Blógünder Schlock

If you follow my Twitter feed you may have seen my tweet about renaming Swine Flu to Hogthrax. My buddy Dave said that Hamthrax is a much better name, and I agree. Later my brother Randy pointed out that H1N1 sounds like something out of Star Wars.

Do you want to defuse some of the hysteria surrounding this particular strain of Type A Influenza? Let’s make fun of it with pig-related names. Here are a few I’ve collected, and a few I’ve contributed …

• Hamthrax
• Hogthrax
• Spamthrax
• Tuporkulosis
• Porklio
• Cowpox oh wait that’s real
• Hogmumps
• The Other Yellow Fever
• Pigfluenza
• Mad Sow Disease
• Sowbola
• Sowmonella
• Spammonella
• Bacon AIDS
• Bacon Fever
• Baconator oh wait that’s at Wendy’s
• Whooping Oink
• Oinking Pneumonia
• Buboinking Pork

For you Star Wars fans:

• Gamorreanorhea

And the end-of-the-world scenarios for the epidemic?

• The Aporkalypse
• Hognarok

Yes,  I know that influenza kills tens of thousands of people annually. This is very sad. These people were not, however, killed by the name of this viral strain, which is what I’m actually mocking (unless I suggest that “Buboinking Pork” sounds more like how you caught the disease, which I would never do.)

Join me. Let’s hear your best names for an inappropriately pig-themed disease, and maybe our peals of laughter will make the world a happier and less hysteria-prone place.

It’s true.

Schlock readers Dr. Jordin Kare and Tom Nugent are doing research into shooting mosquitos with lasers. The Wall Street Journal bills them as “Rocket Scientists,” but to me they’re just these really cool guys who let me work on the plumbing for their water-cooled laser back in 2007. There are other write-ups of the story here, here, and (with a great conclusion!) here.

Okay, they’re also really SMART guys. Jordin (pictured at left in goggles that are all the rage in his industry) has called me on Schlock science at least once…

Short version: With Jordin and Tom on the project the mosquitos are doomed.

But here’s the best part. Tom emailed me the article link and explained:

The Rule 37 poster was put up as part of the lab decorations with the blessing of the lab director. It’s so completely appropriate, with the grunt pointing everything he can at the little bug.  So, whenever Bill Gates or other VIPs come to visit the lab and take a tour of the optics room, they go right through the door with your poster on it. I’ve been dying to tell you for a while, and now that the article is published, I can!

I told you they’re really cool guys.

A couple of months ago I lectured at Utah Valley University on the relationship between talent, hard work, practice, and artistic success. They recorded the presentation, and posted it on YouTube. Because, you know… ANYTHING that gets recorded eventually gets posted on YouTube.

It’s in four parts, but before you watch this thing I need to warn you — the guys in the audio booth made a horrible mistake, and during some parts of the lecture they accidentally dropped in bits of a UVU commercial’s audio track. It’s really awful, and they assure me that the problem exists on every copy of my lecture that they have.

I didn’t hire the recording crew, so I can’t fire them. Also, they’re probably students. Also, their failure in this particular case is sure to be a stinging one, a resounding blow against whatever illusions of competence they may have crafted for themselves. PERFECT. If they decide to learn from it, this gaffe will make them better audio engineers someday. It’s an object lesson that fits right in with my subject matter.

So:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

One of the journalism students at UVU put together an excellent little news-piece after the fact. It’s also on YouTube, and I can recommend it with no reservations whatsoever.

If you’re interested in knowing who I was citing, here’s the bibliography:

Flower and fountain photos ©2009, Janci Patterson Olds, used with permission.

“Victor Pendrake” model from Privateer Press. Photo by Janci Patterson Olds, painted by Drew Olds, Garden Ninja Studios, used with permission

“Schlock” pictures from Schlock Mercenary: The Tub of Happiness, ©2007 The Tayler Corporation

“How Not To Talk To Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise,” Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman, New York, Feb 12, 2007

“Subtle Linguistic Cues Impact Children’s Motivation,” Cimpian, A., Arce, H., Markman, E.M., & Dweck, C.S., Psychological Science, April 2007: (subscription required)

“Family planning: Football style, the relative age effect in football.” Barnsley RH, Thompson AH, Legault P (1992).  International Review for the Sociology of Sport 27(1), 77-88

“The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, Psychological Review, 1993 Vol 100 #3:

The single most imporant part of my lecture is the source material I used. Research on this subject is both ongoing and controversial. I hand-picked sources that supported my own opinions on the matter (so much for objectivity!) but those sources then presented information that changed my mind on more than a few things (see? He CAN be taught!)

So here’s the infodump. (more…)

I caught this over at APOD, and simply had to share with everybody… here’s a composite picture of Saturn, spectrally condensed (UV and IR have been shoved down into visible light ranges) that was taken by Cassini-Huygens from behind Saturn.

It looks, in Sandra’s words, “drawn.” Not photographed. Not “real.” I guess the universe is like that, throwing beauty and form and spectacle around and putting mere human artists to shame. There’s a new ring to be seen there, along with fantastic plays of light and shadow.

The best part, though? Earth is visible in this picture.

Be nice to everyone you see. We all live very, very close together on that pale blue dot.

Gunther van Hagens’ “Body Worlds 3″ exhibit is in Salt Lake City for the next couple of months. I took it in with Sandra Thursday morning.

Wow.

We bought the (very thick!) book in the Leonardo Museum gift shop afterwards. I’m sure that after I’ve read it I’ll be able to tell you all kinds of interesting things about the exhibit that I was unable to learn in person.

My favorite part… I was admiring the unraveled length of digestive tract, and there were three high-school girls standing next to me. One of them said “Weird. It looks like sausage.”

Me: “That’s because that’s how they make sausage.”

Her: “What?”

Me: “Sausage. They take a length of sheep’s intestine, stuff it with ground meat, and twist it off every six inches or so.”

Her friend: “Didn’t you KNOW that?”

Her: “No…” She grimaces, obviously torn. “I LIKE sausage.”

Me: “People who like sausage shouldn’t learn how it’s made.”

Remember this strip, where Kevyn’s blood-nannies communicate with him by discoloring his skin with handy, easy-to-read text messages? (Warning… the strip depicts a compound fracture. Eeew.)

Well, here’s a “digital tattoo interface” for a cellphone. Long story short, your cyberpunk implants are waiting for funding, and the marketing fluff includes such gems as “this product is waterproof, and it is powered by pizza.” Hat-tip to Alexander Proff for the link. Thanks!

Of course, the biggest problem I see with implantable hi-tech gadgetry is the life-cycle. There will be adoption hurdles if we need surgery in order to change carriers.

Also, I’m not sure where the audio interface is. I assume that she’s not talking into her forearm — that would be awkward. In a perfect world, they’ve bored a couple of holes in her skull, and installed Bose.

I just got word that Arthur C. Clarke passed away.

He is the science fiction writer I think most of us want to be — the one who dreams of something that is both wondrous and practical, and which is made into reality into his own lifetime.

In the 40’s he suggested that humans would walk on the moon by the year 2000. While working for the RAF during World War II, he predicted the network of communications satellites we have today. Geostationary orbit is called the Clarke orbit, and the Clarke Belt is that band of space almost 36,000 kilometers above equatorial sea-level where such orbits are found.

We’ve lost a great mind, and a great man, but his contributions will live on.

Here’s the CNN article: Ancient Frog Was As Big As A Bowling Ball

Neat fossil! I love the name “Beelzebufo!” Here’s the problematic argument that its discoverer presents to us: since the fossils of Beelzebufo ampinga, the giant Madagascar frog, indicate that it is related to modern South American toads, then maybe Madagascar and South America were not completely separated by ocean(s) as early as we think they were.

Here’s Occam’s Razor, Please Shave Often: It’s more likely that Beelzebufo is a cousin, not a grandfather to the Ceratophrys. Instead of looking for land bridges, you should be looking for giant frog fossils in South America. I mean, you can look for land bridges if you want to, but I’ll bet you find more giant frogs first.

Hopefully this alternative explanation is just something CNN failed to report.

Yesterday’s Insectpod.com deserves a read.

Then read today’s. Yeeek!