Conservation of Suckiness

If you made good samples, the scanning microscope images you take of them will be lousy.

If you made lousy samples, you will get beautiful SEM images.

If, by sheer chance or determination, you manage to get good imaging parameters on a good sample, the universe will restore the balance by causing your SEM to blow a filament and die.

GRRR.

Lecture Zen

90% of my undergrad lectures, graduate seminars, and conference talks I’ve attended increased the depth and breadth of my knowledge as much as this excellent one:

Bad Science QOTD

I always get leery whenever politicians throw in scientific jargon in their speeches.

For instance, there’s today’s supplement on immigrants in the Straits Times, whose aim is to no doubt stir more debate over the issue of foreign talent. Here’s one bit from the introduction:

“…we are the hard disk of a computer, and foreign talent are the megabytes you add to your storage capacity. So your computer never hangs because you’ve got enormous storage capacity.” — MM

This is just so wrong:

1) What’s the typical capacity of hard disks today? Gigabytes. That’s 10^9 bytes. Compared to this, megabytes are just a measly 10^6 bytes. You’re talking about a 3-order magnitude of difference. Adding a megabyte to a gigabyte hard disk merely increases its capacity by 0.1%. So by analogy, do foreign talent contribute only 0.1%?

2) Amazingly, the second statement is mostly correct. Computers (almost) never hang because they’ve got humongous hard disk capacities. Computers (almost) always hang due to bad software (which can take up megabytes), low memory, CMOS issues or incompatibility problems.

3) Megabytes of what? Operating system? User software? Pictures? Videos? Pr0n?  Trojans and viruses?

Scientific literacy here has a looooooong way to go.

A whole new meaning to the phrase ‘getting screwed’!

I never knew the sex life of ducks could be so interesting. To summarize:

1. Male ducks have really long ones.
2. Male ducks have really twisty ones.
3. Female ducks have really twisty ones too, with dead ends.
4. The handedness of the thread can be different in male and female ducks.

They’ve yet to find out how the two fit together. Stick them in an MRI machine, perhaps?

This is going to be a contender for this year’s Ignobel Prize, for sure!