Friday, May 25, 2012

But all that doesn't anti-matter Now we found ourselves a black hole in space

This is not an eye-catching title* for a SRS PAYPA in a rear-previewed academical journal, so it almost sailed unnoticed past our vigilance and slipped under the radar of our metaphors.
Part of the Riddled mission statement is to monitor the Existential Threat situation, where as any fule know a threat is 'existential' if it leads to fear and trembling. "Seen any Existential Threats today?" I will ask AK at smoko after a long morning of unblinking attention to the journals and the CCTV screens. "Nope. You?" "Me neither. Though I did see a squirrel."

The menacing part is in the Discussion section:

What Chirumbolo et al. are proposing is that a histamine molecule in water can cause the water molecules to arrange themselves around it in a kind of quasi-crystalline cluster -- a cluster having the same chemical and biological properties as the histamine itself. Further, the clusters are self-replicating: they can catalyse the formation of copies of themselves across multiple stages of dilution and succussion. This is a whole new polymorph of H2O, more stable at room temperature than liquid water.**


If a sample escaped from the laboratory it would nucleate a change of state of all the water in the ocean into more quasi-crystals (the Katz-Cray-Dell effect). This always ends badly, with waterspouts and mass extinctions and a nigh-universal inhibition of CD203c membrane up-regulation in human basophils.




But wait; another homeopathic threat to life on earth stands revealed:
69
But scientists who guided their studies based on [homeopathic] theory failed to make progress.
How can you say that, when the Materia Medica has grown to include 'homeopathic positronium' and 'homeopathic shipwreck'?! PROGRESS!

Posted by: herr doktor bimler | May 10, 2012 5:45 PM

71
herr doktor bimler @69
You forgot homeopathic light of Saturn. Perhaps we should hold a contest for the most ludicrous homeopathic preparation. Or perhaps not due to the risk of creating a homeopathic black hole of stupidity.
Posted by: Militant Agnostic | May 10, 2012 7:26 PM
TOO LATE! Behold the horror that is Homeopathic Black Hole!
PREPARATION The remedy was prepared by Rowan Jackson and astronomer, Peter Lipscomb, using an 8" telescope, Meade LX90 aperture telescope. A vial of alcohol was affixed to the viewing end as the telescope was focused on Cygnus X-1’s location within the Cygnus constellation.
COMPILATION Lori Foley and Sandra Haering, with students and alumni of the Northwestern Academy of Homeopathy.
METHODOLOGY Twenty provers took the remedy administered in 30C potencies. The proving was double blind format in which neither the supervisors nor the provers were aware of the substance they were taking. During the proving, provers logged symptoms on a daily basis and were in daily contact with their supervisor until symptoms subsided.
Exposure to H.b.h. (i.e. consumption of alcohol that had been in extremely indirect contact with alcohol that had been exposed to visible light from the general direction of an X-ray source) causes a variety of symptoms. These are precisely the symptoms for which H.b.h. might be prescribed. It inspires some skepticism, however, that the list of effects fails to mention baldness, or a renewed loathing for Disney Studio movies.

* Also eye-catching.

** Let us draw a discrete veil over their shonky statistics. They use multiple comparisons without a Bonferonni correction, and the Friedman non-parametric test for unmatched samples -- where the Kruskal-Wallis test is appropriate.

17 comments:

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

In the future...

Get me my damned flying car, and then we'll see about proving stuff.
~

Substance McGravitas said...

The provers searched for analogies to describe the weightless experience of being in space.

[...]

• “Feel spacey. Floaty sensation in whole body.” (05)
Well described, young scientist! As a reward you may avoid this link.

tigris said...

OMG I have a telescope AND some alcohol, I will have to get RIGHT ON THIS. Though I have found if I dilute alcohol with enough other alcohol I can already get a spacey, floaty feeling, so maybe I don't need to drag the scope out after all?

Sirius Lunacy said...

I am really feeling spacey today. Like I'm from another planet or something.

H. Rumbold, Master Barber said...

C'mon- fess up- which one of you Bozos wrote the poem?

Mangobite:

Out of Nowhere, Pow! Unshackled
The unseen, Unstoppable, Powerl The Wrath of God
It’s an explosion. I punch him, he punches me. The tiger attacks
It's the Goddamned Big Bang!
Lava, fire, heat, hurricane, with a thunderous roar
It creates and destroys; it is benevolent and malevolent
it takes things away in an instant.
Obliterates, dissolves, disintergrates

mikey said...

OMG. That's IT!

I am now in the bottled drinking water business.

mikey's Highly Ordered Water, to be precise.

See, it's got a dual meaning - the molly cules of water are highly ordered, but the sublima...sublimu...subli...um, the UNDERLYING sekret marketing message is that LOTS of people ORDER it!

There are two flavors - Regular and Histamine.

Call or go online today!

wiley said...

Uh oh.

Hamish Mack said...

Tip for young folks, use a scoop when weighing out the eyes.

Smut Clyde said...

As a reward you may avoid this link.
I see your Rush and raise you one Krautrock.

Smut Clyde said...

which one of you Bozos wrote the poem?
BOC lyrics!!

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

I think I've figured out what is meant by "taking the piss".

That's an entire thread of it, but this in particular made me laugh.

National Geographic is respected the world over and clearly states the Mamba will leg it rather than confront.... Even Angela Merkel has picked it up.
~

Hamish Mack said...

Thunder, that thread is classy enough to be called "Extracting the urine".

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Homeopathic black hole is good for colorectal maladies... except for a cerebrorectal impaction, which is a prerequisite for using homeopathic black hole.

Though I have found if I dilute alcohol with enough other alcohol I can already get a spacey, floaty feeling, so maybe I don't need to drag the scope out after all?

Tigris uses SCIENCE!!!

Dr.KennethNoisewater said...

Not an existential threat, huh?

Smut Clyde said...

VS' link deserves the "helping ZRM" tag.

Hamish Mack said...

The Black Skwirl of Death

James Randi Jr. said...

What a fucked this post?

Take a Randi pills.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167732215312277

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1475491615000090