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Nanotech Protests Begin
ByteWoopy wrote to mention a Wire.com story discussing the danger of nanotechnology, and the beginning of a backlash against the branch of technology. From the article: "...environmental activists sauntered into the Eddie Bauer store on Michigan Avenue, headed to the broad storefront windows opening out on the Magnificent Mile and proceeded to take off their clothes. The strip show aimed to expose more than skin: Activists hoped to lay bare growing allegations of the toxic dangers of nanotechnology. The demonstrators bore the message in slogans painted on their bodies, proclaiming 'Eddie Bauer hazard' and 'Expose the truth about nanotech,' among other things, in light of the clothing company's embrace of nanotech in its recent line of stain-resistant nanopants."
So where are the pictures of these protestors?
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And thus begins the Nanotech protests... Don't let the grey goo... Hey! a naked chick!!!
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
who the **** wears nanopants?
mary-kate and ashley?
shooting is not too good for my enemies
Nano bad.. let's get naked!
Squeeze as I can, I just can't fit in em.
I'm going to start wearing nanotech all the time if it draws protesters like these.
I thought the Evil Religious Right(tm) had cornered the market on unreasonable opposition to scientific progress. What am I supposed to make of this??
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
My pants are already too tight, why are they making them smaller?
Post-rock/Ambient/Drone and other noise.
Theres no nudity in the pictures :(
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10.
I've got several pairs of those nanotech khakis. They don't stain at all, even with coffee spilled on them. It doesn't seem to be "real" nanotech, though, just some kind of nylon polymer treatment for the material that makes it water-resistant.
Eddie Bauer makes some nice jeans too. Levis always seem to feel better, but I get a lot more compliments when I'm wearing my Eddie Bauer jeans.
I'm not sure what they are trying to protest. Maybe they can get some mites rolling around naked in the store or something. That ought to give them something "nano" to worry abuot.
So sad, grey goo is unlikey to come from this... But we could still get cancer!
The problem with nanotechnology is that we don't really understand why much of it works, and we don't have any idea how the special properties it has will affect our bodies. Nano-whiskers? Great - I'm sure they help keep stains from getting on clothes. But what the *hell* are they going to do in my lungs?
As we've seen time and again, what we don't know really can hurt us...
--LWM
I was standing in line to see a movie years ago - I forget which one - when I was approached by petitioners from PETA who were upset about the treatment of the horses in the latest Conan movie.
They showed me a letter from the Spanish Department of the Interior which said, basically, "Gosh, if you say they were abused, then we believe you." Then they waved this letter around claiming the Spanish Government corroborated their claims.
People who run up and start protesting before they know a damned thing about what they're protesting just make me laugh. I hope at least that the people who took off their clothes had nice butts, because apart from some tittilation, that's all they accomplished.
I really enjoyed the "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" episode about environmental activists. +1 Funny AND Insightful, highly recommended viewing.
I think the thing that stuck with me the most is that the environmental activists started out decades ago with a good idea, and then were usurped by anti-American/anti-Capitalist propaganda peddlers.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Still, the idea of a "catastrophe brought on by millions of uncontrolled, destructive [Eddie Bauer pants] that chew through the environment" is very appealing to me, and I suggest that the SciFi channel makes a movie about it.
Yes, of course, the dangerous effects of pants on humans. These people are just fucking stupid. Way to be afraid of a marketing word.
It's probably just some guy standing out there waving around his nano-penis. On the other hand, I suppose it's an interesting twist on the "does size matter?" question.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
We're already seeing signs of problems to come: buckyballs appear to cause Alzheimer's-like damage when they get into the brains of fish.
o technology/dn4825
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/mech-tech/nan
I have been eagerly awaiting the first self replicating nanomachines ever since reading Engines of Creation (http://www.foresight.org/EOC/) but the tech probably has a long convoluted road ahead to acceptance and safe use. If we are seeing problems already with buckyballs - perhaps the simplest example of nanotech - the implications will be far greater for something like airborne nanobots that clean the air, or your bloodstream.
NSFW? That's NSFVAA = Not Safe For Viewing At Anytime
No sig for you!!
OMFGWTFBBQ EVIL TECHONOLOGY. GET NEKKID. Protests like this lower the value of all other protests. Sort of like spamming lowers the value of all e-mail, you have to filter out the crap to actually see the stuff that is worthwhile.
But who needs logic when you can jerk your knee around some. These guys have the same mindset as the Creationists, just a different issue.
*plonk*
The more you know, the less you understand.
Merits and dangers of technology aside, activists seem more and more stupid these days. Yeah, shock value gets you *attention* -- but not credibility. MLK had protestors dress up in their sunday best, looking dignified. If they'd run through the streets nude and shouting, it would have been a fine spectacle, but we'd probably still have seperate water fountains.
So yeah. Fight the man. Spark debate over nanotech, GM food, war, whatever. Just do it with some sense, OK? Protest is already in danger of becoming dead as a vector for social change. Turning it into an easy parody of itself isn't helping.
Tweet, tweet.
Where do these heartless luddites get off protesting clothes meant for truly size-challenged individuals. There's always some new form of bigotry. We ought to organize a counter protest (clothed of course) to support these poor diminutive folk, so sorely in need of nano-pants...
...carrier dead.....
There are two big problems with nano-tech. First, it is too broad of a term, therefore not really useful. Second, the things it deal with are novel materials, not only in the fact that they have novel properties and risks, but those risks may change with the size of the material, and risks based on size is not something we currently have a lot experience regulating.
That said I am kind of unhappy with the fact that many companies are trying to manufacture products under the radar. We really don't know what the risk of these materials are, but we know, from current research, and past experience, that there will probably be risks. OTOH, we know that the benefits will likely at least equal the risks, and as long as we don't go hogwild everything will be ok. The issue is likely to be whether these companies are studying and managing the risks, or whether they expect future generations to pay for the inevitable cleanup.
We can take GM as a way not to do it. The assertion that GM is safe was never reasonable. The assertion that GM products would not significantly cross pollinate other products was never reasonable, and any argument that depended on the assumption was necessarily invalid. The modification to make sure the plant would not reproduce was a good thing, but we all know that genes mutate and therefore was not a silver bullet, and not without its own risk. There were and are very good uses for GM products, but the GM people really deserved the grief because they were pompous bastards.
If Nano follows the same pompous 'we are saving the world and deserved to be worshiped, not protested' bullshit, then Nano also deserves the pain. Look at it this way. Airbags probably save lives, but they probably cause injury, and occasional death. It was the marketing of the life saving properties without full disclosure of the risks that lead to problems.
The nano in pants, sun screen, and whatever else, needs to be disclosed an treated as a net benefit, not a god given gift to humanity. Who know what the long term production problems or exposure problems are going to be. I mean, are these products suitable for parents, whose baby's are going to chew on the fabric, and injest the materials and residual chemicals? This follows the same line that tuna is fine for the general public, but probably not for pregnant or nurseing women.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
See, everybody seems to have this impression that nanotechnology is going to turn the whole world into a pile of grey-goo.
Problem is, nanotechnology is NOWHERE NEAR advanced enough to do that. And may never be. As it is right now, we don't know how to make intelligent, self-replicating machines AT ANY SCALE. We're not even CLOSE to being able to do that.
This is just an updated version of the "computers are evil" mindset that still is pretty prevalent thanks to HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey". People read some science-fiction, and mistakenly think it's REAL.
Duh.
Isn't this protest about the toxicity of Teflon, not nanotechnology?
Dude, teflon is WAY outdated. In fact, Dupont already created genetically engineered bacteria that degrade teflon (hence, it's biodegradable now).
Nanopants use specially designed molecules that make them stain-proof because of their hydrophobic properties.
This is what happenened when PETA activists showed up at my school and tried to force-feed us their bullshit:0 325.html
http://www.animalrights.net/archives/year/2002/00
Seriously, can we wait until the cool nano-tech stuff comes out before the protests start? This is like protesting the realistic violence in video games just after the release of Pac-Man.
First off, let me preface this by saying that I'm a huge nanotech fan. The sort of leap-forward potential that nanotech provides in superconductors, photovoltaics, betavoltaics, computing, LEDs, medical tracers, antibiotics, genetics, materials, rocketry, and just about everything that you can think of are of such a huge scale, it's hard to even picture.
However, it would be wrong of us to pretend that there aren't serious risks. And, no, I'm not talking about dumb "grey goo" scenarios. Look at CNTs, for example. Very stable, aerosolizable in some situations, and very easily penetrates cells. Add various functional groups onto them (like many projects are doing) that might damage cell internals, and it sounds like a ready-made health nightmare. The problem with many nanoparticles is that they're very small, and thus able to get to places that their non-soluable relatives couldn't. They often tend to be either very stable or very reactive in comparison to their large-scale relatives.
Oh, and before all of the poorly thought out "nanoparticles like CNTs occur in nature in candle soot!", that's like arguing that since cyanide occurs in many fruits, we shouldn't worry about pure cyanide.
We shouldn't hold up research; far from it, the varying fields of nanotech really look to be the next leap forward in almost every scientific arena. But we also need to put them under great scrutiny, or we'll have another DDT on our hands.
Sigur RÃs: I didn't know that Heaven had a rock band.
would be nonstick cookware, which is where most people's daily encounter with teflon is. Obviously the easiest route to ingestion would be food cooked on it, compared to wearing pants. Especially if you use a metal utinsel to stir the food and accidentally scratch the pan, releasing the teflon.
So why arent they protesting sellers of kitchenware?
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So, will the benefits outweight the potential risks?
You've hit the nail right on the head. That's the fundemental thing most environmentalists refuse to understand. Everything has risks --- the question is, what risks are we better-off taking? It's the same thing with energy policy. Environmentalists don't realize that by opposing nuclear power (meltdown), wind power (birds), water power (aquatic ecology), and solar power (land usage), they are effectively coming out in support of oil and coal power (cancer, war, pollution, etc). In doing that, they are effectively in league with the big energy companies!
No mode of human-nature interaction will be completely noninvasive. The only rational goal is to make the interaction as non-invasive as practical. By arguing against change, people are effectively arguing for the preservation of the status quo, a status quo which will lead to environmental destruction more surely and quickly than any of the proposed alternatives.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
But most toxins have a threshold dose below which they don't do much of anything.
I wonder if the makers of these pants determined the rate of absorption of teflon when wearing them, especially as they deteriorate. Somehow I doubt it.
But it's probably OK. In the meantime, I'll let Eddie Bauer shoppers be the test subjects and get my stain-free paints in a couple of decades, after the effects are better understood.
I bet there's a great deal about malt scotch that we don't understand at the molecular level. Does this mean we should be purging Balvenie from the shelves? Saints preserve us!
This does not mean we blindly rush into things, but to say "we don't understand everything about it" or "there's a possibility that it gives cancer" is just stating the blindingly obvious. We need a better assessment of the risks than that.
Is that the best thing they can find to protest? Talk about fiddling while Rome burns! Lemme see, you could, say, talk about the broad and concerted assault on the middle class through Bush's Retirement Roulette scheme, or the nuclear option Congress is practicing on American workers by rewarding outsourcing, or the elimination of personal bankruptcy protections that only hurt anyone not wealthy enough to field a team of lawyers, or the changes to Federal Student Loan guidelines that will double the cost for poorer students' families, or nominating federal judges who equate non-neo-cons with slavers. Heck, you could possibly even talk about a quagmire that never needed to happen, that was sold to the American public on a pack of lies, and that is now grounding down our army, grinding up our treasury, and, incidentally, killing American soldiers and lots and lots of hapless Iraqis.
THIS is what these people choose to spend their time doing?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Sounds like any of thousands of protests going on world-wide. Protesters who haven't a clue about what they're protesting, but protesting it none the less. It makes them feel important. Facts don't enter into the equation.
Hey, there is no point in lumping environmentalists in with progressives in general. It's a common misconception, but it isn't true. There are tens of millions of "progressives" in this country. In comparison, the membership of Greenpeace (the largest environmental organization in the country) has declined from 1 million in 1992 to a mere 300,000 in 2000.
Environmentalists are a marginal part of the overall progressive movement. Heck, there are more Mormons in the conservative movement than there are environmentalists in the progressive movement. I suppose conservatives would love it if we characterized them all as Mormons...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You are thinking in only one dimension (1D), with "right" and "left" as opposing signs. In reality there are many variables that define people's political positions, at least one per issue.
Also, for many people, political activism for their causes takes on a religious role in their lives. It gives their lives meaning and makes them feel part of a larger whole in the way that religion does.
Religious views become mixed up with political ones, to a greater or lesser extent. Religious values say that helping the poor is Good, that chastity is Good, or that being kind to other species is Good. Adherents then are prone to wanting those Good things put into law, or at least to have their government support their practice.
People see themselves as having a "right" or "left" charge, as belonging to a side, and then think they have to conform to all of the beliefs associated with that side. The religious overtones for certain issues bring religious conformity to bear. Couple that with peer pressure and you get the madness of crowds.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Many bird owners are aware of the dangers of Teflon. Cooking with Teflon cookware will kill your birds. Not cooking their food, but any food. Teflon delaminates from the cookware and gets into the air. This isn't from crazy environmentalists; it's a real danger.
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Jake: Hey, what's going on?
Officer: Ah, those bums won their courtcase so they're marching today.
Jake: What bums?
Officer: The fucking nanotech hippies.
Elwood: Illinois nanotech hippies...
Jake: I hate Illinios nanotech hippies.
It sounds like Urban Myth. Like using a cellphone at a gas pump can cause an explosion. A well accepted Urban Myth does not make it fact.
click me
And your point is. . .?
Many if not most envrionmentalists claim they are "Progressives."
And to the best of my knowledge, most "Progressives" (you being the exception) are happy to have them.
There may be some "Progressives" like yourself who embrace advances in technology, but the socialist bedrock of your "progressive" ideology has proven more harmful than any catastrophe capitalism or technology ever whipped up.
"I worked hard for it. I deserve it. And I have it," Campbell said. "It's all mine."
Because you're not wearing your kitchenware in the form of tiny teflon fibers.
By the way, Teflon pans are deadly to birds when overheated. A gas is formed which can kill your pet in a matter of minutes. Does it affect humans? Dunno. You can read DuPont's assessment of the danger to birds here.
I'd like to find out exactly what the hazards of Teflon are, especially since we just bought a Teflon-treated couch. The fabric is awesome and inexpensive, but I want an objective assessment of the health risks.
Please don't let your distrust of activitists and love of the acronym FUD obscure the issue. The signal-noise ratio on slashdot is bad enough as it is.
Not that I post on slashdot or anything.
Weather is short-term, geographically-isolated environmental effects. Climate is long-term trending over larger areas.
Saying "how can we predict climate when we can't get the weather forecast right" is about as insightful as saying "but it was COLDER than average today! How the hell can we be experiencing global warming???"
Not that I disagree with you in principle, mind you - we seriously lack data to know just what is going to happen long-term. Just keep in mind that through all the talk about cliamte change, no one is claiming that "it will be 5 degrees hotter on July 21, 2007 in Peoria".
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Most environmentalists are progressives. However, most progressives are not environmentalists. We're not "happy to have" the environmentalists, indeed, by now, we suspect most of them have pretty much gone over to something like the Green party anyway (which is of course, more reactionary than progressive).
Most progressives do embrace technological advancements, again, because most progressives are not environmentalists. If you look at protestors on college campuses and say "oh, those are progressives", you can get the idea that progressives are enviro-nuts. If you actually look at the statistics, you'll realize that those college campus protestors have no power in the progressive movement because they are a numerically small group that doesn't vote anyway.
As for "socialist", that's a pretty funny comment. First, there are few true socialists in America. American progressives are more populist than socialist. But then again, American conservatives are pretty damn populist as well. Certainly, Presidents like George W. Bush have abandoned conservative economic principles in favor of populist ones (give the people whatever they want).
In short, the ideological battle that is actually being waged is very different from the one you have in your head. It's not "socialist progressives vs capitalist conservatives", but rather "populist progressives vs. populist conservatives". And, statistically, neither side could care less about the environment.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Cooking with Teflon cookware will kill your birds
I thought cooking birds would kill them irrespective of the material they were cooked in.
Wow, I remember when comments on Slashdot used to be thoughtful and informative. Now they're reactive, ignorant and shallow. Did any of the dorks calling these people "stupid hippies" actually read any of the details of why they're protesting?
CHICAGO, Ill. -- On Saturday, at 1 pm, dozens of concerned citizens joined the public health group THONG outside of the Eddie Bauer flagship store on Michigan Avenue to protest the company's use of untested "nano-fibers" in their "nanotex" clothing line which also boasts the "Teflon" label and are "wrinkle free". THONG is a local Chicago public-interest group that uses nudity to educate people on detrimental threats to human health and the environment.
"We're out here naked so people can SEE THE PROBLEM, nanotech is such a radical and unpredictable new technology, like biotech, that it takes something highly visible, like a naked body, to get people to focus on the need to stop corporations from using humans as guinea pigs for new, untested, and unstable new technologies!" said Kiki Walters of THONG.
"The Royal Society in the UK has issued their own report, recommending regulation to control exposure to nanotechnologies. We believe they have a point to make. We just wanted to make it even more obvious to people."
Eddie Bauer's line of water and stain resistant clothing utilizes nanotechnology, a radically new and untested technology that involves the manipulation of matter at the scale of the nanometer (nm), which is one-billionth of a meter. At this scale, materials behave differently than their larger counterparts, and can possibly be more reactive and toxic, posing unknown risks to human health and the environment. Though nanoparticles are not regulated by any government in the world, many products containing them are already on the market, including food, clothing, cosmetics and sunscreens, without proper safety testing for toxicity, posing risks to the health of consumers and retail workers. Nano-Tex(TM) clothing contains nano-fibers coated with Teflon particles. Nanoparticles have been found to penetrate the blood brain barrier. Inhalation of many types of nanoparticles have been proven to be toxic to animals in lab tests.
"Even the largest re-insurance company in the world, Swiss RE, has stated that they will not insure nanotech at this time. At least this major financial player has openly admitted the potential toxicity of nanoproducts, and that these products present what they call long latent unforeseen claims." said Natalie Eggs, another THONG member.
The real toxic issue here is not nanotech, but the fact that nanotech is being used to further promote the use of substances such as Teflon, which is known to be toxic and dangerous and is already outlawed in many countries. People wearing these outfits with the special nanotech-enabled teflon-based chemicals embedded within them, are exposing themselves to toxic chemicals that are widely recognized around the world as being dangerous!
Teflon is inert for MOST materials. There are a few things that make it swell but you are, mostly right. It is the most chemically inert substance I personally know of.
Just a minor clarification.
So, although they bury this information on their web page, and don't use the word Teflon (AKA PTFE), the information is there on their own web page.
(Btw, I didn't know any of this until I read about it myself in this thread.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I call bullshit. In it's purest form, Teflon is good to about 400 degrees F. I don't know how they laminate it to a frying pan but I am guessing they do so in a way that that the Teflon can not "melt" away or vaporize during the higher cooking temperatures. Is it possible that it's something OTHER than the teflon that is causing the problem? It would certainly be easier to qualify if you could provide a link supporting your assertation.
Also, if the vapors are so bad, then why don't power plants, chem plants, and other plants have to report to the EPA when they "melt" teflon due to process upsets and whatnot? It happens ALL the damn time. Every day, all over the world.
And since I spec Teflon on on many of the items I provide to these plants, I am certain I would have heard of any hazardous environmental issues related to it. Yet, this is the first time I have EVER heard anything "harmful" associated with Teflon.
Can you please elaborate?
People don't really look like that. You don't look like that. Get over it.
If you mean to talk about those things specifically, say "nanomachines".
You mean, I'm not allowed to say "nanobots"? Well, if you say so. I guess I'll have to go change my resume now.
There's a set of books by Peter Hamilton (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, The Nakid God) which uses the term "nanotechnology" a LOT. But never in the sense of nanobots or gray mater. Good books btw. (Not a great ending though)
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela
I have heard a bit about how the BuckyBall carbon molecules don't break down and react strangely with the body. So nano tech is hardly inert. The BuckyBall issue, while made from simple carbon, is a different shaped molecule. And could result in another health issue like asbestos fibers.
Are you aware that buckyballs are a major component of soot? Along with many of the other carbon nanostructures (many of which are manufactured by sorting them out of soot).
Humans have had a very long time to evolve defenses against these particular carbon compounds that "react strangely" with the body - along with a lot of other combustion products.
One of the dioxins, for instance, is a low-grade carcinogen for humans, instant death for birds (as in they literally fall out of the sky, which is how a chem prof told me at least one accidental release was detected) at similar concentrations, and extremely toxic for just about all other animal life.
I'm sure nanotech will soon come up with something novel and nasty to humans - if it hasn't already. But, odd as they are, buckyballs aren't it. We've been breathing them in quantity since the domestication of fire.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way