Archive for the ‘science’ Category

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Adventures in TV repair

22 Jul 2008

Came home the other night to find the TV on and the house unusually warm. Suspected burglary, but nothing seemed to be missing. Figured the TV had caught a random cosmic ray and switched itself on, and it puts out a fair amount of heat.

Things got weirder on Sunday night. TV kept turning the volume up to 100 by itself. Suspected poltergeist with hearing difficulties.

Process of elimination: remove batteries from remote - still happening. Cover infrared port on TV, in case of random radiation source in the room - seemed to work at first, then didn’t. Twiddle with buttons in case one of them got stuck - non-sticky electronic buttons don’t appear to get stuck or to be capable of unsticking.

Evaluate options: take TV to repair shop, stop watching TV, dismantle TV and poke around the insides, call exorcist. TV is weird LCD thing from Chinese manufacturer nobody’s ever heard of, Konka. Possibly similar to Sorny or Magnetbox.

Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it.

Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it.

Likelihood of parts availability: minimal. TV addiction too entrenched to consider breaking on a Sunday night before work. Don’t believe in ghosts.

Leaving option 3.

Unplug all cables from TV, lie it flat on dining table, unscrew 25 screws, remove back cover. As expected, button assembly is a discrete component connected to the rest of the TV with a small ribbon cable. Twiddle with ribbon cable connector, appears sound. Unscrew button assembly from frame, pull away from TV with loud glue-unsticking noises. Muck around with button area, twiddle with two additional ribbon cable connectors. Stick button assembly back in place, screw back into frame, twiddle with connectors again. Replace cover, screw in 25 screws, connect power cable to TV. Volume levels remain at preset level.

Plug cables back into TV, realise I’ve missed Dr Who. Watch 5 minutes of Foyle’s War before deciding I’m not in the mood for twee period drama, and besides, Honeysuckle Weeks has a weird name. Read book, retire to bed early.

Posted in nerds, science, techno-wankery | 1 Comment »

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Smart-arse Jewish scientists explain how sarcasm works

3 Jun 2008

A team of neuropsychologists from Haifa University have worked out how the brain processes sarcasm.

Dr Simone Shamay-Tsoory said language areas on the left hand side of the brain interpret the literal meaning of words and the frontal lobes and the right side of the brain understand the social and emotional context. An area called the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex then integrates the literal meaning with the social/emotional context, which will reveal any sarcasm.

People who suffer from autism or have had one of those parts of their brains damaged have trouble interpreting sarcasm - they tend to understand the statement literally - because they don’t pick up the emotional context or can’t reconcile the context with the literal meaning.

(Image courtesy of BBC)

Perhaps these parts of the brain atrophy through disuse, or can be removed through selective breeding. Which might explain Americans.

Posted in filthy kike propaganda, nerds, science | 6 Comments »

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Eat shit and feel ill, celebrities

22 Feb 2008

Ordinarily, celebrity stories are meant to make us envious. Tales of glamorous, wealthy people dining on fine foods and quaffing bank-account-draining beverages supposedly make us see the futility and meaninglessness of our lumpen existences, which we seek to fill by purchasing the goods and services our celebrity heroes endorse.

The same must obviously be the case for news that guests at ‘actor’ Ashton Kutcher’s 30th birthday party may have been exposed to hepatitis A at swank West Village bar Socialista. Nothing says Cuban socialism like a $600 bottle of Moët & Chandon Dom Perignon Rosé, an $8 appetiser made of lettuce or a 20% surcharge added to parties of six or more.

Celebrity guests including Mrs Kutcher Demi Moore, Javier Bardem, Roberto Cavalli, Eric Dane (who?), Rebecca Gayheart (zuh?), Salma Hayek, Catherine Keener, Lucy Liu, Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ivanka Trump and Liv Tyler would no doubt be horrified to discover the most common method of hepatitis A infection is the faecal-oral route.

One can’t help but wonder what kind of cocktails they serve there.

Actually,  several hundred people who were not celebrities attended the same bar on the three nights the infected bartender was working, but who cares?

Upon reading this story, ordinary people will no doubt also wish they were inadvertently exposed to a virus that infects the liver, causing jaundice, fatigue, abdominal pain, loss of appetite,  nausea, diarrhoea and fever.

New York health authorities have warned said celebrities to get a vaccination quick smart. (It should be noted the health department warned the non-famous patrons as well.) Though to be honest, if they didn’t, you can’t imagine the world would be worse off. Shame hepatitis A is almost never fatal.

Posted in media, money, science | 1 Comment »

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Don’t try new things

14 Jan 2008

Visiting the inconvenience store near work the other day, I spied these interesting-looking snacks called Piranha Vege Crackers and thought I’d give them a try. They were nothing spectacular. Or so I thought.

The next day, I noticed a small news article noting that the manufacturer had recalled the chips because they contained “unusually high levels of naturally occurring compounds that could cause an adverse reaction”. I should be particularly worried if I was a small child or had eaten the product in moderate to large amounts.

I had only eaten one pack and am not a small child in most regards, and also I was still alive. So I wasn’t worried, except by the lack of information. The NSW Food Authority’s warning notice wasn’t any more helpful than the article. I emailed the Food Authority and they wrote back this afternoon.

This follows findings in a batch of exported vegetable crackers of higher than allowed legal levels of a naturally occurring cyanide compound in the ingredient cassava. Cyanogenic glycosides are naturally present in cassava (a tropical root crop) and can be converted to hydrogen cyanide when ingested, which can be harmful.  It is believed this ingredient is the likely source of the contamination. Symptoms of a mild reaction include dizziness, weakness, anxiety, a rapid pulse rate, nausea and vomiting and occur very shortly after eating.

And if you had a severe reaction? Queensland Health was more forthcoming:

“In severe cases mental confusion and twitching and convulsions,” Queensland Health population health senior director Linda Selvey told AAP.

“People who eat cassava prepare it in such a way that the compounds break down before you actually eat them and it would appear in this case that it hasn’t been prepared in such a way.”

Apparently washing it in water does the trick.

I always knew health food was bad for you, but this is ridiculous . . .

Posted in media, science | 1 Comment »

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Google outspends Australia 20:1 on renewable energy

29 Nov 2007

Earlier this week, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin pledged to spend “hundreds of millions”, in the long run, on renewable energy research and projects in an initiative called RE<C (renewable energy cheaper than coal) (nerds).

The project’s eventual aim is to build one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. This is enough to power “a city the size of San Francisco”. (Though not, it seems, the actual city of San Francisco. Perhaps a city the size of San Francisco in a poorer country without all the energy-hogging fat Westerners in it.)

Anyhoo, a laudable aim, for sure, even if some cynical media types have pointed out Google’s interest is not entirely philanthropic, given its reliance on vast datacentres chock full of electricity-sucking servers.

By contrast, former PM Howard, even in über-generous election fire-sale mode, could only manage $75 million for renewables.  And commie Big Kev’s $500 million might only equal Google’s investments. Just for comparison, Google earned US$10.6 billion in 2006 (around $12 billion Oz); the Australian government ‘earned’ $232 billion in 2006-07.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation puts Google spending about 20 times more, as a proportion of revenue, than the Australian federal government on renewable energy. That’s taking into account the generous pledges of the Labor federal government that just got elected on its green credentials.

Seems like if there’s to be any real action on global warming, it’s going to come from the people and the private sector - not wishy washy politicos . . . of any flavour.

Posted in damned lies and statistics, nerds, politics, science | 1 Comment »

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Taste with your earlobe

23 Apr 2007

Sorry for the dad joke, but I heard that awful song Listen with Your Heart on the radio in a cab yesterday and it occurred to me that technically speaking, you can’t listen with your heart any more than you can:

  • Taste with your earlobe
  • Do a poo with your elbow
  • Produce bile with your toenail
  • Transport oxygen from lungs to organs and muscles with your armpit
  • Synthesise glucose from amino acids, lactate or glycerol with your cerebellar flocculus.

Posted in music, nerds, science | 2 Comments »

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Pot calling the kettle a science fraud

11 Mar 2007

Erin Brockovich - the real one, not Julia Roberts - is in town at the invitation of the Climate Change Coalition to raise the profile of said party ahead of its run for the NSW upper house in the upcoming election.

But wait . . . isn’t there a party called, I dunno, The Greens or something that has a fairly strong platform on global warming and stuff? Ah, but it turns out the Greens have sold out to The Man. Or something.

And, having helped win a class-action suit against an energy company for poisoning the groundwater near a power station, Brockovich’s qualifications as a global warming spokesperson are . . . ? Oh, I see, energy companies cause global warming, Erin Brockovich hates energy companies . . . gotcha. Or as the great woman herself puts it:

I am absolutely convinced there is a link between environmental destruction and global warming . . . If mother Earth dies we all die. My purpose is to come to Australia and create greater awareness that individuals can make a difference.

OK, so convincing arguments may not be her thing, but that doesn’t excuse the Herald’s resident enviro-sceptic Michael Duffy for taking the opportunity to do a bit of Brockovich character assassination. He starts out by mentioning that Brockovich and her employers made a fair whack of moolah out of the class action suit against Pacific Gas and Electric, obviously implying her motive was profit, not a genuine concern for the cancer-riddled folks of Hinkley, California. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in damned lies and statistics, media, science | No Comments »

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No shit sherlock news #2

6 Mar 2007

Jewish people who don’t toe the line get called names by Colin Rubinstein, but the first person to mention Hitler or the Nazis always loses the argument. Sam Brett plugs a whole bunch of other people’s books to discover the shocking truth that women like foreplay, but remains oblivious to the fact that her readers are bloody morons. Young, overpaid, testosterone-filled boofhead gets charged with sexual assault. John Howard and co will do anything and say anything to get re-elected (as will Peter Debnam?), but it just might not work this time despite the wishful bleating of his cheer squad. Paul Keating is piss funny when he gets fired up. And yet another example where right-wing idiots play the man when they have no real argument, but by now they really should be ashamed of themselves.

Posted in filthy kike propaganda, media, politics, science, sport/boofheads | No Comments »

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Light entertainment

16 Feb 2007

The most entertaining thing I saw on TV last night was Malcolm Turnbull spending nearly 10 minutes avoiding the question of whether or not electricity prices would go up as a result of using “clean coal” technology, specifically carbon capture (transcript and video).

This was the closest he got to an answer:

Tony, once you get the technology working, once you know it works, then the cost will come down. You and I are old enough to remember when a desktop computer cost $15,000. Now you go and buy one for less than $2,000.

Riiiight . . . because a computer is pretty similar to an enormous vacuum cleaner-like thing that extracts carbon dioxide from burning coal, compresses it and buries it several kilometres underground in saline aquifers. (The obvious advantage of this being the companies that bottle mineral water won’t have to pay extra to put the bubbles in.) Of course the technology isn’t proven yet and may or may not work - just like a computer! But let’s assume, for the moment, it does.

We know politicians are never fond of bad news, but people in Australia and other western countries generally seem to be quite comfortable with the idea of paying more for electricity if it reduces greenhouse emissions and stuff, whatever that Al Gore bloke was talking about when got on a crane next to a graph or something. Why not come clean?

Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in media, money, politics, science | No Comments »

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What were they smoking?

14 Dec 2006

While Kerry O’Brien and the regular crew are on holidays, I take it the 7.30 Report has been taken over by a crack squad of “fair and balanced” right-wing lunatic propagandists.

How else do you explain last night’s rabid anti-drug, anti-fact reporting on the Mental Health Council of Australia’s report Where There’s Smoke, a study of cannabis use and mental health?

Technically the MHCA’s report is more of a literature review; it doesn’t contain any original research, just summarises and analyses what other people have already said and makes a series of recommendations. It is, to a fault, conservative and balanced in its findings, using cautious language such as:

  • Cannabis use precipitates schizophrenia in people who have a family history of that mental illness
  • There is a 2-3 times greater incidence of psychotic symptoms among those who used cannabis, however, the epidemiological data shows that cannabis cannot be considered a major causal factor
  • More frequent cannabis use is associated with higher relapse rates for people with psychosis and more severe symptoms were associated with increased risk of cannabis relapse
  • Cannabis can induce schizophrenia-like symptoms in otherwise healthy individuals

The 7.30 Report was not so careful. Where the MHCA report cautiously finds correlation, the 7.30 Report loudly trumpets causation. Will journalists ever learn the difference?!

Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in damned lies and statistics, drugs, media, politics, science | 1 Comment »

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