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."
Reference to Soaking sponge in water (Score:2, Interesting)
Forgive me if its off-topic, but you can learn a lot from the movies...
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:4, Interesting)
Generally, the more intelligent, well-educated and well-established couples get children at a later age, and get fewer of them.
The "dumber" and lower-class people reproduce faster, and there will be more and more of them.
This effect is clearly visible both on a global scale (developed/developing countries) and locally (lower/upper class).
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Incoming lawsuits in: (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that educated women want to establish a career before becoming mothers means that they start a family in their late thirties and consequently have fewer kids, sometimes they have no family at all as it is too late for treatment when they discover infertility issues. Basically the smart people aren't replacing themselves.
Fuck, I sound like some Eugenics Nazi but really stop running yourselves down, have a shower and go out and breed people!
Re:Pop Corn Kills Microwave (Score:2, Interesting)
How to really sterilise a sponge (Score:3, Interesting)
IMHO a better way to sterilise a sponge is as follows:
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, until we have robots (or other technological solutions) that can take over most of the unskilled and lower-skilled work, we do need these "dumber" and lower-class people or the entire economy and our way of life will come to a standstill. Or do you really think, that if everybody was more intelligent and well-educated, that we'd have enough people with PhD's who would find satisfaction in working at the checkout of a supermarket or cleaning toilets or
The question then becomes: what if we do get to the point where we have robots (or whatever) to do most of the unskilled, lower-skilled and maybe even medium-skilled tasks? We'd have 5 billion people in the world, "mostly" not well-educated and due-to the evolutionary feedback up till now a "big" percentage would not be intelligent enough to be well-educated. What should become of these people? What would they do all day if they're all unemployed?
Even if natural selection would step in hard at that point and we'd be left with only with 1 billion people, all well-educated, what would THEY do all day? I mean, can you imagine 1 billion well-educated people working on innovations or being "artists"? Soon enough there would be little left to invent, or at least not enough to keep 1 billion people occupied, and then what? Spread out across the universe and colonize other planets? Sure, but seeing as everybody would ofcourse take all the knowledge with them there'd be nothing "real" to do on those planets as well, apart from just living.
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:1, Interesting)
Not only sponges: a microwave will melt metal (Score:5, Interesting)
You can for example melt and cast most metals:
http://net127.com/2005/01/24/melting-metals-in-a-
With some research, you may even be able to use your kitchen microwave to generate some fusion reactions.
Re:Incoming lawsuits in: (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Clearly, evolution as a system has failed... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Incoming lawsuits in: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Incoming lawsuits in: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Eugenics on Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
What makes this germane to this discussion is the text that was apparently felt by someone that needed to be included in the ad. Underneath, it stated first off, "all ariel sequences were simulated", followed by "Professional driver on closed course. Do not attempt."
Now, if you have to tell someone that measuring out 4000 feet on a runway and racing a car dropped from a helicopter @ 4000 feet is something you shouldn't attempt, I'd say that anyone so tempted should be allowed to go ahead and potentially remove themselves from the gene pool.
Re:You're being naive/optimistic (Score:2, Interesting)
G.W. Bush is really a meat puppet, everyone in politics seems to have their hand shoved inside him pulling strings. They seem to be taking turns with him now, but he is one of the worst presidents ever!
Now if you will excuse me, I have to get ready for HomeLand Security to come over. Aparently they now think I am a terrorist (See above statements) and I am about to be jailed without being told why. And there is no telling how long I am going to be held.
Other good things to put in microwaves (Score:2, Interesting)
Darwin's theory no longer works on humans (Score:3, Interesting)
The example in this case would be: guy hears about scientists sterilizing a sponge, guy rushes to the microwave in order to replicate the experiment, sponge catches fire, guy frantically jumps around in circles while microwave oven and room catches on fire, this sets off the fire alarm which in turn calls the firefighters, they extinguish the fire, guy sues everybody and their grandma, gets rich and procreates like mad..
We have basically neutralized effects of natural selection on us by assuring the survival and procreation of individuals that would be "less fit". Instead we are subjected mainly to genetic drift [wikipedia.org], the other effect that determines the gene pool of a population.
The movie Idiocracy [imdb.com] actually takes it a step further and postulates that stupidity actually increases the "fitness" of an individual (i.e. a stupid individual is more likely to have children), thus a bunch of generations down the line we'll be living in an "idiocracy" such as the one depicted