A new mouse is, like, five dollars. I thought the A.P. was cheap -- is the Post really in such bad straights that they can't buy you a new mouse when you move to a new cubicle?

BTW I find a trackball much better than a mouse for preventing hand and wrist problems.

--KB

SCC: straits, not straights. Doh.

Bad Straights would be a good name for a rock band.

I use a chipmunk with my home computer.

My mouse is a horse.

Assuming you were using something water based to clean, wouldn't it have been wise to, oh, I don't know, UNPLUG the thing first? Just a thought. Cuts down on unnecessary electrocutions, but what do I know? The goal could have been to destroy the mouse, so that a new one could be requisitioned without all the hassle.

Something always gets lost when you move. Once, I lost a boyfriend. He wasn't that special, so I just got another one, rather than look for the old one.

Joel, I can relate. My whole division moved five and a half years ago, and it was a horrible ordeal. Worst of all is realizing you have thrown away stuff that you need really, really badly. We are just now getting over it.

Helpful edit time:

first graf--
One suspects it's the job

not its

:-)

A Chipmunk?

I moved cubes two weeks ago so I feel your pain. I found the hardest part was retraining myself on the proper route to and from the bathroom.

On a side note, a good portion of my job is making people move cubes and making sure there are trash cans (they do have a tendency to wander off and I've suggested attaching bells but my supervisor looks at me funny). I always feel so guilty because I tell someone they have to move and they just look at me with those eyes...

...I believe I was relocated for my own safety.

I feel for you. My boss still has a beige keyboard, and everytime I have to go in there to use it (to access his data because he has forgotten to take the info with him) I am overcome by the willies. To give you an idea of just how bad it is, I have worn glasses since I was 8, and really learned to look past the scunge that accumulates on the lenses. My mother says it hepled me become allergic to acknowledging dirt buildup, and in truth she is right. I just don't clue in. I usually have to be told my glasses are dirty before I see it.

So now when I restate that I SEE the scunge on his keyboard, you have some idea of how bad it is.
You are not alone Joel, and I really empathise with you.

In case I have left the impression that I am on the weingart-ien level of scunge, in my defense, I have stated in a previous boodle that I employ a very well paid house cleaner who is second only to God in esteem at my house.

I say this with a clear conscience because my mother does not read this boodle.

Word of the Day, brought to you by the makers of Lysol ...

Main Entry: ex·u·vi·ae
Pronunciation: ig-'zü-vE-"E, -vE-"I
Function: noun plural
Etymology: Latin, from exuere to take off, from ex- + -uere to put on; akin to Old Church Slavonic obuti to put on (footwear)
: sloughed off natural animal coverings (as the skins of snakes)
- ex·u·vi·al /-vE-&l/ adjective

I landed in a new, improved space some time back and went home with headaches and eyestrain for about a week.

First there were bright lights, a couple of which I was able to undo. And there was sunlight coming in through a window, hitting my desk and computer. The shades had tiny holes in them so that you could see through them even when they were closed. But this let little dots of sun come in.

Time passed. I fixed some things and learned to live with other issues. I got used to the space. It got used to me.

I don't know if there's ever been any scientific study, but moving to a new space for work may lead to an incredible loss of productivity for a period of time.

Ah, fess up, you ate too many 'Bro beans and drank too many beers in Boulder. The new work environment probably has little to do with it. You saw the Rockies and you're just not in a containerized, cubicle state-of-mind. It happens.

BTW, posted a bit about the Bablylonian Captivity at the end of the last Kit/Boodle.

Plus flying across time zones on a time change weekend. I suggest you check yourself into the shop, Joel, for an adjustment of your circadian rhythms.

I once told my boss at the Modesto Chamber after a time change shift that my circadian rhytms were out of sync, and he looked at me like I was nuts. I wish that I had had a camera.

Besides, what do you know of divorce, from a first-person perspective?

And ohmigod, you had to ***clean?*** You actually did it yourself? Rag, windex, ammonia--that kind of stuff? Will wonders never cease!!!

Hey Joel---I empathize with you... it brings to mind Bill Bryson. He is also a bit paranoid about anything smaller than a bunny. I remember vaguely him writing about how much skin we sluff off per hour and then he multiplied by the number of people on a plane and made an astounding calculation regarding a 15 hour flight to Australia from L.A. It makes one gag and never want to fly again!

Cubicles aren't nearly as bad as the house thing. I wallpapered and put new vinyl in the kitchen, so neighbors ostentatiously canned the cabinets, redid drywall, etc. Now I'm behind.

I don't think of my workspace so much as, well, a workspace as much as I think of it as providing a treasure trove for archeologists.

Fact: I have three items in my workspace that date to the Reagan Administration. One of them is my USSR (CCCP) Moscow / MCI Global Communications Center mouse pad.

I don't file documents, as much as distribute them into the geological strata on my desk top, for easy substrate (be it parchment, papyrus, or vellum) retrieval.

bc

I definitely follow bc's method of non-filing. At any given time my actual work area is often reduced to about 12" square of flat usable space. it's my way of keeping them from wanting to relocate me too often.

DC just got swamped with a thimblefull of drizzle. And the storm has passed...

Its the office vortex and its spreading.

If I was a linky type person, I would now link to that 'black hole' photo from a few weeks back.

Mr. G has pointed out that no matter how old the desk is in a new workspace, or how many people have used it before you, there will always be a staple remover in the middle drawer. Go look, Joel, and tell us whether there's a staple remover there.

Once he lost a bulletin board in an office move. He wouldn't have minded except he had brought it from home. We bought it at a thrift shop because stenciled in large red letters on the top wooden frame were the words "BULLETIN BOARD." Someone must have thrown it out because they couldn't figure out what it was.

LostInThought: HA HA HA HA! That gave me a chuckle.

Glad I made ya laugh. Always a good thing, especially on a Monday.

I feel it's time for Buffy to slay this topic.
What if you had vampires in your new, windowless office? What if demons moved your furniture for you-- to the H**mouth? Then you'd have a problem.

Change. Get used to it. Be glad that your manager doesn't use surplus cubicle walls to set up a new maze everyday to "wake up"
his employees.

Squeak.

Well, the lefties of the world have our own cubicle problems...As a representative of this demographic, I must tell you that finding a leftie-friendly cubicle is a tough gig.

I'm *almost* ambidextrous now, since I've had to place my mouse on the "wrong" side of my desk to be operated by my completely uncoordinated right hand. In fact, until I moved into this cubicle, I didn't even know I *had* a right hand. Go figure!

At least I'm in a corner.

Also a leftie. Since the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, we're in our right mind. Spooky, no?

I also suscribe to bc's method of filing/sediment creation (future archeologist: "we can identify the year 1999 in the sediment as that corresponds with the "yellow paper phase" and are able to make fairly accurate assessments of the months and years preceding and post-dating that event). I've managed to limit myself of one stack somewhat out of view with all those interesting things "to read later" (AKA: to be eventually broken down and in the far and distant future be part of the fuel operating the Morlocks' engines).

Be glad you have cubicle walls.

Les Nesmond's of the world, unite.
Make a tape manufacturer's day.

(The foregoing was public service announcement, brought to you by The International Association of People Who Wish They Had Office Walls)

And here's our check-in from Andy Borowitz today....

After stating last week that the U.S. had made thousands of tactical errors in the war in Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice restated that number upward today, telling reporters that the actual figure was "probably closer to a billion."

Dr. Rice apologized for initially low-balling the number of U.S. mistakes, explaining, "Quite frankly, I forgot about a lot of the mistakes that Rumsfeld made."

I'm a right-handed leftie. Does that help?

One of John McPhee's geological traveling companions, probably Princeton prof Kenneth Deffeyes, told the story of the stratigrapher who was brought in to determine whether a fire had started in a carpet warehouse or the ice cream factory next door. The stratigrapher sorted through the complex layers of carpet and goo, eventually reaching a determination.

firsttimeblogger....Only if you always sit on the end at the dinner table. Oh wait...that takes us back to Friday, and assuming there IS a dining table.

By the way, welcome to the surreal.

Speaking of unfathomableness of human nature: why do people freak out at seeing service dogs walking in the crowd at ZOOs... or museums...
They're there to see animals, right? So the dog is just another animal. Honestly, I am starting to wonder about mankind.

"Here, little offspring of my glorious loins, come and love animals... but only if they're dead or in cages?

Watch and learn as I act like an idiot and let you bother the crap out of disabled people trying to have a peaceful day at the zoo amidst screaming kids. Hey, if we're really lucky, the dog will make one move and then we can sue for emotional distress, and get the owner in court for an "dog attack." Everybody knows nobody listens to disabled people in court anyway so it'll be easy money for us.

After all, EVERYBODY knows that a dog in public is everybody's petting zoo. Go on, be a petaphile. It's a service dog, it can't have any cooties after being petted by 100 grubby handed kids just like you without the owner's permission."

This is why I favor laws in all 50 states making it a misdemeanor to interfere with a service dog team whether by a loose dog or by a loose kid/parent.

Kids are fine, it's the parents that bug me when I see them. Not everybody wants to hear parents go "look at the doggy" like service dog teams are a walking freak sideshow for the entertainment of society.

Folks, forget the groundhog stuff. You know it's truly spring when the screaming toddlers are out with the cherry blossoms.

I want a leash law for children under age 4.

Seriously, I'm seeing how careless parents can be in how far they let their kids wander off-- anybody snatched them, they get in danger suddenly, they do NOT have time to intervene, period.

Sometimes I wonder how many parents secretly DO want to lose their kids.

...And this is the truth, not the news.

A very short story of renovation time travel:

Removing the wall paper in our kitchen after moving in. There were two layers of wallpaper(first, folksy 1980s country pattern, and second, silver late 60s'). Beneath that, a hand painted mural of a beach scene. Unfortunately, not exactly a rediscovered masterpiece (and the oil paint used was extremely difficult to remove).

A more pleasant surprise was finding original hardwood beneath the master bedroom rug (where we were intending on putting hardwood anyway).

I'm definitely leaning left on all fronts, but hey, like LostInThought said -- I'm in my right mind!

As for the cubicle gunk, I find keeping a container of Clorox disinfecting wipes is handy and quick -- not to mention disposable.

Now, the garbage bin relocate is definitely aggravating. I have my garbage can strategically located in my cubicle-zone; it's in the perfect place to receive 'over the shoulder' trash tosses and is correctly aligned for the 'swivel-toss-pivot' method of waste disposal, and it took me many hours of practice to get the can in the proper position for the 'off-the-wallpaper' bank shot!

And yet...

Every night, some mysterious cleaning-crew person keeps moving my garbage can! Every time the bin is emptied, this individual insists on placing it under.my.desk! (A totally unsuitable location for any beginner in waste disposal methods, let alone someone with my skill & my patent-pending methods!) It's an insult!

Does this person not recognize the fact that the can is constantly being moved *back*?!!

The wanton hubris! The unmitigated gall! The complex lack of respect for a fledgling sport in its infancy!

No wonder we're going to hell in a handbasket, with this kind of anarchy on the loose.

Wow Wilbrod...so sorry you have had such bad experiences with children. I've taught mine to ask first before touching anything that isn't theirs. But a word to the wise...zoos attract families with small children. If you want to avoid one, you'll need to avoid the other.

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

Actually, make that my right hand. No sense in going overboard.

amo, you get to throw away paper? How lucky are you. In the college town here, run by unreconstructed hippies, the recycling laws are intricate, detailed, and draconian. Huge blue recycling bins and tubs litter the landscape, and the penalty for failure to properly separate (glass by color, for crissakes) and dispose of trash leads to dire punishment (probably they force you to shave your legs -- well, if you're a girl -- and eat meat). Oh, how I'd love the chance to crumple a piece of paper just so and, with just the proper amount of spin, launch it at the trash can, with perhaps a gentle rebound off the wall... Sigh.

In the three years since I have been with the government I have moved five times. The place is in a constant state of reorganization designed to look like progress. Most workers deal with this by keeping the number of personal objects in their cubicles to a minimum. I, however, have issues. I have a compulsion to personalize my workspace with plants, a fountain, and hand-made little wooden boxes (many made from a certain African hardwood.) These things help me achieve the Zen-like state of inner peace I require to contemplate Really Important Things. (Which to many may look like napping, but is really, like, totally different.) Because these cubicle accoutrements are so perversely valuable to me, I do not mind the extra effort involved in moving them. I do, however, feel sorry for the person who moves in behind me. Aquarium gravel is really hard to get out of your keyboard.

Squirrel,

Shhhhhhhhhhh!!! Don't tell anyone I've been throwing away paper or they'll crap in their Patagonia pants! Trample me with their Timberlanes and flog me with hemp ropes!

We, too, have bins littering (*snicker*) the landscape and I suppose I *could* toss paper in there, but it's so unsports(person)like...Where's the challenge? Large (in our case, orange) wide, open bins? My grandma could bank off one of those!

PS I assembled a grill this weekend (go me!) and the directions for it were less complicated than our recycling program...(Window vs non window envelopes, to post-it or not post-it, whatever man. They should be happy anything makes it in at alll...)

Not all zoo trips are uniformly bad. The icing on the cake when I had to make my dog go to a downstay when their little girl (around 2 and microscopic) interrupted me trying to talk to somebody by petting my dog (sitting down).

I always make large dogs lie down around children. Simple safety and keeps the dog calmer and mannered, and in this case I needed my dog to wait for me to finish talking.

The parents THANKED me for telling my dog to lie down. Yeah, it's all about you, bubbles.

I went huh-uh, and said flatly "Please stop her." And I turned back, seeing they did in fact comply. Good. 2 year olds are so moody that they can go from coos to wahs in a second.

Let me clarify, it's when the parents overly attempt to make their child interact with my dog that I get ticked off.

Maybe these PARENTS needed to learn from you, LostinThought, to ask first before touching anything that's not theirs... and not to take silence for permission.

The leash law is because I've seen parents let toddlers wander over 20 feet away and out of sight in crowded places when they were yakking on cell phones. Parents seem to be extremely overconfident of their ability to supervise remotely.

I saw a little girl playing near a restroom that I figured that 4 different strangers could have grabbed while her father was busy and out of sight. Just no clue.

Moving in somebody's well used office furniture and appliance could get a little repulsive, I concur. I was tempted once to dispose of a phone as toxic waste. A gentleman with a taste for hair gel and a dandruff problem used it for about ten years. He was a chin&shoulder cradler too. The caked crud on that handset was museum quality.

For those dull monitors, try a little clean water and light grade sandpaper.

The kiddos and g-kidlets left for our big move to Florida early Saturday morning. Once they're settled in, about 10 days, they'll come back for me and my stuff. So I have 10 days to get "organazized". (K'guy, quick, which film is that from?).

Okay, so if I am understanding these Milankovitch Cycles, all we have to do is wait a a few thousand years or so and maybe global warming might not be such a big deal. And to think I was all worried.

So HERE you all are! There I was, still back on the previous kit, talking to myself and wondering where everybody went! Jeez, it was starting to get like that Twilight Episode with the last man on earth, or something. The place was, like, deserted, and all the kids had gone to the malt shop (geezer reference; pay no attention) and there I was, still in after-school detention. (Hey, not a bad premise for a Samuel Beckett play.) There I was, checking the postings from time to time, and never knowing the circus had packed up its tent and moved to a new town. (Stop me before I metaphor again.)

OK, now I'm forced to re-post a question I asked on the previous boodle IN HOPES I'M NOT STILL TALKIN' TA MYSELF:

Technical question for Joel, ScienceTim, scottynuke, and any other folks with detailed scientific knowledge:

Over the past 20 years, what technical/scientific principles, theories, and ideas have been completely overturned/changed/significantly disproved, e.g., "constants" that aren't any longer "constant," etc.

The primary one I'm aware of is that there were "only" nine planets. I'll accept answers in the field of astronomy, but would like other fields as well, especially physics and engineering. (I need to make an argument to some scientists and engineering types that some of what they were taught in college and grad school was "wrong" or less immutable than they thought.)

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

SCC: Twilight Zone

Re: Climate Change

Me, I'm waiting on the Velikovsky Cycles.

bc

I had a boss who wore a lot of bad cologne. He would come over to my cubicle and use my phone and it would reek for the rest of the day.

Gross.

Shrieking, I'm still laughing, you're a riot. Museum quality!

Joel, does this move mean you're going up or down? As in moving up on the job, promotion? Or demoted? Same place, same time?

I'm sure there are enough germs around any office to start their own city or business, and probably not limited to just those two.

Mudge, I don't want to step on ScienceTim's turf, but here are a few big changes in recent years:

1. K/T extinction. Luis Alvarez in 1979 showed that the extinction of the dinosaurs coincided with a layer of iridium that suggested a huge impact event circa 65 million years ago. Soon, crater found near town of Chixulub. BUT...even so, there are many scientists arguing that the huge impact and the K/T biological extinction don't match correctly, that they're off by 300,000 years, and there's quite a thorny debate about whether the other mass extinctions (say, Permian) were the result of impacts or of volcano-induced climate change.

2. Cosmic Inflation. Alan Guth et al in 1980s develop a theory that the universe went from very very small to very very large in a fraction of a second in what is known as an "inflationary" epoch. This is mind-boggling but seems to be supported by more recent observations/theories. Throw in discovery a few years ago that the current expansion of the universe is ACCELERATING and it's a more interesting cosmos than ever before.

3. The constants of nature themselves are not constant. Seems to be some wobble in things like gravity.

4. We perceive three spatial dimensions and one time dimension but there might be many more spatial dimensions, say 10 of them, and the reason gravity is so weak as a force is that much of it is leaking off into another dimension, another "brane" of reality. As if we didn't have enough problems.

5. Relatively new theory: Moon's origin in giant collision of Earth and Mars-like object some 4.3 billion years ago.

6. Human migration more complicated than previously believed. This probably comes closest to answering your question: the old Bering Land Bridge hypothesis, for example -- that Asians walked into the Americas -- now seems a bit simplistic, as fossils show multiple migrations by land and water and possibly (this is much more speculative) even from Europe and Africa.

I'll ponder it further.

Cassandra, all my professional moves are lateral at best. Physically, I'm working my way inward in the building, getting as far away from natural light as possible. To get any farther I'd have to move into a windowless closet. Fact: If anyone wanted to know where I work on the 4th floor, he or she would be told, "He's under the stairs."

Curmudgeon,
I was taught that the neutrino had no mass, but now some experiments sugegst it does. I was also taught that the Grand Unified Theories in vogue at the time suggested Protons might, but I believe that these have fallen out of favor. I am not sure about the details of the above, but it might be something to think about.

More obvious are changing interpretations of history. For example, I learned in school that the first people came to North America over a land bridge from Asia, now much older "Pre-Clovis" civilizations are suspected.

I was taught that mammals during the Age of Dinosaurs were all little bitty things, now evidence suggests that they may not have been.

Finally, I was taught that increased C02 levels could easily be absorbed by plankton in the sea. Now I am not so sure.

SCC: That Protons might decay, that is...

Finally, a REAL topic! Carry on :). Asimov wrote an essay called "After many a summer dies the proton" so I remember what RD Padouk is talking about.

Since we still don't know what causes gravity, not surprising that our theories are slightly wobbly.

Einstein's theory of relativity predicted an effect for Mercury that was borne out by scientific data, though. But I hear there's a slight wrinkle in how the equations should work and how they DO work. But Einstein was very nearly right too... it'll take some serious fighting to improve on Ol' E. And would we REALLY have such elegant equations at the end?

NASA is actually trying to detect gravitional waves in space... maybe we'll get struck by a gravitional tsunami sometime.

Few other thoughts.

Dietary recommendations have been revised a few times. When I was in school we were told to avoid all fats and eat a high carbohydrate diet.

I learned that the Japanese economic model was the wave of the future.

Wilbrod, you seem unusually concerned about strangers abducting children. I had understood this is actually so rare as to be news-worthy -- that far more children are killed in car accidents each year, for example. But I have no stats ready to hand. Do you have a solid reason to be concerned, or is it just something you worry about a lot? If it's the later, why criticize?

I was also lead to believe that Disco would Never Die, but now I'm just gettin' foolish.

For proton decay,try Pepsodent.

The earth is flat and due to its mass its plane is curved and the edge is...wait for it...The Bermuda Triangle.

Another theory: Disco didn't die, it just ran away when it reached its rebellious adolescence. Once it matured it came back as House Music.

RD, would that Japanese model been the one that promised lifetime employment and benefits for all? We should be so lucky, eh?

Curmudgeon, I'm not going to be able to give your question the attention it deserves. Can it wait until Wednesday? I find this stuff easier to think of with someone to talk to. Otherwise, I would sit here all afternoon, researching stuff and crafting an answer, and getting scooped by Joel, and on and on and onanism.

It's hard to see a revolution at close range. For the most part, there hasn't been much that was utterly startling -- it usually comes after some initial signs, so that someone already is consciously on the hunt. "Chance favors the prepare mind," and all that.

I can do a few things, off the top of my head, most of them from astronomy/planetary science (but not all!):
1) I second Joel's items. Among planetary scientists, the K/T event is a no-brainer. There are too many craters in the rest of the solar system to fantasize that we would be somehome immune. There is evidence now for a mighty honkin' big impact that dates to the right time for the Permian extinction. I think the 300,000-year differential doesn't sound so bad to me, since (a) dating things that old is not real, real exact; and (b) it may take time for an ecosystem to finish collapsing completely.

2) There is now evidence for at least 4 moons in the solar system to contain an internal reservoir of liquid water -- Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, and Enceladus. probably Titan, too.

3) There are no methane oceans, and hope is dimming for lakes, on Titan. It was a reasonable prediction, not borne out by evidence.

4) There is solid evidence for the past presence of water on Mars.

5) There is solid evidence for the existence of Black Holes.

6) There are now many times more planets known outside the solar system than inside.

7) Boiling water does not kill all organisms. Thermophilic bacteria were discovered 30-some years ago.

8) There is life on Earth that is completely disconnected from sunlight, at the bottom of the oceans and in deeply buried rock.

9) There are stars that are too small for nuclear fusion, too big to be planets, called Brown Dwarfs. These were only a humorous speculation in the 80's.

10) There may have been another species of human alive as recently as the end of the last Ice Age.

11) The constants are still constant, pretty much, but experiments have been devised and performed to test the propositions.

12) Gravitational waves are real, deduced from watching pulsars slow down.

13) Neutrinos have mass (but not very much).

I'll have to keep thinking about this.

Gosh, 'mudge, damn near everything's been proven wrong over the past 20 years.

Seriously though, conclusions drawn from data regarding phenomena that humans have no firsthand experience of (*sorry*) are open to a lot of intepretation.

What's a planet? AFAIK, even the IAU doesn't have a solid defintion to apply to the solar system (or anywhere else) yet. Last I checked, they were still working on it.

There have been some data from which some could infer that the speed of light has changed over time, and data that Alpha, or the fine structure constant used to describe light's interaction with matter has changed.

Then there's Stephen Hawking's famous admission recently that he now belives that quantum information "leaks" out of black holes, rather than the random "Hawking radiation" that he'd previously said could not carry information.

My long-winded point: Some people belived that the 4 minute mile would never be broken, that man would never walk on the moon, that the Red Sox and the Patriots would never win championships (much less in the same year), that heart transplants were impossible, I could go on and on. Here's one for those whippersnappers: Show me something that never changes (be prepared to argue - that's the point, right?).

The older I get, the less I know.
That's for damn sure.

bc

If I understand Mudge's question, it was about areas in which we were wrong, not just ignorant.

There are Weapons of Mass Destuction in Iraq.

That last was for you, RD.

bc

I was moved to a new office two weeks ago, which has its benefits and its pains. Good: I got a window, and I am out of the traffic that comes straight from the front door of the building past my office door. I have direct access to management now. I have a thermostat(!)and a larger cabinet to store useless stuff in.

Bad: People hold really loud meetings in the offices right next to mine, the thermostat is broken, and did I mention management? Before, I came and went as I pleased because they didn't remember that I was here until a crisis arose in my area of expertise. Now they can just look down the hall, and summon me to meetings that I am sure I avoided before.

Also, the chair is not my chair, and the keyboard holder is an ergonomic one - i.e., not like my old one. It is supposed to prevent wrist strain. I am in actual pain at the end of a long typing day.

But hey, it's pretty outside, and I can use my shortwave radio!

Cute mammals smaller than a bunny:
chipmunk
least weasel
pygmy marmoset
hedgehog
guinea pig

When I was in school, an engineering professor of mine stated that coal-fired electrical generators were more ecologically friendly than nuclear power plants. I am not so sure if he would make the same claim today.

Also, I was taught that thermal influences on cooper-pairs prohibited toom temperature superconductors, but clearly that isn't the case.

SCC: Room temperature. Everybody knows tooms are kept real cold.

Things that have been overturned:

The entire field of Freudian psychology is now literary theory rather than science. Same for Jung.

Plate tectonics is the poster child for shifting paradigms. It was roundly laughed at when first proposed and now is sacrosanct dogma.

Planetary exploration has made every word Asimov wrote for about 30 years completely obsolete.

Things that endure:

Euclid's Fifth Hypothesis? Unless you are counting non-Euclidean geometry.

Not being able to trisect a line or angle.

Admittedly, these are mathematical truths rather than scientific.

Would punctuated equilibrium somehow upset traditional Darwinism? Evolution is a scientific theory in the rather messy field of biology that has held up pretty well despite its continued unpopularity in some quarters.

The Laws of Thermodynamics are beyond proof and have entered into metaphor.

Something else that makes Curmudegon's request difficult to answer: theorists often will work out the details of theories based on assumptions that we believe to be wrong (but we might be a little wobbly). Thus, even when something inconsistent with old theories is discovered, there probably already is a theory developed to explain the results coherently.

Right now, there is a cottage industry of theorists addressing the question of Lorentz invariance of the speed of light -- is the speed of light REALLY the same, measured in every frame of reference, or does it depend on direction relative to your perceptible motion? The invariance of the speed of light is a fundamental precept of special relativity. Special relativity works very well in all tests so far devised. BUT ... if you could find even a tiny deviation from Lorentz invariance, you would shake the entire structure of relativity. There are whole theories being developed from this simple assumption.

Oh, and let me reinforce one that Joel mentioned -- dark energy. The expansion of the universe now appears to have had an accelerating phase in the past. It appears that new energy was introduced into the universe and may still be oozing in. What this means, exactly, still is hotly debated. But there are theories already available, and more being developed.

Re: things that never change - How about the theory of evolution? Which is funny because evolution in itself is a process of undergoing gradual change.

But the process stays the same, inasmuch as we adapt to specific environments to better suit ourselves; not only by going from monkey to man but also by going from horse-drawn carriage to automobile, etc.

I think this theory has held up pretty well.

Mudge: There's a crazy rumor going around that the brontosaurus either A) didn't really exist, or B)didn't look anything like the docile, blue creatures happily stomping around on my niece's pajamas. I don't know if there's any truth to this; could possibly be an urban legend. Has anyone else heard anything about this?

Ache - don't forget to scrub the phone...

RD, I'm still waiting for a scientific explanation for disco.

To Curmudgeon's list, I think you could add h.pylori.

"Changing medical belief and practice takes time. For nearly 100 years, scientists and doctors thought that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy food, and alcohol. Treatment involved bed rest and a bland diet. Later, researchers added stomach acid to the list of causes and began treating ulcers with antacids.

Since H. pylori was discovered in 1982, studies conducted around the world have shown that using antibiotics to destroy H. pylori cures peptic ulcers. The prevalence of H. pylori ulcers is changing. The infection is becoming less common in people born in developed countries. The medical community, however, continues to debate H. pylori's role in peptic ulcers"

Punctuated equilibrium is a filigree, a detail. The fundamental concept of natural selection as a means for the change of gene frequency to the extent that an entirely new species arises, is unperturbed. To call it a theory is like speaking of the Theory of Addition. It's simply a fundamental framework of discussion. Punctuated equlibrium is a revision of the remainder of Darwin's book, in which he attempts to deduce the application of the framework to the observable natural world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathological_science#N-rays

Continental drift vs plate tectonics?

Cubical atom vs Bohr atom?

Cold fusion?

Water memory?

Okay, so long as I'm going to be a regular (or semi-regular) member of this eclectic group, I really need know what "SCC" stands for. I understand it's use, just struggling with the anagram.

30 years ago: Computers in the home? No way.

My sister just sent me this:

On Wednesday of next week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

Coincidence that it's the same day as the Official Cherry Blossom Boodle Porching Hour? (Which, by the way, is 5:00 at McCormack & Schmick's on K St between 16th & 17th.)

Here's another: Back in the day, scientists didn't think BluRay technology was possible, because the energy level of blue light-waves was too high, and therefore too dangerous.

At the risk of BOO, I have always taken SCC to stand for "Self-castigating correction" which differs slightly from the canonical definition in Mo's Achentionary:

http://www.mortiifera.com/?p=67

We really need a homepage link to that like Weingarten has with his FAQ.

Helicobacter Pylori! An excellent offering.

VidaBlue -- (if you were pulling our collective leg, please forgive me for being so boringly literal-minded) Brontosaurus was a mistake, a combination of a Camarasaurus skull (already scientifically described) and an Apatosaurus body (already scientifically described); or maybe I have the parts backward. It was retracted by the 1930's, if I recall correctly. However, it somehow stayed in the popular literature and has been tenacious in the public mind. I think it's because it has a manly, masculine, brutish sound to it (vanity at work), it's easy to figure out where the emphasis goes in pronouncing it, and the translation is so cool -- Thunder Lizard.

Inconveniently, it has stuck around as a name for the general class of certain types of sauropod, even though there is no Brontosaurus genus or species. They are Brontosaurids, or Brontosaurs.

I think I knew this by 1970. What I have found far more shocking in recent years was the clarification of the point that pterosaurs were reptiles, not dinosaurs, and were more closely related to crocodilians; and that the giant sea reptiles other than turtles and crocodiles -- ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs -- were just that, reptiles that had branched off BEFORE the evolution of the peculiar skeletal traits that signified dinosaurs. Turtles and crocodiles were neither more nor less dinosaurian than those other genera, they were just luckier when the hammer fell.

I don't think that this was a revolution in paleontology, just a revolution in the public presentation of it.

Gosh, this was almost a whole year ago:

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2005/04/tom_befuddled_b.html#comments

SCC = Self-Castigation Club, some refer to it as Self-Correction Club. Either way works. jw pointed out that when you hit the submit button, your eye will be immediately drawn to any goofy spelling, grammar, or punctuation error as the Comment posts, mocking you as it posts your mistake to the entire Blogosphere, marking you for worldwide derision. The SCC is an acknowledgement of an error.

bc

eeeeeeeew.

I know EXACTLY what you're talking about!

The part that always grosses me out is the hair that you can blow out of the key board when you try to clean it. ick!!

ScienceTim,

Interesting bit about the invariance of the speed of light. I recall annoying a TA in physics with "but how do we know it isn't/wasn't different in another time or part of space?"

Which brings me to this: we're rotating on our axis, and around the sun, which is spinning around the Mily Way, which is...

So we're never in the same actual space twice, correct? How do we know some of these things aren't affected by exactly which piece of space we're in?

Fairfax, just turn your keyboard upside down over a clean white surface and shake it. Bang it a few times for good measure.

Mmmmm. There ain't just hair in there.

bc

You're correct, bc!

And what falls out could be served as a banquet in some snall, simpler societies.

eeeeeew

Gotcha! Thanks yellojkt!

and SFC is the Self-Flagellation-Club for the more masochistic types among us...

Oh it's all so gross. Ewww! Germs and things. It's all just too much--getting used to a new work space--especially for such a sensitve fellow. Poor Joel, no wonder you couldn't blog. I'm all twitterish just thinking about it. Breaking into a sweat now. OH MY GOD--THE SWEAT IS CONDUCIVE TO GERM AND MICROBACTERIAL TRANSFER! Help me, Joel, but steel yourself. Don't pass out and knock your head on your filthy key board.

Dang, I'm using up my afternoon this way, anyway.

amo mentioned:
Continental drift vs plate tectonics? –– Continental drift had several predictive failures, because it described only the result, not the mechanism. It was dead by the 20's, I thought. We didn't get plate tectonics until the early 60's, partly because of the stench of failure hanging around continental drift. However, this was all largely settled 30-40 years ago, and therefore doesn't fit Curmudgeon's window. I remember reading about conclusive evidence settling the concept of plate tectonics in My Weekly Reader, in the early 70's.

Cubical atom vs Bohr atom? -- I don't recall ever hearing about a cubical atom concept. I remember the "plum pudding" model. The Bohr model was only semi-classical and thus was born obsolete. The Bohr model is a handy conceptual device, but was basically never considered an accurate description of atomic structure.

Cold fusion? -- everybody was sure it would be wrong, except that it would be so cool if it were right, that it got a far-more-than-fair shake. It got shook, and died. So, not a revolution -- a resounding success of the old guard. But it fits Curmudgeon's time frame.

Water memory? -- I had heard of this, but I had to go look it up on Wikipedia to verify my memory. It certainly sounds like nonsense, that was never taken seriously by the vast majority of the scientific enterprise (like, everybody). Attempts to demonstrate its predictions in front of independent observers do not appear to have been successful. In this and other ways, it sounds very much like N-rays (right down to the nationality of the self-hoaxing scientist). I would like to think that Blondlot eventually recanted N rays (I don't recall), but Benveniste is attempting to make a buck off of water memory, or whatever pompous appellation he has given it.

There ought to be a rule.

Any time someone vacates a cube (expecially that one under the stairs - and you know who you are), s/he must be responsible for shaking-out their own keyboard muzz, emptying the desk drawers of dust and paper gloms, and cleaning-off the workstation screen.

Also, take your raisins with you.

Error Flynn said "So we're never in the same actual space twice, correct? How do we know some of these things aren't affected by exactly which piece of space we're in?"

Well, you don't know for certain. The working hypothesis is to follow the principle of isotropy, or maybe it was mediocrity: anyway, just assume that everything is pretty much the same everywhere. This is the working hypothesis, because it provides the simplest framework in which to make predictions and to interpret observations. You show me persuasive evidence that it's wrong, that physics changes from place to place, and I will abandon my prior beliefs in a heartbeat to get on your coat-tails to the Nobel Prize.

However -- absolutely no significant evidence has been presented to support abandoning the basic principle of blandness. It's conceivable that physics varies from place to place, but it is not necessary to explain any actual observations.

me being the it person, i get to give myself a new mouse, keyboard, monitor and computer...

that being said, i constantly am working on fixing other people's computers and touching their nasty keyboards and mice - and i HATE it when people think they are being cute and bring in their own ergonomic/whathaveyou mice/keyboards - i HATE trackballs!!!

this one time... at band camp - oops - i mean, this one user had a very bad skin condition and i guess didn't do anything to fix it cuz his whole desk, keyboard and computer were covered in dead skin. EWWWWWWWWW indeed!

While I was on maternity leave a few years ago, there was a fire at my place of work. My stuff was boxed or tossed by someone else following certain guidelines. When I got around to unboxing everything when I returned, I discovered that my black Swingline stapler was gone. Our insurance allowed for replacement of missing objects, and I very stubbornly insisted on the same model. It's still a very good stapler, but I can tell the difference...

EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWW!!!!!!

I HATE dead skin.

It's dandruff from OTHER parts.

scc - i'm the I.T. person - not the "it" person...

rd - i also have a thing for decorating my cubicle - on the other hand i also have a lot of toys and things to throw at my co-workers - helps relieve some of the stress from the job...

It's the dust bunnies/goats/bovines that pop out of my "new" desk drawer that really get my...er...goat...

yeah, and sometimes those desk-dust-goats are held toghether with HAIR and DEAD SKIN!!!

eeeeeeeeew

mo, you're the it person here.

SciTim, I don't want to redirect this interesting discussion, but how did SciKid's presentation go?

5:10 was me. I paper-cut my finger earlier (occupational hazard) and my band-aid has adversely affected my keyboarding.

Its called "Chemical Sensitivity" from all the Volitale Organic Carbons (VOC's) outgassing from all the plastic.

And Chemical Sensitivity is not recognized as a disablity under the Americans with Diabilites Act, so please don't even think about it.............yet.

Just my opinion.

When I moved into my current office I had to scrub the wall next to the desk because the guy who lived there before me apparently used to scuff his feet against the wall while he was working, I guess.

It would be nice to work somewhere where they actually painted the walls more often than every 10 years.

The thing is, one NEVER TRULY knows what caused the scuff marks, the squashed raisins, or what looks like sesame seeds (laced with band-aid thread from paper cuts) in the keyboard.

No one should have to go to work ever again, unless they want to once in awhile.

I'm an RN, so I know all kinds of evocative words, but I really have to thank you for exuviae! I used the word pejorative the other day and a doc that I was assisting just could not get over what a great word that was. I guess he doesn't think nurses are all that smart. Next time I see him on the unit I am just going to blurt out "Exuviae!!" That will really knock his socks off, I think.

Don't EVER shout "exuviae" in a crowded theater.

> SciTim, ... how did SciKid's presentation go?

ScienceTim occasionally has real work to do, so I'll answer.

ScienceKid #1 did very well, not only winning 2nd place in the Junior Physics division, but recognition from two professional societies! I was astounded to learn that one of the awards is a $100 check - who knew that a 6th grade project could have such a lucrative return?

We are, of course, very proud of our first SciKid. The second one will be presenting at the elementary county fair in about a month.

It's clear, though, that they have some serious competetion as they approach high school. I was impressed (and a bit envious) at the level of accomplishment.

Tim - I think water memory refers to homeopathic medicine, in which a chemical that has been diluted by many, many orders of magnitude is still asserted to exert an influence on the essentially pure water.

Lurker in Toronto - please tell me your stapler wasn't red...

Wait- rereading I see the stapler was black. My universe is restored.

RD, I see someone's got a bad case of the Mondays!

I believe that the red stapler is actually not truly available - thank god

actually the red stapeler is INDEED available - we got one for a going away present for a co-worker...

Before the co-worker left, was s/he asked to remove the scuffs from the walls and the hairs from the keyboard?

Swingline began manufacturing red staplers due to the high-demand following the release of Office Spac.

SCC: Space

(See, I'm getting the hang of it!)

I stand corrected - I just need to make sure I don't advise specific co-workers of that fact - office supply chaos would ensue

Has anyone had their stapler placed in a bowl of jello?

Why would WMO's be for you, RD? And hey, I'm definitely being nosy, and if too much, ignore me.

Have good evening everyone. We're expecting some tough weather this evening. We're under a tornado watch until eight, and severe thunderstorms are in the mix. I'm a little nervous after seeing the damage in the middle of the country, and so many deaths.

Kim, I have another for you. It's my personal boodler new word favourite. It sounds like so much more than its definition.

crepuscular (krî-pùs´kye-ler) adjective
1. Of or like twilight; dim: "the period's crepuscular charm and a waning of the intense francophilia that used to shape the art market" (Wall Street Journal).
2. Zoology. Becoming active at twilight or before sunrise, as do bats and certain insects and birds.

Excerpted from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Cassandra, I'm thinking of you, and will keep you and yours in my prayers.

spob - in a bowl of jello? what flavor?

interesting vida - i didn't know that! see you learn something new everyday in the boodle!

mo: I'm full of useless information. Unfortunately none of it is marketable...

Re: Mudge's list of things that we thought we knew, but now we don't, or somethin'...
Didn't a guy from up around I-270-way get the Noble Prize for making energy act like matter. Einsteinian Continuum (sp?) or whatever. I'm an ignoramus; maybe somebody has already said this 20 times already. Ask me about ships and boats.

H.pylori, is one of my favourite science stories. I saw a documentary where the gents who discovered the bacterium were the focus. I have never forgotten that in order to prove this bacterium was the guilty party, a fine gentleman of science drank a potion containing the stuff, and promptly devloped a raging peptic ulcer, took medication and cured it.

There might be bigger stories in science, but this one still is in the best of pile.

Cassandra, I think I mentioned WMDs in an earlier post about needing to be really sure of something.

Also, regarding red staplers, the red Swingline stapler available is not the same model featured in the movie "Office Space." The movie one was actually a prop, according to the FAQ. At one point I was going to try to duplicate it by sanding and painting a black stapler of the right model, but I decided it was too much work for a silly joke.

Its from the BBC version of "The Office." The assistant manager can't stand jello (or "jelly" as they call it in British English) and one of his coworkers always steals his stapler and inserts it into a bowl of green jello. The jello is then presented to the assistant manager on a lovely platter. Its a running gag throughout the 12 episodes and very, very funny.

And I believe green jello corresponds to lime flavor if I am not mistaken...

This is probably going to be BOO. I started typing but got called away by work...

I thought the h. pylori bacterium PREVENTED ulcers. The point being that antibiotics kill off these little critters and THEN you develop ulcers. Although I think it's true about the scientists drinking them in order to test their effectiveness.

(See there's more of that unmarketable information.)

Pictures of the little critters:

http://www.helico.com/

As it turns out, there is a timely WaPo transcript of a discussion with a microbiologist about office germs posted today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/03/31/DI2006033101212.html

Highlights: shared office candy a big source of germs; telephone receivers also a baddy; and there is no proven "value" in exposure to germs to build up some kind of immunity.

PS

Note the use of colons and semicolons. Note the non-use of the word "correct".

PPS

VidaBlue (love that handle), I'm fairly new here too. I can't get into using BOO because (1) everything is out-of-order here and (2) I still associate with BOO with ghosts and I for one am not in the boodle to scare anyone.

PPPS re: no office candy anymore: BOO HOO

PPPPS: ;)

Little does the ScienceSpouse know, I was just off at my yoga class -- and talking in the hallway with fellow science types to brag on my ScienceKid's accomplishments.

But I do have to get some work done. ANd then get home for dinner.

Is it true that you shouldn't be on the computer during a lightening storm? Just asking.

Is anyone as disturbed as I am by that photo of Z. Moussaoui on WaPo's homepage? I can't wait for the news-cycle to change so I am not bombarded by this menacing appearance everytime I visit the boodle.

(Granted I was equally disturbed by the image of Dubya throwing out the first pitch at the Nats season-opener.)

Cassandra, that same storm line is blowing through here right now and I am very worried it will knock out power precisely when I need to see my Florida Gators put a whompin' on that Los Angeles team, I forget the name, they won some championships in years past.

ScienceTim and ScienceSpouse, I know we learned this in a previous boodle, but can you summarize ScienceKid #2's science fair project? Or is it so good it's already Classified?

We have our science fair at the elementary school on Wednesday and I may shamelessly mention the work of one of my critters.

Go Gators!!!!

See, I wasn't going to bring up "Office Space", but I go, have a little dinner, put my kid to bed, and discover it's been done for me.

As I typed my previous comment, I did think it might look a little suspicious that my stapler story was connected to a fire, but my alibi is that the stapler was not missing until after.

ScienceKid #2 performed a simple but elegant experiment -- dropping balls of various composition onto horizontal surfaces of various composition, and measuring the bounce height. Three balls: lacrosse, steel bearing, glass marble. Three floor surfaces: wooden tabletop, smooth concrete floor, wood-like laminate flooring on concrete. For each test, drop the ball 6-15 times while recording the drop and subsequent bouncing on digital camera, typically 5 good bounces. Afterwards, SK2 used shareware to convert the MPG to a set of frames, then went through frame-by-frame to find the peak of each bounce. Bounce heights were measured in pixels, referenced to the height of the preceding bounce or drop point. As a result, the Science Kid had something on the order of 3X3X10X5 = 450 data points to manage. Conclusions: the highest energy recovery is with the hardest material from the hardest surface. The next highest was with a highly elastic material (the lacrosse ball) from any surface. The poorest energy recovery was with the steel ball from the wood laminate. Priamry parental contributions were in providing hints and guidance, operating camera and demonstrating software, and kicking behind (figuratively) to maintain motivation.

I TRY to avoid passive voice, but so dang hard is the extent to which it sometimes is determined to be difficult to achieve the complete restraint from the usage of passive voice.

Joel, there are cases of peoples' workstations ruining their health, not to mention preventing them from working. Check out this article from October by one of your coworkers: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/07/AR2005100702281.html?referrer=emailarticlepg

RD:
Using a computer during a lightning storm is dangerous because of power surges, but that can be addressed with surge protector. One could lose data, but that can be addressed with a Universal Power Supply.

I have heard that the biggest risk of being on the computer during a storm is from the phone line on a dial-up modem. My understanding is that phone lines have been known to deliver a bad jolt to your modem if the line is struck by lightning. Maybe it's an urban myth.

DV

Tim,

Fifty years ago I believe you could have gotten college credit for the experiment ScienceKid #2 performed. Maybe even more recently than that.

Thanks DV - As Joel alluded, we had a nifty little lightening storm come through. The kind where you want to sitdown, stare out the back window, and enjoy the show. When I first moved out here I was overwhelmed by the power and beauty of such storms. Nearly two decades later they still amaze me.

> Fifty years ago I believe you could have gotten college credit for the experiment ScienceKid #2 performed.

Fifty years ago you would have been hard pressed to find a digital camera!
:)

Join the Army.

>Fifty years ago you would have been hard pressed to find a digital camera!

The digital camera was unnecessary for the experiment. Just make a grid, place it behind the experiment, and then take photos. You'd probably have to do more tests to get a good result.

Or maybe you could have hired Harold Edgerton. :)

Wow pj. Harold Edgerton. I haven't thought of that name in years. When I was a really little kid I recall seeing a bunch of his famous pictures in Life magazine. When I was in school we played with a strobe to "freeze" a fan blade. I came close to trimming my fingertips when I tried to reach out and touch it. (Fortunately, Sister Gabriel had really quick reflexes...) One of the cool things about this blog is that I am reminded of so many things I thought I had forgotten. Thanks pj!

Don't be on an above ground phone line during a lightning storm. My friend's father was killed by a strike. It hit about a mile from their house, and zoomed down the line and right into his ear and out the bottom of his foot.

http://www.dufourlaw.com/cbc3.htm

This is one story that is not an urban myth. I wish it were. He was a nice man, with a big laugh and a 'James Earl Jones' big voice. He told everyone not to laugh at me when I got the toothpick from my firend's birthday cake that meant that I had to dry the dishes.

Your modem is a small price to pay, but round home, we DO NOT talk on the phone when there is a storm.

Jeepers dr, what a tragic story. My original comment was partly in jest, but I thank you for pointing out that such things can happen. Given the number of conductors running into most houses, it is something to keep in mind. Thanks again posting that.

I am always in awe of lightning. For what it's worth, my DSL modem fried last summer due to a nearby lightning bolt. Forget surge supressors, they're a start but often not much more than a placebo. Get a UPS (Uninteruptible power Supply). The incoming power just charges the battery which in turn runs the output. Generally it'll fry the input and leave you safe on the other side. And turn the bloody thing off during a storm, unless what you're doing is worth the cost of a new computer.

ScienceTim, I appreciate your humoring my dumb physics question, but being unable to do the equations myself I have to ask someone.

I mean, Inquiring minds want to know:

1) If the inflation theory is right, the universe expanded from nothing to everything much faster than the speed of light, of which there was none until stars formed. Whazzup wit dat? I thought nuthin' went faster than the speed of light. Just nothing we can see? Or is it that "nothing" CAN go faster than the speed of light. So to speak.

2) As I said before, it seems we're never in the same place twice. All the things we think may have changed over time, how do we know they didn't change over place? re. the principle of isotropy, it's certainly it's reasonable and sane to assume these things always were the same, but is it right? And how could we know?

3) You mentioned the universe started to accelerate and new energy was introduced. (I recall hearing a figure of like 6B years ago for the acceleration?) Could you point us to any lay-person friendly info on theories re. the energy influx?

I have a stapler story.

My friend was at a wedding with his brother, who liked to sleep in the nude. Friend and brother tied one on -- a good drunk that is, not a stapler. In the morning, in their shared hotel room, the friend woke up to find his brother out cold on a bed, completely nude per normal. In the corner, however, wads of crumpled newspaper that had mysteriously appeared.

Finally, brother woke up. Friend asked "what in heck is all this newspaper about, bro?" Brother paused for a few moments without answer, then the light bulbs went off.

Seems in the middle of the night, brother, the sleeper in the buff, wakes up to use the bathroom. He walks into the bathroom, half asleep, half drunk, and closes the door behind him. Proceeds to look for toilet, but cannot find it. Keeps looking, looking. Where is the damn toilet? An additional bit of consciousness permeates the fog and he realizes he is not in the bathroom at all. Rather, he is strolling down the long hotel hallway in his birthday suit.

Alone, without room key or pockets to put one in, he does not remember what room he is staying in.

But he is resourceful. He sneaks furtively down the hall to the elevator waiting area. And what should he find there, but a stack of newspapers. Can they be used somehow? How, dammit? He looks in the drawer of the table there between the two chairs (don't know whether he sat in them. Ick). What does he find? A STAPLER! (pre Office Space; it could not have been red).

Did I mention he was resourceful? Bingo. Our little naked boy scout proceeds to staple himself a newspaper ensemble. But what to do? He still has no pockets (handy with a stapler, but not that handy), no key and no recollection of his room. Knocking on everyone's door at 4:00 a.m. does not appear viable.

On the table, a phone. He calls to the front desk. "Ah, this is Mr. Smith on the fifth floor and I seem to have locked myself out of my room. Can you please come up and let me in?

He is let in the room, not arrested. Still without pockets, he is unable to tip the front desk attendant. Just a knowing nod and a "thank you." He realizes that it would be more comfortable sleeping again in the buff than in his brand new newspaper jammies.

If there is a lesson here, it is that one should never stay in a hotel without checking the elevator vestibule table for a the day's paper and a stapler. Just to be sure.

It is sad and it surely is not the tone of today's boodle, but even urban myths have roots.

I've often wondered how myth becomes myth, and where it begins, and where it goes as the a story grows and changes. It was so long ago, and really such a small local one family story. Amd there it was, still being passed and I knew about it. Even more weird was the fact that I found something on the internet. Not a lot of people died over time as they talked on the phone. It could possibly be unique, but I don't doubt that it is part of the roots of the urban myth of today.

It almost makes me believe that one day this kit and kaboodle will become myth, and people will bow down to the power that is the great Achenbach and the disciples will be called the now even archaic term, SAO 15! There will likely be something about a mythical being called WaPo, who some hold is the progenitor. There will be a sacred porch and celebrations will revolve sitting on one, and only occasional umbrage will be allowed, all will be civility...OK people, help me out here. I am certainly no Curmudgeon and I am no CowTown.

SCCCCCCC

...and I can't spell, nor phrase things right. Read around it. This chickie is suffering time- change sleep deprivation and I am off beddy bye.

EF - let me try to pinch hit a little.
1) It is true that "nothing" can go faster than light. For example, the point where two scissor blades meet can go arbitrarily fast. So too can the envelope of the universe.

2) One of the postulates of special relativity is that all inertial (non accelerating) frames are equally valid. Since special relativity has been shown to be experimentally true, this supports the notion that the universe really is, you know, relative. That is, if some locations were more equal than other locations, experiments involving special relativity would fail. This is as close as I think physics can get without entering the realm of truly unprovable conjecture.

3) Try "The Whole Shebang" by Timothy Ferris. It might not get you all the way there, but it comes really close.

Divorce is not a fair comparsion, Joel. Divorce is like death. Moving cubes and cleaning a bit is simply part of life. And who can't relate to that?

funny story, since several people mentioned circadian rhythms. An old lady from my synagogue in Medellin went to visit her daughter in London. When she returned, she didn't feel well and went to a doctor who told her she had caused her meridians to fall out of alignment by crossing so many time zones. This doctor treated her by running magnets over her body and sent her home. She died less than 24 hours later of a pulmonary embolism. I was about 12 at the time. My dad, who had been this woman's doctor before she went "alternative" told us that story many times. Every time we complained about having stayed up late and having to catch up on sleep, my dad would volunteer to treat us with some magnets from the refrigerator door.

Wow! I've been reading this for so long and never posted. I feel great! Or, I should say I will feel great for a few minutes until someone posts some ugly comment about this post...

Sorry for the delay in respondiong to all the suggestions--had a doctor's appointment (and only waited 80 minutes to see him after my scheduled appointment time).

Thanks, everyone for the suggestions. I think the winner is dr for the h. pylori suggestion. I think I failed to add a key point to my question, which was that the point of knowlkedge had to be pretty commonly known to any reasonably education person, probably a college grad (liberal arts), or even a bright high school grad. By this criteria, I think it was "commonly known" by everyone that stress, etc., caused ulcers, and that bland diets and milk cured them.

Many of the other suggestions while both pretty good and pretty interesting, tended toward specialized knowledge. When I graduated from college, I couldn't have told you whether neutrinos had mass or not; I couldn't even have told you what a neutrino was, exactly. Some of the other suggestions were or are still in the realm of "theory"; padouk was right: I was interested in things that were flat-out wrong, not just unknown or not understood, or controversial. (Until just now, I was unaware that continental drift has been discredited. I guess that means that South America really wasn't connected to Africa, and all that after all? I never got the memo.)

I also liked the boiling water doesn't kill all germs thing. Never heard that one before. And I'm fascinated by ScienceTim's statement that there may have been a second species of human as recently as 10,000 years ago--never heard that one either. Got details, Tim? Or a link?

But thanks, everyone.

The Gators are looking very good, Joel. Impressive.

RDP,

Thanks so much. I almost hate to ask these things, unfortunately my math fails me with regard to actually understanding the bloody equations myself, but early immersion in sci-fi leaves me asking still.

I blame my 3rd grade nun for failure to imprint the basic mathematical axioms. Or something.

Mudge,

The second species reference is probably to Homo floresiensis (again, where's the italics). Here's a link:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1027_041027_homo_floresiensis.html

I'm still surprised as well about the "continental drift" theory being discredited, and so long ago. It seems to me that the terms probably became interchangeable (drifted together, if you will). I assume plate tectonics still says all the current continents were together in Pangaea, and then went their separate ways (with periodic reunions), which regardless of the mechanism, 'continental drift' is still descriptive shorthand.

For mind blowing changes within your 20 year time frame, I'm going to say the biggest is political - the collapse of the USSR. In 1986, who could have thunk it?

A used cubicle may be more healthy than a new one. The outfit I worked for decided to upgrade all the the workstations at the same time, floor by floor. People on my floor were the guinea pigs, they are animals smaller than bunnies yet not too scary by the way, our floor was first to get the do-over. There were about 400 cubes on my floor. New partitions, desk, chairs, bookshelves, the works. Old stuff was to be thrown out with the old carpet, a new carpet installed and the company selling the new kit promised to do it in one week, this was the big selling point. The grand inauguration came on a Monday morning, during which two guys collapsed from allergic reactioin to all the VOC/glue/foaming gas emitted by all this new synthetic stuff. My boss, a florid man in his normal state, became an interesting shade of crimson but walked out just before his head was set to explode. Quick evacuation ensued. Turns out the company doing the install removes a few windows on the floor and installs forced ventilation to ensure its worker's safety during the work. Then they put the windows back in and left on the Friday. With the winter heating on the the place was about to explode from VOC on the Monday. Hey we got 3-4 days off out of it, not a bad deal !

Wow.
I swing by the 'boodle to check on scientific breakthroughs and urban myths, and on the way here from the front page I see that DeLay has decided it's time to wee on the fire and call the dogs.

'Mudge, let us know if you want stories about eras that ended in the past 20 minutes, "constants" that aren't any longer "constant", etc.

DV

Error Flynn, I'll try to answer your questions, but I don't have really good answers to them.

1) If the inflation theory is right, the universe expanded from nothing to everything much faster than the speed of light, of which there was none until stars formed. Whazzup wit dat?

I know nothing of any significance about inflation theory. I know it's based on GUTs (Grand Unified Theories), which I think now is called string theory -- or they may be completely unrelated. I don't know. These are those pesky theories that try to unify gravity and electromagnetism and all those pesky forces as one entity, but doing it requires 9 spatial dimensions and one time dimension (which is a lot like a spatial dimension in relativity theory -- to get "there", I have to travel through space and time, which means I also get there "then", not "now"). With spatial dimensions that may exist but that are difficult to observe in the casual sense of what we have been doing all this time, I suppose it's possible that the universe expanded through all 9 spatial dimensions in some reasonable way, but then all converted into normal matter in normal space like what we normally see, all at once, appearing to have come from nowhere into existence. I'm just wavin'my hands here, I got nothing. Read Ferris' book and Greene's book. I'm a slow reader, so I haven't gotten around to them yet.

2) As I said before, it seems we're never in the same place twice. All the things we think may have changed over time, how do we know they didn't change over place?

This is a philosophically simpler question to answer: if you can't tell, then it doesn't matter whether it happened one way or the other. It looks the way it looks, and it makes sense the way it makes sense. You're asking for "truth." Science doesn't give you "truth." Science only gives you tests for falsehood. Whatever has not yet been shown to be false is provisionally true. However, some provisional truths (if I walk off a bulding, I will fall) have greater predictive power than others (if a blue elephant walked right behind me right now, while I'm not looking, there's nothing to tell me it didn't happen).

3) You mentioned the universe started to accelerate and new energy was introduced. (I recall hearing a figure of like 6B years ago for the acceleration?) Could you point us to any lay-person friendly info on theories re. the energy influx?

That would require knowledge on my part. I don't have that knowledge. This stuff is kind of outside my realm, as well. Truth is (there's that word!), if it were presently understandable, it wouldn't be treated as being so darned mysterious. It really is a mystery.

I have created darkness where there was light. Sorry.

Continental Drift was not precisely discredited. The problem was that the original idea was too simple and resulted in some bad predictions. The original idea had continents as giant air-hockey pucks sliding about on top of the ocean bed, lubricated by water and mucky goo; maybe even by melted bedrock. There were a variety of predictions that didn't pan out so well (not that I can remember them right now; I tend not to mentally store information about defeated ideas), which were based on a misunderstanding of the mechanisms by which the continents got moved around. So, the theory got tossed on the trash heap and forgotten ffor several decades. Then, along come a whole raft of measurements in the 50's and 60's showing that (a) volcanoes and earthquakes largely follow organized lineal arrangements on the surface of the Earth; (b) there are sub-sea volcanoes where new rock is born; (c) there are imprinted patterns of the Earth's magnetic field as it has switched polarities, in band s of rock pushed away from the deep-sea rifts, which could only form if the rock were molten at the time the field had that orientation; (d) mountains formed at interfaces between giant regions, either volcanoes or uplift mountains; and (e) there had been some successes from Continental Drift theory, which still were true. I suppose there was a lot of other subtle and powerful stuff I'm not thinking of. Anyway, the fundamental concept of Contintental Drift was revived -- continents have migrated -- with a powerful new model for the mechanism: giant plates, including both continental and ocean-bed crustal rock, sliding around on top of the Earth's semi-fluid mantle, releasing mantle rock (basalt) as volcanic magmas at spreading zones, crushing plates together to melt continental rock and create continental magmas in subduction zones (where a continental plate edge gets pushed under another plate's edge, melted by the pressure). There remain big questions in how all this works, what keeps the motor going, and so forth, but the fundamental language with which to discuss the matter has been figured out. Wegener was right about the ccontinents drifting; but he was wrong in most respects about how it all worked.

And, yes, I meant Homo Floresiensis as the other species of human. Note that this is work in progress and may yet be proven to be false. The skeletons of little hominds definitely have been found, and they're not all that old (10K years or so). It remains to be seen whether they were just short Homo Sapiens, or an offshoot. These skeletons were found on the island of Flores, part of Indonesia. How far back does that culture go?

Another part of the mystery of human migration, mentioned by Joel: it appears that the ancestors of the Australian aborigines arrived there quite a long time ago -- say, 40K years. It is clear from modern experimentation (reproductive sex) that they are not speciated from humanity on the rest of the Earth. The people of Flores went in a different direction -- they were very tiny, with tiny brains, but they apparently had sophisticated shaped stone tools, suggesting that they really had evolved a different set of adaptations to solve the problem of becoming tool-using people, compared to modern Homo Sap. A Homo Sapiens with a brain that small would barely be able to drool -- Homer Simpson, basically. That suggests that they really were speciated, because they would need a different brain structure. How far back did they split from the rest of us? Before or after the evolution of Homo Sapiens Sapiens? Did they evolve from Homo Erectus, separately from us? Interesting, interesting, interesting...

Or, were they just very small humans of anatomically modern type?

Joel, it looks like congratulations are in order:

ahem - "Ladies and Gentlemen, your 2006 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Champions - the University of Florida Gators!"

While I whined and moaned about how badly my brackets looked even as late as last week, UCLA's getting to the final pulled me into the money in my pool, finishing second out of 36 entries. I won't pretend that my brackets were better than JA's, but I didn't have to beat him. Woo-hoo, I'm in the CAI$H!

RD, information between entangled subatominc particles count as "nothing", doesn't it? I think that's what you meant...

I also seem to remember that some scientists had used specialzed trickery to boost photons well beyond the normal speed of light (IIRC up to 300x for short distances, and something like 6x for longer runs in the kilometer range), and of course, photons slow down in media like water.

bc

I run my own division and so have no-one to complain to, save myself. I face west at my computer. It's an older, but faithful companion. The front says "Packard Bell." And I'm reminded every time I visit my friend that it's Windows 95. The screen varies from a sickly green to a restful blue, depending on its own mood. It won't Print Screen. Rather, I have to go to a disc, then print from disc. This was a casualty of my successful ridding the computer of a virus. Tis a casualty of that war. Like an old car with a battered body but a sound engine, it keeps going on, even though I often, like the insecure actor, "Can't go on...I'll go on."

beacantor:

Congratulations on your emergence from lurkerdom! And don't worry, we don't often have hecklers. Regarding misaligned meridians, interesting theory. My husband says that when you travel on a jet, all of your molecules don't always arrive simultaneously at your destination. That's why it can take a while to feel like "yourself" again, because you are waiting for the missing molecules to catch up to you.

There. Now we've helped balance this extremely erudite discourse on scientific theories and counter theories with some pseudoscientific nonsense. Hey, glad to assist. Anytime.

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How ABOUT those Gators, eh?
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Error, don't blame the third grade nun. Some of us have math logic, others have English logic. Just depends on how you process the data. I did *okay* in math, but language has always been my thing. Loved to diagram sentences, because it made such good sense to me! Thank heavens for ScienceTim; I appreciate how he can make science/math logic understandable to this English logic person. We have many participants with English logic. That's one reason I really enjoy Achenblog.

kbertocci - liked your jet lag explanation. In William Gibson's book "Pattern Recognigion" he talks about jet lag being caused by your soul not keeping up. You can talk all you want about those circadian rhythms and all, but for anyone who has ever done a red eye from San Francisco, "soul delay" is the best explanation.

Works for daylight savings time too.

Glad to see the Gators win. Takes the sting off Mason's loss to know they lost to the best. But I imagine a certain writer will be totally insufferable today...

bc - the limit on light travel is closely linked to information transfer. If it doesn't carry info, it can go like a tachyon bat out of hell.

RD,

Aren't sports writers supposed to be insufferable to the vast majority of their readers?

You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle-aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life.

=== Emo Phillips

I would hope we Boodlers are all prepared for a long stretch of Kit-lessness. I'd imagine the Achenresidence's celebration continues, and the recovery period could be significant as well.

Congrats, Joel! :-)

Anyone care to weigh in on the ongoing saga of one Cynthia McKinney?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040300998.html

Scotty, thanks for the link. You reminded me that I only knew what was on the radio yesterday as I drove from stop to stop.

Let's just say that I learned more from that article than the radio, other than McKinney had been charged for assault.

Other than that there seems to be the basic problems of living in a "rainbow" world, the police probably should be better prepared for something like the original incident. OR they probably should tell the Congress members what they will do if they change their do and/or forget their pin.

BTW, is that all a terrorist needs, is the pin?

I hope everyone made it through the bad storms last night. And, Go Gators indeed!

About Ms. McKinney, I'd want to hear what any witnesses might have to offer on the situation. And I have questions. Did the officer tap her on the shoulder, or did he grab her arm? Why shouldn't members of congress be required to walk through metal detectors? (