drexelmed: August 2005

drexelmed

I seem to be on a theme of technologically enhanced critters recently so here's a story about a hamster powered cell phone. I leave it to you to envision the national security issues.

Mutant jellyfish invade Nuke plant, wreak havok. - seriously.

Baltimore Tales: Abnormal Jellyfish Shut Down Nuclear Reactor

Don't miss my brothers article on the new threat of jellyfish to national security. Apparently a species of jellyfish that had previously been found to actually slow or stop ships in the Baltic Sea is now being attracted to Swedish nuclear power plants and is actually shutting them down. No word on whether this is due to space based genetic engineering... but then, there wouldn't be, would there?

We all think that Annie is very fetching.

Loewinger Pictures

I'm seeing how the "Blog this" function works. I don't understand it at all, yet.

Not so relaxing with my faithful dog.
PhillyMikec73e

Relaxing with my faithful dog.
PhillyMikec73e

c6 corvette

I saW It at the pizza place.

Vioxx Verdict

I just read about the Vioxx verdict. It's so horribly unjust and destructive I don't even want to talk about it. Here's a link to Jane Galt who goes into more depth. One thing that she doesn't mention, though is that the FDA is now reccomending that Vioxx be put back on the market. I'm sure Merck will be eager to do so now that it has already sufferred $229 million in punitive damages already for putting it on the market in the first place and stands to lose billions more. I've pretty much lost faith in the jury system to handle any case that's even slightly complicated in a fair and just manner. For that matter I'm not sure that it handles simple cases right. ughh.

More space fun.

Professional columnist Lenore Skenazy is now copying my post on NASA's ridiculous science projects. But she got a list of absurd projects that actual rocket scientists invented, instead of farming them out to 6th graders. And as you would expect their projects are slightly less asinine, involving sending up spiders, slime molds and snail embryos. Now, I can vaguely imagine that the first two might create some mildly different web or growth patterns, which would be interesting to to, oh say... at least 10 Phd.s in the world, but snail embryos? Why? What did they think would happen? Just think, even if you did create a giant mutant snail, by the time it gets to Taiwan, China's mutant pigs will already have eaten everything in sight, taken a mud bath and been gone for a week. Next time send up Rottweiler embryo's. mmm... bacon.

For purpose of comparison Here is a...

Snail Embryo

Mutant Snail invading China.
Note how it is larger and lighter colored than
a normal V. intertextus.

a rottweiler.

Annie enjoys riding in the car.
PhillyMikec73e

If you get high enough, rainbows are full circles. [sigh] No pot of gold for me.
PhillyMikec73e

Dredging Pipe
PhillyMikec73e

Sea floor
PhillyMikec73e

We've all got days like this.
PhillyMikec73e

shedding his skin.
PhillyMikec73e

PhillyMikec73e

Beetle
PhillyMikec73e

PhillyMikec73e

ooh lizards.
PhillyMikec73e

PhillyMikec73e

More wedding sunsets.
PhillyMikec73e

Wedding sunset.
PhillyMikec73e

Oooh. Fire.
PhillyMikec73e

Impressionist or poorly focused? We post. You decide.
PhillyMikec73e

Dredger
PhillyMikec73e

PhillyMikec73e

Moon and palm tree
PhillyMikec73e

L' cafe europeane

They had a video menu outside.

Chinese space pork 2

Having some time to think about it, I'm even more angry about NASA's "send junk into space" program. I said before that NASA obviously couldn't think of anything more important to do with their shuttle space, but I can. If nothing else, you could sned up modern electronics and instrumetns and whatnot that might be used on a future rocket and see how they handle space. It would be better than a bunch of junk from middle schoolers. Seriously, I wouldn't do those experiments if they were free. marbles into space? In a fair world that should get last place in any middle school science fair. Its really the worst, most inane science fair project I've ever heard of. (and the costliest in lives and money).

Well I think that covers it for space rants. We'll now be returning to your normal non-angry blogging.

Chinese Space Pork

Some pundits are horrible worried that China is getting ahead of us in the manned space race especially since the Columbia disaster. However, even if they ever do build more manned ships than us it seems that they can't think of anything worthwhile to do with them either. Case in point this telegraph article which explains how they are sending plants and anmials -in this case pig sperm- into space to see if being exposed to space makes them grow better or something. Of course I'm completely in favor of irradiating plants and picking off the good mutations, but its probably at least 1000 times cheaper to do it on the ground. Unless you think radiation magically changes its properties in space. Of course since we have a much more mature and sophisticated program we send much more useless stuff into space including pine seeds, soil samples, chalk, marbles, gum, gum/taffy, iron filings, small magnets, candles, crayons, film, yeast, a watch, viruses, meal worms and of course my favorite "urine filtered water mixed with paint dyes". This is all from NASA's own web site. They're actually proud of it. Apparrently these particular projects are supposed to help teach a dozen or so classes about the scientific method, except instead of costing thousands of dollars to hire teachers it will cost millions of dollars to hire teachers and fly junk into space. I know I certainly couldn't think of a better way to improve education if I had millions of dollars to spend.
Of course in a way its not really costing any money since NASA was going to send up the shuttle no matter what and they really don't have anything better to do than send gum into space to see if it becomes super gum. In case you're dying to know what the results are: all of the inert substances didn't change at all and the biological materials had a bunch of mutuations, most of them deletorious. I didn't look that up. It's just that I have a high school education so I'm able to predict these kinds of things. Personally what I'm really curious about is what anybody hypothesized exposure to space would do to chalk, marbles or crayons. Aaaarghh. And people died for this. And probably will again. I can't stand it.