TheBigUpshot

Against any good sense, I have been reading some… alternative… news sources. It’s good for the mind to explore other points of view. I’m not afraid of madness. Indeed, I would prefer to flirt with insanity than be comfortably ignorant.

In any case, if you have not heard, some people think fluoridating water pollutes our body’s essential purity. The purity of our essence, in essence. I think that’s rather silly, myself. Our bodies are quite capable of handling a lot of junk (see my post on mercury) so I’m not worried. But still, if you want to cut down on fluoride intake, that seems like something we should be able to do.

Fluoride reacts with glass at low pH, so I got to thinking about how one might put drinking water in a glass pitcher with a drop of citrus juice and let it sit for a while. Maybe that would lower the concentration. Or maybe if you added a bit of calcium carbonate (chalk, or Tums brand antacid) that would cut it down.

It turns out that the calcium thing has been tried in order to remove fluoride from wastewater streams… I wonder why there is a lot of fluoride in wastewater at such high levels that it needs to be removed. Probably it’s being recovered for industrial purposes. In any case. It only works at high concentrations according to X. Fan et. al.

They looked at using a bunch of different materials like quartz, calcite, and apatite to see how much and how fast fluoride would attach itself. If you want to remove something from water, it’s a lot easier if it will attach itself to a solid - then you just let it settle out.

According to that paper, my glass idea was not so hot. Glass is a lot like quartz, and quartz doesn’t adsorb much fluoride at all at low concentrations. Drinking water has about 2 parts per million of fluoride. At that concentration, hydroxy apatite (a kind of rock) is much better. At pH 6 (a droop or two of lemon juice should do it) a bit of hydroxy apatite sand will remove 90% of fluoride.

There are commercial products that use activated alumina to remove fluoride, but that seems like overkill and it ends up putting aluminum into the water, which might be just as bad. Probably neither are really bad, but if you want to remove something because of superstition, it seems like you might not want to put something else in to be superstitious about.

Apatite is a mineral you can dig up or buy pure from a chemical supplier for ~$1 per gram. Don’t go blaming me if you end up drinking hydroxyapatite slurry and it makes you sick. I’m not recommending anything. I would wash and filter anything I was going to try along these lines. And I certainly would make sure I didn’t drink mineral slurry. But, honestly, I don’t mind the fluoride.

-Peter

Addendum as of 10-12-2008: It looks like reverse-osmosis filtration is really the way to go for this.  Reverse osmosis filtration removes basically everything and is a lot cheaper than bottled water (which probably has exactly the same crap you are trying to remove).

Tags: Science by Peter
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As you might have heard, I am in Germany. I like it a lot. The people here are helpful. And tolerant of my ignorance. I appreciate all of this. For the most part, German Engineering is everything I had heard and more. The trains and trams are on time and easy to navigate. The dorm room in which I am staying is nicely equipped and clearly designed to be very easy to clean - one could practically hose it out if need be. This is entirely unlike the dorm rooms I cut my teeth on in the states.

Those hexagonal beasts had so many nooks an crannies it was nearly impossible to get them clean. It was ridiculous. And two people in there! Three in some cases! Unbelievable. And expensive! almost three times the price of this little place I have rented for the month, even after the terrible exchange rate.

Yes, I will be here through August, but I’ll update as best I can.

Some fun lapses in German Engineering Sense: hotel shower faucet with a long metal handle (think kitchen faucet). It’s at elbow level, so is almost impossible to bump it when showering. Then try to reposition it quickly and brace yourself! You’re about to be scalded or frozen. Same hotel: both the room and building doors open inward and require a key to exit. The fire hazard is terrifying!

The other thing I’m not so fond of here is the bells. There’s a bell tower across the square form my room, and at totally random times (as best I can tell) it rings continuously for several minutes at a time. It’s like somebody just tells Quasimodo, “3:47? Sure, kid, knock yourself out. Good a time as any.”

I like bells as much as the next guy, but I’m thinking maybe ring it 4 times at 4 o’clock? That’s nice. Ring it off the hook for 5 min at 3:47? I don’t know. I thought that maybe it was a special occasion. Glockeläutentag or something. But no, it’s just how it works here.

-Peter

Addendum: today, the noon bell actually corresponded to noon, amazingly. What was great was that a dog down in the square below my window started to howl and didn’t stop until the bells did. It pretty much summed up my feelings.

Tags: Humor by Peter
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Since Peter is still lazing in Germany, we, here are going to discuss duck penises. Don’t question my Judgment! The publication of the discovery of the longest penis in the bird kingdom is worth noting. In the popular press article covering the discovery, Dr Raoul Mulder from the University of Melbourne is quoted as saying “I’m not fond of the ‘nudge nudge, wink wink’ comments by the authors.”

I beg to differ. If the your scientific legacy is the discovery of the single longest penis in the avian world, most of which is penis free, then I would suggest some nudging and winking is called for. Just to be clear, we’re talking about a 42 cm (17 inch) wang on a duck that is, itself, no longer than 15 inches.

Peter appraised me not too long ago about an interesting lab conversation in which the following question was discussed: if child-rearing responsibilities were not biologically biased to one gender ot the other, would the existance of a penetrative sexual pattern result in a dominant/submissive behavior pattern elsewhere in the species’ behavior? Yes, that is how he phrased it. All hoity-toity like that.

Well, it seems that the bird family has good examples of this: birds exist with and without “penetrative sexual organs,” and lay eggs. Compare ducks to chickens. Chickens mate using the “cloacal kiss.” It’s not as romantic as it sounds. Just as when humans kiss, they form a continuous tube from one rectum to the other, when birds mate, they form a continuous tube from one beak to the other. No penetration. But there’s still dominance. Hence the phrase ‘cock of the walk.’ Ducks, who have the penetratative dynamic, still leave the female to care for the eggs.

So, evidently, penetration is not a necessary condition for dominance. I’m sure that’s good news for somebody.

-The Jester

Tags: Humor, Science by Jester
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Well, so much for that whole ‘this lack of posts is going to change’ thing. So far we’ve seen two posts this week, and it’s Friday. Peter’s currently in Germany and we should spend a moment speculating on just what he’s doing there.

What he probably should be doing is learning the German language by speaking with German people. What he probably is doing is sitting in a room much like his one room apartment. The only real distinction between the room he left and the one he found is that one is very far away from work. And what will he do in this room very far away from work? Work. that’s what he will do. We don’t have to guess.

So there he is in Bavaria, working on something or other (you can’t bet it is not something amusing to you or me). So: what is amusing these days? I’m amused by the runner who has no legs.

That’s not a joke, either. A double amputee is competing this year in the Olympics. Not the Special Olympics. I’m almost disappointed that he won the suit to get into the Big Olympics - wouldn’t it be great if the Special Olympics evolved into the main spectacle? It could become the technological and human struggle for synergistic greatness and achievement. I think that would be great.

It would be virtually the opposite of this little endeavor which is a human struggle for synergistic posting three times a week.

It seems I have to do everything myself.

-The Jester

Tags: Humor by Jester
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