Coffee + Laptop = F#&%!

I spilled coffee on my laptop.

I was reading the latest headlines in J Exp Biol, when I carelessly reached for my coffee and it tipped over, spilling caffeinated bliss all over my laptop (Toshiba M50). It was one of those fancy Starbucks no-spill travel mugs, but somehow the inertia of the fall carried the coffee out of the sipping hole in a jet of destructive brownness.

I quickly shut-down by holding the power button for a couple seconds, and then flipped it over to drain the coffee and unplug the battery and power cable. Then I stood there, motionless for a good minute or two, contemplating my next mode of action as the coffee dripped from the keyboard and onto the infrequently swept floor.

I really hoped this was covered by the warranty, as ridiculous as that sounds. My brother, a devout mac enthusiast, was going to love this. I could already hear comments like "If you bought a mac, it would clean itself," or "the circuitry in macs actually repels liquids and prevents them from shorting out."

After letting the keyboard drain, and going over hopeless scenarios in my head, I carefully removed the hard drive while the laptop was still upside down. It was still dry; hoorah. At least I can save my data, which hadn't been backed-up since last week. Then I flipped the laptop back over, and slowly removed the keyboard. There was surprisingly little liquid underneath the keyboard. Only a few drops, and they were confined to a wonderfully designed plastic barrier, which was likely engineered with this sole purpose in mind.

I let it sit in front of a fan for the weekend to dry out. Visions of the dreaded BSOD, clouded my thoughts all weekend. When I finally powered it up on Monday, I was greeted by a friendly and familiar Windows startup screen, followed quickly by my desktop.

And everyone lived happily ever after. I even have a coffee scented keyboard now. But the letter "m" refuses to work. So I may end up running the keyboard through the dishwasher as a last resort.

UPDATE: I fixed the letter "m" by prying it off and cleaning with a damp q-tip. Bonus.

5 Reasons Why London (Ontario) Needs a Monorail

5) Biking is suicidal. There are very few dedicated bike paths on London’s streets. I don’t mean the curvy nature bike trails along the rivers and through parks. I mean major roads that serve to get traffic through the city, North/South and East/West. I have counted two, citywide, one of which happens to be on campus at UWO. There may be more, but they’re in the wrong places and do not serve the large student community (at least 20% of the city population).

4) It will stop the suburban sprawl. Let’s face it. There are currently over a dozen suburban wastelands being built at the far edges of London, with more planned. If a more efficient public transit system existed to serve the downtown and near downtown areas, then people would build UP not OUT. Stop destroying our beautiful forests and reduce the ecological footprint by living in sky-rise apartments. Besides, why does anyone want to live in a cookie-cutter-house in a neighborhood with un-navigable winding streets that are a 20 minute drive to get food, movies or a drink with friends? You could be living in an apartment with a cityscape view and only a few minutes away from all your needs.

3) City landmark. Although the John Labatt Centre and the University attract a lot of people to visit London, there is no landmark that is immediately identifiable with London. Having a monorail will make London a unique city, as opposed to being just like every other Southern Ontario city.

2) Reliability. The current bus system is unreliable. I’m not happy waiting 30 minutes for a bus to get me downtown on a Friday night. I want to party now, not in 30 minutes plus transit time. And why do busses stop running at midnight?!?! Maybe the cab companies have something to do with this conspiracy.

1) Traffic sucks. Just try driving across the “forest city” without screaming a few profanities. Traffic engineers have not yet managed to figure out how to time lights on major roads so there is no stopping. Making a few major streets one-way would definitely help. It worked for Hamilton. But I have a feeling the traffic engineers would just mess up this job too. So the only viable solution is a monorail. Get some engineering students to design it for school credit.

Journal of Experimental Cock and Bull

It would be an understatement to say I am frequently frustrated at the quality of scientific articles in high impact journals. Take the example of the cover story for the December 22nd 2005 edition of Nature: “Dancing’s role in sexual selection.” Why is this leading edge research? This is the kind of thing a group of poor-dancing MIT students try to answer on your average Friday night.

Another article is the recent June 30th 2006 edition of Science, where researchers tried to find a correlation between income and happiness. Newsflash: there is none. Mind you, the researchers didn’t ask anyone living below the poverty line how their day is going.

It was articles like these, and an inspiring conversation with colleagues, that has evoked me to create the Journal of Experimental Cock and Bull: An international bimonthly journal of pseudoscience. After creating the cover, I realized the theme behind it was eerily similar to The Onion. Soon there were visions of a successful spin-off company from my MSc degree flying through my head. About five minutes later, I realized my writing skills lack the wit and effectiveness of Onion editors (part of the reason I started this blog). Although, I am currently accepting abstracts for the second issue.

A priest, rabbi and pastafarian walk into a bar

In a recent article published in Science, the authors claim that public acceptance of evolution has decreased over the past 20 years in the US. While other counties can boast that over 80% of the population believes evolution to be true (Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France), only 40% of Americans believed the same. Canada was not included in the study. The article goes on to explain that familiarity with genetics and basic biology is a major influential factor for adults who accept evolution.

When presented with a description of natural selection that omits the word evolution, 78% of adults agreed to a description of the evolution of plants and animals. But, 62% of adults in the same study believed that God created humans as whole persons without any evolutionary development.

So it seems that people are paying attention in school and church, but they have conflicting beliefs. Granted, it is not conflicting to believe in God and evolution. It seems politicals and corporate media may have had an influence on this. I recall a few Republican rallies where people had signs reading "My grandfather was not a monkey!" It makes me wonder if television shows like CSI can possibly help to educate the public about DNA, evolution and biology, or if they will just warp the public view further from the truth. Only another 20 years will tell.

Stargazing made easy with freeware program

I research migratory birds. So, for the past month, I have been waking up before dawn to go birding. This has given me a chance to do some early morning star gazing. I have found the National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Night Sky book to be very helpful. But recently, I have discovered a freeware program called Stellarium. It is an impressive piece of software that can show you the sky in real-time from any location you choose. The atmospheric effects and jaw-dropping realistic skylines make this the best star-gazing software I’ve seen yet. And it’s free! The interface is very simple and intuitive making it easy to learn the stars. It gives me a new appreciation for the early explorers who relied on the stars for navigation, without the aid of GPS, software or even laser pointers.

Monkeys and Typewriters

If an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters will eventually recreate the complete works of Shakespeare, then one monkey at a computer will surely produce only jibberish.

It has been written about before, but I'm not sure who started it. The idea that genetic mutations leading to adaptive changes in a species is a process that can happen more quickly than just by chance. Think about it. Some genetic changes are bad, producing disease or death. These changes are weeded out of the next generation. Whereas genetic changes that are beneficial are passed on. Positive selection. Speeding along the development of adaptive traits.

But I do NOT believe this is the primary contributing factor to the evolution of a species. Rather, I believe sybiotic relationships lead to acquired genomes and this can lead to profound changes in an organism's physiology and biochemistry. Lynn Margulis is a strong advocate of this paradigm. However, she is admittedly not a pioneer in the idea. Many Russian scientists before Darwin believed sybiosis was an important life-changing process. Unfortunately, much of their research has been lost in political turnovers, or is in need of translation into other languages. There are some monkeys currently at work on this. More later.