Tag Archives: science

Facebook Fear Factor: Cake and Pancake Mixes

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What the warning (incorrectly) says: When they get old cake mixes grow spores that can kill you, which is why it’s so important to throw out your expired cake mix — it is toxic.

What the warning leaves out: Cake mix does not develop spores over time, but cake mix that isn’t sealed (like lots of other things left unsealed) can get moldy if exposed to mold spores. People who are allergic to mold can have serious reactions in the presence of mold. But old cake mix is itself not toxic.

Very important thing: If you are allergic to mold, you can have a severe reaction to eating anything with mold in it. And if you do not seal your cake mix, your cake mix can get mold in it.

Therefore, if you’re allergic to mold, you should take precautions and make sure your cake mix doesn’t get mold in it. Usually it comes in a sealed plastic bag anyway. Pancake mix might be a bit trickier–maybe mold-sensitive people could put it in a sealable plastic or glass canister immediately, or simply buy small packages and make and eat it quickly.

More information: Snopes.com.

Scare Tactics on Facebook: BVO

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Lately it seems like Facebook is trying to scare us all to death with ominous warnings about brominated vegetable oil, deadly cake mix, killer brown recluse spiders and child-abducting men in silver cars, or cops who beat up civilians and might get their jobs back.

Then there’s the “fun facts” type posts about the main ingredients of WD-40.

The problem? All the stories about these things are only partially true at best. Each one leaves out vital pieces of information or includes vast swathes of incorrect information.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t repost information when you get it or when you see it on Facebook, but please take the 30 seconds it requires to check it out on snopes.com or otherwise verify it.

Don’t add to the vast array of bad “information” out there. Don’t help make the world a little more ignorant. It only takes a moment to determine some of these things are not accurate.

Brominated Vegetable Oil

What the warning says: I’ve seen two warnings about this substance, which is found in Mountain Dew. One of them attempted to terrify people by asking “Do you feed your children flame retardants?” To which the answer is, of course, “Yes,” because water is a very effective flame retardant, and it is required to keep the human body functioning.

The other warning calls BVO a “poisonous, corrosive chemical.” The same can just as accurately be said about water: it can act as a poison in large enough quantities and its corrosive action is easy to see if you leave an iron object in the water for a while. And of course, everything is made out of chemicals, from good old H20 (water) to the oxygen we breathe, O2. (Oh, and that oxygen is explosive, by the way.)

What the warning leaves out: No studies have shown serious health issues caused by moderate consumption of beverages containing BVO at the concentrations typically used in those products.

That said: there have indeed been cases in which people have suffered ill effects from BVO in soft drinks, so there’s a grain of truth in the fear-mongering. However, those people were drinking 2-8 liters of soda in a day.

Dose makes the poison, and there are no toxic substances, only toxic doses. In sufficient amounts, water is a poison too, and excessive amounts of vitamin D can be very harmful. And drinking 2-8 liters of soda in a day is probably not a good idea anyway, BVO or no BVO. Caution and moderation is definitely called for; pouring out all your Mountain Dew really isn’t.

More information: snopes.com, wikipedia.org

Hovercrafts, Children and Other Magic Science

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Had I realized I would be explaining the inner workings of a hovercraft to a classroom of adorable first-graders at Gussner Elementary School here in Jamestown, I would have prepared a little bit more.

As it was, I did the best I could to answer all the questions they had, both before I started reading to them and after I had finished.

I have one of my colleagues to thank, or possibly blame — he told me about the Master Reader program here, in which community members visit elementary schools and read to children. Before you read the book selected for you and your class, you tell them your name, and a little bit about what you do.

My colleague usually talks about all the famous people he’s met. I go a different route and tell them all the cool things I’ve gotten to do as a reporter. I’ve had my nails done. I’ve ridden on a hovercraft. I’ve been in the nose of a World War II-era bomber. And I’ve even been (accidentally) shot at (by a ricochet at a gun tournament, and the bullet landed about 5 feet away from me).

In this case, they had all sorts of questions about the hovercraft, some of which I could answer and others of which I had to admit I didn’t know. I told them about how hovercrafts work–the fan and the noise, and how you can go on water, land or ice with a hovercraft.

After I read them a Little Red Riding Hood story that featured a tiger instead of a wolf, they had quite a few comments on that, too. One kid told me he’d hide a knife so that when the tiger swallowed him he’d be able to cut his way out. I tried to tactfully point out that normally tigers chew when they eat, and that maybe this was a magical tiger, and that’s why the little girl in the story was still okay after she’d been eaten by the tiger.

In retrospect, I should have told them that they would make good reporters. They sure did ask a lot of good questions!

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

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It’s Ada Lovelace Day, a good day to celebrate women in technology careers!

If you don’t know who Ada Lovelace is, check out this wonderful Science Chicks blog post.

She was the first computer programmer. Not the first woman programmer, the first programmer, and she did it without having a computer to program anything on. She wrote for Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which was still theoretical.

Incidentally, until I started keeping an eye on Science Chicks, I had no idea there were so many women scientists throughout history.

I wish they’d been in the curriculum when I was in school; I might have ended up in quite a different field altogether, or at least, I might have a stronger science journalism background now.

Ah, Science: Redheads, Booze, Booms and Shots

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My list of interesting links has once again swollen to monstrous proportions, so much so that my whole computer is threatening to just lie down and cry.

Instead of playing a game of Klingon Monopoly to determine what happens next, I’ll just do the responsible thing and share the links with you folks.

Poison, History, Health

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I’ve collected a fair few items about history, and I never seem to really have a good place for them anymore, now that Reprint is done.

  • Everybody’s heard of Florence Nightingale, but there was another very famous nurse operating at the time, during the same war (the Crimean War)–Mary Seacole. At one point Nightingale accused her of operating a brothel, apparently.
  • Ever heard of Devon colic? No? That’s because it no longer exists. The ailment was oddly localized, and turned out to be yet another incidence of lead poisoning. Incidentally, lead acetate has a nice sweet taste and used to be used as a sugar substitute. Unfortunately, it’s toxic.
  • BoingBoing drew my attention to this marvellous article about islands of exile–you know, such as St. Helena, where Napoleon was imprisoned. My immediate thought was: What about Pandataria? It was the high-profile island prison of its day, and housed at least five very high-profile Roman noblewomen, including the daughter of Augustus, who was exiled there for adultery.
  • Photoshop makes all sorts of photo trickery easy, but people have been editing pictures for an awfully long time. Witness the picture of John Calhoun with President Lincoln’s head attached, and many more! (via BoingBoing)
  • Icepick lobotomies, deliberately giving people syphilis and then not treating it and poisoning fishermen with radiation — science has had many, many dark and horrible experiments in its history. Columnist John Horgan lines up a few of the ghastliest, although he’s not touching on Mengele’s “science” (most of which was probably just thinly-disguised sadism rather than any attempt to learn at anything, I gather).
  • Doping athletes also has a long history, although for a very long time it was apparently not considered cheating. I had no idea.
  • Finally, Dixie cups were touted as a measure to stop the spread of disease. And they are pretty cool. (via BoingBoing)

When I Am A Parent…

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I’m not expecting a child anytime in the near future, but my colleague and his wife are. I suggested he write a list of things of things he will or will not do when he is a parent, but then I thought: Hey, I could do that too!

So.

When I am a parent…

1. I will not use my child as a hood ornament.
a. Even if he or she likes it.
b. Especially if he or she likes it.

2. I will not enroll my child in a baby-fighting tournament, with cutthroat, winner-take-all competitions in events such as Smelliest Diaper, Shrillest Scream and Fastest Creeping, or even High-Volume Drooling.
a. Baby beauty pageants are also out.

3. I will not use my child as a basketball.
a. I will also not paint my pregnant belly like a basketball and attempt to dribble myself. It’s just awkward.

4. I will not tell my child I bartered away six radishes in exchange for him or her at an open-air market in Bangladesh and then tried to return him or her because he or she was only worth five radishes. That is what siblings are for.

5. I will not embarrass my child by suddenly becoming a nerd when he or she hits the teenage years. I will be pre-nerdy for my child’s convenience, so nothing will change whatsoever.

6. I will sing to my child, but only if he or she turns out to be as tone-deaf as I am. Otherwise singing would fall under cruelty to children statutes and would not be permissible.

7. I will not steal my child’s toys and play with them myself. Instead I will share my child’s toys with my child. Sometimes. If my child asks nicely (or offers bribes).

8. I will most certainly not feed my child to a dragon.
a. Unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

9. I will not allow my child to attempt to sled down the steps in a cardboard box. It never works. Instead, I will instill in my child a more adequate understanding of physics such that he or she knows a toboggan or, failing that, a sibling, would work better.

10. I will attempt to teach my child science. I will, however, discourage mad science, as it tends to be hard on the Tesla coils.

There are Donut Cops?

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There are donut cops. This is a thing which actually exists. Had I realized this earlier on in my life, I may have chosen a different career track, although I’m not sure my blood pressure would’ve thanked me for it.

I have a wide assortment of other links that may or may not be of interest:

  • Logan Adams, of “It’s Good to Be in N.D.” has posted after a long hiatus. Hurray!
  • Dull and Boring are together at last, as sister communities. I’ve always thought it would be awkward to live in a town with a weird name, although being able to say “I’ll see you in Hell!” in a chipper, friendly voice would be kind of funny.
  • “The Hunger Games,” which is a great book, and its sequels feature four of the top five highlighted passages in books on Kindle, as well as eight of the top ten. The other two in the top ten are from Jane Austen. All ten of them were written, in other words, by women.
  • A mom-science-blogger calls TLC out on some vaccine-related silliness. TLC asked “why shouldn’t we vaccinate our children” as if doing so were a bad thing. Vaccinating is not a bad thing, there is no link between vaccines and autism and the paper that claimed there was was not only false, but deliberately fraudulent.
  • How do you feel about nounjectives, adjectives that become nouns? The good, the bad, the ugly and the like? Apparently some people have very strong negative feelings about them. I quite enjoy using the term “awesome” as a noun, personally.
  • Men can have sympathetic pregnancies. It’s called “couvade syndrome,” and it sounds pretty uncomfortable, although not as uncomfortable as actually having all your internal organs jammed up into your chest cavity to make room for a bonus human.

Alarming Trends, and Mr. Rogers

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I never watched much children’s television as a child. At a young age I considered myself too old for a lot of TV shows, such as Sesame Street, because it seemed to be trying to teach me letters and numbers when I could already read and count. And books were far more interesting than television, too.

It occurs to me now I may have missed something good. Mr. Rogers, at least, seemed to be a pretty cool guy. Now someone has remixed some pieces of his show, added autotune, and made a wonderful little song about growing ideas in the “garden of your mind.”

I’m not big on video, but I do have another short clip–a very alarming video of a person wandering up to a volcano to take samples of the bubbling lava lake. This volcanologist survives the experience, but I have to wonder, isn’t this the sort of thing that is obviously stupid? It seems like a Louis Slotin waiting to happen, frankly.

Do we need to put up a sign that says “Do not taunt happy fun volcano”?

And some more links:

  • Here are some more reactions to the “MEN invented the internet” piece.
  • People will kill each other over just about anything, including, apparently, ice cream. The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars were a real thing.
  • The same things people say about those terrible video games is the same thing they used to say about those terrible television programs, those terrible movies, and those terrible books. We all know this, but sometimes it helps to have a reminder.
  • Video games have a peculiar way of telling you a task is urgent and then diverting you away from it with other tasks called “side quests.” While this is typical of a modern work day, when you’re an adventurer tasked with saving the world, it seems a bit weird. Play this tiny, five-minute game. You won’t regret it. (via BoingBoing)

Not Getting Away With Murder

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Swimming Platypus (Photographer Peter Scheunis)

Swimming Platypus (Photographer Peter Scheunis)

Nicotine is well-known for being the addictive ingredient in cigarettes, which will kill you, but it’s also a very potent poison on its own, with a long and lethal history.

Wired magazine’s Elemental blog tells the tale of the 1850 high-society murder that prompted an enterprising chemist to learn how to detect the signs of nicotine poisoning in a murdered victim.

Lest you think the notes on nicotine are a mere historical footnote, this is not the case. There have been a few recent incidents.

Elemental’s nicotine post is part of a series in which bloggers write about their favorite toxic chemicals. Here’s BoingBoing’s list of them, in case they drop off the front page of ScienceGeist, the blog that lists them.

Yes, some people have favorite toxic chemicals. My personal favorite happens to be whatever’s in the moth-murdering homicidal death spray that’s keeping the moths from taking over my house.

Incidentally, people are complaining about the way people use the word “poisonous” again, and are pointing out that they usually mean venomous.

I’m a little on the fence about this. Although allowing the words to continue to have two separate meanings might be useful–for greater specificity and clarity of meaning–do we really want to give preference to dictionaries to determine a word’s meaning over the word’s actual common usage? When does misuse become legitimate use?

There are still people complaining that “ain’t” isn’t a legitimate word, when it’s been around for more than two hundred years.

And does anyone really think “Well I’d better not eat that platypus, then” when they hear the critters are “poisonous” rather than being correctly described as “venomous”?