The SCQ wishes you a Happy Holidays, and invites you to please enjoy (or re-enjoy) some of our holiday flavoured pieces. We’ll return with new material in the New Year on January 7th.
Soon it will be Christmas Eve, and once more children will be divided into distinct factions. Here, Cyr [1] described younger children (<7 years) who believe in Santa Claus, and older children (>12 years) who have ditched this ‘childish’ belief. But he fails, by excluding from his questionnaire, to describe a third group who aren’t really sure – the undecided voters if you like. And as the eldest child, I have spent a large part of my life in this group. Moreover, being scientifically minded even at the age 7, I of course approached this problem according to well-established techniques of investigation.
My first stop was to consult the authorities. My parents (beneficiaries of a liberal arts education and a liberal dosing of 1960’s psychotropic compounds) reassured their young child by explaining that Santa, like all beliefs, was a social construction and as such was true to all who believed in him. When I asked how I would prove that, Mum told me that all truth was relative and that the concept of proof was no more than a projection of hegemony by the dominant culture. Which I thought was a load of old bollocks.
Disappointed but not discouraged I proceeded to a literature search (It wasn’t until much later in my career that I realised this was only ever done after at least 9 months of laborious investigation, although I was naive then, so give me a break). My little red bookshelf contained several volumes referring to Santa Claus. Most were personal accounts [2], and as such counted as no more than Level V evidence (expert opinion). Other styled themselves as authorities [3,4], but lacked references to definitive investigations.
Modern children of course have Pubmed, and conducting a search today for “Santa Claus Existence” gave 5 results, of which one was relevant. In 2002 Cyr surveyed whether paediatric inpatients still believed in Santa Claus. While a good and noteworthy study, this would still have not fit my purposes. I didn’t care if other children believed in Santa, and besides this was still only Level IV evidence (case-series). The author also declared his bias as a continuing believer, throwing all his conclusions under a cloud.
I realised I would have to abandon epidemiological techniques in favour of direct experimentation. I proceeded with the null hypothesis “Santa Claus does not exist”. I designed a trap to snare him in my bedroom, but after two failed years I realised the fault in my experimental design. The only way to reject the null hypothesis was to catch him, but not catching him left me unable to either accept or reject the null hypothesis. Unfortunately we hadn’t studied Karl Popper in reading room at that stage.
I decided to approach things in a more indirect manner. His ability to tell if children have been naughty or nice has been well-described [5]. More specifically, I decided to adjust my behaviour, the independent variable A, and observe the number of presents, the dependent variable B. If he did exist, then B would vary with A, but if my parents were bringing the loot then A should not cause B to vary, as I was an overindulged and spoilt child. Furthermore, being nice and still getting presents regardless would prove little, and besides naughty was much more fun.
So I was as naughty as possible on Christmas Eve. I threw tantrums, messed my room, pulled my sister’s hair and hid my brother’s toys. I interrupted my father and refused to eat my dinner. The next morning I awoke with eager anticipation of my results. I got pretty much the same presents as usual. I then realised with horror that I had no reference standard! What if I was going to get more and had been reduced? How would I know? My brother and sister served as case-controls, but this was wholly unsatisfactory. Was a Barbie doll worth one or two toy cars? Had they been naughty or nice, thus confounding the results?
In any event, I am sorry to report that despite having now reached adulthood, I have still been unable to establish a satisfactory experimental design for this problem. The levels of evidence in this field continue to be amongst the poorest in the literature, and anecdotal evidence abounds. However, there will be a bear-trap at the bottom of my chimney again this year. While Popper may maintain that it is impossible to prove that something does not exist, the truth is that I’ve only got to catch the bastard once to get my answer.
References
1. Cyr C. Do reindeer and children know something that we don’t? Paediatric inpatients’ beliefs in Santa Claus. CMAJ 2002 Dec 10; 167(12): 1325-1327
2. Moore CC. ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. The Sentinel 1823. Heirloom edition available from Running Press Book Publishers.
3. Apple M, Baum LF, Riley, MO. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Signet Classics
4. Perkes A. The Santa Claus Book. Lyle Stuart Publishing.
5. Coots JF, Kellogg S. Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. HarperCollins
Paul is a masters student in Vancouver. He grew up in New Zealand, lived in Australia and then came to Canada three years ago, but has yet to be deported. His main reason for continuing education is to avoid getting a real job. Interests include anything pointless or involving the consumption of alcohol. Fortunately, most activities can be adjusted to accommodate these requirements.
Characters:
Dr. Macy: a young female scientist
Dr. Terrell: the ex-chairman of the department
Charles Darwin: looking a bit like Santa
Dr. Fred Gimble: Macy’s boyfriend
Geemo: Macy’s daughter
The Recombinant DNA BioSafety Committee
Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Vader, and the Invisible Man
(Macy is in the lab, working.)
Macy (on the phone): Yes, I know what time it is. (Pause) I’ll go home when I’m done – I mean, when she’s done. (She covers the phone and speaks to a flask full of media. ) This time it’ll work honey. I’m sure of it. (She speaks back into the phone). Listen Fred, I gotta go – if you want to go home, go ahead, but I’m staying. I’ll be done when I’m done. Talk to you later. (She hangs up, then pipettes some fluid onto a Petri plate and swirls it around and then puts it in an incubator. She then goes back to the bench and talks directly to a flask full of media.) It won’t be long now honey. I know it’s been over 30 combinations so far, but eventually one of them will work. It has to! It just has to!
Terrell (enters): Hello? Hello? It’s nearly midnight! Why are the lights on? Anybody here?
Macy: Hello Dr. Terrell. I’m here.
Terrell: Oh, hello Dr. Macy – and that’s CHAIRMAN Terrell to you!
Macy: What? I thought you stepped down from the Chair? I thought Dr. Newcomer was the Departmental Chair now.
Terrell: Oh, yes, yes, she is – that’s correct. But I am the Weekend Chairman!
Macy: The Weekend Chairman? What the heck is a Weekend Chairman?
Terrell: It’s a position I created just before I stepped down from the Normal Chairmanship. So Dr. Newcomer is, of course, the Departmental Chair – during the week. But I’m the Chairman on the Weekends.
Macy: What about holidays?
Terrell: No, just weekends.
Macy: Does Dr. Newcomer know about this?
Terrell: Is there a reason she needs to know? Maybe we should just keep this quiet. (He goes and puts his arm around her and looks at her workbench) So – what are you doing?
Macy: I’m trying to evolve a daughter.
Terrell: Excuse me?
Macy: Say hello to Weekend Chairman Terrell, honey. (She swirls the flask and holds it out toward him.)
Terrell: Dr. Macy, that is a flask full of bacteria.
Macy: Shh!! (covers the flask with her hand) Don’t be mean – she’s just a few evolutionary steps away from being human. I adopted the whole colony, and now I’m going to evolve them into a human being.
Terrell: And just how do you think you’re going to do that?
Macy: I got this “Rapid Evolve” kit from Stratagene (holds up the kit)—and I’ve mixed in some of my own DNA. Although it hasn’t been working very well yet. My 33rd attempt is in the incubator now.
Terrell: Does the Recombinant DNA Committee know about this?
Macy: Is there a reason they need to know – WEEKEND CHAIRMAN Terrell?
Terrell: Well, I guess I could look the other way – especially given the probability of success of this experiment. Look, it’s nearly midnight on Christmas Eve – maybe you should go home and try again tomorrow.
Macy: No – I’m going to make it work! You sound just like my boyfriend, Fred.
Terrell: Hmm….maybe I could be your Weekend boyfriend?
Macy: Excuse me, I have to check my experiment. (She goes to the incubator) Oh! Oh well. At least we’re getting closer. (She pulls out a giant beetle).
Terrell: Eww! Gross!
Macy: Don’t say that about my daughter!
Terrell: It’s like a dung beetle or something! You’re nuts, Macy –up here in lab all night on Christmas Eve with bacteria and dung beetles, trying to evolve a human being.
(He sings to the tune of “Carol of the Bells”: )
This will not work!
It’s really dumb!
You are insane!
Touched in the brain!
Wasting you time,
Working with slime,
Evolution
It’s not just fun
Very, very, very, very looney.
Really, really, really, really kooky
Ding dong, ding dong
That is the sound
When your career
Will disappear
(He begins to exit, still singing: )
Very, very, very, very looney.
Really, really, really, really kooky
Ding dong, ding dong…..
Macy: (Speaking to the beetle as she puts it on the desk: ) Don’t listen to him, honey. We’re getting there – it’s just taking a long time. I wonder if I got the DNA samples mixed up.
Fred: (Entering) Hello Sweetheart!
Macy: Hello Fred!
Fred: (Seeing the beetle on the bench, he takes a magazine he’s been carrying and swats it. ) Whoa! Oh! Oh! Got it! Did you see the size of that thing?
Macy: (Puts her hands to her mouth and then just stares at Fred). Oh well.
Fred: Uh oh – was that one of your evolution experiments?
Macy: Yes, but it wasn’t a very good one.
Fred: Sorry sweetie. Look, if you want a child so much, why don’t we just have one the normal way?
Macy: But I want to have a daughter or a son, AND win the Nobel Prize at the same time – and this is the most efficient way to do it.
Fred: Well. I’m going to get something from my office, then I’m going home. I assume you’re staying?
(Macy nods and holds up the flask of bacteria).
Fred: Well, I’ll check back on my way out anyway, just to see how you’re doing. (He exits).
Macy: Oh, well, at least it was eukaryotic this time. (She cleans up the beetle and gets back to work making new plates)
(She sings to the tune of “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas)
It WAS …. beginning to look eukaryotic!
Instead of slimy goo.
The bacteria soon will grow, into a Jane or Joe
And all my Christmas dreams will soon come true.
It’s beginning to look eukaryotic!
Mutant DNA.
But the prettiest sight to see, is the human that she’ll be
At the end of the day.
CD: (Entering) Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!
Macy: Santa Claus?
CD: (Turning around and looking) Where? Where?
Macy: Um, (pointing) right there.
CD: (Turning around again) Where? Where? I don’t see Santa Claus.
Macy: Look in a mirror buddy! You – are – Santa Claus!
CD: I’m not Santa Claus!
Macy: We’ll then who are you?
CD: I’m Charles Darwin.
Macy: Sure, and I’m a monkey’s uncle.
CD: I am. I am. I really am.
Macy: Sure pal – now why don’t you tell me who you really are and what you’re doing here before I call Security.
CD: So you were willing to believe I was Santa Claus, but you don’t believe I’m Charles Darwin?
Macy: I can only go so far. Besides, its Christmas Eve — what would Charles Darwin be doing here?
CD: (Very seriously) I show up anywhere that a great advance in evolution is about to occur.
Macy: (Mocking his intonation) Oh -oooh – hey – wait a minute – did you say a great advance in evolution is about to occur?
CD: Why don’t you continue with your experiment. I believe this will be your 34th try.
(They sing the following to the tune of Silver Bells together as Macy finishes getting the next Petri plate ready. At some point in the song Darwin sprinkles “fairy dust” on the plate. )
DNA (DNA), Chromatin (Chromatin)
It’s time to grow something special.
Mutant genes, New proteins
Soon it will be Christmas day.
Add some salt now, add some Tris now
Quick let’s check the pH
In the flask there’s
A feeling of Christmas
(They put the plate in the incubator)
Genes are bubbling, germlines doubling
Lot’s of genome repair
And on every growth plate you will hear:
DNA (DNA), Chromatin (Chromatin)
It’s time to grow something special.
Mutant genes, New proteins
Soon it will be Christmas day.
(Suddenly Geemo emerges from the incubator, stretching and yawning).
Geemo: Oh wow. (Sees Macy) Mommy?
Macy: Hello little girl.
Geemo: (runs to Macy) Mommy! Mommy!
Macy: (to CD as she hugs Geemo) Oh my gosh – is it? Is it true?
CD: (Nodding “yes” ) Oh ye of little faith!
Macy: Hello little girl. Yes, I think I am your Mommy!
Geemo: (pointing to CD) And is this my Daddy?
CD: (over-enthusiastically) No, no, no, no, not me, not me – not your Daddy, no!
Geemo: Then who are you?
CD: I’m Charles Darwin.
Macy: I really wish you’d stop saying that.
Geemo: Mommy? Who IS my Daddy?
Macy: Your father was a lower form of life, honey.
Geemo: You mean, like an undergraduate?
Macy: Even lower than that, honey. He wasn’t even eukaryotic. I’ll tell you all about it when you grow up…. more.
Fred: (running in) Macy, Macy – I tried to stop them. Put away all your reagents! (Noticing Geemo and CD) Who are these people?
Terrell and the Recombinant DNA Committee enter. The Committee members are carrying clipboards and take notes throughout.
Terrell: (To Fred) Step aside Dr. Gimble, we have to talk to Dr. Macy. Dr. Macy, in my capacity as the Weekend Chairman, I felt it necessary to notify the Recombinant DNA Biosafety Committee of your activities. Please say hello to Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Vader, and the Invisible Man (they all shake hands and greet).
Invisible Man: As you can see, the BioSafety Committee has a lot of experience with biohazards.
(Frankenstein groans in agreement. )
Vader: (To CD) And who is this intruder?
CD: I’m Charles Darwin.
Vader: (To CD) Do not toy with me, underling.
CD: But I AM Charles Darwin!
Terrell: Okay….and I’m a monkey’s uncle. (To Macy) This does not reflect well on you. (To Geemo) And who might you be?
Geemo: I’m a newly evolved genetically modified organism. But I don’t know what my name is yet. (to Macy: ) Mommy?
Macy: I was going to call you Geemo (pronounced “Jee-moe” as in “GMO” ).
Geemo: Sounds good to me. (To Terrell, and the Committee) My name is Geemo. (She holds out her hand to shake hands but Terrell and the Committee shirk back in fear, they talk quietly but agitatedly amongst themselves during the following)
Macy: (Whispering) Geemo! Geemo, come here. Open your mouth. (Macy takes a cheek swab of Geemo). Fred, get this down to the DNA lab and get it sequenced right away. (Fred takes the swab and leaves) Hurry, sweetheart, hurry!
Terrell: Well, Dr. Macy – upon conferring with the Recombinant DNA Biosafety Committee, we find that you have neglected to file any of the proper forms for your experiments.
Invisible Man: Maybe her forms are invisible.
Vader: (to IM) Quiet Infidel!
(Frankenstein groans in agreement. )
Terrell: We’ve decided that unless you file the proper forms and can prove that this Geemo person is your actual daughter, that we are going to have to fine you 28 billion dollars for unauthorized construction of dangerous genetically modified organisms.
(They sing to the tune of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” )
We think your work is dangerous.
We think it should be stopped.
And if you don’t do as we say
Your research will be cropped.
We’re saving you from Satan’s power
As you have gone astray
O filings of paperwork and forms
Paper and forms
O filings of paperwork and forms
Our rules may seem quite rigid,
But we have the final say
And if your work is dangerous,
Big fines you’ll have to pay
We’re really here to help you out,
So file these forms today (they all hand her forms),
O filing of paperwork and forms
Paper and forms
O filings of paperwork and forms
CD: Excuse me! This scientist has just accomplished a major breakthrough in evolutionary research – you can’t seriously be thinking of impeding her work by bogging her down with your silly paperwork!
Terrell: Excuse me, old man –
CD: That’s Charles Darwin to you sir!
Terrell: Oh, oh, I forgot. It’s the great Charles Darwin! (He and the BioSafety Committee laugh).
CD: But I am! I am Charles Darwin!
Terrell: And I’m Linus Pauling! (Putting his arm around one of the BioSafey Committee members) And this is my good friend Albert Einstein! (They all laugh again).
(Fred runs in with Geemo’s DNA sequence)
Fred: Wait, wait! Look at this – Macy and Geemo really are mother and daughter! There’s very high DNA sequence similarity between them! Take a look!
(The Recombinant DNA Safety Committee looks over the sequence, and comes to a consensus)
Terrell: Well, well – it seems that the two of you really are related! And the interspersed bits of E. coli DNA suggest that Dr. Macy might really have evolved you from a bacterium. This is very interesting and we’ll have to consider it more carefully. This may be a very important piece of work. In the meantime, we’re going to let you continue your work.
(Macy, Fred, Geemo, and CD cheer) Hooray!!
All sing:
Add some salt now, add some Tris now
Quick let’s check the pH
In the lab there’s
A feeling of Christmas
Genes are bubbling, germlines doubling
Lot’s of genome repair
And on every growth plate you will hear:
DNA (DNA), Chromatin (Chromatin)
It’s time to grow something special.
Mutant genes, New proteins
Soon it will be Christmas day!
Macy: (to CD: ) You really must be Charles Darwin!
CD: Well, actually I’m not – I lied. I’m really Santa Claus. Ho, ho, ho – Merry Christmas!
All: Merry Christmas!!
Vince LiCata is a biochemist in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Louisiana State University. His laboratory studies protein structure and function. He owns two Britney Spears CDs, but one of them is an illegal copy given to him by one of his students. He routinely gives out more than 25% A’s in his General Biochemistry and Biophysical Chemistry courses, yet is considered a hard-ass. He is reasonably sure that if Britney Spears got in a fight with Jessica Simpson, that BS would crack JS like a little twig.
It has come to our attention here at Pole Headquarters that something disastrous is occurring in regards to the Earth. It seems that there have been too many bad little boys and girls polluting the atmosphere with the byproducts of carbon fuels, causing world temperatures to rise. While we here at Pole Headquarters do not completely understand the science behind this, we have noted that our own workshops are beginning to sink into the ice, and that our candy striped North Pole is now leaning ominously. We can assure the world’s population that all manner of people from corporate planners to politicians to purchasers of Humvees, leaf blowers, ATV’s, and energy inefficient home climate control systems have been placed on our “naughty” list, and will receive nothing from our workshops this year, as they are the ones primarily responsible for the world’s problems. While we would, in years past, fill their stockings with lumps of coal, we are informed that coal is one of the aforementioned carbon fuels, and so these people will receive lumps of uranium or small vials of ethanol instead. Personally, we do not care if they eat or drink these little presents.
And what are we at the North Pole doing about our own use of carbon fuels, one might ask? We here at the Pole have always been conscious of energy consumption. It is a known fact that all toys produced here are produced entirely by elves. We have never employed electricity, coal fired steam boilers, internal combustion, or even nuclear energy. While we do light our tree, it is with the light from the Aurora above. We have no cranes to place the star at the top, but have an Abominable Snowman to do this for us.
Our snowman is also good at supplying power for machinery we have recently had to install for scraping the lead based paints from certain items supplied by our subcontractors. And as far as subcontractors, it is well documented that Chinese laborers work in the same types of conditions our own elves do. An elf can withstand cold, poor lighting, and minimal food, and although this may appear cruel at first glance, we submit that this is better than bending down to sow rice in a giant northern paddy; something that we are afraid will happen soon if the world doesn’t wise up and take measures to keep the polar ice from melting. We have been assured by these subcontractors that they, too, are using very little of the earth’s precious resources, relying mostly on the hard work of their employees.
But what of our reindeer? Again, some concern could be voiced over the fact that at certain times – mostly after meals – a reindeer can emit methane, a known greenhouse gas. Our engineers have been addressing this problem. While we do not yet have a system in place, we are well on the way to an apparatus which collects this gas and recycles it to run some new equipment we are developing to feed the insatiable appetite for toys which ad men have been creating over the years.
And Rudolf? No one truly understands his glowing nose, but if it does utilize carbon fuels, we submit that it is only lit up during the emergencies of foggy flying conditions. We are experiencing fewer and fewer of those as the world warms, and Rudolf and his possible energy consumption will soon be a thing of the past.
Until the scientists of the world can realize the miracle of cold fusion, and begin depleting the sea’s vast resources instead of ruining the atmosphere, we here at Pole Headquarters can assure the world’s peoples that we are continuing to make our gifts as in the past, using as few fossil fuels as possible. We are doing our part in the fight against global warming. Our very existence here depends on it.
Think about this, and act upon it. Please. The world would be a sad place indeed with sunken workshops, and Santa flying over barren deserts, instead of snow banks, to deliver his goodies every year.
Your concerned friend,
S.Claus
Dictated December12: George Motisher, head elf stenographer.
George Motisher is a collection of rather unimportant elements and protein molecules that are in the habit of complaining about their insignificant exsistence.
They also worry about money a lot.
Riley Jane Taylor is in fourth grade. She loves to draw and she likes to read and write. Art and music are her favorite subjects and she likes acting.
The environmentalism movement is currently experiencing an injection of perhaps well-needed popularity. Celebrities who own multiple homes that could each comfortably house the inhabitants of small villages, and who regularly circumnavigate the globe in private jets that have a maximum capacity of seven, routinely remind us to do such environmentally responsible things as turn the lights off when leaving a room lest we become wasteful. Manufacturers of products ranging from toilet cleaners to sport utility vehicles advertise their wares as being earth- friendly by arbitrarily adding prefixes like “eco”, “bio”, or “green” to product names in hopes of capitalizing on our environmentally conscious sensibilities and thereby gaining greater market share. Most recently, with the awarding of the 2007 Nobel peace prize to An Inconvenient Truth filmmaker Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming has taken centre stage as the potentially catastrophic side effect of our carbon-emitting actions. Scientific consensus has widely established that mankind is changing the planet, and that, by every metric by which the sustainability of life on Earth can be quantified, this change is decidedly not good.
So, it is encouraging to see such widespread dissemination of our negative impact on the environment not only in the scientific community but also in mainstream popular culture and industry, even if the motives and sincerity of the messengers are sometimes dubious. As a species, it seems that we have generally begun to acknowledge the consequences of our actions. The next step, of course, is to establish a strategy for reducing this negative impact, and most people would agree that even if we have not yet satisfactorily implemented this strategy, we have a pretty good idea of what needs to be done.
To most of us, “what needs to be done” can be summarized with the “three Rs” of environmentalism: reduce, reuse, and recycle. The phrase “chuck it in the garbage” certainly does not find itself welcome in this list of earth-friendly Rs (even if we ignore the fact that it is not compatible with the established alliteration). The very word “garbage” conjures images of massive landfills teeming with used styrofoam cups, torn plastic bags, rusting metal parts, and other manmade refuse that is distinctly at odds with the pristine beauty that we associate with our natural environment. Intuitively, it makes sense to us that throwing things in the garbage is not an environmentally sound option. If asked to place the available options for dealing with a consumable product in order of their impact on the environment, I think most of us would probably say that the worst thing one can do is to throw a product in the garbage, that it is better to throw that product into the recycling bin, that it is better still to reuse that product, and that the best option is to not have to use the product at all. Until not too long ago, this order had always made sense to me. Perhaps it was my penchant for playing devil’s advocate combined with the recently renewed global interest in environmentalism, but for some reason I found myself questioning the scientific validity of this conventional wisdom one day when buying a cup of coffee from one of the many fine UBC campus coffee shops. At this shop, I was informed that I would be charged a little bit less if I supplied my own coffee mug. In addition to the obvious financial reward, this discount was presumably being offered as an incentive to lessen my negative environmental impact by cutting down on the amount of consumable materials that I use. Implicit in this logic, of course, is the assumption that by drinking from a reusable coffee receptacle, I am inflicting less harm on my planet’s ecosystem than I would by using a paper cup. With a background in engineering, though, I have been indoctrinated with the pragmatic (and maybe pessimistic) notion that there is no such thing as a free lunch – that is, if you manage to improve a process or product in some way, you inevitably pay for it by worsening it in another way. With this in mind I tried to roughly gauge the environmental impact of each of the available coffee handling options in the context of the aforementioned three Rs.
Consistent with my perceived order of the three Rs, the most environmentally desirable coffee receptacle is no receptacle at all. Ideally, coffee shop patrons would line up in front of coffee dispensers, open wide, and have their choices of tall, grande, or venti volumes of coffee poured directly into their waiting mouths. If we ignore the fact that the used bandages incurred from the subsequent medical treatment of throats scalded by boiling coffee might offset the environmental gains of this option, it seems obvious that of the three Rs, “reduce” is indisputably the most environmentally friendly choice. The most effective way of reducing the negative environmental impact of a product is to eliminate the use of that product altogether. Unfortunately, at least for consumers of hot beverages, this is rarely a realistic option. So I went on to consider the remaining options. The option encouraged by the coffee shop I visited was to opt for the second of the three Rs and to drink from a reusable mug. The option discouraged by the coffee shop was to opt for the third of the Rs and to use, and of course then recycle, a paper cup. The final option, and one that responsible coffee drinkers would never consider, is to simply throw the cup into the garbage after use.
The first things that come to mind when comparing these options are the most obvious benefits of each. Conventional wisdom dictates that reusing a mug is optimal because it obviates the need for another cup the next time I want to enjoy a coffee. If I must use a paper cup, recycling it eliminates the need to extract and process the raw materials required to manufacture my next paper cup and also eliminates the waste that would result from a disposable cup. Finally, throwing the cup in the garbage seems to have no discernible benefits. A new cup must be made from scratch for my next coffee purchase and the cup that I have used sullies my environment by sitting in a landfill somewhere. However, when attempting to make a more complete assessment and comparison of these options, a multitude of questions arose in my mind. For example:
- When reusing a coffee mug, most people find it necessary to wash it and, in doing so, consume some water and soap. Which has a more detrimental effect on the environment: the soap use and water consumption required to wash a mug or the solid waste introduced into the environment by disposing paper cups in a landfill?
- If one of these is worse than the other, exactly how much worse is it? For example, how many grams of soap released into the water system will cause an amount of environmental damage equivalent to that resulting from one gram of paper in a landfill?
- What pollutants must be released into the environment in the process of recycling a paper cup and what is the effect of these pollutants relative to the ones mentioned above?
- What pollutants are involved in the manufacturing of, say, a ceramic mug? Are they more or less detrimental than the pollutants released during the manufacturing or recycling of a paper cup? How much more or less?
- How much energy is expended in the process of making one ceramic mug? How does this compare with the energy used to make a single paper cup?
- How far is a ceramic mug transported from the factory where it is manufactured to the store that I buy it from? How does this distance compare with the distance that a paper cup is transported in order to get to the nearest landfill or recycling facility?
- How does the environmental damage of the carbon emissions resulting from this transportation compare with the pollutants mentioned above?
This to me, was already a dizzying array of questions, but one could go even further and ask questions that relate not only to the activities involved with reuse, recycling, and disposal, but also to the development of the infrastructure necessary for these options. For instance:
- What are the processes and resulting pollutants used in the construction of a factory that produces ceramic mugs, a factory that produces paper cups, and a paper recycling facility? How do these processes and pollutants compare to one another?
- What pollutants are released during manufacturing of the dish soap that is typically used to wash a ceramic mug, and how do these compare with all the pollutants mentioned above?
- How many people are required to run a factory which manufactures ceramic mugs and how many are required to run a recycling facility? If these employees all have to drive to work, how do these carbon emissions contribute to the environmental impact of each option?
Many of these questions do not seem relevant when first attempting to assess the environmental impact of each option, but answering all of them struck me as being essential in order to accurately compare them. It seemed to me that in order to conclusively determine that one option is more environmentally friendly than another, one would need to first take into account the environmental impact of all of the processes and by-products necessary for the execution of each option, and then establish some kind of common basis or standard with which to make an “apples to apples” comparison of the impacts of each.
A technique known as life cycle analysis (LCA) attempts to do exactly this. LCA seeks to consider the entire “life cycle” of a given product beginning with the extraction of the raw materials needed to create the product and ending with the return of all materials back to the earth. It then seeks to evaluate and compare the cumulative environmental impact resulting from all stages of the life cycle of different products. The ultimate objective of LCA is to guide the choices made by consumers, industry workers, or government policy makers in order to minimize the negative environmental impact of their actions. Unfortunately, although LCA is currently the most formalized methodology for performing such comparisons, it is also widely acknowledged as having fundamental problems that have already been highlighted by some of the questions asked above.
In order to make a comparison of multiple products or processes, the scope and boundaries within which to perform the analysis must be established. This is the first step in performing an LCA. The beginning and end of the life cycles of the products being considered are defined and different products are compared using some logical basis. For example, when comparing incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs, a logical basis for comparison is the number of hours they can provide light for. Using this basis, if a fluorescent bulb lasts ten times as long as an incandescent bulb, then ten incandescent bulbs should be compared against one fluorescent bulb. However, for products that do not have a well-defined lifetime, establishing such a basis for comparison is much more challenging. In our coffee cup comparison, how many paper cups should we assume can be substituted with a single ceramic mug? The ability to recycle a product also brings into question how the end of its lifecycle should be defined. For materials that can theoretically be recycled almost indefinitely, should their lifecycles be considered infinite? The beginning of a product’s lifecycle can be equally as dubious. Should the lifecycle of a product also include the construction of facilities that are needed for the manufacturing of the product? For example, perhaps, during the construction of a piece of equipment used in the production of ceramic mugs, a particularly harmful chemical is required. Neglecting this could erroneously make ceramic mug use seem more desirable than it actually is. These questions all make the definition of the scope and basis of this kind of comparison highly complex.
The next step in an LCA is to take a quantitative inventory of all of the energy, raw materials, airborne pollutants, waterborne pollutants, and solid waste that are consumed or produced during the entire life cycle of a product or process. This process is fairly straightforward assuming that a scope and basis that allows for a satisfactory comparison of multiple options has previously been established. However, depending on the established scope, this step could require the collection of an incredibly large amount of data. As well, companies that manufacture the products being analyzed will be understandably reluctant to relinquish data that could be used to conclude that their product is less environmentally friendly than that of a competitor.
The last step of a LCA consists of interpreting the data collected for each of the options being analyzed in order to assess the environmental impact of each. In this step lies the key weakness of LCA. While the cataloguing of the consumption and emission of a product or process can be scientifically rigorous, the interpretation and comparison of their environmental impacts can not be. Judgments without any purely scientific basis, such as whether a gram of dish soap released into the water system is more or less detrimental to the environment than several tons of paper waste disposed of in a landfill, are necessarily subjective to a certain degree. Are solid pollutants more or less harmful than airborne or waterborne pollutants? Is excessive energy use more or less of a concern than excessive water use? If one pollutant is known to primarily affect one species and another pollutant is known to affect a second species, do we choose which pollutant is less desirable by determining which species is more valuable? How should the consumption of non-renewable resources like oil be weighted against the consumption of renewable resources like lumber? The complexity and diversity of earth’s natural ecosystems do not allow for easily determined scientific answers to these questions and therefore do not permit different types of environmental impacts to be objectively compared and contrasted. There are differing approaches to dealing with this problem in the context of LCA. Some approaches attempt to demarcate various environmental impacts into clearly defined categories. So, for example, one might attempt to quantify a product’s contribution to global warming or its effect on the ozone layer relative to another product. But even if this quantification is accurate, it only leads us to question which aspect of the environment deserves more of our attention. Would we rather experience increased worldwide temperatures or increased exposure to high frequency ultraviolet radiation? Other approaches go even further and attempt to assign an overall environmental “score” or “rating” for a particular product. Some have suggested methods of arriving at a universal basis of comparison by attempting to determine and then compare the economic cost or the amount of energy that must be spent in order to avoid various forms of environmental impact. However, these conversions are hardly objective and scientific. The failure of all of these approaches is highlighted by the fact that many LCAs using different comparison methodologies have reached different and sometimes contradictory conclusions about identical products.
Despite these inabilities, however, LCA can offer benefits. It can help a company identify and improve steps in its engineering or manufacturing processes that are particularly harmful to the environment. LCA can also serve to provide data to the public with which decisions can be made based on regional circumstances or interests. For example, an LCA could result in the conclusion that a recycling program is not environmentally favorable for a relatively isolated city where transportation of materials to distant recycling facilities incurs high levels of carbon emission, but is favorable for cities that have such facilities in close proximity. Communities that are located close to natural waterways could impose the constraint that waterborne pollutants are of paramount concern, and in this way simplify the prioritization of pollution reduction.
I believe our inability to objectively compare multiple forms of environmental impact poses a serious problem to the scientific basis of the environmental movement. Without a standard by which we can measure, quantify, and contrast the ecological effects of various manmade processes or products, it seems impossible to determine which course of action is most environmentally desirable given an array of options. And this, unfortunately, is the environmentally conscious citizen’s central task.
I still feel that my perceived order of the three Rs is correct and that it is indeed better to reuse than to recycle or dispose. Intuitively, it still makes sense to me that drinking from a reusable mug and washing it when I’m finished is more environmentally responsible than drinking from a disposable cup and throwing it in the garbage. However, science has shown time and time again that human intuition is incorrect about a great many things. Given the seemingly infinite number of variables inherent in our natural environment, it seems highly unlikely that we will ever be able to objectively compare different forms of environmental damage with complete accuracy but perhaps more communication and collaboration between the scientists that study the condition of ecosystems and those that develop the industrial processes that supply us with goods and services will enable us to better understand our cumulative effect on the natural environment and thus come closer to this goal. Maybe this in turn will allow us to determine, at least with a little more certainty, whether that coffee shop was justified in making me feel bad for not having a mug with me that day.
Kaston Leung is a graduate student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia currently doing his best to masquerade as a biologist. He dreams of one day formulating a satisfactory scientific explanation that will elucidate the mechanism by which Megatron is able to become so much bigger when transforming from a gun into a robot. When not busy trying to build microfluidic systems to solve biological problems, he enjoys eating bacon, drumming in Latin rock cover bands, and wishes that UBC was located in Whistler.
O.K. So the deal is that it’s the holidays – and soon the whole merriment parade will be kicking into high gear. This includes a number of things that I bet many households end up going through. Things such as:
1. the strategic maneuvering of the mistletoe locale.
2. watching the antics of nasally sounding claymation elves,
3. arguing over the relative merits of putting raisins in the stuffing,
4. real tree, fake tree, or no tree.
5. debating the necessity of the feature length Grinch movie,
6. figuring out what did “my true love give to me” on the eleventh day?
And 7, that opportunity for all of us to play the role of an amateur architect – (drum roll please) the building of the gingerbread house. Usually, the directions taken here, tend to veer towards one of two extremes: (1) a somewhat childish semblance of four walls, a roof, and a freakish amount of candy, or (2) you think you’re Martha Stewart or something.
So let’s instead try a different tact. Here, we’re looking for your take on a “sustainable” gingerbread house. Rules are found at www.bakeforachange.com, but basically the premise in a nutshell is: apply sustainable building design practices to a gingerbread house.
Anyway, Dave S. has set up a Flickr site to collect entries, and we’re hoping to see some spectacular houses. Spread the word – we have a few prizes to give out, but really, the process is the thing you see.
David is Director of the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory, the educational arm of the Michael Smith Labs. He's also the dude that edits the SCQ
Fanboy: Hey gang! Did you read The Sword of Shanara? The characters traveled hundreds of miles described in excruciating detail for hundreds of pages, until they reached the ultimate battle between good and evil! Cool huh?
Scientist: Whatever. The characters in Red Planet traveled 48 million miles to Mars, while those in 2001 traveled 369 million miles to Jupiter. Characters in Asimov’s Foundation books travel millions of light-years all over the Milky Way galaxy in routine manner. Isn’t it amazing what people can accomplish when they don’t have to walk everywhere? Thank a scientist for your planes, trains, automobiles, and spaceflight whydontcha.
Fanboy: Yeah, but did you see in The Lord of the Rings when Gandalf fought the Balrog all the way down a really deep hole and then all the way back up to the top of a mountain peak!?!?
Scientist: Big whoop. The adventurers in The Core traveled to the very center of the Earth, fighting technological, natural, and human hazards all the way down and all the way back up to the Earth’s crust again. Characters in Fantastic Voyage and Innerspace fought their way all through the human body in microscopic form.
Fanboy: Ooookay… But did you see all those maps having to do with the Wheel of Time books? It’s a huge continent! Pretty epic, huh?
Scientist: Thpppt. Not. The film Contact opens with a satellite shot of Earth and pulls away, out of the solar system, out of the galaxy, and out to a view of many galaxies. The film Men in Black pulls out past many galaxies to many universes. Maybe you can find some flat-Earthers to impress with you dinky little maps.
Fanboy: The Dragon Riders in Eragon spent thousands of years protecting and guarding and stuff. Thousands of years!!! Isn’t that amazing?
Scientist: No, that’s “we todd did.” (Say that out loud until you get it.) The film A.I. begins in our near future and then jumps 10,000 years ahead of that. And you know what? Things changed. Technology advanced incomprehensibly, society changed and its inhabitants evolved. Compare this to a bunch of dumbass Dragon Riders who never updated their swords to guns or dragons to fighter jets despite having millennia to do so? Dude, that’s weak.
Fanboy: The Balrog, Godzilla, and Dragons are really big. That’s got to count for something. Right?
Scientist: Whaddya want, a cookie? V’ger, from Star Trek, The Motion Picture, is so large that much of the movie is spent showing the Enterprise traveling through it. The living ocean in Solaris covers an entire planet. V’ger wants to find god. Solaris is so advanced we cannot even decipher it’s motivations. Colossal Science Ficiton beings, have much bigger aspirations than growling and smashing things.
Fanboy: There were thousands of monsters and people on the battlefields of Lord of the Rings. When Sauron is destroyed a volcano erupts and the earth swallows its legions of monsters. Now that was awesome! Am I right? I mean, am I right???
Scientist: (Rolling eyes) War of the Worlds reduced entire cities to rubble. Star Wars blew up entire planets. 2010 transformed Jupiter into a star just to thaw out Europa for life to evolve there. Your “epic” armies are kind of cute though.
Fanboy: Okay. Okay. Okay. I got one. In LOTR Arwen Evenstar’s father warns her that, as an immortal, if she abandons her elfin people, her mortal lover will eventually die and she will be alone forever. Forever! Top that Science Fiction!
Scientist: Bite me fanboy. In Science Fiction, all of the immortal elves would be cursed, as eventually the Universe would dissipate to an entropic state of absolute zero, leaving them frozen in total darkness forever, completely devoid of emotional, intellectual, or spiritual growth (Not too different from sitting through all 16-plus hours of the extended DVD version of Lord of the Rings). Sucks to be an elf.
In which we summarize the “chosen one” story line, a plot device that appears ubiquitous in almost all fantasy stories:
Someguy: I think he is the chosen one!
Chosen One: But I’m just some putz!
Everybody Else: He is the chosen one!!!
The Grand Poo-Bah: He has defeated the melodramatic personification of pure concentrated evil!!! Thus, proving his status as the chosen one!!!
Everybody: Hooray for the chosen one! Let’s party!
Chosen One: Hooray for me!
Fantasy sells. Bookstores and theaters are brimming with works of fantasy, be they Harry Potter, C.S. Lewis, Dragonology, Eragon, or Lord of the Rings. Science Fiction sales are in decline, while Fantasy sales are shooting through the roof.
C.S. Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) and J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings) were English faculty at Oxford. Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time) has a BS in Physics. J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) has a BA in French. Christopher Paolini (Eragon) has no higher education as of yet.
These fantasy writers have inspired countless fans to stand in long lines at movie theaters and books stores sporting capes, light-sabers, and elf-ears, while endlessly debating which of their favorite trilogies is superior based on purely subjective criteria.
In contrast, David Brin (Uplift) has a Ph.D. in Space Science. Stanislaw Lem (Solaris) could not attain his medical degree because he refused to accept Lysenkoism, but did work as a scientific researcher. Dr. Isaac Asimov (Foundation) was a professor of biochemistry, Vice President of Mensa International, president of the American Humanist Association, and wrote hundreds of books on science, politics, and human improvability.
These science fiction authors have accurately predicted the future from cell phones to the Internet. They have contributed to the human race’s collective body of knowledge, and they have inspired countless others to do the same.
Science Fiction fans are intellectually engaged with their subject matter, taking the speculation beyond what is presented, and internalizing its vision to inspire their own accomplishments and contributions to society. Science Fiction walks alongside civilization, evolving and growing in potential as we grow and evolve as a society and a species.
Fantasy books use printing presses and desktop publishing software to glorify times when most people were illiterate. Fantasy movies use computer animation and special effects technologies to let people escape to worlds without films and special effects. Fantasy video games whisk players away to realms devoid of computers. Fantasy wants to delude us into thinking things were better, more exciting and morally clear in mythical ancient times without electricity, running water, toothpaste, toiletpaper, fast food, equal rights, aspirin, diet soft drinks, or any of the other myriad conveniences of modern life that science has betowed upon us. All fantasy fans have to look forward to is bigger swords, flashier magic, and more gruesome monsters. Fantasy is an intellectual dead end.
While fantasy broods on an overly idealized dramatization of the past, science fiction looks upwards and outwards to the future. As L. Ron Hubbard said:
[Science Fiction] is the herald of possibility. It is the plea that someone should work on the future. Yet it is not prophecy. It is the dream that precedes the dawn when the inventor or scientist awakens and goes to his books or his lab saying, ‘I wonder whether I could make that dream come true in the world of real science.’
Science Fiction argues that the best times lay ahead of us, but only if we make them happen.
Ryan Somma writes unpublishable Science Fiction and maintains a blog at ideonexus.com, where he regularly misinforms the public about science news, politics, and anything else he blogs about.
Some years ago I began photographing exotic tropical hibiscus blooms to catalog my collection. Part of the appeal in growing these beauties is cross pollinating to create new cultivars. I wanted a catalog of my collection so that I could keep a record of which blooms were crossed and what offspring they produced. In that way I could have an idea of whether specific colored flower parents would produce a certain color offspring. You see exotic tropical hibiscus are not true breeders. Even if you were to pollinate a bloom with its own pollen you would not get seeds which would produce duplicates of the original. They contain the genes of their parents and their parents parents and so on down the line.
One evening, I was editing a batch of photographs and began exploring the features of the editing software. I stumbled upon a Reflections Menu, where one of the options was a Kaleidoscope Effect. Within the Kaleidoscope menu there are a list of parameters which can be adjusted to change the appearance of an image. And so I began manipulating the photographs of my blooms using these effects which have produced some striking images. I send them out to friends who like myself use them for such things as wallpaper on my computer. Others have requested high resolution images to hang as prints. One friend even requested a certain image which she developed into a pattern for making quilts. It has been an enjoyable experience. People got such enjoyment from looking at and using the images I began photographing objects other than hibiscus blooms and converting them into my own private Kaleidoscope or Mandala images. Even clouds did not escape my curiosity (see below).
So now I am always on the hunt for colorful objects with varying textures to experiment with.
Kevin is an avid gardener specializing in exotic tropical hibiscus, which he grows and competes in hibiscus shows.
I sat down on the folding chair in front of the emergency room admitting nurse and explained what had happened: “I’ve had an accident in my laboratory.” I was expecting a dramatic reaction. Instead I got barely a raised eyebrow. It must take a lot to surprise an emergency room nurse but still, hadn’t she heard about all the superheroes that have emerged from lab experimentation gone awry (Did she not know about Spiderman, who was bitten by a radioactive spider, or The Incredible Hulk, who was irradiated by gamma rays?) Was she not curious as to what superhuman feats I would soon be capable of? She was not.
“I’ve injected myself with hamster cells,” I continued. I had been performing a novel, but ultimately unfruitful, experiment wherein I was attempting to track the movement of hamster cells in a swirling flow using some fancy cameras and a fairly sizable laser. The idea was to inject the cells into a vortex using a hypodermic needle. The idea was not to miss said vortex and stab the needle into my left hand.
The mention of hamsters piqued the nurse’s interest and she looked up from the form. I showed her my hand. There was very little blood; it had been worse immediately following the puncture. If I had not stopped for a fortifying sandwich en route to the ER, I’d probably have garnered more sympathy. As it was she didn’t seem to care about the wound. She did, however, care about the hamsters.
“Hamster cells?”
“Yes.” I smiled in what I hoped was a manner that, while sheepish, also conveyed my concern at having bits of hamster flowing through my bloodstream, getting closer and closer to my heart or, even worse, my brain.
“Like those animals that run around on those wheels?” she asked. “How do you spell that?” I was now getting concerned that she had not grasped the seriousness of the situation so my response was a little testier than it should have been. “Ham. Ster.” My testiness went unnoticed.
“So you’ve injected yourself with hamster blood?” she said. Not blood, I replied, ovaries. Again she looked up from her form. I assured her that it hadn’t been an entire ovary, merely a few million cells. Chinese Hamster ovary cells have, for a variety of reasons including reduced risk of pathogenic infection, become leading vehicles for recombinant protein production. The syringe I was handling that day was full of a solution of these cells; a solution that vaguely resembled opaque tropical punch. However, I didn’t feel that it was the time to get into the ins and outs of cell culture seeing as it was, in my mind, one of those life-and-death moments where every second counts.
The nurse continued, “But the hamsters – they’re healthy?” This is a frequent misconception. Whenever I mention that I work with hamster ovary cells people envisage a room full of cages with me hunched over an operating table, harvesting ovaries from defenseless hamsters splayed out beneath my scalpel. This is not the case, as I explained to the nurse. There are no live hamsters, just their ovary cells grown in suspension.
My explanation seemed to satisfy her. “Okay, but the ovaries – were they healthy?” she asked. “Ah…well no. They have cancer,” I replied. We had reached her breaking point. She put down her pen and told me that I was going to have to see a doctor. She had no interest in hearing that cancer was induced in the cells so as to immortalize them, allowing them to proliferate ad infinitum.
I was shown to an examination room where I received a form to fill out. The form was clearly designed for intravenous drug users and asked a variety of personal questions that seemed to have no connection to science experiments or lab accidents. As I was writing “Hamster” in the space allocated for the name of the person with whom I’d shared a needle, the doctor entered. He had already been updated on my situation and, after taking the form and throwing it in the garbage, gave my hand a few investigative prods. He then pronounced his diagnosis. “Well, you aren’t dead yet so I think you’ll be fine.”
And with that vaguely unsettling bill of health I headed off to await my metamorphosis into Ham-man the half-man half-hamster scourge of evil-doers who, based in his secret lair constructed from chewed up paper towel rolls, and traveling the city’s mean streets in a large transparent sphere, fought crime with his sole superpower: an unrivaled ability to eat his own offspring. I was not looking forward to it.
Patrick Francis is freakishly strong. However, his fighting technique is almost as bad as his dancing and so he would probably perform poorly in any sort of cage match. Also, he likes pie.
