Microwave Experiments Cause Sponge Disasters 517
gollum123 writes "Reports about a study that found microwave ovens can be used to sterilize kitchen sponges sent people hurrying to test the idea this week — with sometimes disastrous results. A team at the University of Florida found that two minutes in the microwave at full power could kill a range of bacteria, viruses and parasites on kitchen sponges. They described how they soaked the sponges in wastewater and then zapped them. But several experimenters evidently left out the crucial step of wetting the sponge. "Just wanted you to know that your article on microwaving sponges and scrubbers aroused my interest. However, when I put my sponge/scrubber into the microwave, it caught fire, smoked up the house, ruined my microwave, and pissed me off," one correspondent wrote in an e-mail to Reuters."
Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:0, Insightful)
Wankers.
And this qualifies as a story? Next up, NEWS FLASH: People are stupid!
You're being naive/optimistic (Score:5, Insightful)
This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You're being naive/optimistic (Score:5, Insightful)
People are just too damn stupid for their own good (Score:4, Insightful)
If you made mistakes dumb enough to kill you , you didn't get anybody to pull you out and nature did its thing and eliminated the "idiot's" gene.
Of course this had nothing to do with real accidents, but in the long term idiots would dissapear.
Nowadays there is no personal responsibility. People do their own mistakes and blame it on somebody else.
This idiot should have had at least his genitals burned so we wouldn't have anymore kids.
Mind you, I am all about protecting and subsidising the weakest, the handicapped, the sick and al. I just believe that dumb people that bring it upon themselves deserve no attention and no compassion whatsoever.
Re:A bit silly? (Score:4, Insightful)
You could easily read that as if the soaking in wastewater was just to add some nasties to zap.
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ignorance != Stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, but you say, taking things as fact without questioning why is a folly committed only by stupid people, thus making them ignorant. The two are really the same. I would then ask you why light is both a particle and a wave and why electrons jump to a different energy level when hit by the right frequencey of light. There's probably less than 1,000 people on the planet who can give a good answer to these questions, and unless you're one of them, you've committed the same folly as your average suburban mom - you still don't truly know why a microwave works.
Re:This just in... (Score:3, Insightful)
In defense of fools... (Score:5, Insightful)
People read the original article and played dumb for a bit, temporarily throwing out conventional wisdom regarding non-food objects in the microwave as they followed Reuter's authoritative instructions.
But, hey, this is slashdot and people don't play, rather, they are dumb, and we all have a good laugh at their misfortune while we're glad it was somebody else who ruined their microwave and not us.
And yes, I did make a whole bunch of toxic smoke years ago by forgetting to put the bowl of water while nuking a CD.
Re:Stupid People, Stupid Method (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure. According to Mr Jobs, that's what's happen inside their Cupertino HQ.
Doesn't matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, but rich parents typically bear rich kids (trust funds, inheritance, better opportunities, better educations leading to better paying jobs, etc.) and poor parents typically do not offspring that go on to make millions. Rags to riches (or riches to rags) *can* happen, but neither is commonplace. Similarly, kids do tend to reflect their parents' religion, social standing, morality, etc.
Don't assume that enviromental variables aren't inheritable. In most cases, I don't think that genetic predisposition can hold a candle to environmental predisposition. If Einstein was born to a family living in the slums (instead of an upper-middle class family), do you think he would have still come up Special Relativity? How nice it would be to pretend that he would; yet, it would be utterly naive to suppose that even an individual of Einstein's calibur could have completely overcome his environment, somehow educated himself, and then somehow pursued the academic community to listen to these crackpot "time dilation" theories coming from a man who could not afford a decent suit, let alone college.
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:4, Insightful)
I presume you're not an American?
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Errr, what the hell are you arguing? Seriously, I can't figure it out. That there's a finite limit to our intellectual pursuits and/or technological achievements? That existence itself is pointless? That smart people don't know how to have fun?
Society as a whole will always figure out something to itself occupied. Individuals that don't see the point anymore will inevitably withdraw from society and/or commit suicide--either way, removing themselves from the gene pool--leaving only those individuals who are able and willing to find a purpose. I don't see how intelligence or lack thereof has anything to do with it.
Re:This just in... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ignorance != Stupidity (Score:3, Insightful)
If you own a microwave and use a microwave, then you should know how to use one safely. Remaining ignorant of that is just stupid.
Re:Incoming lawsuits in: (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Eugenics on Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Eugenics is practiced with every prenatal screening, gene screening to discover genetic abnormalities prior to conception, and with almost every in-vitro process. Do you consider those "horrible"?
This is merely encouraging a subset to remove themselves from the gene pool. There's a major difference between showing someone cliff-diving and describing its wonders vs forcibly shoving someone off a cliff.
Or do you hold that the Darwin Awards website [darwinawards.com] is an abomination as well?
Re:People are just too damn stupid for their own g (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, you just hogtied people to a stone, and threw them in the lake. The ones that sank drowned, and the ones that did not survived.
Or you made them walk on burning coal. The ones that got burnmarks were killed, and the ones that did not could live.
This is called survival of the fittest.
Re:Eugenics on Slashdot (Score:1, Insightful)
The Nazis practiced genocide and encouraged eugenics. The fact that the distasteful former has so completely colored the latter to the point of tainting its meaning is obvious in your case.
The Nazis performed eugenics to an extreme degree. I think that eliminating "stupid" people (using an arbitrary definition of "stupid") by encouraging them to kill themselves would qualify as a moderate-to-extreme form of eugenics.
Eugenics is practiced with every prenatal screening, gene screening to discover genetic abnormalities prior to conception, and with almost every in-vitro process. Do you consider those "horrible"?
These are controversial ethical debates. Some people, especially the disabled community, do not believe that those who are born disabled should be screened out. Of course, the definition of "disability" and "disease" varies greatly.
This is merely encouraging a subset to remove themselves from the gene pool.
Deliberately encouraging people to kill themselves would... land you in a fair bit of trouble, I think.
Or do you hold that the Darwin Awards website is an abomination as well?
More like insensitivity to loved ones.
Re:Incoming lawsuits in: (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand what you are saying and largely agree but I kind of object to the "more capable" tag, perhaps "more mature", "more fortunate", "more materialistic" or just plain "wiser".
Wisdom and comfort are the twin goals of many humans, and often the reason for desiring wisdom is that it's seen as a path to comfort. Evolution does not have goals, it has survivours called "genes" who's lineage goes back billions of years, these "genes" are actually just patterns of interacting atoms originally created in exploding stars. "Strong people", "loyal people", "pious people", "educated people", ect, are the result of conceptual tools that humans use for dealing with each other, the deep rooted tribal tendencies [pointlesswasteoftime.com] found in our genectic makeup appeared long before our particular species did.
"....but really stop running yourselves down, have a shower and go out and breed people!"
I did that while my "more capable" friends finished high school, some went all the way into thier thirties totally clueless about kids or the value of a buck. I am now 47, my youngest is 21 and is getting married next year. Having worn collars of both colurs for a minimum of 15yrs I can attest that a good education can buy you time via a healthy paypack, intellectual satisfaction via interesting work, and the comfort of not fighting the checkout-chick to the death over a 50 cent overcharge. Personally, formal education doesn't rate highly with me in a relationship - after all, even the most "retarded" red-neck can teach you something.
Re:Incoming lawsuits in: (Score:5, Insightful)
No, common sense is not part of Darwin's theory. Natural selection is based on an organism's fitness to its environment. Since these people live in an environment that includes microwave ovens, sponges, and Reuters, their ability to interact with these elements without removing themselves from the gene pool is part of being 'fit' for their environment.
Re:People are just too damn stupid for their own g (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the ones that survived were burned for being witches. After all, how else could they survive? Talk about a shitty test.
Re:Incoming lawsuits in: (Score:3, Insightful)
To play devil's advocate, that's a very subjective definition of "smart." From the point of view of your genes, not having children is an incredibly stupid thing to do.
Rather than saying the human race is selecting for stupididy, you might well say that we are selecting for a willingnes to have children, even in adverse conditions (ie modern developed society, with its multitude of distractions from procreation).
Given that the human race will hopefully live in these conditions for a long time to come, having our gene pool strengthening the instinct to have children may be no bad thing, even if other desirable trits decline.
Re:Sounds like a college prank (Score:2, Insightful)
Potentially killing people in a fire just doesn't sound so funny.
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:3, Insightful)
It has a correlation to monetary issues, but is not "caused" by monetary issues. Diet has a bigger factor in IQ than anything you list, but then you could claim "societal or monetary" could affect diet. Perhaps you should have just said "environmental." That's the real buzz word for the debate. Is it genetic or environmental? And the answer is probably the same as height and many other things. It is 100% genetic, except where affected by the environment. That is to say, genetics sets up the baseline. The environment can cause deviations from he baseline, but the environment does not set the baseline. 1000 people from the same environment will vary wildly. 1000 people with the same genetics are quite close together. This has been shown with twins separated at birth and raised in vastly different environments ending up more similar than different, for hobbies, traints, and yes, results on IQ tests.
The people that imply enviroment has anything to do with IQ or height are trying to come up with excuses for differences between people. Why is it so bad that someone is "dumber" than someone else and it can't be changed? It is people that claim environment that imply a low IQ is a failing that must be explained away.
The Weird Thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The weird thing is that people are so afraid of bacteria that they are going be microwaving their sponges!! Not only that, I see they sell anti-bacteria material sponges pre-made at the store... and anti-bacterial soap... and anti-bacterial air-sprays (don't worry about lung cancer from breathing that crap!). Anti-bacterial teething rings... anti-bacterial towels... anti-bacterial shaving cream...
When did people get paranoid about bacteria all of a sudden? You gotta admit, bacteria isn't a significant problem for most people in the industrialized world, even without all the extreme anti bacteria tactics people are using.
Cruelty to Microbes (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, we're talking about a species that used eat stuff raw that had been sitting out in the sun for a couple hours, and beat it into edible sized pieces with sharp rocks. It's a species that still does eat stuff off the floor, picks its nose, and thinks nothing of touching computer keyboards or the handrail on city bus. And here we are worrying about ordinary household bacteria in a sponge that probably gets used in conjunction with some form of antibacterial detergent anyway.
Seriously, how many death certificates note "Cause of death: Scotch Brite scrubber sponge?" How much clinical evidence is there that disinfecting sponges increases longevity or improves your health?
At the same time, there is mounting evidence that moderate exposure (without overdoing it, of course) to microbes may bolster the immune system, and questions about whether antibacterial products might kill only the weakest pathogens, leaving no resource competition to stifle the growth of chemical-resistent bacterial strains.
Don't be paranoid. Most of the microbes out there never hurt anyone.