Category: science

We Are Going to Be Like the Jetsons!

Sena has been telling me for years that someday soon we’re all going to be like the Jetsons, flying around in bubble-top saucers.

It turns out she may be right.

There’s a news story out about the Jetson Flying Car, which I saw on the Good News Network.  It’s a compact flying car that runs on batteries that are good for about a 20-minute commute. Reports about the altitude the Jetson car can achieve vary, but some say you can get up to about 1500 feet and tour along at a little over 60 miles per hour.

And the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says you don’t need a pilot’s license.

Can you say “mass mid-air collisions?”

I doubt there’ll be a lot of buyers because the sticker price is close to $100,000, not counting insurance, extra batteries (you’ll need 8 if you want to swap out to recharge), and attorney fees.

The CEO of the company that makes the Jetson car says you can be a pilot in about 5 minutes.

Funny, that’s about the same time it seems to take the typical semi-truck driver in Canada to get a commercial driver’s license, judging from how busy the tow truck operators are up there.

What if the heavy rescue operators in British Columbia and Toronto had to do recovery work on the Jetson cars? True, the cars aren’t that heavy (about 250 pounds), but what if the number of crashes overwhelms Jamie Davis (think Highway Thru Hell on the Weather Channel)? There wouldn’t be enough tow truck guys to drag all the cars out of the ditches.

Did you know the Jetson Cars come as a DIY kit? That’s right, you have to finish assembly of that expensive toy yourself. You better make sure the batteries are hooked up right since you get just 20 minutes of running time before you need to recharge. Average commutes are longer than 20 minutes.

The Jetson car comes equipped with something called a ballistic parachute, which should be enough to send most potential buyers running out of the showroom. Hey, why would I need a parachute?

No worries, you’re unlikely to be flying much higher than 16 feet anyway, according to the co-founder of the company, eVTOL (electrical vertical take-off and landing).

Let’s see how many traffic signs and trees we can take out on the way to the drug store to pick up some Dramamine.

Only one person (the pilot) can fit in the Jetson Flying Car. And of course, there’s a weight limit; it’s 210 pounds, which is going to raise a hue and cry from the equity, diversity, and inclusion police. There’s no flying family eVTOL—yet. That’s a good thing because there will have be some survivors left to collect on the insurance.

On the bright side, there are no ashtrays to empty, no flat tires to change (nobody remembers how to do that anyway these days), and no radio stations to cycle through. You’re going to be paying too much attention to the birds getting caught in the rotor blades and the bugs splatting on your visor.

That’s assuming you’re a multimillionaire and can afford to fly like the Jetsons. Don’t buzz the pedestrians.

Hammerhead Worm Invasion!

The other day Sena and I were talking with a landscaping consultant about a job we’d like done on our backyard patio. He uncovered a worm in the dirt, and it seemed to wriggle energetically. Jumping worms had been in the news a lot last month. The consultant picked it up and the worm seemed to jump out of his hand.

Sena exclaimed, “It’s a jumping worm; kill it!” The consultant picked it up again and, much to our surprise, simply crushed it in his hand. However, he doubted that it was a jumping worm and hinted that much of the news lately about jumping worms (an invasive species from Asia) was overdone.

I don’t know how he got rid of the crushed worm in his fist.

But I suspect he wouldn’t crush a hammerhead worm in his hand (although I wouldn’t bet on it).

They are also being reported in the news recently, although they’ve been in the country for decades and probably longer. They’ve possibly been sighted in Iowa. The hammerhead worm is another invasive species from Southeast Asia. If you cut them up, the pieces will grow into new worms.

They also carry a toxin on their bodies. It won’t kill you or even harm you that much if you get it on your hands, but you should wash up thoroughly if you nonchalantly crush them in your fist.

The hammerhead worms eat earthworms, which could make things even harder for them because jumping worms displace common earthworms by outcompeting them for territory.

Right now, the best way to rid your garden of hammerhead worms is to kill them by sprinkling salt or spraying vinegar on them.

I can’t help wondering if there might be a way to teach hammerhead worms to eat jumping worms.

But then, how would you get rid of the hammerhead worms? They don’t have any natural predators. There are a number of ways humans can control the population in their immediate vicinity.

Just don’t crush them in your fist.

Learning About Monkeypox

The University of Iowa podcast Rounding@Iowa, hosted by Dr. Gerard Clancy, MD talked with Infectious Diseases specialist Dr. Jeffery Meier, MD about the essential facts about Monkeypox for health care professionals, recorded on June 2, 2022.

This podcast would also be interesting to anyone interested in learning more about Monkeypox.

Invasion of the Pregnant Man Emojis!

I just saw a pretty funny story in the news about an old guy who was not allowed to donate blood at a Scotland blood bank because he refused to answer a new questionnaire asking whether or not he was pregnant.

I thought that was uproariously funny. Then I read the rest of the story and found another punchline: The director of the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service defended the question on grounds of respect for inclusiveness. So, I had a good laugh about that one too.

I wonder if there could more than just a yes/no question about whether a guy is pregnant. We need space for an essay response: “No, but my 33-year-old son is living in our basement. Would you please adopt him?”

There are two other comical trends. One is providing tampon dispensers in men’s bathrooms. Another is the chuckle-provoking pregnant man emoji. What kind of email message would you use that for unless it’s a joke?

The issue is less farcical when you consider there is a rare psychiatric disorder known as delusion of pregnancy in men, otherwise known as Couvade syndrome. I never encountered it in my career as a psychiatric consultant in the general hospital.

And there is a psychiatric disorder known as pseudocyesis or delusional pregnancy as well as denial of pregnancy in women.

This reminds me of a fascinating episode from Blue Planet II in which David Attenborough filmed the transformation of a kobudai wrasse female fish into a male.

I gather some people are pretty angry about this exaggerated inclusivity trend. I’m not sure why.

We all need a good laugh whenever we can get it nowadays—as well as a fresh perspective.

The Proof is Way Out There

I watch the History Channel show, The Proof is Out There, hosted by Tony Harris, an American journalist and filmmaker. The show reviews videos of paranormal events, supposed cryptids, and other weird stuff and generally ends up debunking at least half of them. I’ve seen some of the videos on another TV show, Paranormal Caught on Camera, which airs on the Travel Channel. Interestingly, the hosts of that show tend to uncritically endorse the authenticity of the videos while The Proof is Out There usually debunk them as faked.

I don’t know how the videos get swapped between the two shows. In fact, the last episode I saw of The Proof is Out There was subtitled “The Skinwalker Edition.” The History Channel blurb on it says that Tony Harris “…travels to the Skinwalker Ranch, a place known as the epicenter of strange and mysterious phenomena.”

In fact, Harris does nothing of the kind and many of the videos were previously aired from other episodes. The only connection with Skinwalker Ranch were a few photographs from another History Channel show, The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch. I wonder if the producers of that show didn’t allow Harris to actually evaluate the alleged paranormal events of their show because they were afraid he would debunk them.

Obviously, the title of the show “The Proof is Out There” got its name from the X-Files subtitle, The Truth is Out There. Some viewers have suggested that there may be another meaning to the subtitle, which is that the truth may be “out there” in the sense of outlandish or crazy instead of from aliens in outer space.

So, what’s going on with The Proof is Out There? Is it designed to do a better job of picking out the faked paranormal videos? Sometimes they miss them, like the one about the glitch in the matrix which turned out to be a cool camera trick.

Most often they hedge their bets and say they don’t know what’s going on in the video. But they don’t shy away from calling something a hoax if the evidence points in that direction.

On the other hand, do the producers of The Proof is Out There somehow collude with those of other paranormal TV shows, sharing videos and creating the impression that they’re more objective just to sustain interest in the show and even deliberately foster controversy for the same reason?

That would be way out there, although I still like the show. And the cryptid chaser parody, Mountain Monsters, obviously pokes fun at other sasquatch-themed shows. Not only do they get away with it, some people love it for just that reason—including me.

When we’re taking ourselves too seriously, I think it’s healthy when somebody comes along and makes us laugh at ourselves.

The Scientific Skinny on Bigfoot

What’s up with this Bigfoot thing? Could it be a few humans with the rarest form of Hypertrichosis (Werewolf Syndrome)? You know, some scientists said that Patty, the hairy creature featured on the Patterson Gimlin film back in the 1960s, was not genuine because she had hairy breasts. Hey, guess what? If a woman has Hypertrichosis she can grow hair anywhere, even on her breasts.

But I guess that would not account for the huge size of Bigfoot. Why would they be seven or eight feet tall? They’re sometimes described as being ferocious carnivores. What would they find to eat in the forests? Deer, maybe. But are they quick enough to catch deer?

Can a 1,000 pound bipedal humanoid chase down a deer? Hey, it’s more likely Bigfoot could be a grazer. Some of the largest animals on the planet eat nothing but grass. Take cows for example. They’re pretty big and they munch on things like grass and frosted mini-wheats—with just a little milk they squeeze from their non-hairy breasts.

That’s a tough skill to master when all you’ve got are hooves. And like some chimpanzees who can learn to crack nuts with big rocks, if cows don’t get the hang of milking themselves by the time they’re a few years old, they just never get it. They’re stuck with trotting to Hy-Vee to get a gallon of two percent.

But sometimes you hear about Bigfoot making these tree structures. That’s what some people call them. They usually don’t look like they amount to much. It’s not like they have a well-defined sun room or even a roof. It’s a stick laying across another stick, unless you’re watching the TV documentary Mountain Monsters. Then they’re split levels or log cabin vacation lodges with a jacuzzi.

And how about the noises that Bigfoot makes? The sounds vary a lot from screams to deep bellows to nasal twangs reminiscent of Willie Nelson singing “You Were Always on My Mind.” Do they have a language of some kind? Or do they just grunt and growl and ask where to get the best beef jerky?

Bigfoot sometimes knocks on trees. I’m not sure why. It could be like knocking on wood for luck, I think. Maybe it’s their music. Knock three times on the big tree if you fear me.

This stuff gets pretty deep after a while. Your thoughts?

Nothing is Impossible?

The mural of Muhammad Ali throwing a punch next to the impossible quote is finished. It’s on the south side of the ICOR Boxing building, which faces Highway 6.

Impossible quote mural Iowa City

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

Muhammad Ali’s name is lettered below his picture. It’s highly improbable he created the impossible quote. An Adidas ad campaign copywriter named Aimee Lehto probably wrote it, according to Quote Investigator.

I think it’s possible that Ali might have said it, although I can’t prove it like I can prove that the Korean war veteran Howard William Osterkamp said “All gave some…some gave all,” but probably didn’t create it.

I’ll have to concede there are some things that are impossible, like licking your elbow.

But I don’t think it’s impossible for us to be kinder. And I know I’ve made excuses for not doing something because I lacked confidence or skill—and saying that it was because it’s impossible.

Many things that used to be impossible have been done. The list of impossible things tends to look shorter as I get older. It speaks to the temporary nature of what we think of as impossible. It is about realizing my potential.

In a way, impossible is a dare, a challenge to do more in spite of what I think are my limitations.

If you turn the last line of the impossible quote backwards, it says “Nothing is impossible.”

But I dare you to lick your elbow.

FDA Advisory Committee Green Lights Novavax Covid-19 Vaccine

The FDA Advisory Committee endorsed the Novavax Covid-19 Vaccine at their meeting June 7, 2022. It awaits the FDA Director’s decision and, if endorsed by the director, would next go to the CDC Advisory Committee for their evaluation, which looks like it might be scheduled later this month.

Parody or Fake Science?

I was just looking at the IMDb reviews of 3 TV shows, one of which we think is hilarious and a couple of others we watch mainly because there’s nothing else on and we’ve already played cribbage for entertainment. In my opinion, one of the shows is a parody of science (and by extension fake science), and the other two are fake science. And I think the parody is a lot more entertaining the others.

Let’s list the shows with their IMDb reviews links:

The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch

Expedition Bigfoot

Mountain Monsters

We can’t watch Mountain Monsters anymore because it’s available only on the streaming network now and it’s not worth chasing (although it was uproariously funny).

One way to keep this post from getting too long is to let you look at a few reviews of all three on IMDb and compare them.

I don’t know what you think, but I have always thought that Mountain Monsters is a parody of shows like the other two, which try to be scientific but fall far short.

First, we need a definition of parody. Merriam-Webster says:

Parody: “a literary or musical work in which the style of an author or work is closely imitated for comic effect or in ridicule.”

I think it’s probably also good to know the difference between parody and satire.

Now we think The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch and Expedition Bigfoot are failed attempts to come off as science-based so-called reality shows. They take themselves too seriously. You can probably tell that from the IMDb reviews. The casts never find anything noteworthy, jump at their own shadows, and generally are terrible actors.

If you then read the reviews for Mountain Monsters, maybe you can see why we’d classify it as a parody. Most reviewers call it pure entertainment. It’s unpretentious and clearly pokes fun at the other two. I even found one reviewer who pointed out the credits at the end of Mountain Monsters has a disclaimer saying no animals were hunted. We hadn’t noticed that, but it’s probably because we were still laughing so hard at the hillbilly antics.

The cast of Mountain Monsters are probably better actors, but forgivably often can’t stop themselves from laughing at their own jokes.