Technically Incorrect

I know science thinks it can do everything.

I know robots will soon be ordering us around like wait staff at the Ritz.

But I am gravely concerned about an experiment that has been going on up there in space.

Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, who returned to earth Friday, had been on the International Space Station since March. And, well, I don't know quite how I am to put this, but he didn't change his underwear for a month.

I know what you're thinking. We're both thinking the same thing.

Not even in the the darkest, most slovenly days of our student youth did we wear the same pair of knickers for 30 days. Around seven days was our limit. Then we'd at least manage a hand wash in a sink.

But here was the intrepid Wakata, prepared for the sake of all our futures to don anti-static, flame-resistant, odor-eating, bacteria-killing, water-absorbent underpants. Yes, water-absorbent.

Will we only have two pairs in the drawer one day? Or even one?

(Credit: CC Mike52ad/Flickr)

I know that there was a lady astronaut a little while ago who wore diapers on a long car journey, but this is surely couture from another realm.

The London Times quoted Wakata as saying, pre-landing: "I haven't talked about this underwear to my crew members."

This is quite understandable. I rarely talk about my underwear to my clients. Not even my underwear clients. However, wasn't just the occasional merest stink caused by this novel eco-friendly fashion show?

"I wore it for about a month and my station crew members never complained, so I think the experiment went fine," he said.

Well, now, in polite society one doesn't normally comment when a fellow worker suffers something of a digestional malfunction, so how can Wakata be sure that his fellow astronauts weren't furtively making sniffy remarks about certain odors emanating from his person?

I know you'll be wondering what astronauts normally do with their soiled undies. Firstly, they take them off. Then they pack them up with the trash, which they shoot into outer space on human-less Russian cargo ships. On the way, the dirty undies are cremated.

But here's the thing with Wakata's undergarments: the Japanese space agency, Jaxa, which designed them, has no firm idea just how well they performed their task.

Which makes two pulsating thoughts thud around my cranium.

One: what if the anti-static, flame-resistant, odor-eating, bacteria-killing, water-absorbent qualities didn't work so well? Especially the last two. What effects might imperfect performance have on poor Mr. Wakata's inner well-being?

And two, I must do the washing.

They called him a science fiction writer.

JG Ballard, who died last weekend, hated that. For him, once you were smeared with the sci-fi label (rather than the syfy label) you were condemned to the world of spacecraft, monsters, and goo.

And, though he began his writing career in the science fiction genre, his style made him, for some, his own very brilliant kind of monster.

Though many associate his name first with the Spielberg movie, made from Ballard's book about life in a Japanese concentration camp, "Empire of the Sun" and then for the eroto-rubberneckrophilia of David Cronenberg's 1996 movie "Crash," perhaps the most telling, the most moving, and the most disturbing of Ballard's work came this century.

He became increasingly fascinated and nauseated by the paralysis engendered by modern life and the structures created through technology, tourism, and multinational business.

'Empire of the Sun' movie poster from the Polish poster tradition.

(Credit: CC PiH9/Flickr)

So his science fiction was "for the present day."

He asked us to wonder, just for a moment, what kind of world we were creating and what kind of people we were becoming. Or, indeed, had become.

The trilogy of "Super-Cannes," "Millennium People," and "Kingdom Come" makes for a vivid and crushing dissection of the way we have unconsciously allowed ourselves to be.

"Millennium People," in particular, published in 2003, is a foretelling of upper middle-class people who, suddenly realizing how little they have, attempt to start, of all things, a revolution. It doesn't mention hedge funds, but the revolutionaries do burn down London's National Film Theater.

Look, when a great author dies, Amazon often divvies up a deal or two just to help you get over your grief. So please pop along there and get yourself a Ballard or three.

A Ballard is like "Battlestar Galactica" with people in suits, ties, polo shirts, and big, big trouble.

I always thought a stray meteorite would just smack into the world in, oh, 2020, and that would be that.

Or, perhaps, around 2015, everyone would become a celebrity and have a simultaneous nervous breakdown, brought on by excessive drug abuse, causing a Koresh-like disappearance of humanity.

But no, the year to prepare all your insurance policies for is 2030.

By that year, according to Professor John Beddington, the U.K. government's chief scientist, food and energy demand will have risen by 50 percent and fresh water by 30 percent. And the global population will have risen to around 8.3 billion.

(Credit: CC L*u*z*a Lack of Inspiration)

Professor Beddington said at the Sustainable Development UK conference today that it will be a "perfect storm." Because today's storm is, of course, so frightfully flawed.

Here's the good news. For the United Kingdom, at least: "We're relatively fortunate in the U.K. There may not be shortages here, but we can expect prices of food and energy to rise."

Yes, Britain may, again, rule the world. Now that would, indeed, be perfect.

It's not that I'm pessimistic, but does Professor Beddington really believe that, given the way things have been going lately, there will even be a world by 2030? I worry that he doesn't watch enough TV.

Live for today, people. Tomorrow may not be another day after all.

Oh, what would Buffy say to this? They've finally dug up a vampire.

A skeleton of a woman with a substantial brick wedged between her jaws has been exhumed by Italian scientists.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence came across this sad and lonely woman when he was digging up plague victims on the island of Lazzaretto Nuovo in Venice. The woman probably died in the Middle Ages, a time when it was believed that "vampires" were an actual cause of the plague.

These so-called vampires did not sup on the blood of their fellow man and woman. They spread disease by gnawing at their shrouds after dying. The brick in the mouth was invented to create something of a disincentive.

Many scientists believe that the vampire myth came to life because blood emerges from the mouths of dead people. This blood causes the corpse's shroud to dip and tear.

Could this be a descendant from the Island of Dr. Borrini?

(Credit: CC Vimages)

Dr. Borrini unveiled his "vampire" at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver last week. He made the bold claim that this could be the first vampire ever examined so intimately.

However, Professor Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita State University in Kansas seems ready to bite Dr. Borrini's head off. Or at least to take a chunk out of his neck. He insists he has found similar vampires in Poland (I have lived there and I find his claim to be entirely plausible).

Ah, countered Dr. Borrini, but this is the first time we have seen "exorcism evidence against vampires."

So there we have it. I blame the early Van Helsing family myself. I believe they performed a large number of these mouth-brickings for many centuries before they decided that a stake through the heart was far more commercial.

I spent some of my vacation with Rupert Murdoch.

I lay him down on his back in the sand and said: "Sir, please tell me a little about yourself." His words, translated often very sympathetically by his authorized biographer Michael Wolff in a book entitled The Man Who Owns The News, were quite picturesque.

As I lay glistening in the heat, Mr. Wolff shined a light on MySpace's owner: "All right, he's not quite a liberal. He remains a militant free-marketeer and is still pro-war (grudgingly, he's retreated a bit). And there was the moment, one afternoon, when over a glass of his favorite coconut water (meant to increase electrolytes) he was propounding the genetic theory that the basic problem of the Muslim people was that they married their cousins."

I will admit to finding Mr. Murdoch's alleged view faintly quaint. However, the idea of attraction to one's cousin and marrying into one's own bloodline is one that has secretly fascinated many.

Happily, Professor Diane Paul of the University of Massachusetts in Boston and Professor Hamish Spencer of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand have slipped their heads above a rather difficult parapet to suggest there's nothing wrong with marrying your cousin.

Strangely, Nevada outlawed cousin-coupling in the 19th century.

(Credit: CC Zoonabar)

They declared that the risk of genetic defects in babies born from the unions of cousins is no greater than that in babies born to women over the age of 40.

Scientists appear to have known for a long time that cousin-coupling was not as risky an adventure as many feared. The root of society's aversion to finding a man from your clan and a spouse at your house seems to have been largely engendered by the eugenics movement.

First cousin marriages are legal in the UK, but not approved by 31 states in the US. You will be stunned to discover that Texas has not hitched itself to the cousin-coupling wagon. Whereas you might feel a frisson on hearing that Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina see nothing wrong with it at all. (You see, there really is no homogeneous entity called the South.)

Professor Spencer, had, perhaps, not read the Murdoch biography before telling the Independent newspaper: "Neither the scientific nor social assumptions behind such legislation stand up to close scrutiny. Such legislation reflects outmoded prejudices about immigrants and the rural poor and relies on over-simplified views of heredity. There is no scientific grounding for it."

Because I know many of you are great believers in science and played in your school orchestra, I can tell you that H.G. Wells, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein and Johann Sebastian Bach all married cousins. As did, um, Jerry Lewis.

Then there's Queen Victoria and Rudy Giuliani. No, they didn't marry each other. But they did, according to the immensely pupil-stimulating cousincouples.com, marry cousins.

In our great new world in which nuance attempts to wrestle with swathing generalization, many are glad that science is playing a role in helping us grasp some of the more difficult issues.

However, I am skeptical about the rumor that scientists in the Middle East are trying to find a definitive conclusion as to whether the biggest problem of the Australian people is that they are largely descended from British convicts.

Although if such research were taking place, Mr. Murdoch might be very interested in sponsoring it. Mr. Wolff suggests his subject believes Britain would be a far better place without British people.

(Disclosure: Yes, I used to be responsible for the advertising for Mr. Murdoch's Sun and Sunday Times. Yes, it was great fun. Yes, I learned more than I might ever have imagined.)

We live in times when celebrities become mayors, governors, even presidents. They use their good looks and power to speak out about all the important things in the world. Like cancer. And fur.

Which is, perhaps, why Sense About Science, an organization that exists to give a little scientific perspective in the midst of our madness, has published the Celebrities and Science Review 2008.

This delightfully downloadable pdf shows celebrities for what they really are: somewhat deficient. Scientifically speaking.

The report barely conceals its glee at what it sees as some of the magnificent nonsense that has emerged from celebrity brains, navigated celebrity tonsils and popped out from celebrity mouths in 2008.

Here is Kelly Osbourne, daughter of Prince of Darkness, Ozzie Osbourne, talking about her mother's cancer: "Because of her history of colon cancer she is absolutely convinced the Pill caused the disease. I don't have a microwave in my house for the same reason."

The best scientific evidence apparently suggests that the Pill reduces the risk of cancer. It simply doesn't eliminate it. And there is no evidence, the scientists say, that microwaves cause cancer.

The Review is critical of the spit parties organized by Anna Wojcicki, wife of Sergey Brin, and founder of 23andMe, a company that tries to identify people's genetic markers.

It quotes clinical scientist Mike Hallworth on the subject: "Genetic testing is not fun if it makes you think you're likely to develop a devastating disease or gives you false reassurance. Very often, the evidence linking genetics to individual outcomes simply isn't good enough yet. And 'high quality but limited scientific evidence' is a bit like 'a definite maybe' - a contradiction in terms!"

One can only imagine the smirk on scientific faces when they included this quote from Ivanka Trump, a spit party attendee: "I have a very low chance of becoming obese. That makes me exceedingly happy." Perhaps even happier than plastic surgery might make her.

Sing with me! Eeeee equals MC Squaaaaaared.

(Credit: CC Current Events)

The Review's authors go on to dismiss Barack Obama's and John McCain's views on autism, Sarah Palin's deep thoughts on fruit flies, and Julianne Moore, Demi Moore, Oprah Winfrey and Kate Moss on such varying subjects as 'natural' chemicals and detox diets.

The authors aim some of their toppest guns towards Tom Cruise, who sagely declared: "Psychiatry doesn't work. [...] When you study the effects it's a crime against humanity."

Professor Simon Wessely, a psychiatrist from Kings College, London shoots back: "The real crime against humanity continues to be the enduring misery caused by the major mental illnesses across the globe, and the continuing lack of resources devoted to supporting those afflicted and their families and to improving our currently inadequate treatments."

I found myself cheering for the scientists, until the Report's very last page. (Yup, I read all of it.)

For some strange reason they decided to go after the entirely innocent Mariah Carey and her explanation for naming the latest showcase of her modest talents e=mc2. She explained: "Emancipation equals Mariah Carey times two."

A painfully humorless mathematician, Dr. David Leslie, retorts in the Report: "Unfortunately, Mariah has misread the algebra. The two in the equation means c squared, not mc multiplied by two. The correct reading of the equation is E=mcc, so perhaps Mariah's re-interpretation should have been "Emancipation equals Mariah Carey Carey"? I would have been very happy to chat with her and check it out before she went to print."

Oh, come on, Dr. Leslie, why would Mariah need to confirm her artistic interpretations with you? I mean, you're no Oprah, are you?

I don't know who conducts sexuality experiments at the University of Sydney. And I refuse to wonder about their sex lives.

But the latest results of one of the University's experiments may leave many male readers' blood above safe temperature levels.

The researchers delved into the sexual biographies of 185 students and emitted some breathtaking conclusions.

Female arts students are the most likely to have sex. And the least likely? Oh, yes. Another dart at the genitals of male science students.

The research report, published in the journal Sexual Health, declared: "Males in the study were less likely to have had sex as a group compared to the group of females in the sample (....) Science students were also less likely to have had sex compared to their counterparts in other faculties."

This is a lecture at the University of Sydney. Please note the highly-charged sexual atmosphere.

(Credit: CC Sailor Coruscant)

The report then cited a Sydney-based psychotherapist, Stephen Carroll, who made some humbling statements: "Who are the people at unis that go to the rave parties and the bar? It's not the nerdy boy science students."

The 'nerdy boy science students'? Is that not a little cliche along the lines of 'full of babbling bilge psychotherapists'? Is one to ignore the possibility that Mr. Carroll himself might, deep in his inner cortex, be worried that he is a little nerdy boy?

And how should one react to his suggestion that it is significant that many of those who come to study science in Sydney are foreigners? So foreigners find it more difficult to have sex in Sydney? Honestly, does anyone find it terribly difficult to have sex in Sydney? How many people are, in fact, sober enough NOT to have sex in Sydney? Even the Australian Prime Minister has admitted getting tipsy and going to a strip club.

In the words of my fine Australian friend, Justine: "It's a drinking culture. And you know what that leads to.."

Were the researchers not aware of the recent study from the University of California at Davis that suggested that women have a vast preference for male intelligence over dumb jockism, an attitude that holds for one-night stands, two-night stands and even longer-term relationships.

I am concerned about the University of Sydney's male boffin besmirchment because writing on this site has helped me become far more sensitive towards the complexities of the scientific mind. It has also helped me read the fine print of research reports.

The brains from Sydney appear to have reached their conclusion from a survey in which only 22% of those questioned were actually male. Which would mean that their evidence is based on the sex stories of merely 40.7 males. (One can only wonder how many of these were foreign males).

Did the researchers wonder why so few males participated? Was it because they were too shy to talk about their shamefully constricted sex lives?

Or was it because they were too busy on a quiet lab floor or kitchen counter, enjoying blissful conjoinment with a like mind?

In uncertain times like these, we are desperate to turn myth into reality.

Sex with Madonna really isn't all it's cracked up to be, according to those gossiping over her divorce. And there really are supranatural creatures out there that have evaded captivity, according to many explorers, scientists, and teenagers.

So if you're not persuaded that a Creepy Gnome really is terrorizing Northern Argentina, or that Bigfoot will ever be found (and certainly not by a couple of mendacious hicks) then perhaps you will believe Yoshiteru Takahashi.

Takahashi has caused a great stir over the last couple of days by displaying photographs of what he claims are Yeti footprints.

Takahashi took a seven-man team far up the Himalayas and, while he didn't manage to snap a picture of the Hairy One, he did take shots of 8-inch footprints, which, he claims, could not possibly be those of deer, wolves, or snow leopards.

Here's my first point of concern. Takahashi is the head of something called Yeti Project Japan. How many times have those who are looking for something otherworldly actually found something otherworldly?

This, apparently, was a Yeti sighting in Central Park.

(Credit: CC DoctorWho)

It's the same thing as looking for your missing purple sock. It doesn't matter how hard to try, you will not be the person to find it. It might be your wife, your daughter, your dog, or the man you called in to exterminate your rat population. But it won't be you. So I am already skeptical.

Takahashi claims he first saw a Yeti in 2003. According to Animal Planet he claimed to have first seen Yeti footprints in 1994.

Despite his nine motion-sensitive cameras on the most recent expedition, Takahashi's team failed to get a Yeti onto their Fuji. Still, Takahashi's belief is that the Yeti is around 5 feet tall, in other words not entirely dissimilar in height to Danny DeVito.

One wants to believe that Takahashi is an honorable man. One tries to believe that he has not faked these footprints in an attempt to get sponsorship for another climb. (On this occasion, his team spent 42 days on Dhaulagiri IV, the 25,135-foot peak that he believes is Yeti's patch). And one chooses to believe that he is just another obsessive who wants to be the man who proves the existence of the Yeti.

In various articles I have seen him described as a "scientist," a "mountaineer," and an "adventurer." However, Animal Planet calls him as a "house-fitter." So one has to keep wondering just what Takahashi's credentials are, other than the enthusiasm of a Japanese game show contestant.

"We'll keep coming back until we get the Yeti on film, and then all doubt will vanish," Takahashi is quoted as saying in the Daily Mail.

Will the Indomitable Man finally capture the Abominable Snowman? Well according to that impeccable news source, Pravda, President Theodore Roosevelt once saw a Bigfoot.

We must keep on dreaming, no?

Aren't you momentarily stunned when your cab driver or your shuttle driver at Hertz or your local car dealership says something that really makes you think? Don't you wonder how someone so smart ended up driving you around?

Please, therefore, consider what it must be like to be Douglas Prasher.

Prasher, or as he should be known, Dr. Prasher, makes around $8 an hour as a courtesy shuttle driver for an Alabama car dealer. And he's been stunned to hear that the fruits of his work have led to a Nobel Prize for chemistry--which just happened to be awarded to two other scientists.

A couple of years ago, Prasher was involved in a slightly different kind of shuttle--the one occasionally shot up by NASA. And a few years before that, in 1992 to be precise, he isolated the gene that makes jellyfish glow in the dark. At the time, he believed this discovery could be used to study some of humankind's most debilitating diseases. He was right.

It's just that at the very moment he made his breakthrough, his funding, which had once come from the American Cancer Society, ran out.

This picture was not taken at a Toyota dealership

(Credit: CC Pheezy)

He could have kept his work to himself. Instead, he mailed a couple of test tubes to Roger Tsien at the University of California and Martin Chalfie at Columbia University.

"It was more important to me to hand over the tool to other scientists with the funding than to have individual glory," Prasher told London's Daily Mail.

So how did he end up driving those nice folks in Alabama to and from Bill Penney's excellent and, no doubt, munificent Toyota dealership?

"After I gave up my work on the jellyfish, I eventually found another dream job, with the U.S. space program, but I was laid off in 2006 and I haven't been able to get another scientific position," Prasher said.

Prasher has three children and, apparently, had just taken out a large mortgage when he was laid off by NASA. But is it really possible that someone with so much evident ability can't get a more appropriate position in America's scientific community than helping to shift a Scion?

It's not as if Chalfie and Tsien don't concede Prasher's role. Tsien even sent him an e-mail to apologize. But doesn't Prasher deserve something more than a little acknowledgment?

If this were a movie--and perhaps it will be--Chalfie and Tsien would visit Prasher and offer him a cut of the $1.5 million Nobel Prize.

And then, in the last scene, he would get another knock on his door--a new sponsor to finance his future research. That sponsor would be Toyota, wouldn't it?

You're going to tell me life isn't like the movies, right?