonging to Sparks World Famous Shows attacked and killed an inexperienced handler named Red Eldridge. Although the story has been told and retold to the point of obfuscating true details, it was clear that no town would give Sparks a licence to operate with a dangerous elephant in tow. Officials were left with the problem of how to safely put down Mary without any specialised equipment. They finally settled on death by hanging, to be performed at the local railroad station using a powerful derrick car. According to legend, the execution was bungled, making the entire story a sad state of affairs. Today in Erwin you can visit the Hanging Elephant Antique Shop for all your pachyderm-lynching souveneir needs.
3) A shocking finale
During the late 1800s two forms of electricity distribution vied for dominance – the so-called War of the Currents. Thomas Edison, whose personal holdings depended on the adoption of Direct Current, set out on a propaganda mission to illustrate the dangers of the competing form, Alternating Current. His campaign organised the electrocution of stray and unwanted animals with AC electricity to demonstrate its inherent danger. The most famous of these public executions was that of Topsy, an elephant of Coney Island which had killed three of its handlers. The event was filmed – a video that still exists today. Ultimately, Alternating Current (which allows for cheap and effective transmission of electricity over long distances) became the favoured technology; however, one of Edison’s employees put the lesson of Topsy to good use by inventing the electric chair.
4) The Electric Acid Kool Aid Death
In one of the most bizarre annals of scientific experimentation, researchers at the University of Oklahoma injected a 7,000lb bull elephant named Tusko with a massive dose of LSD. They were attempting to induce a seasonal condition in male elephants known as musth, during which they become very violent and uncontrollable. Loading a dart rifle with almost 300mg of LSD (over 1000 times the normal human recreational dose), Tusjko was shot in the buttock. Five minutes later he collapsed into spasm, and despite attempts to counteract the LSD, died less than two hours later. The ensuing controversy still echoes today.
5) The final cut is the deepest
According to this document, the most humane way of euthanising an elephant is via lethal injection using a pint of saturated potassium chloride solution (the same chemical used to euthanise criminals). However, if the chemist is all out of potassium chloride (and the massive amount of sedative needed to render the elephant unconcious first) you can opt for the other painless method – using a scalpel to cut the aorta. Of course, this being an elephant, you need to stick your arm shoulder-deep into its rectum and cut it from the inside. What more dignified death could Nelly ask for than to spend its last moments with a vet’s arm up its arse, before falling into an endless sleep whilst gallons of blood gush from its backside?
If you liked this you might like Five stupid weapons that were actually made.
November 14th, 2008
Anyone who’s spent a reasonable amount of time in the UK will know of the Daily Mail, a highly popular right-wing newspaper which regularly twists itself into apoplectic fits of rage over homosexuals, immigrants, people on welfare, teenage mothers, and the state of England’s house prices. The beating heart of this publication is arguably columnist Richard Littlejohn, a self-styled man of the people who draws an estimated £800,000 salary and regularly dispatches columns about the terrible state of Britain from his gated compound in Florida. He’s been awarded ‘journalist of the year’ and ‘irritant of the year’; and branded a racist, a sexist, and a homophobe; one critic described his book as ‘a 400-page recruiting pamphlet for the the British Nationalist Party’ while the leader of the BNP himself cited Littlejohn as his favourite journalist. Ever the embodiment of indignant rage, one of Littlejohn’s most famous catchphrases is ‘you couldn’t make it up!’.
Chief amongst his concerns is homosexuality, but Littlejohn also finds time to regularly decry the Health and Saefty Executive, who he rather unambiguously refers to as “nazis”. Apparently health and safety officials are responsible for sapping the enjoyable danger out of every corner of British life, leading us into a sanitised, hermetically sealed plastic future. Last week’s column starts:
Some years ago, after trapeze artists on a tour of Britain with the Moscow State Circus were ordered to wear crash helmets by the elf’n’safety nazis at Haringey Council, this column speculated about what other indignities would soon be imposed upon performers in the Big Top.
He then goes on to write an entire hilarious column describing a circus stripped of fun by heartless health and safety jobsworths. What Richard doesn’t know is, the Health and Safety Executive are tired of being painted as a bunch of soulless killjoys when they’re simply trying to stop people from eating asbestos flakes or stabbing themselves in the eyes with screwdrivers. So much so that they launched a Myth of the Month webpage designed to counteract the numerous myths that circulate about them. Here’s one from June 2007:
Myth: New regulations would require trapeze artists to wear hard hats
The Reality: Despite being widely reported at the time and regularly repeated since, this story is utter nonsense. There never were any such regulations. Hard hats do an excellent job of protecting building workers from falling debris – but they have no place on a trapeze.
As Littlejohn might say: ‘You couldn’t make it up!’. Only in this case, someone did.
September 28th, 2008
The road to the truth is rarely straight or clearly signposted, and although the scientific method has managed to install a few streetlights along the way, there are still plenty of dead ends for the unwary to stumble into. Here I’ve collected a few examples of wonderful substances that have been bought, sold, collected, created, and had detailed theories written about them, only to have one tiny downside – they never existed.
Orgonite
Orgonite is an offshoot of the pseudoscience of Orgone, an all-encompassing life-force energy “discovered” in the 1930s by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, in an extrapolation of Sigmund Freud’s already highly questionable theories. Today, a host of websites host tutorials on how to create orgonite, a substance said to be able to accumulate this life force. Some even claim to have invented it themselves, and trademarked it. In reality, it’s just a piece of quartz embedded in some plastic, and the only thing it will accumulate is strange looks when you tell everyone how their sexual libido energy is coursing through you.
Polywater
Some time around the early 1960s, Soviet physicist Nikolai Fedyakin was carrying out experiments on tiny amounts of water that had been repeatedly forced through narrow quartz capillary tubes. His measurements showed this water had a higher boiling point, lower freezing point, and much higher viscosity than ordinary water. As news of his research spread, his experiments were soon replicated with varying success around the world, with only very small amounts ever beig produced. The new substance was termed ‘polywater‘. Excitement and speculation surrounded the discovery, with some people suggesting polywater could be responsible for the increasing resistance of the trans-atlantic phone cables.
However, when Denis Rousseau of Bell Labs measured the properties of his own sweat after a rigorous game of handball, he found it to be identical to those of polywater. He published his findings, suggesting that polywater was nothing more than normal water contaminated with biological impurities. When researchers attempted to create polywater under even tighter controls to eliminate contamination, they found nothing but water. Polywater dropped off the radar almost overnight, and today remains a byword for pathological science.
N rays
Another example of pathological science, but this time over a electromagnetic wave rather than a physical substance, is the “discovery” of N-rays. Toward the end of the 19th century, rays and waves were the exciting forefront of science. Röntgen had discovered the medical usefulness of X rays in 1895, whilst the Curies were doing important research into the properites of radioactive substances. France desperately wanted its own home-grown hero of this new science and a man named René-Prosper Blondlot briefly filled that gap. He was convinced that a change in the brightness of a spark crossing a spark gap was due to a novel form of radiation he named N rays, after the University of Nancy at which he worked. Other reasearchers however, could not replicate his experiments.
After himself failing to replicate the phenomenon, US physicist and renowned debunker Robert W. Wood travelled to France to see Blondlot’s setup. Hidden in the requisite darkness of the experiment, Wood secretly removed an essential prism from the apparatus, and switched a large file for a piece of wood. Nevertheless, Blondlot and his team were able to ’see’ the spark. Wood reported his findings in the journal Nature, stating that N rays were a purely subjective phenomenon. Although belief in N rays endured for some time in France, the rest of the world soon forgot them.
Carmot / Alkahest
As the principle element of the mythical Philosopher’s Stone, carmot was all things to all men. The 8th-century Arab alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan had categorised each metal in terms of the four basic qualities of hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness. Clearly one metal could be turned into another by rearranging these four basic qualities. A substance that could engineer this change came to be known as al-iksir in Arabic (from which the term elixir is derived) – or in other words, the Philosopher’s Stone. 16th-century Swiss alchemist Philippus Paracelsus posited that all classical elements were derived from one master element, which he named alkahest, which could similarly transform other metals. Despite a huge amount of effort over hundreds of years, nothing even approaching this fantastic substance was ever discovered or synthesised. However, a great many useful substances were, and the foundations for modern chemistry were laid in the process.
Red Mercury
Perhaps the strangest of all non-existent materials, Red Mercury was originally a little-known about material used by Soviet scientists in the creation of nuclear weapons. In the absence of any anchor to reality, Red Mercury became anything that a buyer wanted it to be as hoaxers began selling the mysterious substance on the black market. An article in New Scientist covering a report from the Los Alamos National Laboratory had this to say: “You want a short cut to making an atom bomb? You want the key to Soviet ballistic missile guidance systems? Or perhaps you want the Russian alternative to the anti-radar paint on the stealth bomber? What you need is red mercury.”
Even more bizarrely Dominic Martins, Roque Fernandes and Abdurahman Kanyare were arrested by UK police in a sting operation in 2004, after attempting to buy a kilo of Red Mercury for £300,000. After a lengthy trial all three were acquitted, probably under the reasoning that if Red Mercury didn’t exist, it couldn’t be illegal to buy it. This begs the question: which is stupider, trying to buy a fictitious weapons material, or arresting someone for trying to buy a fictitious weapons material?
Some people still think Red Mercury exists, but no-one seems to be able to agree on what exactly it is: an element, a code-name for nuclear fuel, a landmine additive, or simply the collected fears and suspicions of those living in a nuclear world?
September 21st, 2008
