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Microwave Experiments Cause Sponge Disasters
gollum123 writes "Reports about a study that found microwave ovens can be used to sterilize kitchen sponges sent people hurrying to test the idea this week — with sometimes disastrous results. A team at the University of Florida found that two minutes in the microwave at full power could kill a range of bacteria, viruses and parasites on kitchen sponges. They described how they soaked the sponges in wastewater and then zapped them. But several experimenters evidently left out the crucial step of wetting the sponge. "Just wanted you to know that your article on microwaving sponges and scrubbers aroused my interest. However, when I put my sponge/scrubber into the microwave, it caught fire, smoked up the house, ruined my microwave, and pissed me off," one correspondent wrote in an e-mail to Reuters."
There's this method of execution shown in Tom Hanks' 'The Green Mile' in which the guy to be electrocuted is seated in the chair and a wet sponge must be placed on top of his head. Some guy (Percy) with sadistic intentions 'forgets' to do this and the poor convict burns to death in the chair.
Forgive me if its off-topic, but you can learn a lot from the movies...
In case of human IQ, the evolution feedback works in the wrong direction.
Generally, the more intelligent, well-educated and well-established couples get children at a later age, and get fewer of them.
The "dumber" and lower-class people reproduce faster, and there will be more and more of them.
This effect is clearly visible both on a global scale (developed/developing countries) and locally (lower/upper class).
The fact that educated women want to establish a career before becoming mothers means that they start a family in their late thirties and consequently have fewer kids, sometimes they have no family at all as it is too late for treatment when they discover infertility issues. Basically the smart people aren't replacing themselves.
Fuck, I sound like some Eugenics Nazi but really stop running yourselves down, have a shower and go out and breed people!
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
About 4.5 years ago a guy I later worked for had a new office/factory built. This freshly decorated building included a kitchen area with, amongst other things, a combination microwave/oven. Someone put a jacket potato in and cooked it for 20 minutes on the microwave setting. The room stank of smoke for months afterwards. The potato allegedly looked like a barbeque briquette.
IMHO a better way to sterilise a sponge is as follows:
Reduce, reuse, cycle
The evolution feedback, in case of human IQ, has worked just fine till now. Almost all human institutions are organized in a pyramid-like structure: the more intelligent, well-educated people will be more at the top, leading. The "dumber" and lower-class people are more near or at the bottom, doing more of the menial work. ...?
.... So, we'd have 1 billion people, of which 99.99% have nothing to do, except to just try and enjoy themselves. My guess is most of them would get really bored really fast...
Now, until we have robots (or other technological solutions) that can take over most of the unskilled and lower-skilled work, we do need these "dumber" and lower-class people or the entire economy and our way of life will come to a standstill. Or do you really think, that if everybody was more intelligent and well-educated, that we'd have enough people with PhD's who would find satisfaction in working at the checkout of a supermarket or cleaning toilets or
The question then becomes: what if we do get to the point where we have robots (or whatever) to do most of the unskilled, lower-skilled and maybe even medium-skilled tasks? We'd have 5 billion people in the world, "mostly" not well-educated and due-to the evolutionary feedback up till now a "big" percentage would not be intelligent enough to be well-educated. What should become of these people? What would they do all day if they're all unemployed?
Even if natural selection would step in hard at that point and we'd be left with only with 1 billion people, all well-educated, what would THEY do all day? I mean, can you imagine 1 billion well-educated people working on innovations or being "artists"? Soon enough there would be little left to invent, or at least not enough to keep 1 billion people occupied, and then what? Spread out across the universe and colonize other planets? Sure, but seeing as everybody would ofcourse take all the knowledge with them there'd be nothing "real" to do on those planets as well, apart from just living.
Of course it's a genetic trait. Perhaps not entirely, but there's a significant genetic component to it, that's why we're humans after all, you can't take a chimpanzee and raise him in IQ promoting environment and get Einstein.
One exceptional feature of a microwave is that it will keep heating at full effect no matter how hot the target gets. The only limit how you design your target.
d omestic-microwave-oven/
You can for example melt and cast most metals:
http://net127.com/2005/01/24/melting-metals-in-a-
With some research, you may even be able to use your kitchen microwave to generate some fusion reactions.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
The "zero" in your score makes me laugh. Super patriotism of others for the win. But seriously, joining the military is quite interesting...on one hand you have the people who obviously have all the right reasons: nuclear technicians without enough money or high school GPA (which doesn't mean your dumb by the way...the fact I was 11th in my class means nothing) to get education from a decent college, people down on their luck because they got laid off and can no longer afford schooling, etc...etc... In both cases, and many others, a good reason for military conscription is in fact a lack of college. Which isn't saying your too stupid or poor to get into the college mind you. A good example would be my own father-in-law: extremely smart man. Never graduated high-school and dropped out after reading every decent book they had in their library (never went to class and the principle didn't know what to do with him; took him a good year and a half to read everything that interested him). Yet he joined the military AND went to college (3 PHDs and more masters and Bachelors than I can count). On the other hand, you have gang members who want a legal excuse to shoot people. I know, that sounds horrible, and my karma will hurt after this post. But, honestly its true. My father was in the military, and my best friend is in bootcamp right now, and they'll agree with me. Gangs since the beginning of war have been formed after wars were over by soldiers with too much extra aggression... Why am I replying to a "0" scored post? I dunno, perhaps I wanted to talk about my dad. Perhaps I'm waiting for a virus scan to end on my laptop before driving out to the lab to get some late-night work done. Or perhaps I felt that the moderation system of slashdot is such that one ticked off guy who copies and pastes: "I for one..." into every biology post can turn your essay into troll-bait. And so I say "farewell to karma..."
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
It's seems to really be a moot point whether IQ is genetic, social or monetary as an individual's children will (generally) be raised in the same social and monetary situation as the parents. No personal experience, but my father has been a guidance counselor at a High School since he retired from the military,(about 7 years) and he swears it's genetic. According to him, 95% of the time, if the kid is an idiot, when the parents come in for a meeting they're going to be idiots too, and the same thing holds true for the smart kids.
I used to work for an environmental engineering company, where one of my co-workers had a clipping from a 1960's Popular Mechanics article suggesting the the best way to dispose of used motor oil was to pour it into a hole in the ground. I'm not sure if it was up there to show the difference in how we view things over time, or to give clients ideas so as to drum up more business, but either way I found it amusing.
Oh, wah. We're not overpopulated, not by a long shot. Growth of the population is a good thing, especially since most "western" countries are actually facing a declining population (birth rates are too low). The only reason the US has a growing population is because of immigration. Go look up birth rate statistics for countries in Europe and North America.
Eugenics is practiced with every prenatal screening, gene screening to discover genetic abnormalities prior to conception, and with almost every in-vitro process. Do you consider those "horrible"?
These are controversial ethical debates. Some people, especially the disabled community, do not believe that those who are born disabled should be screened out. Of course, the definition of "disability" and "disease" varies greatly.
I agree there's much debate on this topic. In a contrary view, there was a story in the insert in my Sunday paper this past weekend about a married dwarf couple wanting to ensure their child was born a dwarf. This would be intentionally producing a child with what is considered a genetic abnormality by, at a rough guess, 95+% of the population. Personally, I feel that intentionally disadvantaging a child in this manner, because they will be at a disadvantage in today's society, is not unlike unnecessarily amputating a new born's legs or arms at birth. The story also made mention of intentionally selecting deafness for a deaf couple. I feel the same way about that.This is merely encouraging a subset to remove themselves from the gene pool.
Deliberately encouraging people to kill themselves would... land you in a fair bit of trouble, I think.
Or do you hold that the Darwin Awards website is an abomination as well?
More like insensitivity to loved ones.
Telling someone to "drop dead" if you will, is not punishable. As an example of how stupid our society has become as a whole, I was by pure happenstance viewing an ad on TV this morning. It was of the new Lexus IS, and they had one on a runway racing against an IS dropped from a helicopter across the drop target. The ground based IS squeaks right under the falling IS in classic thrilling escaped by a hair style.What makes this germane to this discussion is the text that was apparently felt by someone that needed to be included in the ad. Underneath, it stated first off, "all ariel sequences were simulated", followed by "Professional driver on closed course. Do not attempt."
Now, if you have to tell someone that measuring out 4000 feet on a runway and racing a car dropped from a helicopter @ 4000 feet is something you shouldn't attempt, I'd say that anyone so tempted should be allowed to go ahead and potentially remove themselves from the gene pool.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
He has no clue what he is doing! He has no idea what his stand on anythign is untill his speech writer hand's him a pice of paper. And he does not even try to HIDE that! Does he practice before any speech he gives? No Does he even read the speech before he gives it publicly? NO!
G.W. Bush is really a meat puppet, everyone in politics seems to have their hand shoved inside him pulling strings. They seem to be taking turns with him now, but he is one of the worst presidents ever!
Now if you will excuse me, I have to get ready for HomeLand Security to come over. Aparently they now think I am a terrorist (See above statements) and I am about to be jailed without being told why. And there is no telling how long I am going to be held.
While you are testing out all the theories in this tread, try Peeps (you know those disgusting marshmallow candies that you still have in your closet 2 years after Halloween re-located them from the store shelf to your shelf). They are great fun to watch in the microwave -- try it and see. And no, they won't light everything on fire.
Or let's put it another way: the more "advanced" a society gets the less applicable natural selection becomes. Why? Because societies in first world countries will try to safeguard its citizens against stupidity or any other "lack of fitness". Not only does it protect its citizens against natural hazards, such as wild animals, bad weather, famines etc. but it also strives to protect them from any new threats arising due to the new life style.
;) - A funny movie none the less.
The example in this case would be: guy hears about scientists sterilizing a sponge, guy rushes to the microwave in order to replicate the experiment, sponge catches fire, guy frantically jumps around in circles while microwave oven and room catches on fire, this sets off the fire alarm which in turn calls the firefighters, they extinguish the fire, guy sues everybody and their grandma, gets rich and procreates like mad..
We have basically neutralized effects of natural selection on us by assuring the survival and procreation of individuals that would be "less fit". Instead we are subjected mainly to genetic drift, the other effect that determines the gene pool of a population.
The movie Idiocracy actually takes it a step further and postulates that stupidity actually increases the "fitness" of an individual (i.e. a stupid individual is more likely to have children), thus a bunch of generations down the line we'll be living in an "idiocracy" such as the one depicted
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.