Hidey ho, neighbors, and welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Science Whatever. We have some neato keen science stories for you this week, along with some extra bits, because hey… I love you people.
Though honestly, I wish I could just share all the awesome science I learned about Thorium reactors and how the universe is accelerating last week at Vcon, the local science fiction nerdfest that I so dearly love.
But alas, whatever I learned has passed below the horizon of my consciousness now. It’s still in there somewhere, but it will only come out when it feels like it.
Anyhow, on with the science.
One From The Vaults
First off, we have a very cool piece of science history from our friends (and main source of science articles) Popular Science.
In honor of the recent American Presidential debate, Pop Sci went way back in time via their back issues and brought up this gem about how Pop Sci felt the advent of radio would change Presidential debates.
I adore that kind of thing. I love that feeling that you are traveling back in time and looking into how people thought and felt and saw the world in a different era. Pop Sci can do this kind of thing because, like National Geographic, they have been around for well over a century.
The article in question is almost heartbreaking in its optimistic naivete, though. Especially this point :
2. “Compel facts and reasoning instead of oratorical flag-waving.” “Speech making … will have to be unemotional, tightly reasoned, simple and direct in wording. Talking directly to a family at home, unaffected by the ballyhoo of the mass meeting, the candidate [will have to] appeal on his merits or not at all.”
Oh, if only, Pop Sci of the year 1928. If only.
The Wi Fi Inside Of You
Next up, an article sent to me by faithful correspondent, peerless beauty, and all around awesome human being Felicity Walker, about scientists installing a Wi Fi network in your body.
That probably requires some explanation. The basic idea is that scientists have modified a relatively harmless virus called M13 and harnessed its DNA messaging capabilities in order to create a basis for genetically engineered viruses that can communicate with each other in highly sophisticated way.
This would open the door to creating disease hunting viruses and other organisms that could coordinate their attacks on things like cancerous cells or antibiotic resist diseases, and thus pack a mighty wallop with relatively few cells.
Being somewhat of a whimsical fellow, this makes me imagine tiny Black Ops type soldiers with even tinier walkie talkies, exchanging terse signals to each other as they hunt down cancerous cells before they can find a nice home in your pancreas and metastasize.
The scientists have, rather charmingly, nicknamed this biological networking “Bi Fi”, which also happens to be the battle cry of bisexual Marines.
OK, not really, but could you imagine?
So thanks for the story, Felicity. Feel free to send more. And that goes for all of you!
Paper Versus Air
Our next item is one for people who, like me, have given far too much thought to this particular issue.
The issue is this : what gets your hands cleaner after washing, paper towels, or hot air hand dryers? What is the more hygenic solution?
And according to this study, it is definitely the paper towels.
Which is great, because honestly, that is what I have always suspected. Hot air does a much worse job of actually getting your hands dry, and wet skin is a much better bacterial medium than dry skin, so just on that basis I would think paper towels do a better job.
Also, the evidence is piling up that the only truly effective way to get germs off your skin is to rub them off somehow. All these touch-free innovations in public bathrooms certainly appeal to the touch paranoia inherent in various forms of “germphobia”, and I am all for toilets that flush themselves. That is a technology which works, and I am glad when I do not need to touch a toilet handle which has been touched by many others right after they have done the dirtiest thing any of us does in a day.
I don’t even have anything against the idea of the no-touch faucet, although in practice, it causes a hell of a lot of irritation as people try to find that “magic spot” that makes the damn water come out. I suspect that to make one that worked right for everyone, it would have to be three feet tall or something.
But once we have entered the drying phase, I want paper towels. Even really crappy low quality unbleached scratchy butcher’s paper type paper towels are better than hot air hand dryers. The hot air ones have been around since the Fifties, and as far as I can tell, have never ever actually worked.
They are a failed technology. We now have the science to prove it. They get your hands dryer, but they do not actually get them dry. Plus, drying your hands with them does not give you the second stage of scrubbing that towel drying does, and therefore is hygienically inferior.
Sadly, though, the no touch public bathroom trend seems likely to continue for the time being at least, and that means more air dryers. People will not be happy until you can use a public bathroom without coming into contact with any surface.
I assume this will involve some sort of levitation.
How Time Travel Works
Finally, we will finish off today’s science with a little science fiction treat.
It’s a great video essay which brings together all kinds of clips from various time travel movies and weaves them together into a fun trip through time via video nostalgia.
Well that’s it for this week, science fans. Nothing really huge to report, but then again, I was away from the computer for a weekend and probably missed a lot of stuff.
See you next week!