Category: Technology

I just wonder how many British tabloid readers are going to be turned on to chemistry with the news this week that the Royal Society of Chemistry has decided to associate various celebrities with an appropriate element from the periodic table. They kick off by labelling Rebekah Wade Editor of infamous red-top The Sun with bromine and her partner soap star Ross Kemp with caesium. An RSC “scientist” is reported as saying that life is all about chemistry and recent violent reactions between Wade and Kemp could be down to the explosive chemistry between them.

Other “stars” elementalised by the RSC press office at the beginning of Chemistry Week include:

Jordan � Silicon, Mick Jagger� Neon, Wayne Rooney � Sulfur, Tim Henman � Boron, Anne Robinson � Chlorine, George Galloway � Mercury, Colin Montgomery � Beryllium, Steve Redgrave � Gold, Bruce Forsyth � Helium, Ken Livingston � Palladium, Russell Crowe- Iron, Jose Mourinho � Arsenic, Jane Goody � Lead, Thierry Henry � Silver, Anne Robinson – Promethium, Andrew Flintoff � Iridium, Roy Keane � Krypton

For some reason quizmistress Anne Robinson gets two mentions and they spell sulfur incorrectly using the old “ph” version despite a ten-year RSC/IUPAC ruling that it should be spelled with an “f” these days.

Drop me a line or leave a comment, if you cannot work out why a particular celeb gets assigned a certain element, although most are “obvious” (to tabloid readers, at least).

Is it any surprise there is a gulf between science and arts?

This is what the art world seemingly considers important: Harold Pinter "in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms"

Whereas science renders discoveries in chemistry that offer “Fantastic opportunities have been created for producing many new molecules – pharmaceuticals, for example. Imagination will soon be the only limit to what molecules can be built!”

Those free iPods ads are everywhere on the net and in your email inbox, but are they for real? They sure don’t look it at first glance. Almost everything about them screams “scam!!!” But only almost. What at first appears to be a “something for nothing” pyramid marketing scheme is nothing of the sort as Wired magazine, CNN, Good Housekeeping, MSNBC, New York Times, and others have reported over the last few months.

In fact, what it boils down to is simply signing up, partaking of a special offer such as freebie DVD rentals or making your first bid on ebay (you don’t even have to win the auction!), or, perish the thought, signing up for an AOL trial, and then persuading a few friends to do the same. You can always cancel the agreement after any minimum period.

Of course, if you’ve got a website, any visitor can become an instant friend if you can both get a free iPod out of that visit. The organizing company Gratis Internet has sent out tens of thousands of ipods and other pricey gadgets already. In return they get a bung from the likes of ebay and AOL who might gain a new customer out of the deal. They don’t sell your name on to mailing list companies so it really is a win-win situation.

An interesting preprint popped up on my physics eprints page this morning: “Fractal Dimensions in Perceptual Color Space: A Comparison Study Using Jackson Pollock’s Art.” by J. R. Mureika. Apparently, the standard RGB colour system used across the imaging industry from graphic design and photography to computer monitors and TV screens is not up to the job of representing fractal images and does not reveal the nuances of colour in perceptually different colours. Best avoid Pollock desktop wallpaper then!

Blair Bolles discussed the Sunday Times Acrostic puzzle recently on one of the NASW discussion groups. Apparently, he was rather intrigued by a “new” word – retronym. As examples, he cites “silent movies” and “acoustic guitar” all retronymic phrases – i.e. the qualifier was added after the original word lost its original meaning.

Another example he gives is “special relativity”. Einstein talked of his “theory of relativity” but then he came up with another “theory of relativity” so the first one was retronymically referred to as “special”.

Puzzlingly, Blair says Google only lists one page carrying the word retronym – a google whack blatt, in other words. But, I see more than 20,000 hits when I search…

This article ties in quite neatly with a more recent item I wrote on redundancy in phrases such as male semen, as if there could be any other kind.

Just in, a press release from the Royal Chem Soc. I really didn’t get far into it because I stumbled at the first major acronym – EuCheMS. Why is it that learned societies and academics in general opt for all these acronyms with mixed upper and lower case letters?

I realise they’re an aid to remembering and pronouncing the acronym, but EUCHEMS would look soooo much neater on the page.

TtFn