Mr. Irresponsible's Bad Advice

Box Full of Heart

John Biggs of Gizmodo has a nice, dry take on the year's most medically significant and aesthetically disturbing battery-powered device:

No time for a sit-down lunch? The Organ Care System lets you take your viable human hearts, kidneys, or livers anywhere, allowing you to enjoy the taste of fresh meat anywhere—in the park, after your work-out, or in Deepwater Cave down by the old sawmill on the edge of town.

There's even a video. Two words of warning, though: 1) It's gross. 2) When the time comes for my inevitable liver transplant, I hope the tech assigned to deliver the organ works with a tad more urgency than the guy seen here sauntering across a hospital parking lot carrying a $4.99 Igloo cooler like he's on his leisurely way to a 4th of July cookout. I know he's the "Before" in this "Before & After" scenario, but that's my liver in there. Would it kill him to stop by the Gas'n'Go for Luckies after he's delivered it to the OR?

I'm Aiming At You, Buddy

Mr. Irresponsible's been on something of a science jag lately. First came the report that ill-mannered louts behave more or less the same in deep space as they do in the street below your window at midnight. Now, right on the bleeding edge that separates coolness from creepiness, we have the news that human behavior may soon be controllable via a small handheld device. That's right: it's remote control for people. At the moment the technology is only sophisticated enough to impel a test subject to reel a few tentative steps to the right or left, like a league bowler on $6.00 Bucket Night. But my goodness, think about the implications. Imagine being able to abandon moral suasion as a tool to get your way. (Moral suasion only works on people with a shred of conscience, and really, how often are those the people you're trying to keep from urinating in your doorway?) Imagine a compact battery-powered device with a snappy brand name like "MAKE-EM-DUIT" or "GuyZap 2000." (Trademarks applied for, just in case.) Now imagine the small, discrete thrill of aiming it at the idiot who's chattering away in the row behind you at the movies.* And just imagine the satisfaction you'll feel as he suddenly zips his yapper, a look of befuddlement clouding his features. Heave a delighted sigh with me now, won't you? Aaaaaah.

Admittedly, it will take some adjustment to make the product broadly useful. I suggest a few pre-programmed settings: "SHUT UP," "DRIVE FASTER," "REACH FOR THE CHECK." It might also be worthwhile to market age-specific models -- one for teenagers, for example, which might have pre-sets for "STOP SAYING 'LIKE' AND 'SHE WAS ALL...'" or "QUIT SCUFFING YOUR GIANT CHUNKY SHOES ON THE SIDEWALK." These are finishing touches, though. The important thing is that the ability to regulate anti-social behavior is about to land exactly where it belongs -- with the victims of that behavior. Isn't this precisely what science ought to do? Empower the powerless, give voice to the voiceless, and make people quit acting the fool? And if that requires a debilitating jolt of electricity to the brain, who's Mr. Irresponsible to stand in the way of science?

*A lower-tech means of handling this situation is detailed in Chapter 1 of my current book, "Mr. Irresponsible's Bad Advice," which is -- hey, what do you know! -- available now.

Venus and Mars Are All Right Tonight, But That Russian Guy Is Getting On My Nerves

Mr. Irresponsible always has one eye aimed at the far frontiers of interpersonal relationships. And what's farther than space, or more interpersonal than sex? So this dispatch from the invaluable NewScientist.com just about made my day. Not because it was "useful" or "informative" or "timely" or even "well-written," but because it shed light on a little-known incident in the recent history of what might be called Manners in Space. (Try to imagine the phrase read in a booming, echo-y voice, the syllables elongated for dramatic effect. It'll help you get into the spirit of the thing.)

Apparently a Russian cosmonaut got a little frisky during an eight-month terrestrial space-station simulation in 2000, and (NewScientist picks up the narrative)...

...twice tried to kiss a Canadian woman researcher just after two other Russians had gotten into a bloody brawl. As a result, locks were installed between the Russian and international crews' compartments.

What's delightful about this is the news that even highly-trained scientific professionals behave like the shirtless yahoos on "Cops" after a little indoor time and a few flash-frozen vodkas. Oh, to have been a fly on the shiny titanium wall that day -- the slurred recriminations, the sidebar fistfight, the angry shouts that "The stocky woman in the flannels loves only me, Mikhail Mikhailovich!" This is a deeply encouraging picture for those among us who occasionally enjoy a cocktail and occasionally find our judgment impaired, resulting in the occasional slap in the face or hurried, friend-assisted trip to a waiting car. It gives the lie to the muzzy notion of space as a final outpost of hands-across-the-water comity, a sort of 4H Club national convention hurtling through the cold skies at 17,000 miles per hour. I believe that it is this which has always made Americans skeptical of space exploration, even in the halcyon days of Apollo -- the suspicion that we were going to end up living in giant moonbases with travelers of every nationality, clasping hands and singing some ghastly synth-pop version of "Kumbaya" by earthlight. Now we know better. Space, if we ever do succeed in colonizing it, won't be a bastion of scientific fellowship and good feeling. It'll be Jacksonville on the night of the first Friday of the month, when the disability checks arrive. That I can handle. And Ivan, you can have my interstellar space Stroh's when you pry it from my cold, dead hand.

Science For The People, By The People

If, like me, you've had it up to here with scientists and their starchy white lab coats and their insufferable know-it-all attitudes, you might be interested in a new scientific study which maintains that a majority of all scientific studies are hogwash. (Which may or may not mean that the study itself is all wet. You pays your grant money and you takes your chances.) From the invaluable New Scientist, the Web's number one site for pseudo-news about demi-science:

John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false.

Putting aside the delightful sound of the guy's name (it's like a Michigan State researcher being called George Michiganstatesky), this really is excellent news. It allows lay readers what they've always needed: official sanction to ignore most of the inevitably conflicting research that gets put before them. Confused by a Tuesday study that maintains coffee extends life and a Thursday study that says caffeine is poison?  Flummoxed by two papers issued the same day on opposite sides of the world, one holding that obesity is a death sentence, the other claiming that humans may weigh up to six hundred pounds without sustaining any ill effects? Just pick the one you like! This plucks the review process out of the closeted ranks of researchers' so-called "peers" and places it squarely where it belongs -- with the average citizens who are science's ultimate victims or beneficiaries.  Why, it's downright democratic! And who knows: Freed from the strictures of peer review, science might even shift its attention to something useful, Like, say, turning dark meat into white meat. You gotta live the dream.