The Last Word On Nothing

Valentine’s Day Tips from the Animal Kingdom

By: Sally Adee | February 14, 2013

I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s day, but I love the ads. They are so utterly, transparently awful that they cross the line from crassly offensive into entertaining. Business Insider just did a brilliant roundup of the worst offenders of all time.

They have a certain evolutionary-psychology simplicity to them — if you present a female with this resource, she will mate with you willingly — and it reminded me of a tour I took last year of the Natural History Museum in London. The NHM celebrated the occasion with a “Turn me on/Turn me off” tour of romance in the animal kingdom, one of which I covered for New Scientist.

If you’re struggling with the crass cynical exploitation fest this Valentine’s Day, let the animal kingdom give you some cheap alternatives. Continue reading →

Bad Wind Made Better

By: Erik Vance | February 13, 2013

Last year, I published a series critical of modern wind farms. They dealt with a number of pretty dirty land deals in southern Mexico related to new wind farms. Although they were on the cover of a major national newspaper, they didn’t get the attention I thought they deserved (as with most of my stories, oddly enough). It was a sad story in an overlooked corner of the continent.

But one sliver of that attention especially bothered me – those who used it as an argument that wind power is just as bad as coal and gas. That’s why a few weeks ago at a placebo conference (yes, it’s a real conference – not just a bunch of fake scientists and a fake audience) my head snapped around at a lecture on the health effect of wind power. Apparently, there is an idea out there that wind turbines can make you sick. The idea goes that people exposed to very low sound waves, called “infrasound” (say 40 decibels at five hertz for the nerds out there) might experience sleep disturbance, headaches, dizziness, tinnitus, ear pressure or pain, nausea, concentration problems, irritability, anger, panic episodes, fatigue, loss of motivation. Continue reading →

Petula Clark Turns 80

By: Richard Panek | February 12, 2013

I was browsing online a couple of months ago when I came across the headline, “Petula Clark Turns 80.” What? That’s not possible. I remember when she was part of the British invasion, an icon of Swinging London, a mainstay of the Top Forty. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing “Downtown” or “Don’t Sleep in the Subway” coming out of a transistor ra—

Oh, wait.

I experienced a similar cognitive rebuke a few weeks later while riding on the uptown 1 train. I was standing near a trio of women I would guess were at least in their mid-60s. I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop—not that I’m above that sort of thing—but two words kept surfacing: “Mick Jagger.” I couldn’t quite get close enough to hear what they had to say about Sir Mick, but I did notice that they were talking about him with great familiarity, as if they had grown up listening to the Rolling Stones. And then I realized, they had.

Continue reading →

Abstruse Goose: Computer Programming 101

By: Ann Finkbeiner | February 11, 2013

In spite of AG’s title, this is really Science Writing 101. The first time science writers run across these infinitely receding questions is when they start researching a story and the story is all parts and no whole. The next time is when they start asking scientists questions and every answer just means another question. And the time after that is when they write the first draft and nothing is irrelevant. How far down the rabbit hole do you go? Once you’re down there, how do you get back up again? How much of what’s down there do you bring back with you? Oh Lord it’s awful, it’s just awful.

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Abstruse Goose has been on some kind of sabbatical and was posting from his archives. This one was labelled Jan. 2, 2009 and didn’t have a link. Because if it did, I’d link to it. Meanwhile, he seems to be back again, all fingers and toes accounted for — for which we are grateful and a little relieved. http://abstrusegoose.com

The Last Word

By: Sally Adee | February 9, 2013

February 4 – 8

This week, Erika’s back! And she’s not happy about “informed consent“.

Cameron considers the endangerment of the world’s apex predator, some of which are only as big as a chocolate bar!

Cassie throws shade at the dodgy sleep aids of the 70s.

Jessa tells us how architects are like psychoactive drug designers.

Did you know your brain doesn’t natively know how to hear? Ann explains in the gorgeous story of how Rosemary learned to hear again.

Afraid of the Shark

By: Cameron Walker | February 8, 2013

The other day, just as I was about to go out on the water on a nine-foot piece of epoxy-covered foam, a man stopped me on the beach. “Aren’t you scared to go out there by yourself?” he said. “Because of the sharks?”

I had been trying to forget about them, even though the sun was setting, the water murkier by the minute. So I mumbled something that I’ve heard other people say, that I was going into the sharks’ territory, that I was the uninvited guest. I also held up my paddle, as if to say I could give a shark a good whack if I had to. Continue reading →

Sleep Aids

By: Cassandra Willyard | February 5, 2013

Ahh, the 1960s. A simpler time when women wore pant-skirts and insomnia could be cured by the soothing sounds of Liadov’s Musical Snuff Box. Well, not quite. Flip open this album and you’ll find a two-page ad for a sleeping pill called Placidyl. The tagline reads: “But when music fails, you can rest assured with Placidyl, Doctor.”

Here’s what I find striking. First, this isn’t an album with a drug ad slapped surreptitiously on the inside cover. The album is the drug ad. That title, “Music to Nudge You to Sleep” — that’s actually Placidyl’s campaign slogan. Drugmaker Abbott Laboratories promised Placidyl would “nudge” patients to sleep in the print ads too. Second, this isn’t some rinky-dink endeavor. The music — ten songs in all — is performed by the Boston Pops led by Arthur Fielder, a man the New York Times called “one of the world’s best-known musical figures.”

The album appears to be the love child of a strange (and brief) affair between the music industry and pharma. A blurb in the April 4, 1964 issue of Billboard Magazine notes that record label RCA Victor “is now leading the way into the ‘Land of Nod.'” (A later album, “Singing the Blues,” plugged a Merck antidepressant called Elavil.)

Continue reading →