I'll take my SPAM in ASCII format, please

I was aware of the tactic of spammers using embedded image codes to display their product advertisements as a picture instead of text. This used to work against spam filters. Now, however, it is easy to download an email client that allows you to load images only when prompted. That ends that bit of SPAM being viable.

But how can one compete against ASCII art as spam? I received the following in my email today

                                                     hN           
vz    Zf  yT                                        eiW3     uO       qCKX     6k
CT    Vu                                           oQ7Kd0  DaLk      ZJ  Fa  PwsY
 w2  u3                                            wG59      rB          Qm    q1
 H1  ek   Ug   XQX3    ppURD  tmMT   mXzW          yiQD      xH          OB    yC
 Zl  FZ   lQ      TE  Xr  ZL  Nka       1b          hycT     1i         tZ     sz
  YoSF    z9   mZ2Lm  D5  Wj  GI     YKyOK  ToQV5    lqda    KB        VW      KB
  3Vyr    VR  hb  LJ  ba  BS  sZ    i5  kg           Dy6D    ca       VD       Tc
   IX     WZ  R0  ac  3F  f3  VC    hW  Qa         ZU4CbY    Pi      j0        cK
   Qo     6x   DzjxN   rczwT  in     1xYXa          bD8I     LG  Qb  tqdkJz    va
                          P4                         vo           
                      WcgTm                                          
                                                                                        nl                            
                                                                                        Az                            
                                                                                        WJ                            
o6  fP  r4   TY  HG  cl   a0  1i  yn         E54QW    Zfzf    l6Pi0 ECo     oa0F     6Tg0l    MBc          kXYN     4WDV    odmZk AXA
MD  hp  UV   5m  JY  mF   YV  Aj  3g        BN  Fo   4G  J2   uSM IQe ma   P0  19   BS  t8   D0 fp        mN  ei   4w  B1   iLQ Et1 ZS
 VSq6bxaO     WAphmqJK     8KsOng06         T4  kv   LeL2qJ   kl  ZS  Hu   jTDMc5   Ey  u4    1L          zJ       tg  fZ   Gf  uC  EI
 5w7yhHXo     WPUUujKv     eath3D4J         O5  ZZ   04       tH  aG  hi   pI       y8  yE     8l         cs       RP  za   oH  V3  vY
 wdjFpi0g     VMV2bbk9     mLRJ5QOd         Jy  7H   Ko  hf   Kk  mh  w6   a4  3G   oA  i4   FE 2r        Fx  Kf   HG  9U   Fs  nc  G7
  ZU  Rk       iU  kK       ka  Fn     oY    ZUCXP    B4MS    Vz  5p  Lc    4HqB     c6NWd    e8e    IU    RBk0     2b01    ZH  79  H3
                                                Zx               
                                            UEm8h 

Seriously. I'm simply amazed at the effort of spammers to bypass spam filters.

Of course the above could be easily rectified by calibrating the filter to remove gibberish, but then I wouldn't be able to read the Creationist emails I receive every now and then, and I enjoy reading those too much to set my filter to obliterate gibberish.

Grad School Tango

March Madness is creeping around the corner, and I am not referring to the college basketball tournament series.

I have accumulated an interesting list of graduate schools that have accepted me into their physical chemistry programs. They are University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign, University of Colorado at Boulder, John Hopkins University, and Ohio State University.

I visit UIUC this weekend. I will be at LA Tech the next weekend (March 7th and 8th) for the annual Society of Physics Students Zone 10 Meeting. The following weekend (March 14th-16th) I will be in Baltimore to visit JHU, and after JHU that next weekend (March 20th-23rd) I will be in Boulder, CO visiting the CU campus there. Then, for the last weekend of March (29th-30th), I will be visiting OSU.

Of course, the fun doesn't end when March wanes. The first weekend of April is the 235th ACS National Meeting & Exposition in New Orleans, LA. I guess there is consolation in the fact that I will not be adding more airline miles for that trip compared to the previously mentioned destinations. However, I have to prepare the two posters I will be presenting: one on a topic tangent to my undergraduate thesis and the other being my undergraduate thesis topic! Oi!

And when all is said and done, I must make a descision by mid April. I wonder where I will be next year.

Trace Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater

This week's cover story in C&E News addresses an aspect of drug therapy use which is neglected by the public but is a concern to the chemical science community. That is, thanks to our increase sensitivity in analytical intruments, we have been able to detect trace amounts of pharamceuticals in our waste water, such as synthetic estrogen, ibueprofen, and drugs used in chemotherapy.

It is important to consider, though, that these drugs appear in the parts per trillion concentration range (an equivalent of a picoliter of the drug per liter of water). So it isn't a direct threat to humans or our metabolisms, per se.

However, our metabolisms are not as sensitive to such trace amounts as organisms living in aqueous environments. The first half of the artilce discusses the feminization of certain fish species in waters where trace therapeutic estrogen has been discovered in the water table.

I admit that I have not read the journal articles listed in the C&NE article, but I certainly do hope at least one had analyzed the contents of the liver and other potential filtration organs of the fish for amounts of the estrogen ingested.

But why would i study the liver? The liver is where the majority of drugs are decomposed in the body. To me, it makes logical sense that pharmacology would occur similarly in the liver of the fish and of the human. A such, we could determine relative estrogen concentrations of the liver, and determine the amount of drug retention the fish are capable of possessing. That is, does the drug accumulate overtime in the fish or is it simply the presence of the minute concentrations in their environment which induces feminization?

Of course, humans have little to fear in their drinking water. The filtration techniques for waste water is different then water that will be consumed. The latter has the design to remove nearly all contaminents whereas the former is concerned with only making the water clear and have little to no odor.

Though this issue is not new, every year we develop more efficient technologies which may be implemented to help address the unintentional introduction of pharaceuticals into the environment. This is a worthy goal for engineers and chemists interested in lessoning the environmental impact human industires have on local ecologies.

Though this issue is nothing new, I hope the issue can be addressed efficiently and promptly. I believe one of the goals of humanity ought to be to lessen our impact on local ecologies and the global environment from our industries.

Science Fair Memories

I remember my first attempt at a science fair project. I thought I would be able to change the world by developing a hydroponic solution that would grow your plants quickly and to a plump size but with environmentally safe chemical species.

Everything was going as schedule. The control group consisted of a set of lima bean and tomato plants grown hydroponically with a commercially available solution. My experimental group consisted of the same type of plants in my newly formulated solution.

Weeks pass as I studied the various qualitative and quantitative variables I considered important in the study (color, foilage condition and density, oddities in flowers/seedpods/etc.). I even grew a second control group in potted soil. This group was where I pollinated the two other groups.

Well, long story short, when the fruits and pods were ready to be picked and examined via dissection, my dogs ate my experiment. Literally, about a month and a half of data collecting ended abruptly by the hunger of my pets. Not as revolutionary as I had hoped for, and I ended up only getting an honorable mention at the local fair.

What prompted this random track down memory lane? PZ has linked to several "bad" science fair projects. Actually, it's the posters comments on each, mostly centering around either what the student is wearing or the title of the presentation. Admittedly, coming up with titles are difficult when in junior high or high school, especially when you have to fit it on one of those poster-board fold-outs. but some of the titles are worth giggling over, especially "Extreme Wood" and "Who's Your Daddy?".

Enjoy.

Would Guns Prevent School Shootings/School Violence?

Should the recent wave of campus shootings pave the way for relaxing restrictions of firewarms on campus?

I don't think so. Gun pundits are capitalizing on the recent episodes of gun violence egregiously. Let us build a profile of the shooters in each case.

The Dawson College shooter had a deteriorating mental state and ultimately ended his life in suicide.

The Virginia Tech shooter was mentally unstable and committed suicide after his rampage.

The Louisiana Technical College shooter killed the two closest classmates to her and then committed suicide.

The Northern Illinois University shooter unloaded the clip reloaded, and then committed suicide.

What is the common link? They were mentally unstable. They planned on getting vengeance in some manner through violence. The thought of other people having guns probably never crossed their minds. They didn't care. They wanted to end their lives anyway. They saw themselves as an expendable instrument in the ultimate purpose of causing choas and pain to the ones who've hamred them, whether directly or indirectly.

Even if every student had a conceleaed weapon, I doubt that would have stopped the violence. I doubt that would have prevented the deaths. People would've still died regardless.

This is why I disagree with the various student activist groups that have formed as a response to the shootings. Their argument fails when considering the causes behind the shootings. For even when a hero emerges, it wouldn't be until after at least one person had been injured and the point of the shooting fulfilled according to the shooter.

Happy Valentines Day

Today is Valentine's Day. So for your special someone, you ought to consider giving them a special venerial disease.

I'm having a tough decision between which one I think looks the cutest: Chlamydia trachomitis or Neisseria gonorrhoeae ("the clap"). Which would your significant other enjoy the most?

Candle Irony in Europe

Candlemakers in Europe are disgruntled with Chinese candles flooding the market, causing a lose of business to their industry.

My economist friend finds irony in this. Does anyone remember Bastiat's famous candlestick makers' petition? Basically, the French candlemakers wanted the French government to force its citizenry to use only artificial lighting indoors. This would, in effect, encourage the expansion of the industry that manufactures articifical lighting. The French people would prosper due to the increase in industry (more jobs, essentially) and the industry would benefit from the legislation through gaining profits. But his argument was based on something very peculiar:

If an orange from Lisbon sells for half the price of an orange from Paris, it is because the natural heat of the sun, which is, of course, free of charge, does for the former what the latter owes to artificial heating, which necessarily has to be paid for in the market.

Thus, when an orange reaches us from Portugal, one can say that it is given to us half free of charge, or, in other words, at half price as compared with those from Paris.

Now, it is precisely on the basis of its being semigratuitous (pardon the word) that you maintain it should be barred. You ask: ``How can French labour withstand the competition of foreign labour when the former has to do all the work, whereas the latter has to do only half, the sun taking care of the rest?'' But if the fact that a product is half free of charge leads you to exclude it from competition, how can its being totally free of charge induce you to admit it into competition? Either you are not consistent, or you should, after excluding what is half free of charge as harmful to our domestic industry, exclude what is totally gratuitous with all the more reason and with twice the zeal.

To take another example: When a product -- coal, iron, wheat, or textiles -- comes to us from abroad, and when we can acquire it for less labour than if we produced it ourselves, the difference is a gratuitous gift that is conferred up on us. The size of this gift is proportionate to the extent of this difference. It is a quarter, a half, or three-quarters of the value of the product if the foreigner asks of us only three-quarters, one-half, or one-quarter as high a price. It is as complete as it can be when the donor, like the sun in providing us with light, asks nothing from us. The question, and we pose it formally, is whether what you desire for France is the benefit of consumption free of charge or the alleged advantages of onerous production. Make your choice, but be logical; for as long as you ban, as you do, foreign coal, iron, wheat, and textiles, in proportion as their price approaches zero, how inconsistent it would be to admit the light of the sun, whose price is zero all day long!

Oh, the 19th century capitalist: what a funny and peculiar mode of thinking they endured!

Answering Nature's Challenge

Nature's chemistry blog, thescepticalchemist, has issued a challenge. Okay, not really a horrible challenge, but one which does make one think:

Here's a challenge for you - imagine you're setting up a general chemistry
journal and you have a total editorial team of four - how do you break down the
areas of expertise? Along traditional lines, or something different?

That is quite a difficult task. Chemistry has gotten its nose into so many different disciplines, it's a bit sickening. But, I think the safest bet would be to follow the traditional labels: Analytical, Inorganic, Organic, and Physical. Of course, those generic titles do grossly oversimplify the inter-relatedness of each discipline, it is probably the most reasonable approach.

Any other takes on the challenge? I don't have the mind of an editor, so my answer is probably the incorrect one.

There's a reason I'm registered Independent

I discovered two distrubing things this morning.

The first is Hillary Clinton receiving a quasi-endorsement from Anne Coulter (under the condition that McCain becomes the GOP candidate). The second was a Swedish perspective on American Leftism.

With the above YouTube video, I am forced to concur with Dr. Martin Rundkvist of Aardvarchaeology. The progressive movement of America is under-represented by the current party leaders in the primaries. The "change" proposed by the two front-runners amount to a miniscule bump toward the ultimate goals of leftists with views that align to modern European thought.

I wonder what happened to the zeal and the momentum. What events lead Europe to shape into the political system it possesses versus ours. Such things intrigue me with no end.

The Democratic Party's centrist bent prevents me from labelling myself a "True Democrat". Perhaps one day the party's heart will refocus itself onto progressive ideals and reassert itself as a powerful body. Until then, i will simply grit my teeth as I vote in November between a potential turd sandwich versus a potential douchbag.