AS GEORGE “Dubya” Bush settles into the White House this weekend he faces
some tricky scientific and technological questions. To help him on his way,
Feedback is happy to pass on some advice sent to us earlier this month,
concerning the National Missile Defense system, also known as “Son of Star
Wars”. Dubya is well known to be a fan of the NMD. But does he understand quite
how difficult it is to build an anti-missile missile that works?
“Let’s put the technical problem in terms that Dubya may understand,” begins
our advice, which comes from a body calling itself the Notional Missile Defence
Initiative. “Space is very large, George. In fact, it’s huge. Surely you saw
pool tables in your misspent youth? Replace the balls with the tiniest,
edge-of-visibility specks of whatever white dust you fancy. Scatter a few dozen
of them somewhere near the baize. To win, you have to pot all of them. You have
five minutes. And you have to use computers.”
The advice goes on to announce, perhaps ominously, that the NMDI is “here to
help you, George”. It calls on “engineers, inventors, poets and
scientists—mad or not—to contribute notions on how to construct a
Missile Defence”. The London-based group claims to have been inspired by a
previous call for ideas that “contributed modestly to the success of Star Wars
Senior” in the early 1980s.
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Back then, it was the zoologists’ suggestion that made the biggest
impression. That hardy band proposed keeping herds of hippos in constant
readiness, all fed on a strict diet of baked beans, and each tethered to a stout
stake. In the event of missile attack, judicious application of axes to the
tethers and Zippos to the hippos should produce a rapidly ascending and almost
impenetrable barrier.
But we’re sure you can do even better than this. Send your suggestions to
nmd@gn.apc.org.
POPULARISING your science may lead to a terminal loss of serious reputation.
So why not go for broke—as have the authors of “Britney’s Guide to
Semiconductor Physics”? As you can read at http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm,
“It is a little known fact that Ms Spears is an expert in semiconductor physics.
Not content with just singing, in the following pages, she will guide you in the
fundamentals of the vital laser components that have made it possible to hear
her super music in a digital format.”
The guide isn’t bad, either. Except that a colleague of Feedback’s found it
while researching the numbers of women involved in real scientific work on
lasers—and sadly, the site tends to confirm the image of the field as
dominated by heterosexual boys. Even so, Feedback looks forward to other
expressions of the rich diversity of scientific sexuality in the “Sigourney
Weaver Guide to Xenobiology” and the “Judy Garland Marine Engineering
ѲԳܲ”.
MEANWHILE, the research interests of real-world scientists have their own
fascination. “Manipulating aggression among juvenile halibut” is one of the
favourites recently turned up in our unending search for scientific excellence.
There is, of course, a perfectly sensible explanation further down Felicity Anne
Huntingford’s home page on the Glasgow University website, but we prefer the
initial mental image.
TRUTH, even of the geographical type, is relative in the world of electronic
information. Reader Rachael Padman writes in wonderment at the fact that as she
zooms in and out of an online map of her home, the river outside her front door
leaps to the end of the back garden—some 10 metres uphill.
For an even stranger phenomenon, go to www.upyourstreet.co.uk and search for
the Berkshire postcode RG20 8RH. When you click on the map for the area you
should see a lot of empty space with a small road. Now click the button to zoom
out. The empty space is magically filled with rows of buildings, with their own
link road to the M4 motorway. Zoom out a couple more times, and the entire
complex disappears. Something very similar happens at www.streetmap.co.uk.
What is this Bermuda Triangle in the English home counties? Actually, it’s
the US Air Force bomb store at RAF Welford, as Feedback discovered while driving
past it recently. This is clearly an official secret at some map scales, but not
at others.
THIS IS probably not the place to ask “Got a PC for Xmas but not sure how to
use it?” But for anyone still in doubt, Internet provider AOL is running an ad
with the encouraging headline: “We can help you with our guide to computing for
beginners”. Reader Tony Henk reports, “You’ll never guess where this helpful
guidance is to be found.” Yes—of course—AOL’s website. Which you can
get to . . . on your PC.
READER Steve Meager had the radio on and for some reason his ear was caught
by an ad for an indigestion reliever, advertised as “chewy not chalky”. Then the
serious, deep voice-over added, “contains calcium carbonate”. Not only
that—it’s all-natural, “chemical-free” calcium carbonate. Can we have
some?
