Archive for category Nature

SHOULDN’T YOU HAVE A LIGHTNING ROD?

Posted by on Tuesday, 24 May, 2011

YIKES!

A QUESTION:
Dear Mister SASB: My brother (who is a complete idiot, by the way) says lightning rods don’t work. Do you agree? Cause our house doesn’t have one and I’m thinking maybe it should. – Annie Blister

Annie: I’m sure you won’t feel that way about your brother when you get a little older. (Both of my sisters happen to think I’M a dope but, if you’re a regular reader, you’ll probably think they’re being too kind.)

THE OLD DAYS

In Colonial America, lightning rods made people nervous. It was considered an affront to the Lord. Lightning was God’s wrath.

During thunderstorms, churches (which had very tall steeples)  liked to send guys that wouldn’t be missed too much up there to ring the bell. It reminded the storm that this was a holy place. But the bell ringers had a much better record of going UP the stairs than coming back DOWN. While they were up there wackin’ away at the bell, lightning would often strike the bell tower, transforming it into steaming charcoal and molten bell. In fact, lightning seemed to FAVOR houses of worship – a clue, actually, that a different process might be at work than celestial vengeance.

The inventor of lightning rods, a guy named Ben Franklin, said lightning’s not a God thing; it is, he said, a natural phenomenon that  burns down  buildings and scares the goats. Even the old ones.  Certain citizens accused Franklin of irreverence. Blasphemy, actually. Back then, you didn’t want to be a blasphemer.

No you did not.

But Franklin was cool.  A coil of wire and and an iron stick are going to stop The Almighty? He (God) can’t  come up with a work-around? Who’s the blasphemer here?, asked Franklin. You callin’ God incompetent? (I think he also said that most lightning bolts strike trees which are, by and large, innocent of all wrong doing.)

This rebuttal was so effective that it took the thunder out of the opposition and, in no time,  lightning rods became almost as common as door knobs. It wasn’t sacrilegious anymore to use one to protect a powder magazine from being blown up in a storm.

This had a good effect, as you can easily imagine. Even churches got lightning rods. And, as a result, they  burned down less frequently. If the lightning rod business hadn’t been so successful, who’s to say what the state of religion would be in modern America?

SO WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO LIGHTNING RODS?

AND WHY DON’T YOU HAVE ONE?

Now lets climb back into the modern era.

In 1993, the National Fire Protection Association said the science behind lightning protection sucks. (Not their precise words). May as well rescind the national standard for lightning rods that’s been around for almost a century, they said. The standard is called NFPA 780, in case you want to look it up.

Uh oh, lightning rods!

But, according to Cecil Adams (The Straight Dope), after a thorough review of what’s out there plus a heap of common sense, it was decided that the science, though sucky and pretty much out-of-date, is, nonetheless,  compelling. It would be madness to go back to the pre-lightning rod, buildings-burning-down, days merely because lightning protection has been a settled issue for so long that more recent up-to-scientific-standards studies haven’t been done.

So the NFPA 780 standard still stands. And lightning rods work.

REALLY?

Then, how come you can drive for miles, here in New England and see nary a home with a tell tale rod sticking up to the sky ? I’m sure some are disguised as weather vanes and such, but, overall, this region seems to have entered the “right to strike” era.  We do love a roaring fire up here, but do we love fire THAT much?

Maybe this is just a lack of public awareness. I don’t think there’s  been much discussion about lightning rods. Or, could it be that the concern about protecting high technology devices from lightning initiated VOLTAGE SURGES, has diverted attention away from the basics? Maybe the idea’s too “pre-colonial”, too quaint, to be taken seriously by a guy packing an IPhone.

Another thought? Insurance discounts. Used to be, you could get a little knock off on your premium if you stuck a lightning rod up . These days, however, the companies appear to have abandoned that practice. In a region that doesn’t get THAT much thunder and lightning, maybe the occasional smoking ruin is just  a cost of doing business?

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad, as is so OFTEN the case, doesn’t really have an explanation. Do you?



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Credits for above image: Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Category: Nature, Pseudoscience   , ,
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IS SEX LOSING ITS SEX APPEAL?

Posted by on Saturday, 2 April, 2011

Image credits: Comics at xkcd.

ASEXUALS

Just about everything that makes us human comes in small, medium, large, and extra large doses so it shouldn’t surprise you if I tell you we’re not all the same in the sex drive department.

Some people are a little over and some are under, there too.

Lots of people don’t have sex, of course.

Few of the readers of this blog do.

But are there people with no sex DRIVE? None at all? I am NOT asking (not interested, actually) in whether you are straight or gay or transwhatever. I’m asking whether ANYTHING  gets you interested, sexually speaking.

Ever.

I did some research.

No not THAT kind of research. I looked for studies. Data, and such. And, well doggone! It’s true. Lots of people don’t GIVE A RAT’S BUTT ABOUT SEX AND  NEVER WILL!

Funny huh?

Anthony Bogaert (Brock University) started describing the phenomenon a few years ago.  Asexuals  constitute about 1% of the population. About 3,000,000 people in the United states. Naturally, they have an organization,the Asexual Visibility And Education Network, which is trying to increase awareness.

No reality show so far.

Media hyped groups do come in and out of fashion with regularity, of course. I guess we’re about finished Don’tAskDon’tTelling gay people, so we may have spare time for something new.  Would YOU be comfortable serving with them in the marines? Would asexuals  GET the  lusty humor? Would it be possible to behave honorably under fire without a sex drive?

Although asexuals aren’t attracted to either sex, many get married and dutifully try to satisfy their partners. No more complaints than you might expect, all things considered.

(Is this important science? You decide. I just keep the stories coming. )

More detail from Dan Childs (ABC News).

Category: biology, Nature, Public Policy   , ,
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HOW TO SURVIVE AN EARTHQUAKE

Posted by on Monday, 14 March, 2011

WHAT THE HECK? IS THIS THING BROKEN?

QUAKES, TSUNAMIS, POWER PLANTS

Yesterday an earthquake and a tsunami hit Japan.  The earthquake (magnitude 9.0) was a THOUSAND times more powerful than the one that killed 2 percent of the population of Haiti.

And  Haiti didn’t have tsunamis. Or exploding  nuclear power stations which are thought to be melting down.

As I’m writing , they’re still searching for victims so the number of injuries and deaths is still growing. The excellent planning that the Japanese do for such disasters should help. If the sympathetic hearts of others makes any difference, that’ll help too.

SCIENCE ISN’T AN EXACT SCIENCE

Probably yer thinking “What’s WRONG with those guys? If they can make something as good as a Toyota, why can’t their power plants stand being bounced around ?”

Not fair.

I especially didn’t like that little Toyota dig, but I’ll let it pass.

Here’s the thing. Engineers  don’t know fer sure the worst disaster that’ll hit their projects, do they?  So how does an engineer know how strong to make a bridge. Or a house? Or a nuclear power plant? How does he.she know what size earthquakes, winds,  waves, and so on, a power plant will have to deal with in its lifetime? This, after all, is the “loading” to which it must be designed.

You’re not gonna like this, but it’s  a game of chance.

A building, a bridge, an airplane, is designed to handle everything that gets thrown at it.

Almost.

Course, no matter how tough you make the design, there’s always something worse. A 10 ton meteor will NOT bounce off of yer roof and leave it undented. Sorry to say. Honestly? Your roof wasn’t even designed for 14 feet of snow. If you and your house live long enough, you will GET 14 feet of snow. It seemed like we got that much in Boston this winter. Or, if you don’t live where it snows, your house, for sure,  isn’t designed for a category 7 hurricane.

Always something!

Engineers try to anticipate everything that’s likely to happen. Then they throw in a little extra. But what about spectacularly awful things that only happen every 100 years? Or every 1000 years? How unlikely and how huge an event should you build for?

Magnitude 9.0 earthquake don’t occur in/near Japan very often – certainly not accompanied by a massive tsunami.   Very rare. So if you DO beef up your power plant design  for these conditions which include a 30 foot tsunami, what about the possibility of a 35 footer?

See what I mean? You gotta stop SOMEWHERE or you’ll NEVER get a mortgage on that overbuilt monstrosity.

It’s called engineering. Balancing practicality against perfection.

WAS IT A SCREW UP?

I’ll get back to you on that. If the designers simply failed to take tsunamis into account, you bet it was. If they designed for big, bigger, and biggerer but this was biggereryet, it’s just one of those things.

WHY USE URANIUM BASED NUCLEAR POWER?

Is there a way to make nuclear power plants that can’t melt down? Of course.

BACK TO EARTHQUAKES

Now it so happens that I have a lot to say about earthquakes. Because I definitely have an app for THAT. Our product, resQvox ( US Patent 7,839,290) will save your butt next time YOU’RE in one. We’re just in the beginning stages of looking for a licensee (interested?).

Here’s how it works.

You find yourself trapped in the rubble of a collapsed structure, right?

Talk about sucky! The first 24 hours you’re down there are the critical “Golden Hours”. After that first day, your chances of getting out alive get so poor that if they DO happen to drag you out of there with a heartbeat they will describe it as a “miracle”.

Maybe it is.

Anyway, here’s the catch. In most places where there’s an earthquake, it takes LONGER than 24 hours for  the pros to show up. They have to get notified, grab their equipment, search dogs, supplies, and whatnot, and get transport to the disaster site. While this happens, you’re down there under a filing cabinet getting weaker and weaker and weaker.

What to do?

That’s where resQvox comes in. It’s aimed at attracting the attention of the “locals” – the “guys in the neighborhood” – who’re running around trying to dig people out with anything at hand – garden spades, rakes, even bare hands. They don’t have infrared detectors or search dogs. Just their eyes and ears.

Like smoke detectors, resQvox locators are small and inexpensive and are positioned in key spots around a building. Its  sensors tell it if a building collapses (so do yours, but that’s another story) and it uses its speech capabilities to chat up survivors, reassuring, describing survival techniques, and collecting info on their condition. Then, no matter what shape they’re in (maybe drifting  in and out of consciousness or sleep), resQvox uses its “sonic beacon” to draw rescuers to the location  and to help  ”triage” based on the condition of the survivors and the number in each location.

Here’s how it works . (You can contact us at scienceaintsobad@gmail.com).

SceinceAintSoBadRating = 10 (I’m a little prejudiced).

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Credits: Top photo of the earth (modified by MISTER ScienceAintSoBad) is from NASA. Cartoons’n such are my own handiwork.

Category: Inventing Stuff, Nature, Public Policy, Technology & Industry   , ,
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OCEANS FOUND TO CONTAIN MOSTLY WATER

Posted by on Saturday, 22 January, 2011

WOO HOO! MORE PLASTIC.

MAINLY H2O

There’s more plastic floating in the ocean then plankton.

More than seaweed.

Take all the dumb ideas in the world, put ‘em on a scale and weigh them. Well there’s more plastic floating in the oceans than THAT.

Actually, they ARE oceans of plastic.

A little water here and there.

We’re doomed!

Aren’t we?

PLASTIC POLLUTION EXAGGERATED

Not this week.

Professor Angelicque White (Oregon State University)  navigated around the oceans on a National Science Foundation funded study, surveying the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. After analyzing the data that was collected, as well as digging through the accumulating and sometimes over-the-top literature on the subject of humans strangling in oceans of plastic, the professor concluded “huh?”

Well, she didn’t actually, say “huh”. But, for sure, she thought it.

Because  we’re NOT actually strangling in plastic. There ISN’T more plastic than plankton. There’s STILL room for a row boat or two amongst the orange running shoes and plastic toys that are tossing around on the crests of the waves.

Well.

Dr. White’s not HAPPY with all the crapola in the oceans of the only planet we inhabit. It’s bad enough.

Plenty bad.

A scandal.

But, she says, the increase isn’t “exponential” and, in fact, if you take the worst of the worst estimates of the amount of plastic it’s STILL less than the size of the state of Texas.

Reassuring.

And it really hasn’t increased since the 1980’s. So we might be doing better. Unless, of course, it’s just sinking to the bottom.

Anyway, Dr. White’s not making light of the problem. (nor, hopefully, is MISTER ScienceAintSoBad ). Dr White’s point is that it’s bad enough without exaggerating it to the point that nobody believes a durn thing you say.

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Credit for above photo: This is Alvin and her support ship Atlantis and the photo is from the NOAA photo library.
Category: Nature, Public Policy   , ,
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Monkeys Aren’t Such Bad People

Posted by on Tuesday, 16 February, 2010

NOT TOO PROUD TO SHARE

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR: Bananas

You figured bonobos were tightwads.

Sorry.

This study in Current Biology describes bonobos with GREAT food, taking a key and unlocking a door to share it with a buddy.

Would YOU do that? MISTER Science Ain’t So Bad sure ain’t givin’ away HIS bananas.

Don’t even ask.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 6

Probably a good study but the earth didn’t shake.

Photo attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/justinlindsay/ / CC BY 2.0
Category: biology, Nature   , ,
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