helen-louise's journal

For those of you who were wondering about the woman with the Science Genius Girl tattoo, I have a message from lizenthusiasm:

Actually, Sean tracked her down on Facebook! He wanted to get a better-quality photo from her since the one online was all blurry. And no, she didn't know about us, she just saw one of our pins somewhere. Which is still kinda awesome.

Do I know anyone who's a member of the Royal Institution? I'm quite interested in this talk: Quest for the holy grail of bipolar disorder: a better lithium, but it's members and their guests only. The grade of membership that gives free admittance to the Friday evening talks is £95 p.a., and the type where you have to pay £10 to attend the talks is £30 p.a. They don't apparently do a student membership, only reductions for 14-25 year olds. I am mildly grumpy about this.

There is also The great ideas of biology which sounds interesting.

Richard found a very cool video. Ruben's Tube demonstration. Hairy physicist sets up a tube full of flammable gas to demonstrate standing waves.

There is also a Mythbusters version, which explains the science more clearly, but isn't so fun to watch.

Have been having severe mood rollercoastering of late. Am way too stressed for the dose of mood stabiliser I'm on, but can't increase the dose until we're certain that I'm not having a reaction to it, which won't happen until we have the results of the blood test that I haven't had yet. Argh. Blood test is tomorrow morning at 9.50 am, meaning I have until 1.50 am to eat anything else I need for tonight.

Have discovered a bizarre and somewhat morbid way to cheer myself up, though. Every time I feel like I'm a walking disaster area with too many medical problems, I cheer myself up by reading about problems I don't have. For example, there is the whole of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rare_diseases for me to go through. Admittedly, this could lead to a person becoming a hypochondriac, but many of the rare diseases are genetic, so if you don't have them already, you're not going to get them. It's extra exciting because I'm squeamish and don't like horrible medical pictures, so every time I click on a disease named after multiple people, there is the tantalising second or two wait to see whether there'll be something disgusting on the page that I need to scroll past rapidly. As I said, bizarre... but it seems to work.

And in an attempt to clean up my Opera tabs:

Bad Science: All time classic creationist pwnage. With commentary by rivka and friends which may help to explain what the actual science is for people who aren't scientists.

CTRL+ALT+DEL comic: Spored. Can't remember who linked it, but funny!

Na na na na na na na na: Best political bumper sticker ever as spotted by hattifattener. No apologies for the earworm. I note that Richard, of all people, said "What is that? An alien pushing a beach ball?". For those who don't get it.

Today I survived Kingston Hospital! Saw a rather nice GP of African descent, who wins my personal gratitude for actually having read my medical history before seeing me. Apparently my lungs are still sounding clear, but the fact I'm coughing them up again and have crappy peak flow again means I got a prescription for erythromycin. It seems that the new out-of-hours GP service (Kingston Health On Call) are a bit more competent than the old one (Thamesdoc) - although I do believe that Thamesdoc lost the contract for being crap. I also believe this is the first time I've ever seen an emergency GP who's known what all my medications are. Perhaps he looked them up in MIMS immediately before I walked in the room, but I'm still impressed.

Also, some moaning principally for my own benefit, because I believe that I'm the only graduate chemist who reads my livejournal on a regular basis. My new medicine contains E124, which "may cause allergic reactions in people who are aspirin-sensitive". So I go to Wikipedia to find out why, and apparently "Since it is an azo dye, it may elicit intolerance in people allergic to salicylates (aspirin).". Now, I have a chemistry degree, and I have no idea WTF azo dyes have to do with salicylates. They both contain a benzene ring? They both contain a phenol group?! so do 90% of medications! Seriously, there is no obvious connection between azo dyes and salicylates that I can see, and this particular azo dye is not based on 2-hydroxybenzoic acid.

Still... why do drugs need to contain bright food colourings anyway? With the dye, these tablets look rather like Smarties. It would be very easy for a small child to eat them by mistake. Bah.

My brain has dropped out of my head. Something happened today, and I spent several hours thinking "I should post this to livejournal when I get home", and can I remember what it was now? Of course not. Bah.

I've received a very strange email - a photograph sent from someone's mobile phone of the "evolution museum holding massive numbers of dinosaurs captive to ruin christmas!". It has MANY cuddly/plushy dinosaurs in it, so it's obviously not spam, as I am known for having a dino, but there is no indication of who sent it! Unless the random number in the email address is someone's phone number - but if so, it's not a UK person. Am rather mystified.

Though in a Google search for "evolution museum", I found the utterly terrifying Creation Museum, which offers a "Christian" perspective on evolution. As in a crazy right-wing American "Christian" perspective, as all the Christians I know are sane and scientific. I simply cannot imagine the current Archbishop of Canterbury giving the time of day to the idea of God creating the Earth in a literal seven Earth days, and I believe that all of the mainstream Christian denominations in the UK are in accordance with the idea of God working on a Godly timescale. I wish the crazy religious people hadn't co-opted the same name for their beliefs that has been used for 2000 years by millions of non-crazy people :/

I tried to read a review of the Creation Museum, but it made me all twitchy; and I was ever so glad to find the link for the Unicorn Museum, which sounds much more like somewhere I'd like to visit. Hehehe.

I've had the link for Quixotic Clothing open in my browser for a few days. They don't do anything in my size GRRR damnit, but the Herbivorous Rex and I am a mammal t-shirts are awesome. It seems kinda appropriate to link to them with the rest of the links here :)

It is officially the week with the crappest air quality in the UK. This is something that I, of all people, know only too well. In 2003 I wrote a master's thesis on the statistics of air quality, in which I analysed the hourly air quality reports from seven sites in the DEFRA air quality automated monitoring network over as many years as data was available. I looked at PM10 and ozone from all seven sites, and PM2.5 from the two sites where it was available. PM10 is primary pollution produced directly from combustion, specifically particles smaller than 10 micrometres; and ground-level ozone is secondary pollution, produced by photochemical reactions on primary pollutants in sunlight.

Today is Guy Fawkes' night, which commemorates the Gunpowder Plot. Depending on how you look at it, we are celebrating either the salvation of the British monarch from being blown up, or the plotters' valiant attempt to destroy the Houses of Parliament. I suspect which depends on your personal opinion of the monarchy and our British Parliamentary system. We celebrate by lighting bonfires and exploding fireworks. The celebrations generally last from the Saturday before Guy Fawkes' to the Saturday after - and this year, Diwali falls within this time, causing even more fireworks to be set off.

The thing about fireworks, and especially bonfires, is that neither of them are particularly good for air quality. Great quantities of PM10 and sulphur dioxide are produced by bonfires, as well as other noxious pollutants depending on what people choose to burn. (Plastics and rubber should never be burned on a bonfire.) The average urban level of PM10 goes up from 50 micrograms per metre cubed to well over 100, and may spike as high as 600. 100 micrograms per metre cubed is the warning level for asthmatics and other sufferers of respiratory diseases, greatly increasing the risk of asthma attack and hospitalisation. This increase lasts all week, and the weather becomes terrible as a result. PM10 are cloud condensation nuclei, which cause water vapour in the air to form as droplets. As a result, we get lots of mist and fog at ground level, and a lot more rain. Sulphur dioxide has an albedo effect that leads to cooling, and the temperature drops along with all the fog. It is unlikely that we'll see much sun all week.

I hate this week. I have to be careful about opening windows or going outside. I have to take far more asthma and allergy meds than usual just to function. The cooler temperatures and damp weather play havoc with my joints, and the lack of sunlight makes me want to crawl into a hole and die. The fireworks look pretty, but hardly compensate for all the rest of it.

Science & psychology links:
Junkfood Science: It’s better to die of HIV than be fat?, from epi_lj (I think). Warning: It's a review of some seriously BAD SCIENCE, pointing out how asshatted it is. Do not read without a mouth guard if you're inclined to grind your teeth, or without a pillow to cushion your head as you bang it against the wall.

The Observer: Meet Tyran and Leanne - they learnt of love and sex in a school for the disabled. A pioneering policy is breaking an old taboo by encouraging disabled teenagers to form sexual relationships, with help from carers if necessary. From earwigmc. Interesting and moving.

ScienceNOW: Something in the Way She Moves? from geminigirl. Researchers have found that lap dancers earn more when they are in the fertile phase of their menstrual cycle. Now the question is why?

YouTube: The colour-changing card trick!, from Brynne at More Awesome Than You. Requires sound for the full experience. The psychology of this is fascinating.

Silly link:
Amoral Sciences Club: Great Beards in Philosophy, from rowan_leigh on irc. Hahaha!

I stayed up far too late last night courtesy of rivka's excellent post about AIDS deniers, people I hadn't previously realised existed. It transpires these people want to disregard all the scientific evidence that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and instead blame the factors that caused the person to become HIV positive in the first place - things like intravenous drug abuse and "being homosexual" (!). Apparently, AIDS in Africa is just old diseases of poverty given a new name. And, particularly bizarrely, they think that, rather than preventing AIDS in HIV-positive people, anti-retroviral drugs actually cause it.

It wouldn't be so bad if these fruitcakes kept their ideas to themselves - if a person wants to commit slow, painful suicide, who am I to try to stop them? But of course they have to spread their quackery, and evangelise giving up on conventional medication to other HIV-positive people. So far from just hurting themselves, they're hurting thousands or millions of others. When it spreads to politicians, you end up with a situation where the people in charge of educating and protecting their countrymen are causing them active harm. And the worst of it all is the woman who killed her child by HIV.

Christine Maggiore is a famous AIDS denier (I wanted to write "denialist", which is a bit scary) who has appeared on the front cover of magazines promoting an anti-retroviral stance. She insisted on giving birth to her children naturally, refusing AZT for either herself or for them, and breastfed them HIV-infected milk. As a result, her 3 year old child Eliza Jane died of PCP - a form of pneumonia that is only seen in the severely immunocompromised (either through AIDS or leukaemia).

Of course, she doesn't believe that. She & the child's father have a website in which they insist that the child died of an allergic reaction to the common antibiotic Amoxicillin. They even hired a quack claiming to be a pathologist to write a report about how this was possible. Never mind that he has a pathology PhD rather than being a medical doctor. Never mind that the child spent the last year of her life with a height and weight below the 3rd percentile - classic failure to thrive. Never mind that her brain tissue was full of HIV antigen. The parents disregard all of that because to admit she died of AIDS would be admitting that HIV causes AIDS, which would be admitting it was their fault.

A recent interview suggests that the parents are in the process of suing the LA County Coroner’s Office for such delights as the damage caused to their reputation. Their website has a detailed list of deaths blamed on parents, and they have the audacity to compare the coroner to Roy Meadow, the UK-based quack from hell who caused countless families to be suspected of murdering their children, and as a result had children taken away from them. Three women were famously jailed and later had their convictions quashed. One died recently, having never recovered from the ordeal.

I am sorry for any parent who loses a child. It is not the natural order of things. But blaming a severe antibiotic allergy that is completely unlike the way drug allergies usually manifest does not absolve you of guilt. Trying to cast doubt on the coroner's scientific reputation simply highlights your lack of scientific credibility. And continuing to preach that HIV does not cause AIDS - that makes you a murderer.

Also, redbird is awesome.