Terminally Incoherent

Dear Internets,

Pluto is not a planet anymore. Get over it.

We have 8 planets now, and it doesn’t really change anything. All we need to do is to put a footnote in the new books and encyclopedias stating that Pluto is technically a dwarf planet as of August 2006. That’s it. All of the people getting upset by this are just silly.

Here is why we needed this change: every time someone discovers a new cool looking object in the Kuipers Belt some jackass immediately claims it should be classified as a planet because it is bigger/almost as big as Pluto. Media picks it up and for a month or two we are treated to stories about the “10^th planet” or whatnot. Scientists try to clarify this, other people try to dispute them and the public gets confused. All because no one can provide a clear cut definition of the word planet that would include Pluto but not other Kuiper’s Belt objects.

Now we have a good definition, and Pluto does not make the cut, so fuck it. If that upsets your fragile romanticized conception of what the solar system should be, then tough shit.

Thank you for your time.

Thinking in 2 or 3 dimensions is easy, as we are used to it. Everyone can easily visualize a cube with width, height and depth. 4^th dimension is a little bit more tricky, but most people can still wrap their minds around it, by thinking of it as a time progression of that said cube. What about the 5^th dimension? How about the 10^th?

If you have no clue how to visualize it, watch Rob Bryton’s flash presentation. He illustrates dimensions 1 through 10 using nice pictures, and easy to understand analogies. I found this brief explanation very interesting.

found via jenova’s blog

I hate going to the dentist. Most people do. But hey, there is a chance that we will never have to go again if this research pans out.

Here is the gist of the story. Cavities are caused by Streptococcus bacteria that live in our mouths and feed on sugar. They excrete lactic acid which fucks up our teeth. A company in Florida found a brilliant way to stop this from happening:

they have used recombinant DNA technology to produce a new variety of S. mutans which does not excrete lactic acid. Instead, it excretes tiny amounts of an agent called Mutacin 1140 which is deadly to other strains of S. mutans, giving these new bacteria an edge over the existing organisms. Once the modified bacteria get a toehold in the mouth, the existing population of S. mutans will be methodically wiped out, leaving the non-acid-producing bacteria in its place. In the absence of acid-producing bacteria, the teeth have little to fear. Oragenics calls this new treatment Replacement Therapy.

Awesome! There are little problems of course, that still need to be worked out. For example, can these things mess up our system somehow? Can they affect the environment if we start using them on a large scale, and they escape from our mouths? Can they be transmitted by kissing?

Still, this research sounds really cool. So cool in fact that it will probably be killed, trampled, burned and grinded into little pieces by the dentist & tooth care industry. How much do you want to bet this thing will never hit the market?