Science Made Cool

Important Health Warning

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan suggests that most cancer patients are unaware of the link between smoking and bladder cancer. Patients need to be warned of this connection.

I would also like to add this warning, which should cut down on cases of bladder cancer resulting from smoking:

"It goes in your MOUTH, dammit!"



The extremely useful Physorg web log had nothing to do with that one.

Thomas Disch Dies

SF writer Thomas Disch is dead. Apparently he killed himself Friday. Patrick Nielsen Hayden has more.

Listen to the Voices in Your Head

Here's some news certain to gladden the hearts of schizophrenics everywhere: researchers at Sierra Nevada Corporation have devised a microwave device named MEDUSA which can "beam" sounds directly into the heads of targets. In other words, if it was aimed at you, you'd hear sounds, but nobody else would hear anything, and covering your ears wouldn't make it go away. The armed forces are interested because of its applications in silent communications, crowd control, and nonlethal weaponry (more on that anon). There's also the potential for its use in advertising -- brain spam. That last doesn't worry me much, as I suspect anyone adopting MEDUSA for advertising would quickly discover that their brand name would become associated with monumental hatred in the minds of their potential customers.

Crazy people, of course, have believed that microwave beams are making them hear voices since the invention of radio. They blame it on the government, the Illuminati, the Deros, space aliens, or whoever. Since the MEDUSA device uses microwaves, it even seems likely that the canonical tinfoil hat might actually work against it!

There is one aspect of the MEDUSA system which is a little gruesome. Right now it can only be used to create faint sounds inside the heads of targets, and the designers are afraid that at high power there might be undesirable "shockwave" effects. I think this is a polite way of saying "it might make your head explode." I'm also sure that the armed services consider this a feature, rather than a bug -- at low power it can drive people away with irritating sounds, and at high power their brains go boom. What's not to like?

Friday Parasite: She's MINE!

For years,  people assumed that schistosomes -- the parasitic worms that cause so much human misery in the tropics -- paired for life. They certainly seemed built for it: adult worms are usually found in pairs: a female kept snug inside a groove on a male's underside. But as Patrick Skelly reports in an article in the June issue of Natural History, schistosomes can have fairly fluid sex lives, as male worms fight over females. Males play tug of war with the available females, with the victors pulling females out of rival gynecophoric canals into their own. Unfortunately, the article isn't on the Natural History site anymore, but thanks to the wonders of the internet you can read it here.

Many Happy Returns, With Variation

Yesterday marked the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. He first described it at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London, on July 1, 1858.

Darwin actually came up with the theory some years earlier, but he was a thorough, methodical man, and didn't want to rush into publication. He established his scientific reputation by writing books on coral reefs, the geology of South America and volcanic islands, and three works on barnacles. All the time he was gathering data for his theory of evolution, because he knew it was such a bombshell he would have to support it with masses of proof.

But in 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace more or less forced his hand, by advancing a similar idea. Darwin, ever a gentleman, gave Wallace joint credit.

And what a bombshell it was! Before Darwin everyone was pretty much what would nowadays be called a "creationist." Quite simply, there wasn't any good explanation for where living things had come from in all their variety. The Biblical book of Genesis was as good an account as any. Darwin changed all that -- and in the process began the estrangement of science and religion which continues to this day.

Crackpots of all stripes have been drawn to the Theory of Evolution like a magnet. Devoutly religious ones try to refute it, generally with faulty logic, bogus evidence, or simply "disproof by repeated assertion." But they're not the only ones: Marx believed his study of class conflict would do for history and political science what Darwin had done for biology. Wrapped in the mantle of "scientific truth," Marx's 20th-century ideological heirs killed millions trying to create a "New Socialist Man." Another German socialist wrongly applied Darwinian ideas to nations and wrecked half of Europe.

All of which would have horrified the humane, classically liberal Charles Darwin. As its originator he understood that evolution is a biological theory. It describes how things work in the natural world. It is not -- and, frankly, must not -- be a prescription for how people or societies should act.

So Happy Birthday, Evolution! Let's hope the lunatics find something else to fixate on.