Visiopoetics

Definitive proof that less sleep –> more miracles.

Are you affected by the Silent Epidemic? Don’t not suffer in silence.

Bras kill, a friend who is a breast cancer survivor recently told me.

No, they don’t, the American Cancer Society responded.

Actually, they save lives, Elena Bodnar expounded.

Although it is not as funny as a brilliant Ukrainian bombshell managing to plaster lingerie across multiple Nobel laureates’ faces in public, the grand irony here is how particularizing reason killed a good general intuition.

The intuition was this: the patriarchy is making me sick. The particular way in which this intuition was hypothesized was, “wearing a bra caused my cancer.” Causality is an empirical question, and the data answers that this hypothesis is false. The particular claim is completely bogus.

But that doesn’t make the intuition bad. The patriarchy is making you sick — just not in this particular way, through this particular causal path.

Nonetheless the myth persists, precisely because the intuition was correct — because the patriarchy makes us sick. Honoring the intuition that made the myth popular in the first place, is the most effective way to debunk it. But it’s not what the cancer industry will do, because they’re more interested in painting everything pink “for a cure!” than in asking why some common consumer goods are toxic.

There is a really marvelous letter to the editor in the NYT Science section this week.

I often think that arts and sciences are so closely related, that the “two cultures” type division of labor between them is a way of enforcing implicit biases and perpetuating structural inequalities.

Maybe that’s just because, if you have fabulous imaging equipment, I would like to play with it. (Materials engineering: call me.)

Astrophysicists recently discovered that the universe is approximately 30 times more run down than previously believed.

Seeing as how I am a lowly graduate student buried under deadlines and approximately a foot of snow, I could’ve told you that. Astophysics award, please.

Best.  Viral video.  Ever.  If you don’t know what a decision matrix is, how to discuss global warming with skeptics, or who Greg Craven is, watch it now.

Then, buy the book before it melts.

“No donation is too small” — that’s probably something you’re hearing a lot this holiday season, what with the implosion of the global economy and the expert psychops of your local Salvation Army bellringers.

But what does that mean?  How small IS small?

The Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah is here to help.

How is it December already?  This just in, from the latest mini-Annals of Improbable Research:

2009-12-09 Plasma Blobs Poet

The judges have chosen a winner in the Colliding Plasma Blobs
Limerick Competition, which asked for a limerick to honor the
study “Cusp Compression of Colliding Plasma Blobs,” T. K. Allen,
K. Doble, T. J. L. Jones, R. M. Payne, and I. J. Spalding,
Physics of Fluids, vol. 9, July 1966, pp. 1394-.
http://bit.ly/5MXKRT

The winner is INVESTIGATOR DANIEL STERMAN, who wrote:

“Two plasmas do one plasma yield
When compressed by a rising cusp field.
But the hole they contain
We cannot yet explain,”
Messrs Allen and Doble revealed.

Commendation goes to INVESTIGATOR STEVEN HALL, who says:

That Spalding, Payne, Jones, Allen, Doble
Discovered a squeezed plasma blob ‘ll
Give quite a surprise,
Because the hole size
Is fixed by the charge or shield wobble.

Here’s the offering from LIMERICK LAUREATE MARTIN EIGER:

What happens when plasmas collide?
A new plasma blob is espied.
The data suggest
It’s hot and compressed.
This paper explains what’s inside.

From the fabulous mini-Annals of Improbable Research (”mini-AIR”), November edition:

The judges have chosen a winner in the Triple Zech Limerick
Competition, which asked for a limerick to honor the study
“Late Quaternary Environmental Changes in Misiones, Subtropical
NE Argentina, Deduced From Multi-Proxy Geochemical Analyses in a
Palaeosol-Sediment Sequence,” Michael Zech, Roland Zech, Héctor
Morrás, Lucas Moretti, Bruno Glaser and Wolfgang Zech, Quaternary
International. http://tinyurl.com/pz7duf

The winner is INVESTIGATOR MILO OREN, who wrote:

“The proxy is multi?” asked Zech,
To which Zech and Zech answered, “Check!”
They found no impediment
To making Sediment
Science go slightly high tech.

Semi-honorable mention goes to INVESTIGATOR ROBIN LEE:

Mike, Roland, and Wolfgang - all Zechs -
Like landscapes that seem quite complex.
To measure old soil
Makes their juices boil.
Me - I only get that from sex.

Here’s the offering from LIMERICK LAUREATE MARTIN EIGER:

The stuff in a sediment core
Tells which landscapes existed before.
So the Zech guys assert
As they dig up the dirt.
There were glaciers and grass, trees and more.

———————————————————-
2009-11-09 Plasma Blobs Competition

Colliding Plasma Blobs inspire this month’s limerick competition.
To enter, compose an original limerick that illuminates the
nature of this report (suggested by Winnie and Andrew Ducette):

“Cusp Compression of Colliding Plasma Blobs,” T. K. Allen, K.
Doble, T. J. L. Jones, R. M. Payne, and I. J. Spalding, Physics
of Fluids, vol. 9, July 1966, pp. 1394-. DOI:10.1063/1.1761859.
http://bit.ly/5MXKRT The authors, at Culham Laboratory in
Berkshire, England, begin by saying:

“A plasma formed by colliding two plasma blobs is compressed by a
rising cusp field which reaches 34 kG between the coils in 15
µsec…”

RULES: Please make sure that: (1) your rhymes actually do; and
(2) your poem is in classic, trills-off-the-tongue limerick form.

PRIZE: The winning poet will receive (if we manage to send it to
the correct address) a free, only slightly blobby, high-res PDF
issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. Send entries (one
entry per entrant) to:

PLASMA BLOBS LIMERICK COMPETITION
c/o marca AT chem2.harvard.edu