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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.
Nano bad.. let's get naked!
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
Theres no nudity in the pictures :(
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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.
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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.
I wear nano-pants... These particular pairs are known as Dockers "Stain Defenders (tm or something)" and really do , uh... defend against stains. Case in point: I was in a restaurant, and someone moved a plate which moved a cup which moved a soup bowl into my lap. I stood up, brushed my hand down my pant leg once to flick the soup off, and sat down again. The table took more cleaning than this amazing material did. I love 'em and swear by them. (wrinkle-resistant too, as a bonus!)
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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.
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.
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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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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.
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...
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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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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.
Cooking with Teflon cookware will kill your birds
I thought cooking birds would kill them irrespective of the material they were cooked in.
Yes I shake.
Is it possible to mod this one +0.5 TOO Informative?
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.)
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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.
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