An interview with @SarcasticRover

As proof that it never hurts to ask, I had the pleasure of getting to interview my favorite Twitter personality @SarcasticRover.  So here's some insight into the worlds snarkiest interplanetary explorer. 

No indication where the sarcasm module is located

Star Wars or Star Trek?

I like both Star Wars and Star Trek but if I had to choose I'd say Star Wars. [I'd like to think it's due to the importance of robots in Star Wars]

If you could have another robot up there to keep you company which would it be?

I'd have to say that one would have to be made in the future just like NASA is planning for the next decade.

You seem to be the only girl who doesn’t make a duck face in your self portrait, what’s up with that?

I don't make a duck face in my self portrait because they quack too much, I like swans.

If a vampire bites a zombie, who gets turned?

If a vampire bites a zomie then nothing would happen because zombies are already dead.

Did you always want to be a planetary scientist or did you have other dreams as a young robot, like deep sea exploration or defusing bombs?

I would have to say planetary scientist.

Who are your two favorite scientists, one human and one robot, and why?

My two favorite scientists would have to be Stephen Hawking and me, I think Steven Hawking because he just really has a great mind also he is just generally inspirational.
And me because I'm just so fucking awesome.

What did you do to keep from getting bored on your way to Mars?

Music and youtube videos, and online dating.

I stayed up late watching your entry, decent and landing.  I remember sitting in a briefing 7 years ago or so and thinking it sounded crazy.  How was it and were you worried considering some of the previous issues NASA has had with Mars missions?

No I wasn't worried at all.

Do you ever get in arguments with driver Matt Heverly about where you want to go?

I always get into arguments with Matt Heverly, who wouldn't?

Have you seen a rock that you really just wanted to laser the crap out of but weren’t allowed?

I always see rocks I want to laser the crap out of, I see one every second... typical for Martian rocks.

What’s your plan for if you encounter life?  Become a benevolent ruler?

Becoming a benevolent ruler is my top priority for being on Mars.

Do you have a favorite spot to just hang out and relax at after a hard day of doing a science?

Not really because there are always Martian storms and the hills are always really far away.

Why do think so many humans are so intimidated by science and how do you think we can fix that?

Most humans that are intimidated by science are mostly religious, and the reason why they're intimidated is because they know sooner or later science will prove god to be a lie.

Even though you’re going end up dying cold and alone on a desert planet, was it worth it?

Who says I'm going to end up dying alone? I've got my deck chair and martini.

 Hmm...a sarcastic Star Wars fan that kills time with online dating, I feel like maybe several of my friends might be Mars rovers.

Follow Sarcastic Rover on Facebook and Twitter

DO A SCIENCE!!

Astrophysics meets the Wuniverse

There's not much I can say about this other than I would have never thought I would see the GZA being interviewed by Neil Degrasse Tyson any place other than in a weird dream.  Even further proof that Wu Tang Clan aint nothin to fuck with.  The GZA is right though, rap today pretty much sucks because they're not writing intelligent rhymes.  Hell, that trifling scab Nicki Minaj "rhymes" word with themselves.  Facepalm.

Dead Dudes I'd Like to Date: Part I

Yes, sarcastic scientific ladies and gents, Ms. BetterInGlasses is going MINISERIES! Does a three-part blog count as a miniseries, you ask? Well, according to wikipedia, YES IT F@*KING DOES.

Since I have convinced myself that dudes with beards and tattoos are intimidated by my genius intelligence and my engineer-mind-like-way of emasculating them, I have started to put together my Fantasy Top-5 list of bearded dead dudes I'd like to date.  This will hold me over while I work on genetically engineering the perfect man.  Welcome to my brain, as it will be donated to science.

Dead Dudes I'd Like to Date:

Vilfredo Pareto

So, Freddy, above-and-beyond his mind-blowing beard, developed a power-law during his stint as an economist, known as "Pareto's Law."  It is also known as the 80/20 principle.  Freddy basically gave me some mathematical laws to make me efficient at being lazy. Hence, I LUV him.  I'm also hoping he smells like the 1860's version of Old Spice "Swagger" and tastes like bourbon, like all hot men with beards should.

Oh, well SORRY that I went off into a scented-fantasy tangent...didn't I just tell you I'm lazy? (I WILL be penning a topic on sex, pheromones and the MHC gene, so stay tuned!)

Good ol' Freddy observed that 80% of Italy (wine, gelato, buffalo mozzarella and all) was owned by 20% of the population.  But he based this on the the founding species of all genetics...peas! Twenty percent of his precious peapods accounted for 80% of the peas.  Again, biochemistry RULES.

However, I have implemented Pareto's Law into my own life, by realizing that putting in a strong 20% will lead to an amazing 80% of awesomeness.  And on the other hand, that 80% of the crap I do only leads to a mere 20% advantage for myself.  So, I tend to focus on the 20%, and laze about for the other 80.  This equates to one day of work, 4 hours of physical exercise and 1 hour on dating websites for me.  The rest is spent on watching Walking Dead and American Horror Story, reading books that make me sound smart for 20 minutes a month, and crafting up creatures with fimo or yarn.  That leaves ample time for drinking and sleeping.  Oh, and to think about awesome things to write on this blog.  And to genetically engineer the perfect man, whose enzymes produce good smells and tastes.

And, you may want to consider that 80% is way above average for the American citizen.  Eighty percent of 80 is 64%, and that's still above average...

Just when you thought it was safe to read the news... again...

...I read this:

http://news.yahoo.com/creationism-controversies-norm-among-potential-republican-2016-contenders-180354094--politics.html

This is the quote that set me off:
'Rubio added, "And for me, personally, I don't want a school system that teaches kids that what they're learning at home is wrong." '

So...I can teach my kids whatever I want because your school system can't contradict what I teach them? Cool. Let the fun begin:

Green is blue. Yellow is black. 2 + 2 = 5. The English alphabet only has 25 letters. Gravity is optional. You can marry your first cousin - there's no need to worry about that pesky genetic defect thing. That science they call calculus? It's complete BS. You can just make up your own math rules. The sun revolves around the earth. The Flying Spaghetti Monster has touched us all with his noodley appendage and all of those other religions are false.

Look...for the past year and a half you've bitched and moaned and thrown mud at each other and lied through your fricking teeth. You've exhibited all kinds of bat-shit-crazy behavior and spent more than the GNP of some countries to foist yourselves on the public via every means of communication known to mankind. Can you please sit down and STFU? I mean seriously? We, the American Public, deserve a bit of piece and quiet after the election. Y'all didn't take enough of a beating in the science education policy venue and you're starting the ridiculousness all over again? Holy Mother of God all y'all are morons...bless your hearts.

Image inserted by me, because everything should have a picture. kim dude

Curiosity...and it's impending historic announcement

I'm a HUGE fan of Curiosity.  It's delivery to Mars I found to be simply mind boggling.  In fact, when I first sat through a presentation on the planned landing system probably 6 or 7 years ago I thought "Are you kidding me, how the hell are they going to make that work?  There is zero room for error!".  Well, somehow they did and Curiosity has been lasering the crap out of Mars ever since.

You could actually say that that mission was what convinced me to start this blog, along with a little push from one of our contributors.  (The initial inspiration came from the Sarcastic Rover twitter feed, which is still going strong.)

The MSL science team recently made an announcement regarding a potentially "historic" find and in the last few days NASA has publicly "backtracked" saying that the announcement is not exactly earth-shattering.  The first article I read on this was on the Atlantic Wire, and frankly I found the article to be a piece of journalistic crap.  They pretty much just said NASA must be covering up something or doesn't really know what they're doing if they've had to change their take on the significance of the find.  The comments from the readers were even worse (not that the comments section of any news article is ever anything more than the area under the bridge where the trolls live).  I can't find that version of the article and oddly I have yet to see the retraction printed in any of the major news outlets or in NASA's news section on it's website but here's a link to another article on it.

Here's my take on the situation.  Every damned thing about this mission has been historic.  We've done sampling not previously possible so it should be no surprise that whatever we're finding is new to us, or at least is a verification of something we've only suspected.  The significance of any scientific finding as always going to be relative.  To an exo-planetary geochemist what is earth shattering might seem boring as shit to most people, simply because they don't really give a crap about soil chemistry.  The public is hoping we find stuff they can understand.  That doesn't mean we need to retract the importance of any particular data though.  Okay, maybe the guy got a little overzealous, but hey he's getting science data from a fucking atomic robot on another planet, how can he not get excited?!  This discovery might not make your day, but it will certainly make his.

Keep Calm and Do A Science!!

Beer, the cornerstone of civilization

Beer: it's chemistry, biology and history all rolled into one.  The first beers were most likely accidentally brewed 7,000 years ago in the middle east when wild yeasts cultured open jars of grain that had gotten water in them.  Some brave soul tasted it and discovered that is was amazeballs.  This led to organized agriculture in order to increase grain production, which led to established civilizations built around the new fixed agricultural sites.  I suppose you could say the first scientists were brewers (a high percentage of whom were also women).  Okay, maybe they didn't fully understand the underpinnings of the processes they used to create beers, but give me some latitude here.

Receipt for beer 2050BC, Sumaria

Fast forward 7,000 years or so and beer still plays a big part in science.  Beer itself might be chemistry and biology but it has a physics connection as well.  I submit the case of one Donald Glaser, winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics.  Glaser received his Nobel for the invention of the bubble chamber, a detector used in subatomic particle physics.  While developing the bubble chamber he did experiments using beer as the detector medium.

Look at this smooth ass dude

As an additional proof of physicists love of beer take a look at Niels Bohr, yet another Nobel Laureate.  Good old Neils is most commonly know for the Bohr Model of the atom that we all learned in high school.  Quantum mechanics bitches!!!  Where's the beer fit into that?  This dude was so cool that when he won the Nobel prize he was given a house next to the Carlsberg Brewery...that had a tap line running from the brewery to his house!!!  I'm sorry, but that is probably the coolest shit in the whole damned world!

You know this was a rocking ass party!

So in short, have a beer...SCIENCE DEMANDS IT!!!

Sir Ken Robinson is awesome

Kid #1 introduced me to him several years ago by sending me a link to this TED talk. Go watch it. I promise you it's worth the time.

If more people thought like Ken, education would be a lot more fun

http://www.ted.com/speakers/sir_ken_robinson.html

 http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/

Failure is ALWAYS an Option

Do you know why scientists ROCK?  It's coz we are GREAT at failing.  Actually, we are EVEN BETTER at critical thinking that helps us pick ourselves up by the bootstraps after we've failed, and transform our failure into INNOVATIONS.

"I have not failed once. I've just found 10,000 ways that didn't work." --Thomas Edison

I absolutely hate quoting ol' Tommy Boy, coz he really gave Tesla (who is waaaay smarter and hotter) the shaft in the history books.  But basically, he made ten-thousand lightbulbs before he found the one that actually worked.  But, those "failures" lead to the final product--without the knowledge of why something DOESN'T work, it is difficult to figure out how something WILL.

I always thought it comical that "Failure is Not an Option" was uttered by someone at NASA.  Are you ready to be skull-raped by some knowledge?  NASA, back in the day, when soliciting applications for scientists, rejected those with histories full of pure success, and instead selected those who had a significant failure and bounced back from them [1].

One of the most significant failures we all learn in grade school science class is that of Alexander Flemming. While studying the bacteria Staphylococcus sp. in attempts to save soliders' lives, he set a couple of cultures he was growing on petri dishes off in a corner before leaving for a month vacay with his family (those Europeans sure have a nice work-life balance!).  Low-and-behold, he returns to his lab to see some damn fuzzy stuff contaminating his agar.  "Dude, I'm such a dumbass!," Flemming thinks to himself (I'm taking some creative liberties, ok). But instead of dumping the petri dishes in the sink for the lab assistant to take care of, he studies them a bit more closely.  CRITICAL THINKING kicks in, and he realizes that the bacteria is staying away from the fuzz critters.  Voila, Penicillin is "discovered."

Vulcanized rubber, Teflon, Post-it Notes and Velcro were all mistakes.  Albert Einstein was labeled as "mentally challenged" as a child by one of his teachers, and thought to "never amount to anything."  

To bring some marine biology into the mix (coz I'm a failed marine biologist, so I'm so honored to share this smartgasm space with one), Nobel Prize biologist, Osamu Shimomura, did throw his FAILED experiments into the sink.  He was trying to figure out what proteins were involved in the bioluminescence of a species of jellyfish.  The sink he threw his failed experiment into also contained seawater.  When leaving the lab, Shimomura-Sensei (yeah, that's right, I know Japanese, too!) turned off the lights, and guess what was glowing in the sink???  That failure lead him to the discovery that calcium (in the salt water) was a key component of activation of the glow protein.

So, fellow sarcastic scientists (and those who want to date us smartass nerds, coz that is the only reason I agreed to this shit), I say EMBRACE FAILURE.  Some British dude who has a "Sir" in his name said that if "you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original."  (Fine, its Sir Ken Robinson if you wanna Google stalk him).

[1] Dweck, Carol (2006) Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. 

Photocredit: http://ochuko.wordpress.com/2010/04/16/failure-is-an-option/

Knock knock. Who is it? Candygram.

Since our resident marine biologist seems to spend most of her life at sea nowadays tracking sperm whales (hehehe), I'm posting this on her behalf.  Correction: she seems to be on her way to study river dolphins in Suriname.  Yeah, I didn't know where that was either. -Kim Dude-

"As a marine scientist, studying your species of choice has a lot of inherent difficulties, mainly your study species all are evolved for aquatic life while us mere humans can only attempt to be aquatic, complete with heavy, clumsy gear.  The marine biologist solution to this….let’s tag the animals and track them with satellites. This method works great until all of a sudden your tag ping is on land and stays there. You’re thinking, what the hell has happened, did it beach itself, was it caught and killed, is it now in some marine park somewhere? All valid questions…and is the case with this one shark, lovingly referred to as Brenda, by some researchers I worked with in South Africa. Sadly, the shark was most likely caught and killed but I can only imagine the puzzlement going on as the shark’s tag continues to ping over land.  Probably thought the shark had hit the next phase of evolution and was walking on land."

Original article

Photographic proof from her travels showing that biologists might have the funnest field research missions.

Great whites in South Africa.

Elephants in Zanzibar.  It's a boring life that she leads I suppose.

PS- When I first met this contributor she was taking a graduate level class in  biostatistics, which is when she also happened to be going to study elephants.  It has since been my running (probably unfunny) joke that her career is weighing wild animals. 

Carbon is a Dirty Evil Slut

Yea, so whatever…I’m not suppose to personify elements.  But HEY, if your high school chemistry teacher told you that carbon is a dirty evil slut, wouldn’t you have been intrigued?  Maybe you would have pursued the most awesome of the scientific fields—BIOCHEMISTRY.

Carbon is the building block of LIFE, asshole.  Carbohydrates, proteins and most all other nutrients we require are made of carbon compounds.  The same is also true of our cells, DNA and the plants we eat.  In fact, there are over 10 million different naturally occurring carbon compounds.

The fourth most abundant element in nature, Ms. Carbon is typically dark and DIRTY.  She's coal, she's graphite, she's can take an Alice-in-Wonderland pill and become an itty-bitty nanotube. That's pretty dirty, if you ask me.

Carbon carries the sign of the beast, and that makes her EVIL.  She is made up of six protons, six neutrons and six electrons.  That's right, bitch, 666! Now, if God did indeed create the world in seven days, why would he base everything on a satanic element?  Seriously, I'm a scientist, I'm just asking questions...

Now, here's where I'm going to have to drop some chemistry and electron orbit knowledge on your ass.  All electrons hang out in different orbits.  The maximum the inner most orbit of an element can carry is two electrons (aka, the "electron love seat").  The next orbit can carry up to eight (aka, the electron minivan".  Hence, due to the six electrons, carbon's outer-most orbit is only half-filled. In order for Ms. Carbon to feel "completed," she'd really like to have the full eight whirling around her hoop skirt.  Here's where she's a SLUT.  She wants to pair up with about  any other element to get those four missing electrons.  Not only will she pair up in any which direction, but also can do it with up to for different elements AT THE SAME TIME.

But as with any smart, successful, sassy woman that likes her men bearded, bespectacled and tattooed (oh, wait, did I get off topic?), when carbon is under a LOT of pressure (work, dumb dudes, screaming kids, death, divorce, the economic world collapsing, etc), she becomes the TOUGHEST bitch ever, and one of the most sought-out precious gems-- the DIAMOND.

Kean, Sam (2011). The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements. 
Yorifuji, Bunpei (2012). Wonderful Life with the Elements: The Periodic Table Personified.