Eric found this Greenpeace animation, which tries to demonstrate trash accumulation in the North Pacific Gyre. It’s really pretty - too bad the oceanography is entirely wrong. Why is the California Current sweeping through the Central Valley? (Does this mean LA has finally been swept out to sea?) The Alaska Current is not actually over the land of Alaska. And there’s an entirely novel gyre over by Japan - the Kuroshio Current has run away to Kamchatka. Compare:
Still of very very wrong Greenpeace animation:
Actual correct currents (courtesy Ocean Motion):
Oh, Greenpeace - I kind of love your costumes and your earnestness and your enthusiasm. I’m glad you’re out there lobbying and protesting. But Greenpeace, when you’re writing about the North Pacific Gyre you can’t just put the ocean currents every which way. Having the Kuroshio (the Gulf Stream of the Pacific) going the wrong way is particularly harmful to your goal, since it is the Kuroshio that brings plastics from Asia into the gyre. And when your incorrect figure is the second google hit for “North Pacific Gyre Map” - well, that’s way more embarrassing than being the guy in the whale suit.
Miriam is so swamped with work she has to look up to see the lilly pads, and I’m off at a work-related conference. So even though each of the following recent technological advances or scientific discoveries are probably worth a humorous sonnet or two, I’ll just rattle them off in round-up form:
• Scientists at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the U.S. Army have developed tiny little cancer-seeking nanobombs. If they work right, these little babies would essentially swim up to cancer sells and blow up, launching particles at 1500 - 2,300 meters per second. But since they’re nano, the wouldn’t have much force (F=ma). Really putting our faith in these guys with this one, right? ETA: two to five years. [via Engadget]
• Men, try to imagine this: a remote control sperm flow regulator. Researchers at the University of Adelaide have developed a tiny little switch that would go inside the vas deferens and act as a gate to keep the little swimmers from escaping. The theory is it provides men a “grace period” to decide if they really wanted that vasectomy (They need to be considering a vasectomy anyway, because the gate sometimes get jammed shut). To prevent a guy’s gate from getting switched by, say, the microwave, the gate would only respond to a specific code, like a car key does. I also want to know how they remember if the switch is open or shut. I mean, what if you double click the remote by mistake, but don’t realize it? Or worse, what if your kid gets a hold of it? Or your fraternity siblings? <Shudder> ETA: 5-10 years.
• The latest attempt at an electric car, the Tesla, has been exempted by the feds from rules requiring advanced technology airbags. I love the notion of electric cars, but hey guys, safety first, eh? ETA: this year. [Also via Engadget]
• Engineers can code DNA to build tiny crystal structures on their own. Which means the Diamond Age isn’t so far off after all. ETA: Unknown.
Posted by Eric Wolff under
Critters [5] Comments
Look what I found in the spam filter. Oceana, an ocean conservation nonprofit, has been posting that exact same comment, word-for-word, all around the blogosphere. Check out this google search. On the heels of the poorly received “edgy” Stinky Fish campaign from World Wildlife Fund (Blogfish has the story: 1, 2), is Oceana engaging in cutting-edge Web 2.0 marketing or are they dirty, dirty spammers?
I’m leaning towards dirty spammers, myself. The amount of self-promotion in that comment leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Also, virtuous though the cause may be, I think Oceana is setting a dreadful precedent. If the amount of paper mail I get from environmental non-profits is any indication, they are world-class address-sellers & spammers - I can only imagine the sheer quantity of comment spam that would spew out if they decide that this is the way to reach people. In my opinion, comment spam is NOT the best way to reach blog readers, but it is the best way to alienate sympathetic bloggers, many of whom are conservation’s most vocal allies.
I was in Whole Foods Market the other day, perusing the macaroni & cheese options (Does anyone else take a perverse pleasure in buying a purely fake foodstuff from Whole Foods?) when the urge to consume chocolate ice cream with whipped cream overtook me with the force of an off-shore hurricane. I hurried to the freezer aisle, where lo and behold, a new brand of ice cream appeared before me: Green & Black’s Organic. Look at that packaging! So dark and mysterious! It just screams chocolate decadence. Plus, hey, organic. And only $.30 more than Häagen-Dazs. Organic is worth 30 cents, right? But a little voice in my head whispered to me in a sibilant Spanish accent, “This word ‘organic’. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Obeying voices in my head isn’t usually good policy, but this one seemed harmless enough, so I perused the ingredient list. Here it is:
Organic Whole Milk, Organic Whipping Cream (18%), Organic Sugar, Organic Dark Chocolate (12%) (Organic Cocoa Mass, Organic Sugar, Organic Cocoa Powder, Emulsifier: Soya Lecithin, Organic Vanilla Extract. Minimum Cocoa solids 60%), Organic Skimmed Milk Powder, Organic Cocoa Powder, Stabilisers (Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum, Locust Bean Gum).
Hmm. Guar Gum? Soya Lecithin? Are those food items? And what about Xanthan Gum? They all sound suspicious. So, I perused good old New Jersey-based Häagen-Dazs. Here’s the ingredient list:
Ingredients: Cream, Skim Milk, Sugar, Egg Yolks, Cocoa Processed with Alkali.
There’s a kind of poetry there, don’t you think? I know what all those things are (”Cocoa processed with alkali” is dutched chocolate.), and I’m happy to eat them. And so, with some rum-flavored whipped cream, I did.
I was never in a science fair as a kid (my school didn’t offer them), but I love the idea. Volcanoes! Houseplants cruelly twisted towards the light! But the kids should have a vague idea of the scientific method and of proper research protocol, like anonymity. Oh, yeah - and a project based on asking adults about their abortions and porn consumption is not the best idea for Family Night.
This project breaks those wacky rules. The hypothesis is “Do unchristians make less moral choices than Christians?” and it’s based on a 20-question survey. (Best of all, in the science fair, respondents were not anonymous! ) If you get less than 15, you are immoral. A selection of the most amazingly terrible questions:
2. Have you ever killed another human being?
4. Have you ever had relations before marriage?
9. Do you listen to rap or heavy metal music?
10. Have you ever had an abortion or been pro-choice?
11. Have you ever read Harry Potter or Spiderwick Chronicles or the Golden Compass?
15. Are you overweight because you eat too much?
18. Do you view pornography?
I got a mightily immoral 3 2 - I’ve never murdered anyone, I give to charity, and what extra poundage I’ve got is definitely from eating too much buttery, delicious food. [Ed: Ooops, read that backwards. I don't get a point for eating too much. I'm even more immoral than I thought!] Poor student - nobody s/he asked got more than a 15. What a fallen world we live in.
Via Pharyngula
Apparently coyotes have been sighted in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The city animal commission’s response is entitled “Coyotes in the City - a time for Precaution not Panic.” Which I immediately read as DON’T PANIC! written in large friendly letters. Good advice, at least until the coyotes start reading horrific poetry to the wild turkeys.
(Via most excellent Martini-Corona)
Jack Shafer over at Slate likes to snark at the New York Times, but this time he’s out of his league. Shafer claims that the NYT story on mercury levels in sushi was “scaremongering,” and that studies on seafood consumption in Chile, the Seychelles, and Samoa proved that there is no such thing as mercury poisoning.
Pity Shafer’s Biology 101 teacher, since he clearly missed the bit about the food chain. All fish are not created equal. Methylmercury (the toxic form of mercury) reaches the ocean from the atmosphere, usually via coal fumes, and is incorporated into phytoplankton. Each step up the food chain indirectly incorporates more phytoplankton, and thus more mercury. So zooplankton-eating fish (like sardines) have far less mercury than fish-eating fish (like tuna or swordfish).
The NYT article dealt specifically with bluefin tuna, a top predator in the relatively polluted Mediterranean and North Atlantic. People in Chile, the Seychelles, and Samoa aren’t gorging themselves on bluefin tuna, not when a single fish sells for $45,000. They probably aren’t eating many other top predators on a daily basis, not when Chile’s anchovy fishery is the most productive in the world, and the Seychelles & Samoan islands teem with coastal reef fish.
However, there are people who eat a lot of top marine predators - the Inuit and other Arctic native peoples. Their diet of seals and whales is trophically comparable to tuna, and they are suffering severe health effects from mercury and PCBs. I’m all for Shafer keeping a sharp eye on the NYT, but ignorant criticism without even a perfunctory grasp of the biology (he doesn’t even mention that bluefin tuna are critically overfished!) does not help either people or tuna.
Posted by Eric Wolff under
Star Trekkin' [3] Comments
Virgin Galactic has unveiled the space craft they hope will be the first to regularly carry tourists up to space. Well, up to a suborbital altitude and come down. The new craft, cleverly named Spaceship Two, will be carried part way up by a four-engine jet called White Knight Two. Reserving one of the six passenger seats cost $200,000, but you can put your deposit down now for the first flights expected to start in 2009.
I should be more excited about this than I am, but I can’t help but feel … well .. it’s only suborbital. Is that really space? Let me know when they start giving us orbits around the earth. Then I’ll be psyched.
