This Week in Terrifying Science: Give Yourself a Hand
This Week in Our Terrifying Oceans
This weekâs biggest development was that science got terrifying for the non-dork community as well, as news of the report from the International Programme on the State of the Oceans began to seep into the mainstream media.
And the mainstream media, when it realized what it was reading, began to soil itself with fear and wonder if it could have done another story or two on simple ways to reduce oneâs environmental impact and maybe a couple fewer shows heavily implying that you can get a TV series of your very own no matter how horrible and abrasive your personality is if only you are willing to pump out between seven and twenty children.
Long story short, weâre on the brink of mass extinctions âunprecedented in human history.â
When were extinctions on such a gargantuan scale, not to mention these exact oceanic conditions of heat, acidity, and lack of oxygen precedented, you ask? Oh, âround about the end of the dinosaur age. Other than the ones running around disguised as chickens, have you noticed how many dinosaurs you see nowadays?
And by âon the brink,â IPSO doesnât mean within a few hundred years, they mean within a generation or two. Or within the next couple of decades. You, personally, may find yourself filling the evenings when the Flying Self-Organizing Deathbots are in a self-replication lull by trying to describe to a kid what fish tasted like.
Unless you are an actual crocodile, just go ahead and start spreading cheese doodles and cookie crumbs around your kitchen. You need to start sucking up to your cockroaches now so you can ask them for survival tips.
At least no one can accuse humans as a species of being lazy ever again. Because a lazy species would have disastrously overfished or polluted or put the whole planet on a Bunsen burner.
We, however, have pulled off a poor-foresight hat trick. Suck it, pandas.
And donât give all the credit to those headline-grabbing oil spills, either â turns out the perfumes and phosphates in our detergents have slowly, load by brighter, whiter load, been creating vast âdead zonesâ where only the hardiest algae â if anything at all â can survive.
Our oceans make turkey vultures feel pretty and demure. Our oceans make the Lorax feel like things are going pretty well, topside.
Our oceans make Keith Richardsâ kidneys feel glad to be themselves.
So even though we may be past the point where we could pull ourselves back from the precipice, we should all, every last one of us on this beautiful blue planet, give one last heroic effort to save 70% of the Earthâs surface.
â¦Except the United States will not be helping out because we have an entire political party dedicated to screaming that Jesus weeps when we suggest that people could re-think taking the Hummer limo to the corner mailbox or mildly inconvenience our Captains of Industry by regulating the amount of toxic waste they are allowed to store in municipal swimming pools.
But you other countries go ahead, OK? Thanks!
And, really, other than figuring out how to get that tasty, quivering lab-grown meat cooking to stave off global starvation, what do we, as a species, have to worry about?
Itâs not like pissed-off sharks can just leap out of the water and â HOLY ROWS AND ROWS OF MISMATCHED TEETH, THEY TOTALLY CAN.
The wonderful @ClayRivers, in his ongoing quest to rob me of my sleep and peace of mind, pointed me to this National Geographic photo gallery entitled â hang on to your meaty parts â âSky Sharks,â featuring 2,000-pound sharks leaping up to ten freaking feet out of the water.
Photographers Chris and Monique Fallows hilariously refer to the breach-and-bite combos as âfeats of athleticismâ instead of potent reminders of Natureâs most important rule: Never get cocky about where you are in the food chain.
Natureâs second most important rule has just become relevant to us all: Youâre going to need a bigger boat.
This Week in Terrifying Research
But why dwell on our fit-for-only-zombies oceans when there is so much to turn us into gibbering wrecks on land?
For example, New Scientist ran a story on an amusing device that the University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Laboratories are developing. Itâs a simple cuff and some electrodes that you put on your forearm so you can allow it to take control of your hand and move your fingers whether you want to or not.
Really.
The researchers are calling it, for real, PossessedHand.
Great Pazuzuâs wings, scientists, donât you even want to pretend not to be evil? Just to make it a little more sporting?
The PossessedHand, which will soon be giving you wedgies, TurboNoogies and Stooge pokes while defying all attempts to turn it off or remove it, is programmable, so you can pre-set it to move your fingers in specific sequences and rhythms.
Itâs expected to be useful for learning fingering patterns for musical instruments, practicing sign language, or realizing all too late that youâre the victim of the creepiest murder plot ever as your own hand types out an incriminating message and then crawls its way toward your throat, pausing occasionally to make you give yourself the finger just to mess with you.
But hey, at least youâll know you didnât waste those precious seconds learning how to play âChopsticksâ by yourself!
Be afraid.
Ali Davis is a writer and performer in Los Angeles. You should buy her book in paperback or on Kindle before your electronically possessed hand does it for you. Warning: Wear protective masking. Your laughter will only help the sharks triangulate your location.
This weekâs biggest development was that science got terrifying for the non-dork community as well, as news of the report from the International Programme on the State of the Oceans began to seep into the mainstream media.
And the mainstream media, when it realized what it was reading, began to soil itself with fear and wonder if it could have done another story or two on simple ways to reduce oneâs environmental impact and maybe a couple fewer shows heavily implying that you can get a TV series of your very own no matter how horrible and abrasive your personality is if only you are willing to pump out between seven and twenty children.
Long story short, weâre on the brink of mass extinctions âunprecedented in human history.â
When were extinctions on such a gargantuan scale, not to mention these exact oceanic conditions of heat, acidity, and lack of oxygen precedented, you ask? Oh, âround about the end of the dinosaur age. Other than the ones running around disguised as chickens, have you noticed how many dinosaurs you see nowadays?
And by âon the brink,â IPSO doesnât mean within a few hundred years, they mean within a generation or two. Or within the next couple of decades. You, personally, may find yourself filling the evenings when the Flying Self-Organizing Deathbots are in a self-replication lull by trying to describe to a kid what fish tasted like.
Unless you are an actual crocodile, just go ahead and start spreading cheese doodles and cookie crumbs around your kitchen. You need to start sucking up to your cockroaches now so you can ask them for survival tips.
At least no one can accuse humans as a species of being lazy ever again. Because a lazy species would have disastrously overfished or polluted or put the whole planet on a Bunsen burner.
We, however, have pulled off a poor-foresight hat trick. Suck it, pandas.
And donât give all the credit to those headline-grabbing oil spills, either â turns out the perfumes and phosphates in our detergents have slowly, load by brighter, whiter load, been creating vast âdead zonesâ where only the hardiest algae â if anything at all â can survive.
Our oceans make turkey vultures feel pretty and demure. Our oceans make the Lorax feel like things are going pretty well, topside.
Our oceans make Keith Richardsâ kidneys feel glad to be themselves.
So even though we may be past the point where we could pull ourselves back from the precipice, we should all, every last one of us on this beautiful blue planet, give one last heroic effort to save 70% of the Earthâs surface.
â¦Except the United States will not be helping out because we have an entire political party dedicated to screaming that Jesus weeps when we suggest that people could re-think taking the Hummer limo to the corner mailbox or mildly inconvenience our Captains of Industry by regulating the amount of toxic waste they are allowed to store in municipal swimming pools.
But you other countries go ahead, OK? Thanks!
And, really, other than figuring out how to get that tasty, quivering lab-grown meat cooking to stave off global starvation, what do we, as a species, have to worry about?
Itâs not like pissed-off sharks can just leap out of the water and â HOLY ROWS AND ROWS OF MISMATCHED TEETH, THEY TOTALLY CAN.
The wonderful @ClayRivers, in his ongoing quest to rob me of my sleep and peace of mind, pointed me to this National Geographic photo gallery entitled â hang on to your meaty parts â âSky Sharks,â featuring 2,000-pound sharks leaping up to ten freaking feet out of the water.
Photographers Chris and Monique Fallows hilariously refer to the breach-and-bite combos as âfeats of athleticismâ instead of potent reminders of Natureâs most important rule: Never get cocky about where you are in the food chain.
Natureâs second most important rule has just become relevant to us all: Youâre going to need a bigger boat.
This Week in Terrifying Research
But why dwell on our fit-for-only-zombies oceans when there is so much to turn us into gibbering wrecks on land?
For example, New Scientist ran a story on an amusing device that the University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Laboratories are developing. Itâs a simple cuff and some electrodes that you put on your forearm so you can allow it to take control of your hand and move your fingers whether you want to or not.
Really.
The researchers are calling it, for real, PossessedHand.
Great Pazuzuâs wings, scientists, donât you even want to pretend not to be evil? Just to make it a little more sporting?
The PossessedHand, which will soon be giving you wedgies, TurboNoogies and Stooge pokes while defying all attempts to turn it off or remove it, is programmable, so you can pre-set it to move your fingers in specific sequences and rhythms.
Itâs expected to be useful for learning fingering patterns for musical instruments, practicing sign language, or realizing all too late that youâre the victim of the creepiest murder plot ever as your own hand types out an incriminating message and then crawls its way toward your throat, pausing occasionally to make you give yourself the finger just to mess with you.
But hey, at least youâll know you didnât waste those precious seconds learning how to play âChopsticksâ by yourself!
Be afraid.
Ali Davis is a writer and performer in Los Angeles. You should buy her book in paperback or on Kindle before your electronically possessed hand does it for you. Warning: Wear protective masking. Your laughter will only help the sharks triangulate your location.