Ah yeah, a nice slow week here at Jacks of Science. It's not just us either, even light is getting slower. Or maybe photons and I are just getting old. We just can't run as fast as we used to.

Thankfully, I can always fall back on my 800 email strong GMail spam folder when I get too old to receive any cool emails. These days I just check it to see if there is anything hilarious.

From: Letitia Friend <akstcaccessithacamnsdgs@accessithaca.com>
Date: Nov 28, 2007 4:48 AM
Subject: Liquid Microscope Boy Liquid Highway Explosive
Great Gift Ideas
Do all your shopping at our online store
We have Huge Sales going on now
Here you go (<--Spam Link here)

And to think, just when the spammers were on to something with their subject lines, they just pack in and give up... what irony!

I guess I'm a bit of an exhibitionist. In the image above you can see many of my juicy organs. Very attractive! My only fear is that this particular full frontal shot may have adverse effects on my future dating.

Although, I heard a rumor that beauty is only skin deep. I volunteered for a neurology experiment at work today and I got my hands on the dataset. I loaded it into Osirix for 3D volume rendering and created this awesome video.

I have to admit, having MRI's of my brain and internal organs is really comforting. It helps me reassure myself that I'm not a robot in times of doubt. How confident are you that you're not a robot?

Sweating it out for a project idea? Google Scholar allows you to access papers from up to 92 years in the future:

Just steal one, they aren't even published yet! The best part is, Scholar returns 19,100 articles published in that year range. I'm not sure how they are assigning the year of publication, but something is definitely wrong. Either that or Google knows something we don't.

Yep, everyones favorite 248-dimensional Lie algebra E8 makes yet another stride in it's latest publicity stunt in this new video "Lights Get Low" by Freeway featuring Dre and Rick Ross. The trendy algebra can be seen repeatedly as a backdrop for much booty shaking.

Now if only Freeway would drop a shout out verse for Wilhelm Killing instead of just plain old killing.

So have you heard of Dr. Megavolt (pictured above beside a mean looking tesla coil)? I saw him on Wired Science a few weeks ago and he put on a pretty impressive light show. Supposedly you can just hire him to do wild electrical stunts for your events. Which begs the question, why would anyone hire a clown/magician for a child's birthday party?

This latest DJ mix begs the additional question, why would anyone listen to music other than the Sounds of Science? This electricity (unfortunately a little lacking on the magnetism) mix goes out to my co-worker Cindy in Electrical Engineering. Party on!

Download the mix here(21mb) or stream it with this:

1. Rainstick Orchestra - Electric Counterpoint Fast // Richard Muller - Electricity (UC Berkeley Podcast) [0:00]
2. Disney Records - Main Street Electrical Parade (Disneyland 1979) [0:40]
3. Ollie & Jerry - Electric Boogaloo [1:27]
4. Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage [2:38]
5. The Knife - Zapata [4:24]
6. Linkin Park - High Voltage [5:28]
7. Madlib - Electric Company (Voltage-Watts) [6:41]
8. Shout Out Out Out Out - Dude You Feel Electrical [6:57]
9. U2 - Electrical Storm // Schoolhouse Rock - Electricty, Electricity [10:41]
10. The Electric Company - Electric Company Theme [11:54]
11. The Avalanches - Electricity (Original 7" Version) [12:31]
12. Squarepusher - Rotate Electrolyte // Beastie Boys - Electrify (Acapella) [14:23]
13. Beastie Boys - Electrify // Tom Glazer - How Do We Measure Energy [15:35]
14. Eddy Grant - Electric Avenue // Zachary Sanders - Electricty, Electricity [17:20]
15. Billy Idol - Shock to the System [19:15]

A nerdy environment fathers nerdy ideas. If you've ever been to the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario you'd know that because floor to ceiling blackboards of equations cover the entire place!

Although some of us simply don't have the wall space or the theoretical physics knowledge to make that idea effective so it takes some added creativity to infuse science into the home. But here are some great items to outfit your living space for the next scientific breakthrough or for a great Christmas gift!

Via freshome, comes an Equation bookshelf. The Bookshelf really puts the B in BEDMAS. Not only does it encourage proper bracket nesting in your programming code but it allows you to prioritize bookshelf items. Unfortunately, I don't think it's available for sale or even exists (yet?).

Next up, as seen on The Big Bang Theory, the Periodic Table of Elements Shower Curtain, available, along with some other interesting curtains at Simple Memory Art. And Amazon and ThinkGeek. Slightly tacky, but who actually wants to sing in the shower these days when we have games like Karaoke Revolution and Rockband to sing in the living room? Shower chemistry is the new multi-task of choice.

Next is a 3d wallpaper from MIO. Certainly not as nerdy as the first two, but the subtle change of geometry from the typical rectangular plane wall surface is a must for the mathematically inclined. Not to mention that it's made of 100% post-consumer waste.

Art and Science is a big money merger. So DNA Art would be the most obvious example. You send them a sample of your DNA and they make a fancy portrait for you. Science explained here. Also there's free shipping in Canada, YES!

It's just too awesome not to post...!

My coworker suggested going to an educational round last week for lunch. An excellent idea, not only because of the educational and entertainment value but for the delicious complimentary meal.

I grabbed a wrap, some fruit, and a Strawberry Passion Awareness Fruitopia. Which was discontinued in the U.S. and changed to Minute Maid but has been going strong in Canada for years.

I downed the beverage in an epic chug to celebrate getting it for free. Only later would I realize my fatal mistake.

Based on an A.D.D. based distraction from work I decided to check the ingredients list and investigate the things I hadn't heard of. Cochineal Extract was the first to check. It was responsible for the attractive pink/red  juice coloring which attracted me to the drink in the first place.

Well, to my surprise, the coloring is made from boiled bugs!

A deep crimson dye is extracted from the female cochineal insects. Cochineal is used to produce scarlet, orange and other red tints. The colouring comes from carminic acid. Cochineal extract's natural carminic-acid content is usually 19–22%.^[5] The insects are killed by immersion in hot water (after which they are dried) or by exposure to sunlight, steam, or the heat of an oven. Each method produces a different colour which results in the varied appearance of commercial cochineal. The insects must be dried to about 30 percent of their original body weight before they can be stored without decaying.^[10] It takes about 155,000 insects to make one kilogram of cochineal.

I'm sure we eat bugs all the time without knowing it but it's still a crazy place to get some dye! I should be thankful it wasn't FD&C Red 40 or something.

I don't know about you, but I like eating stuff. Over my next few posts I'll share a few food discoveries I made recently with the common lesson of paying attention to what you eat.

So I had to buy some yogurt for an Indian sauce base I was making a few nights ago. No Frills had individual yogurt servings ranging from $0.50 to $1.23 organic Liberte brand so naturally I opted with the Liberte to see what all the fuss was about. Well, the yogurt tasted really creamy in my Tandoori Chicken sauce but I couldn't help but notice this hot fact on the container:

"With Active Acidophilus, Bifidus and L. casei Cultures"

That was it. Honestly, how many consumers actually knows what those things are? Upon internet research it was clear in no time they were active bacteria cultures which, as Wikipedia put it, "intended to assist the body's naturally occurring gut flora to reestablish themselves".

Naturally, the addition of probiotics couldn't make it to the shelves without some science to back it up, or at least one would hope. I immediately pounced on the Criticisms Wikipedia section and was quick to note that it was questionable if these cultures actually make it to the gut in the first place. Science says yes.

Kind of disappointed that there weren't very many criticisms I retired to the boring health benefits section. Reppin' Canada, I'd recommend you check out Dr. Gregor Reid's lab at St. Joseph's Health Center in London, Ontario, otherwise known as the Canadian R&D Centre for Probiotics. They even have a sweet video [40 megs].

So, I got information overload upon discovering a wealth of microbiology papers over my head at Reid's site and decided to call it quits. I even accidentally learned that Acidophilus is also naturally present in vaginas. I'm still not sure why that wasn't listed on the packaging. (Why didn't I go into advertising?)

Actually, advertising is one of the problems with the growing number of yogurts marketed as "Awesomely Probiotic, Dude!". None of them actually state how many bacterias you get per delicious serving size.

CBC Marketplace got together with Dr. Reid and actually tested bacteria levels in yogurts back in 2003.

Scientists say there should be one million to one billion active cultures per gram to be probiotic.

Astro BioBest started with the most - 794 million live bacterial cultures per gram. But near the end of shelf life, almost two-thirds had died. That's still in the ballpark.

Organic Meadow and Danone stayed above the million mark on each test.

"They claim to have active cultures, in which case their claims are correct," Reid noted.

Liberty fared the worst on our test, starting off low at just 118,000 live bacterial cultures per gram — and dropping to just 4,000 after two weeks.

Reid believes there's not much probiotic benefit in that.

Damn Liberty ripped me off on the bacteria count! Now if only I could explain to the grocery store clerk why I want a refund...

If you didn't feel sorry for the ID crowd before, you will after these videos. These people do a much better job of making fools of themselves than anyone else ever could.

4. Peanut Butter - THE ATHEIST'S NIGHTMARE!

"Any theory on the origin of life on this planet...is a fairy tale."

Nice try, chuckles. That would be abiogenesis not evolution.

3. Kirk Cameron and Bananas (THE ATHEIST'S NIGHTMARE Pt. II)

"The banana and the hand are perfectly made for one another!"

Yes, its amazing what thousands of years of selective breeding by humans will do to an organism. This fact was obviously lost on expert evolutionary biologist Kirk Cameron. Wild bananas and hands were, in fact, not made for each other.

2. Four Problems With Evolution

"I'm going to talk about four of the crises facing evolution today."

1. Wrong.
2. Wrong.
3. Wrong.
4. Wrong.

You're on a real roll, Chuck.

1. The Science of Evolution

"Watch the evolutionists use the language of speculation in this 6 min clip from the DVD "The Science of Evolution".

If by evolutionists you mean totally random people off the street, then yes, watch them. As a bonus, you can also watch your brain leak out of your head as you accept total fiction as reality.