Science Advocacy
Science Advocacy
I have done some pretty weird things in my life (including eating bugs for this blog), but I am not sure that there is anything quite so bizarre as using your own pee-pee as a health tonic. However, in a video posted recently in the New York Post, Julia Sillaman does just that.
Sillaman claims that drinking her own urine and using it as a face wash has cleared up her acne and helped her lose weight. She also says that fasting has helped her pee taste more like coconut water. Not only is this really a thing that she does (and not a joke or prank), the practice of using urine for health purposes has been around since forever. In this, the third article we’ve had to do about pee, we debunk the inexplicable history of people using urine as a health tonic. (Hint: It does not work.)
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a startling report on October 6, 2018 that was a clarion call to the planet. The IPCC’s report warned that if the global temperatures increase by the formerly accepted 1.5 to 2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures, the impacts will be far more devastating than previously projected. In December of 2015, the Paris Accord charged world leaders to keep the global average temperature increase well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Since before the industrial revolution, the global temperature has already increased by 0.8°C to 1.2°C, depending on the region.
We are already about halfway to the 2°C tipping mark.Continue reading…
Ridiculous question from the internet: I throw my cigarette butts and empty packs out the car window for birds to make nests. Is there anything else I can do for the environment?
Source of said ridiculous question: Yahoo Answers
Science’s answer: How… how on Earth is that helping the environment???? It is absolutely, unequivocally doing the opposite. Cigarette butts are the number one source of litter in the United States. When they have a filter, they are not biodegradable at all – they contain plastic and pile up in the environment. Birds do not make nests out of them, and if they did, that would be a problem, because they are full of poisons! Besides nicotine (itself a dangerous pesticide), there is often benzene, cadmium, and formaldehyde. Trust us – these are bad for anything that comes in contact with your butts, including birds. On top of all of that, they are a fire hazard, particularly in the drier parts of the country. Please stop throwing your cigarette butts out the window!
Ridiculous question from the internet: Does coal float?
Source of said ridiculous question: Google autofill
Science’s answer: I’ll start by saying that watching Monty Python is not a good way to learn about science. Very small rocks do not float, and coal doesn’t float either. There is one type of rock that does float, and that is pumice. Pumice is a type of volcanic rock that contains many air bubbles within it. If there are enough air bubbles in the pumice, it will displace more water than it’s own weight, and would therefore float. This is called Archimede’s Principle, and it’s also why large ships made of heavy steel can float.
Here are the answers to the other autocorrect questions: No, no, no, no (discussed above), yes, no, yes, yes?, and no.
Ridiculous question from the internet: How do I argue that climate change is fake?
Source of said ridiculous question: Yahoo Answers
Science’s answer: Look, UYBFS does not endorse spreading viewpoints that are directly contradicted by scientific facts, and that is exactly what you would be doing if you were to argue that climate change is fake. If however, this is an academic exercise – say you’ve been asked to take the anti-science side in a climate change debate for your debate club – our advise is to avoid the facts (pretty much all of which support man-made climate change) and focus on conspiracy theories. Maybe say that the whole climate change thing was made up by China in an attempt to slow the US economy? Sure, no rational person will (or should) believe this, but it will work better than talking about the actual facts.
Ridiculous question from the internet: How much garbage should I flush down the toilet?
Source of said ridiculous question: Yahoo Answers
Science’s answer: Why, why, WHY would you think it’s ok to flush garbage down toilets? You shouldn’t do this – ever, and here’s why. When you flush a toilet (or send water down any drain in a house), it can go into three different types of drainage systems. The first and most simple is a straight drainage system into a local water supply. These are rare in most developed countries, but they do exist. It’s easy to guess why putting garbage into these systems is bad – the garbage would go right into the local river, stream, bay, or ocean. That is not where trash should go.
The second type of system is an in-ground, self-contained septic system. These are very common in parts of the country where homes are spread out and connecting them via an in-ground sewer system is not practical. If you flush trash into one of these, you will eventually destroy it, and fixing or rebuilding them can be very expensive – tens of thousands of dollars. If your house or building has it’s own septic system and you have been flushing trash into it for years, my advice is to move ASAP before the system fails and hope that the landlord or home inspector doesn’t find the issue when he tests the system.
The third type of system is the standard sewer system, which connects houses and buildings in a town or city and brings all of the waste from each to a central facility for treatment. These are present in all large cities in developed countries and many smaller cities and towns as well. These systems can handle more then the first two, including ground up biodegradable garbage from in-sink garbage disposals. However, sending non-biodegradable trash into these systems can cause problems – big problems. Most famously, the city of London has been dealing with something called “fatbergs” in it’s sewer system for years. These are congealed masses of cooking oils and fats (which shouldn’t go down garbage disposals because they don’t mix with water) and non-biodegradable trash items like diapers and wet wipes. How bad can these be? Earlier this year, London dealt with a fatberg that was the length of two football fields and weighed as much as 11 buses. It took over 3 weeks to clear it out of the sewer. Don’t flush trash down the toilet.
Ridiculous question from the internet: Do trees have feelings or feel pain?
Source of said ridiculous question: Google Autofill
Science’s answer: No. The ability to feel pain requires a nervous system to sense painful stimuli and ability to react to it. Plants do not have a central nervous system. What organisms can feel pain? There is no doubt that all vertebrates (animals with a backbone) feel pain. Among non-vertebrate animals, there is good evidence that crustaseans (crabs and lobsters) and cephalopods (squid and octapuses) can feel pain, while for the most part, it seems that insects do not.
Feelings are a bit more complex. It seems likely that all mammals are capable of having “feelings”, of some sort. After that, it’s not clear – maybe some birds (like magpies), and possibly a few other species could have feelings, depending on how you define these feelings. Plants do not have feelings – without a brain and a central nervous system, it’s not possible.
To answer the other autocorrect questions:
Ridiculous question from the internet: If we are just chemicals, molecules, then each molecule must also be self aware, mustn’t it?
Source of said ridiculous question: Quora.com
Science’s answer: Nope. Think of it this way: you wouldn’t say that the molecules in a glass of sugar water were self aware, right? If you were to drink the sugar water, some of the molecules of water and sugar would end up in your brain, but would still not be self-aware. “Self awareness” is the ability to recognize yourself as separate from other similar organisms. Some say that this requires the ability to communicate on some level, since in order to recognize yourself as different from others, you would need a “name” to call yourself. It is believed that, besides humans, apes, monkeys, elephants, dolphins, and magpies are capable of self-awareness. Individual molecules are not.
Ridiculous question from the internet: What were Louie Armstrong’s first words when he stepped foot on the moon?
Source of said ridiculous question: Yahoo Answers
Science’s answer: Louis Armstrong (the musician) never made it to the moon. He was already 68 when Neil Armstrong (the astronaut) stepped onto the moon and said “that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” There is some controversy about whether Armstrong included the correct indefinite article “a” before the word “man,” but frankly it’s an awesome quote either way. Had Louis Armstrong made it to the moon, we assume he would have played something jazzy on his trumpet.
Ridiculous question from the internet: Can a human get a dog pregnant?
Source of said ridiculous question: Google Autofill*
Science’s answer: Oh my God No! We are hoping this is just curiosity and nothing… more. Seriously, though – most species can not mate successfully with other species for a variety of reasons, mostly because they physically can’t, or biologically their anatomy and physiology won’t permit it. In the few cases where this is possible, the two species in question are closely related, meaning they diverged evolutionary in the relatively recent past. Here are some fun examples:
In most cases, species that can interbreed have the same number, or at least a very similar number of chromosomes. You & I, however, have 23 sets of chromosomes, while a dog has 39 (despite having fewer genes overall). From a practical chromosomal segregation standpoint, that is a dumpster fire. It just won’t work.
Ridiculous question from the internet: Does looking at a picture of the sun hurt your eyes?
Source of said ridiculous question: Yahoo Answers
Science’s answer: No. Current photographic methods, even the most advanced digital photography, are incapable of capturing the energy emitted by an object and re-transmitting it from a picture. You can stare at a picture of the sun all you’d like. But maybe read a book instead?
The Internet Wants to Know:
In short: it truly depends on … You.
An artist, a science fiction writer, a heavy metal guitarist, a surgeon, a mad scientist, or your local FedEx delivery driver will have different perspectives towards alcohol indulgence. Your family physician wouldn’t recommend his patients or you drinking large amounts of alcohol, because physicians witness and treat the physical and mental illnesses related to alcohol abuse. On the other hand, there is published literature showing that alcohol has been prominent in the lives of highly creative people including artists, writers, and musicians. However, from a toxicological perspective, this issue is often raised as a question of whether there is a specific “dose” of alcohol that could clearly delineate the line between the adverse and beneficial effects on a person’s overall health and wellbeing – but there isn’t a single dose that balances those effects for every person.Continue reading…
