Archive for the 'science' Category

Thursday, June 21st, 2007

The Assault On Coffee Part I

There’s a war that’s brewing and you may not be aware of it. It’s right under our noses but it has been kept out of the mainstream media due to a growing web of deniers and obfuscaters who regard misinformation and doubt as allies. Like many insurrections it has been funded quietly but it’s effects can be devastating to people in the war zones, like the line that stretches out the door at Tully’s.

That war, my friends, is the War On Coffee.

Coffee is good. Coffee is good for you. Science has proved this on numerous occasions yet time and again I see sources in the mainstream media trying to establish doubt about the total awesomeness of coffee.

I saw yet another hit piece on coffee today, this one titled Researchers Discover How Coffee Raises Cholesterol. Where did they get that idea?

But I am a fair person, I want to know if my health is at risk, so I took a random sample of 928 articles on coffee, none of which were found to express doubt in its total awesomeness. That is a consensus, people.

Yet the deniers will not accept it. The issue, they say now, is Cafestol, a diterpene molecule found in coffee. Well, diterpene molecules are our friends, since that’s how we get Retinol, the animal form of vitamin A and an important antioxidant. Unless you like having lousy vision and brittle bones. Why are they blaming Cafestol? Who is behind this? The only answers I found came from one source, not surprisingly the exact same source behind the recent study saying coffee is bad: Baylor University. The folks at Baylor wrote a similar hit piece in 2005.

So off to Baylor I went, to the Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. But they were on to me. When I arrived, the place was cleared out. Mostly. I did find this.


The first clue

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Thursday, May 31st, 2007

The Science of Relationships II: Keeping Magic Alive


Sexy Scientist is a rare and powerful card

People are not always sure there is a science to relatonships until I spend a minute explaining it to them. Everything in the universe is about inductance. Inductance has lots of gobbledy-gook definitions that require you to know what a lot of other words mean, so physics definitions don’t always help, but inertia is part of the lexicon and everyone knows what that is.

Inductance is like inertia, except for electricity. You know that inertia means. It takes some effort to get something moving but, once you get going, it is actually easier to keep it going. So it goes with relationships. With inductance, you have more electrons in one place than another and they are induced to go somewhere else, like when I went green by using fruit for all my electricity. There’s a metaphor for relationships in that also.

Romantic inertia is obvious for men in statements like “it’s always easier to get a girl if you already have one.” Romantic inductance is obvious for women because a woman knows that if she takes her vagina into a bar full of men that have no vaginas, the vagina-lacking men will be induced toward her until equilibrium is reached.

Seriously, you can make an inductance metaphor for almost anything in life. 1

Relationships have inductance, and we’ll get to that in a minute, but first we have to overcome romantic inertia, which means you need a girl. Science can help here also.

Before you can create romantic inductance with her you need to overcome her inertia about you. Girls love to laugh. There are some spectacular women who have dated some ugly men because women are on a higher intellectual plane than men and will overlook a lot of things for a guy who makes her laugh, including your Star Trek “SET PHASERS FOR FUN” t-shirt with barbecue sauce on it from dinner three nights ago.

Here are some personal favorite opening lines to interest that science chick:

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Monday, May 28th, 2007

The Science Of Relationships


You can get Jessica. You just need strategic help from a scientist


Scientists have provided a lot of answers for humanity - the nature of gravity, the shape of the world, how to put unusually large breasts on small, thin women.

But It may surprise you to learn, because you are used to me being a science guru and, on occasion, a Formula One race car driver who solves mysteries on TV, that some scientists are also experts on relationships.

Not my own, of course. I mean I am an expert on your relationships.

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Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

Go Green By Switching To Fruit Power

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.


Don’t write me emails about this girl in the picture. For left wing chicks, this is the best you’re getting.

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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Friday, May 18th, 2007

Girls Give Hope To Ugly Guys Everywhere Part VI

Science articles, even in the casual world of the internet, take a great deal of research. It’s not always easy making science look easy.

As all of you know, my articles are meticulously detailed, well thought out and ergonomically terrific in almost every way. That doesn’t happen by accident. But sometimes revelations for new articles happen by accident, like when I am researching something else.

While I was researching the most important article in the history of the internet I decided, in the interests of maintaining my impeccable credentials, that I needed a picture of a hot girl in a river. I keep a substantial folder of supermodel endorsements and pictures for occasions like this. But I didn’t have girls that fish so it took some time.

And then I stumbled across this picture:

And the happy accident came to me - because women have proved, once again, that they are intellectually and emotional on a different level than men. Namely, because they will date some really ugly guys.

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