I was puttering around the attic of the Cashominium, trying to sort through some old boxes, and I came across something you all might find interesting. Before any of this makes sense, I need to give you a little family background.

Like many, the Cash family has been here a long time (a long time for America, anyway - here a hundred years is a long time and in Europe a hundred miles is a long distance, so it’s all perspective) but we are not blueblooded fancy-pants Mayflower descendants or anything like that. We arrived just over 160 years ago. The mid-1800s were a popular time to leave Europe, what with land and opportunity here and there being the place where guys like Napoleon were still fashionable and ‘reform’ meant killing a lot of people, but we weren’t the working poor that left because of lousy potato crops or anything so dire.

More predictably, legend has it that old Jebediah left Britain under some questionable circumstances - namely a scandal involving a woman.

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It confuses some people that I can be an environmentalist and a Republican. It’s confusing because Democrats are handed a checklist of “coalition of the oppressed” platforms they have to believe in, so they don’t understand picking and choosing positions based on logic and common sense. Republicans don’t much care if you are for ice-picking fetus skulls or paying high taxes, as long as you have an oil well in your backyard and all of your TV channels parent-blocked except Fox News. Republicans have a pretty big umbrella that way, mostly because rich white guys can only buy so many votes and thus they have to broaden their appeal.

So people are confused that I can think Al Gore is an opportunistic shill mobilizing the left with deceit and still care about good old Mama Earth. Well, I do, but instead of asking someone to nationalize Exxon or fly airplanes all over the world telling people they should ride bicycles, I do practical things. Small differences add up to big effects. And I can show you how to make a difference too.

Everyone likes to talk about making a difference but no one is really sure what works. Carbon credits? Scam. Carbon offsets? Scam, only liable to make you rich, so worthy of consideration. But while you get rich selling carbon offsets to suckers on Craigs List, how can you legitimately lower your carbon footprint yet maintain the decadent western lifestyle you’ve come to enjoy?

The answer is simple, my fellow environmentalists: fruit power.

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The plain truth is, if you want an impartial analysis of beer, you can’t ask a beer drinker. They just can’t give you a scientific opinion because they care too much. It’s like asking me to choose between Rocio Guario Diaz and Doutzen Kroes.* Sure, I can give you an answer but it will depend on my mood. It’s the same for beer drinkers.

So if you didn’t read Practical Science Part I - Bugs Bunny and Beer you may not know how to make your very own shrunken head or how smart Bugs Bunny really is or why moms actually do know best but you most especially don’t know how, at the end of that research project, I came to grab a cold beer.

“Miller Genuine Draft” it said, and “unique cold-filtering process.”

“What’s so great about cold-filtered beer?” I thought and, because I am a practical science guy, I found out.

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There’s a lot of “Can X make you gay?” articles being written these days. This fellow says soy is making you gay and even the New York Times wonders if you have a gay car.

Now a study from the University of Pittsburgh says that fish from Pittsburgh rivers contain substances that act like estrogen.

Estrogen. The female hormone. So you’ll have to forgive me for the topical television reference, but when a show called Queer As Folk is set in Pittsburgh, ‘fish’ is going to jump in there rather naturally.

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Anyone can tell you, the surest test of your science chops is your ability to make a kid understand it. Science, at its most fundamental, can be understood by anyone if explained properly. Science is, for the most part, conceptual. The math is relatively unimportant as long as you understand why things work the way they work.

I bring that up because it’s not always kids doing the learning. Most science questions I can answer pretty easily. I have a broad base of knowledge and one of those brains that recalls everything. In the age of Google that’s relatively unimportant. Today, sub-literate sock monkeys who can barely spell their names can cite sources and keep a whole bookmark file full of facts in order to look smart. Luckily, most of them write about politics rather than science ( Huffington Report, RadioAmerica, I mean you ) so science is usually populated by people who know what they’re talking about.

That’s not to say we can’t be stumped. I had a recent question I couldn’t answer without some significant research. I figure if I don’t know the answer, maybe you don’t either and we can all get a little smarter. So here it is:

Why does the fat opera singer’s head shrink when Bugs Bunny sprays Alum in his throat? This came up during the classic “Long-Haired Hare”, after Bugs has had just about enough of Giovanni Jones breaking his banjo.

Well, I wasn’t sure. I never used Alum, I have no Alum in the house. I know they used to put Alum in water, 2500 years ago, and it would work pretty well today. Did the coagulating symbolize this head shrinking? I wrote a chemistry acquaintance but knew I wouldn’t hear from him until morning.

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