Cordial Deconstruction

Observations from our shared single objective reality in a materialistic, naturalistic, & effectively macro-deterministic universe.

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Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 11, Season 2, Unearthed

Posted by Karl Withakay on January 11, 2010

Scott’s synopsis won’t be up until Tuesday night, since he will be writing his House review tonight, and he still has a day job.  Scott’s review and synopsis is now up.  It will be interesting to see how many hits I get on this Deconstruction post in the day it is up before Scott’s review is posted.  (1-12-10 Update: 79 hits prior to Scott’s post & link to me)

Clarification by Confusion

Technically this was an unaired episode from sometime during season one, and not really episode 11 of season two, which is why Charlie is still around and nobody is freaking out.

Something to Increase My Hits on the Search Engines

The number sequence that Lisa spoke was 68339 ALPHA ECHO 358 (68339AE358)

Philadelphia Experiment?

There is no ballistic missile submarine or any other current US Naval vessel named USS Glouster.  The last US ship in the US Navy to bear that name was a WWII Tacoma class frigate, USS Glouster (PF22).  All but one of the Ohio class ballistic missile submarines (the only ballistic missile submarines currently in US service) are named after states; the other is named after a US Senator.

EDIT 1-12-10:  Closed Captioning confirmed the name of the ship was USS Glouster.  In any case, there has never been a US Navy vessel named USS Gloster.

Near Death Experiences are Only That: Near Death

Quote from Walter:

“No one truly understands the nature of human consciousness, Peter.

I’ve  read documented cases of coma patients waking up and claiming that they had moved spirit-like to remote locations and witnessed events they couldn’t possibly have knowledge of.”

I’ve read documented cases of sightings of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, but that doesn’t mean I accept those documented claims.  What it sounds like Walter is really meaning to talk about here are near death experiences.  Without doing a lot of research to find good sources on near death experiences, I can point you to Dr. Steven Novella’s blog, Neurologica.  You can start on these pages, especially here, here, and here.  One point to keep in mind is that just because the heart is not beating and the lungs are not breathing, the body and brain are not actually dead.

Faith vs. Reason

Quote from Lisa’s mother regarding Olivia not being a religious woman:

“Then I imagine you sit in judgment of those of us who rely on our faith to guide our decisions about what is best for our loved ones.”

Olivia’s response was:

“No, I know what faith can mean to a person.”

My response would have been:

“I would hope that my loved ones would use the best available science and reason to decide what is best for me if I am unable to make those decisions myself, and that if they need it, faith would give them the strength to make and act on those rationally derived decisions.”

Skepticism- I Am Not sure That Word Means What You Think It Does

Quote from Peter while discussing God and religion with Olivia:

“Until I see it with my own eyes, I’m going to put my money on healthy skepticism.”

Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself–and you are the easiest person to fool.”  Skepticism is not about only believing what you see with your own eyes.  That is what many people who claim to be skeptics mistakenly think.  Per Feynman, you need to understand just how unreliable even your own powers of observation are.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job, Peter

Good job finding the spent 9mm shell casing, but how about you wait for the forensics team before picking it up and handling it with your ungloved hands?  They might want to photograph the casing in its original location and maybe even check it for prints.  Oh, wait, you day job is working as a consultant for the FBI, maybe you should think about quitting.

Quote of the Show

From Walter Bishop to the priest:

“Please allow me a moment to entertain my fantasies.  They often lead to a truth.”

Inhibit All You Want, But the Damage Would Already Have Been Done.

It is mentioned that Ruck was given a “highly experimental radiation inhibitor” as treatment for his radiation exposure.  Ruck’s file showed he had extreme radiation poisoning and was exposed to 600-1000 REM.  He didn’t need any kind of radiation inhibitor after the exposure, the damage would already have been done at the time of exposure, and he was no longer being exposed to any radiation to inhibit (unless he ingested a radio source).  He would need treatment to replace or repair the marrow, tissues, and cells damaged or killed by the exposure to radiation.

One of My Pet Peeves

The tranquilizer dart took Lisa down way, way too fast; it’s not a phaser set on stun.  If you’ve ever watched a nature documentary in which an animal was darted, you probably saw that the animal did not go down right away, and that it stayed awake for as long as a couple of minutes before going down.  This is because the dart is not shot directly into a vein or artery, and the tranquilizer takes time to be absorbed through the tissues the dart was shot into and take effect.  In order to take the target out anywhere near that fast with a tranq dart, the does would be dangerously close to a lethal dose once it was fully absorbed.  It must have been a very short acting tranquilizer or paralytic anyway, because Lisa was fully awake as she was wheeled out on the gurney only minutes later.  Maybe they administered an antidote or counter-agent once they secured her.

Posted in Fringe, Science, Television | 3 Comments »

Fringe Deconstruction Link Page Added

Posted by Karl Withakay on January 7, 2010

One last week without Fringe before it starts up again.  In honor of the impending return of Fringe, at the advice of my friend Scott, I have created a topic parking page with direct links to all my Fringe Deconstructions.

You may notice a superficial similarity between my Fringe parking page and Scott’s, I swear that has nothing to do with me cutting and pasting the text from his page and changing the links.  🙂

My Fringe page can be accessed from a button in the button bar under the site banner at the top of the page.  You can of course bookmark it directly if you like, but I’d hope that when you visit this site you start at the main page and have opportunity to check out the occasional non-Fringe related posts I put up from time to time.

Posted in Fringe, Science, Television | 1 Comment »

Educate Yourself About Cell Phone Science

Posted by Karl Withakay on December 21, 2009

Maine is considering requiring cancer warnings on cell phones.  I could take the time to write a lengthy deconstruction regarding cell phones and non-ionizing radio frequency radiation, but why bother remaking the wheel when Steven Novella has already done an excellent job addressing the subject?

There’s just no science to support the hypothesis that cell phone use can cause cancer:  There’s no biological science to show a mechanism for cell phone use to cause cancer, and there’s no observational science to show cell phone use correlates to an increased risk of cancer.

What we have instead is an unsupported and mostly  implausible hypothesis that because non-ionizing radio frequency radiation from cell phones causes measurable biological effects and ionizing radiation can cause cancer, that cell phones probably cause cancer.  Give that to a politician who cares more about being seen to act on what is perceived to be (or can be promoted as) an important issue than they do about being genuinely productive (or about taking the time to properly educate themselves on an issue before acting), and you get proposals for new, unneeded, unscientific laws.

Indoor light is non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation with far more energy than the radio frequency radiation of cell phones, and it too produces measurable biological effects, but nobody seems to be proposing cancer warnings on light bulbs.  Oh, snap!  …  Never mind, set your hair on fire and run for the hills.

Posted in Critical Thinking, Criticism, Heads Up, Media, Medicine / Health, Science, Skepticism, Yahoo Features | Leave a Comment »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 10, Season 2, Grey Matters

Posted by Karl Withakay on December 10, 2009

As usual, an episode synopsis can be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent.

Good and Bad for Me

On one hand, I’m a little disappointed there wasn’t more material that I found Deconstruction-worthy, but on the other hand, since I got a late start tonight due to having been out seeing Star Wars in Concert, I’m glad to finish my post at about the same time I usually do.  This time, Scott had much more to say.

Non-Secure Endpoint

Olivia asks for privacy when she logs into the FBI website from the institute’s computer.  I guess it never occurred to her that the institute might have logging/monitoring on the firewall and client PC such that her ID & password as well as all the data viewed in her session were captured.  It also seems a little odd that the FBI has online web access to their “secure” system.  Assuming a genuine secure connection, she doesn’t have to worry about the firewall too much but TLS & SSL aren’t secure if one of the endpoints isn’t secure, and there’s no way Olivia could have known what kind of monitoring or spyware was on the client PC she used to connect in to the FBI database.

Arithmomania?

As far as I can tell from my very limited research on Wikipedia plus a little Google-Fu, arithmomania is an obsession with counting, and not an obsession with a particular number like 28.

Did He Just Say Silicone?

Peter to Walter about the tracking implant:

“You have absolutely nothing to worry about because it’s made out of silicone, and you know as well as I do that it won’t be affected by the machine.”

I listened to that dialog a dozen times to be sure, and Peter clearly said silicone and not silicon.  Even the closed captioning people knew what he should have said, as the captioning read “silicon” instead of “silicone”.

Also, I don’t know if it would be a problem for the MRI or not, but the implant would probably have some metal, like a battery and contacts and surface leads to connect the battery to the chip, etc.

Dead in 2 Minutes, AOK in 1 Minute 59 Seconds.

Another example of the “As long as you administer the antidote 1 second before death, you’re OK.” cliché Hollywood loves so much.  Poison doesn’t generally work that way in the real world, of course; timing is not so precise, and there would usually be permanent or lingering damage from such a late administration of the antidote.  The idea that the order the 3 vials are injected in being critical is interesting, but since there was no interval between administering each vial, it seems unlikely the order could have really mattered very much.

Posted in Fringe, Science, Television | 3 Comments »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 9, Season 2, Snakehead

Posted by Karl Withakay on December 3, 2009

As usual, an episode synopsis can be found over at Scott’s Polite Dissent.

Astrid Should Be Smarter Than That

I’d be a little more careful handling a large, unknown creature like that. Two people trying to hold the creature in their arms while one person tries to extract fluid with a syringe seems like a really bad idea. How about at least holding it down on a table, or better yet, restraining it on the table?

HDTV Prop Convenience Theater

The sticker on the air purifier in the woman’s house read:

MEDICAL AIR SYSTEMS

ULTRASONIC AIR PURIFIER

The sticker on the window read,

MEETS FDA STANDARDS

HERMETICALLY SEALED

CANZI MEDICAL GLASS MFG.

I’ll concede that it’s very plausible that the sticker would be on the window, but the air filter looks like it’s designed to blend in with the room and the sticker sticks out like a sore thumb. I call Prop Convenience Theater on the air purifier sticker.

No, That Means You Should See a Doctor Right Away

Conversation between Astrid and Walter.

Astrid:

“Walter, what if you’re infected with one of those worms?”

Walter:

“I’ve tested my blood and liver function; I’m fine.

In fact, my white cell count is through the roof. I have several new antibodies in my blood, and even the gas I had earlier is gone.”

First of all, it would be possible for Walter to have one or more worms implanted in him and them not yet be detectable; it’s only been a few hours since he was attacked.

Second, if his white blood count is “through the roof”, especially so soon after the bite, my first though would be a severe infection, probably even sepsis, and that he should seek emergency treatment immediately.

Two Different Shows Feature Helminthic Therapy Within Weeks of Each Other!

The November 17th episode of House also featured treatment with parasitic worms.

Bad Medicine, Or This is Where I Try to Horn In On Scott’s Territory

Astrid explaining a picture on the computer screen:

“Ancylostoma Duodenale. An intestinal hookworm. It’s about 10mm long”

Walter:

“Chinese Medicine! Ancylostoma could be used for the treatment of chronic asthma. People are purposefully infected and walk around their entire lives with it.”

We’re good here so far. Helminthic therapy, treating someone by intentionally infecting them with parasitic worms, isn’t just “Chinese medicine”, it’s being investigated for use in scientific medicine.

But then the writers continue…

Walter:

“I believe it’s the parasite’s lymph gland that’s the real prize. It secretes a remarkable immune boosting enzyme.”

Peter:

“Immune boosting? So you might take that if you has, say a severe phobia of germs?”

Walter:

“Or if you wanted to treat any number of immune deficiency disorders.”

Except that as far as I can tell, only vertebrates have lymphatic systems, (hook worms are invertebrates), and that’s not how or why Helminthic therapy works.

Helminthic therapy is used for autoimmune diseases like Celiac and disorders of inflammation and over activity of the immune system like allergies and asthma. It is not used for immune deficiency disorders; the last thing you want to do with an immune compromised patient is intentionally introduce a parasitic infection. Minor infections that would normally not cause significant problems for a healthy individual such as cryptosporidium can be severe, lifelong chronic infections for immune compromised individuals.

It is believed that Helminthic therapy works by basically giving the body’s immune system something to focus its attention on so it stops attacking the body. It does not boost the immune system; that’s the last thing you want to do with autoimmune disorders, where the immune system is over aggressive and attacking the body.

Please see this excellent article by Dr. Mark Crislip, MD, an infectious disease specialist, regarding the concept of “boosting the immune system” and whether the it has any real meaning or if it would be a good idea if it was possible.

Saw it Coming a Mile Away

Hands up all those who didn’t figure it was the son with the germ problem right away. No hands? I didn’t think so.

Jitterbug Anyone?

Why hasn’t Peter given Walter a cell phone with important numbers programmed instead of a 3X5 card? Walter would probably so infatuated with the fancy gadget that he’d never forget he had it like he did that stupid card.

Question Better Addresses by a Someone Who’s a Doctor, Like Scott

If Astrid was knocked unconscious, would she be able to recall what happened to her immediately upon regaining consciousness? I seem to remember from several episodes of Medical Detectives and Forensics Files that generally that would not be the case.

Astrid Must Have Been in the Same Class at the Academy As Olivia

Astrid:

“I don’t know how they knew we had the worm”

Gee, all you and Walter did was mention a four foot hook worm to a Chinese shop keeper selling hook works, and the next thing you know, Chinese gang members are back at your lab stealing your giant hook worm. Go figure.

Peter Does Have a Death Wish

WTF was Peter thinking, going in there by himself? What, exactly, was his cunning plan, to take on an entire Chinese gang by himself?

As My College Lit Teacher Used to Say, “FORESHADOWING, PEOPLE- FORESHADOWING!”

Anyone want to bet that the tracking device in Walter’s neck becomes very important in a later episode?

Posted in Fringe, Medicine / Health, Prop Convenience Theater, Science, Television | 1 Comment »

Deconstruction Review of Fringe, Episode 8, Season 2, August

Posted by Karl Withakay on November 19, 2009

As usual, an episode synopsis can be found over at Polite Dissent.

I Tend To Notice Gun Play

The campus security guard fired 6 shots, and then his gun would not fire anymore.  He was shooting a medium frame Glock, likely either a model 19 in 9x19mm or a 23 in .40 S&W.  The smallest magazine capacity in the medium Glocks (which they term compact) is the model 38 in .45 ACP, which has a standard mag capacity of 8, and the other models mentioned have mag capacities of 15 & 13 respectively.  Either the mag was not fully loaded, or the 7th round was a dud.  Considering the slide did not lock back after the last round fired, I must conclude it was a dud.

High Speed Camera or Underpowered Bullet?  (Or Physics is Fun!)

As the Fringe team is watching the video of the guard shooting at the Watcher, they play it back one frame at a time.  We see the bullet travel about one hand length from one frame to the next.  If we assume the video was an ATSC HD recording at 60 frames/second, and assume the distance traveled in one frame was appx 7.5 inches (the average length of a male human hand, according to Wikipedia), we can calculate the speed of the bullet to be roughly 450 feet/second (225feet/second if the video was NTSC 30 frames/second).  This is entirely too slow for any bullet fired from a Glock semi auto pistol (even if the target was 100 yards away).  The slowest bullet you would likely fire from any model Glock would be a .45 cal 230 grain bullet (7000 grains to a pound) traveling at appx 850 f/s from the muzzle (788f/s @ 100yds).  If we assume the last round fired was a dud, we can speculate that it was a bad lot of ammo, and the round seen in the video was underpowered.

If we assume the round was not underpowered, we can calculate an estimated frame rate required to produce the video seen.  Depending on the caliber and load used in the Glock, the velocity of the bullet would have been between about 850 and 1350 f/s.  That works out to between 130 & 180 frames per second.  It seems unlikely the campus uses high speed video, so we’re back to a defective lot of ammo.

Bad Gag Idea

It’s my understanding that cleave gags like that aren’t very good for keeping a person quite.  They can’t vocalize well, but can still make considerable noise.  Try keeping your mouth completely closed and see how much noise you can make through your nose alone; you can make even more noise with just a cleave style gag in your mouth.  Additionally, it’s actually fairly dangerous to use a gag like that.  If the person developed sinus congestion and couldn’t breath through their nostrils, they may not be able to take enough air in through their obstructed mouth.  Chocking is a major danger if the person were to vomit, say due to a gag reflex.

Is this the FBI or the Blood Hound Gang?

Broyles:

Her name is Christine Hollis; 27 years old, in a masters program for fine arts at B.U..  As far as we can tell, she’s no one special.  Parents deceased, no siblings, no arrest record, twenty-seven of her dollars in a bank account.  Nothing unusual about her.

Olivia:

Do we have an address?

Broyles:

We’re working on it.

OK, so the FBI was able to determine the victim’s name, age, education, family history, lack of arrest record, and bank account balance, but not her fracking address.  WTF???

But it Looks and Sounds Cool.

When Astrid is running the text from the Watcher’s Observer’s  journal through the computer, not only does the display rapidly cycle through various symbols (which I’ve mentioned before that computers don’t usually do when searching through or processing data), but the computer was also making computery sounds like you’d hear on a 1960’s or 1970’s sci-fi show/movie.

What Constitution?

Peter says he’s going to get Broyles to get a list of all the local hemophiliacs form hospital records.  Even if he got a warrant, that is privileged information, and he might have a hard time forcing the hospitals to release that information.  It would also be a HIPPA violation.

Occam’s Razor

So because there are various photos and paintings of bald guys in the background of historical events, the most likely conclusion is that there are time travelers showing up at important historical moments rather than that male pattern baldness begins affecting 1 in 4 men after age 30?  I’d be surprised if there weren’t bald men present in the crowds at historical events.

Did I Mention that I Know a Little Something About Guns?

That gun the assassin was using was a Desert Eagle.  The lightest caliber for which the Desert Eagle is .357 magnum, and .44 magnum is more common.  To be most effective, a suppressed (silenced) weapon needs to fire a subsonic bullet, otherwise you will still hear the crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier even if you do not hear the report of the gun itself.  It’s very questionable whether any subsonic load for the .357 could cycle the action of the Desert Eagle.  A different gun in .45ACP would have been a better choice, as most .45 loads are already subsonic.  Also, the suppressor on that gun was a little too short to be very effective.

When Do Product Placements Become Sellouts?

The scene when Olivia tried to call her niece seemed contrived and not particularly relevant to the flow of the story.  It seemed to exist solely for the purpose of product placement for Ford and their Sync technology, powered by Microsoft, as was prominently displayed on the screen for our benefit.

Peter With a Death Wish?

Making a move on a man with a loaded and cocked gun pressed against the back of your head is absolute stupidity unless you believe he’s going to pull the trigger immediately anyway.  The fact that the assassin hadn’t already pulled the trigger would tend to indicate there was at least a slim chance he might not shoot at all.

More Gun Stuff

Olivia fired only 4 rounds from her medium frame Glock before she ran out of ammo and the slide locked back.  Considering she likely had a 13 or 15 round mag, does she intentionally only load 4 rounds to keep the weight down, or did she forget to reload after the last time she fired her gun?

Third Rank Amateur or Cocky top Professional?

Broyles mentions to Olivia near the end of the episode that the ballistics tied the assassin’s gun to six unsolved homicides up and down the east coast.  Why would a pro use the same gun for six different murders?  If he gets caught with the gun, that’s six murder counts he could face charges for.  You could say he was so good at what he did that he’d never get caught so it didn’t matter, but he could got stopped for a routine traffic stop and searched for probable cause, or he could be in a an accident and knocked unconscious while in possession of a gun tied to six murders. I think a pro would always ditch the gun after the target was eliminated.

Yea Continuity Again!

The writers do seem to making a conscious effort to maintain continuity of details.  Broyles’ arm was in a sling in this week’s episode after having been shot by Peter in last week’s episode.  Good job writers!  You’d never have gotten a job on Star Trek The Next Generation.

Posted in Fringe, Product Placement, Science, Television | 6 Comments »

Minor Review of Fringe, Episode 7, Season 2, Of Human Action

Posted by Karl Withakay on November 12, 2009

As usual, an episode synopsis can be found over at Polite Dissent, assuming Scott had the intestinal fortitude to actually write one after this week’s steaming pile of fetid dingo’s kidneys

This week’s episode was bad.  It was so bad that I am anticipating Scott moving his Fringe Doomsday Clock ahead at least two minutes closer to midnight.

Call Randi; I want My Million Dollars

I take notes as I watch the show to make blogging about the episode easier.  This is an exact quote of one of the first notes I made while watching, “Prediction-  is the kid in control?”  I imagine most everyone else saw it coming from a million miles away also.

Bad Wiring?

I double checked with my day who, in addition to being an electronic engineer, was also a pretty handy home electrician, and that was the wrong slot of the outlet to stick a key in to electrocute yourself, unless the outlet was wired improperly.  Even if the clerk was grounded, that was the neutral connection that he stuck his key into, and not the hot connection and he was therefore not completing a circuit and thus could not be electrocuted, assuming the outlet was not wired backwards.

By the way, DO NOT TEST THIS OUT!!!  It was the wrong slot for the clerk to get electrocuted, but if you try it you’ll probably get electrocuted, die, and get nominated for a Darwin Award under the heading, “Some guy on the interwebz told me it was safe!”

Every house I’ve ever tested had at least one improperly wired outlet. DON’T BE STUPID

Is Randi There, I Still Want My Million Dollars

Later note from when Olivia is watching the video of the kid from the convenience store and says, “He looks so scared”, my note: “Not to me; he looks in control to me.”  Were there any viewers left yet that hadn’t figured it out yet?

Bad Science On the Brain 1 & 2 or Prop Convenience Theater?

While still on the hypnosis/ subliminal suggestion hypothesis, Walter says, “Given the extreme nature of the suggestions in the police woman’s case, I suspect there may be lesions on the brain, physical damage”  I call BS on this and suggest it is just an excuse to give Walter a reason to open the skull up and remove the brain.  No hypnotic suggestion outside of a comic book is going to cause lesions on the brain.

“Hematomas on the brain matter”, “the result of conflicting neural impulses; a conflict of mind and body”  I’m sure Scott will cover this one as well as the lesions, but I don’t think conflicting neural impulses can cause hematomas.  See BS comment above.  I won’t even start on the whole mind/brain thing the writers are implying.

It’s as Good a Guess as Anything Else Walter Might Pull Out of His Hindquarters

The whole auditory trance red herring was such blatant speculation on Walter’s part that Olivia should have approached it from a “There’s a good chance we’re wrong.” perspective instead of a “We can stake our lives on it.” angle like Olivia did, but were are talking about Olivia Dunham here, we’ve already established she’s not the brightest peg on the Lite-Brite.

Why the Womb Tunes?

Even assuming the auditory trance speculation was correct (which it turned out to not be anyway), why did they need the white noise rather than just using the hearing protection to isolate the agents from any outside noise at all, and why link back to the bear for the sound feed rather than hardwiring it into the electronic hearing protection the agents were wearing?

Somebody Call Adam Savage

Mythbusters has covered both parts of the exploding car myth presented here, both from gunshots and from crashes.  By the way, I’m pretty sure that when they show the exploded car on fire resting on its roof, you can see the flip jack used to flip the car over.

The Brain is Not Really a Computer as We Understand Computers

“The brain is a computer is a computer, doctor.  It’s an organic computer; it can be hijacked like any other.”  Sure, other than is doesn’t utilize binary logic or storage, doesn’t run off a discrete signal clock, lacks such discrete functional differentiation and lacks any input bus for direct programming or memory access, etc….so, not so much, no.  I’ll grant you that the brain is an organic thinking machine, but it’s not really what we would call a computer.

Maybe It’s True; It Nearly Crashed My Brain

“We’re going to crash his brain”  We call that a seizure, and they’re generally not good for you.

“This device will wipe his brain of all thoughts for a short amount of time.  He won’t be able to think.  He will become very disorientated; he may even vomit.”   So hopefully it only affects higher level functions so that his autonomic nervous system isn’t shut down as well, otherwise it could kill him.  I am surprised Walter didn’t say, “he might even pee himself.”.  It seems like a Walter kind of thing to say.

As Long as He Doesn’t Have Super Powers Now, What’s the Big Deal?

In answer to Walter’s question as to whether Tyler lost the mind control ability after the drugs wore off, Peter replied,

“You were right, which is a god thing, I guess.  It means he won’t do any time.  The kid goes on a killing spree and all they’re gonna do is make him talk it out with  a bunch of shrinks.”

Why, exactly does it mean he won’t do any time?  Unless one of the side effects or interactions of his medication was psychotic episodes, the kid is still a murderer, and may also be a psychopath.   The fact that he doesn’t have the power to do the same thing again is irrelevant.  That kid clearly needs to be warehoused somewhere for a long time.

It Could Have Been Worse, I Guess

At least they didn’t use the, “We only use 10% of our brains” myth the announcer did in the preview teaser for this episode.

Newspaper Headline Trivia

The headlines from the stories in the newspaper seen in this week’s episode were, “Local Resident Leads Protest Against Highway Expansion” by Tim White, Staff Writer and “Talks Stalled as Strike Looms”

Is That Light I See at the End of the Tunnel?

Next week’s episode looks more promising as I recognized Peter Woodward, son of The Equalizer, from the preview as the/one of the Observers.  He’s a damn fine actor; I just hope they give him something good to work with.  Scott’s Doomsday clock won’t have much time left on it after this week.

Posted in Fringe, Prop Convenience Theater, Science, Television | 2 Comments »

Minor Review of Fringe Episode 6, Season 2: Earthling

Posted by Karl Withakay on November 5, 2009

A plot synopsis can be found at Polite Dissent, as usual.

Ashes to Ashes

Interesting that the outside surface of the body retains all pigment and appearances, but internally the body is just ash.

Self Storage

Broyles keeping evidence in self storage implies one of the following: he doesn’t trust the FBI with some Fringe evidence, the FBI wasn’t going to keep the evidence, or the FBI is outsourcing their long term evidence storage needs to Dino’s storage.

Anti-Radiation?

Not only are the ash remains depleted of radioactive isotopes, but they apparently shield Geiger counters from background radiation as well.

Prop Convenience Theater #1

It was nice to see the computer screen during the FBI’s search of the hospital’s servers display a series of progress bars rather than the usual flashing or scrolling series of data you normally see for such searches on TV & in the movies.  (Computers generally don’t display every piece of data on screen during a search, as anyone who’s used the search for files/ folders function in Windows knows)

Hello, Am I Deaf or Just Dumb?

Why do people on TV & in the movies always repeatedly say “Hello…Hello!” when the voice of person talking on the other end is replaced with a dial tone?  Are they expecting the dial tone to reply?

Prop Convenience Theater #2

Just in case you couldn’t figure out that it was a lead acid battery the man was retrieving from his van, the prop master was kind enough put a giant label on the face of that battery that said “LEAD ACID BATTERY” in huge letters that were visible from the International Space Station in low Earth orbit.  I always buy LEAD ACID BATTERY brand batteries for my cars and boats, and so apparently did the man in the show because every single one of the numerous batteries he had was an identical LEAD ACID BATTERY brand battery.

Bad Radiation Science #1

Radioactivity is more of a phenomenon that it is a “thing”.  Nuclear radioactivity is the result of the decay of radioactive isotopes.  You can’t drain the radiation from something or collect it.  You would have to remove/ collect all radioactive materials from it to do so.

Bad Radiation Science #2

If a life form somehow needed to feed off of ionizing radiation, it could find far better sources to feed off of than human bodies.  Depending on what form of radiation it needed, (Alpha, Beta, Gamma/ X-Ray, or neutron, etc), there’s plenty of better sources likely located right in the hospitals themselves.  Heck, your average home basement is probably a better source of radioactivity than the human body.

Bad Radiation Science #3

Direct ionizing radiation (ionizing radiation other than neutron radiation) does not induce radioactivity or cause things to become radioactive*.  Things become radioactive when they are contaminated with radioactive materials.  Getting an X-ray does not make you radioactive or increase your radioactivity and would not make you more attractive to a radiation eating monster.

*  Extremely high energy particles, the kind produced in supernovas and particle accelerators, can be absorbed by an atom’s nucleus and render it unstable or break it apart into unstable daughter particles, but these particles are far more energetic than anything you normally find on Earth.

Couldn’t they have just traced the call when he checked his voice mail?

I mean, they suspected he was going to check it; why not just trace that call, especially considering he wouldn’t know they were trying to trace him.

Just For Fashion Fun

Why did Walter need to wear a bullet proof vest when Peter didn’t and they were right next to each other?  I’ll just chalk that up to Walter’s eccentricity and assume he just wanted to wear a vest for fun.

From Russia With Love?

Why did the casket/box they hauled the body away in have Russian writing on it?    Does the FBI, the NRC or the NEST contract out production of radiation caskets to Russia as some part of a non-proliferation agreement?  The Russians weren’t collecting the body, so the box shouldn’t have had Russian Writing; we have our own radiation caskets in the good old U.S.A.

Separated at Birth?

I wonder if that creature was related to the Smoke Monster from Lost.

Chemical Trivia

The chemical Walter mentions early in the show when attempting to analyze the formula is Titanium Tetrachloride.

Posted in Fringe, Prop Convenience Theater, Science, Television | 3 Comments »

Flash Forward Gets Schrödinger’s Cat a Little Wrong

Posted by Karl Withakay on October 29, 2009

Tonight’s episode of Flash Forward, “Scary Monsters and Super Creeps” contained a flawed portrayal of the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment (note the 2 separate links) in a conversation where a quantum physicist is trying to pick up a hot woman on a train by telling her he can explain what caused the flash forward.  After mentioning that the most basic concept she needed to understand was quantum superpositions, they have some witty flirting and then the conversation proceeds as follows:

Physicist:  “Imagine you have a cat, a teeny tiny cat that fits in the palm of your hand.  You also have a poisonous sardine.  Once we close your palm there are two possible scenarios: either the cat eats the sardine and dies or the cat doesn’t eat the sardine and lives.  Quantum physics says until we open your hand to discover the cat’s fate, both eventualities occur at the same time.  For us, the cat is both living and deceased.”

Hot Woman  “But how can that be?”

Physicist:  “That’s the miracle of quantum mechanics.  The observer get to decide.”

The problem is that this thought experiment leaves out an important element of the original, a quantum probability.  In the original experiment, the cat’s life or death is dependent not on a poisoned sardine, but on the potential decay of a radioactive isotope source.  If the source decays and emits a decay particle, a hammer triggered by a Geiger counter breaks a vial of poison, killing the cat; otherwise the cat lives.  The key is that the decay or non-decay of the isotope is a quantum probability, whereas the cat eating a poisoned sardine is not.

Schrödinger originated this thought experiment in an attempt to illustrate what he saw as a flaw in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.  According to quantum mechanics, the cat is both alive and dead (because the isotope has both decayed and not decayed) until the observer collapses the quantum wave function by observing the state of the cat (which is dependent on the state of the isotope), even though common sense says the cat was obviously either dead or alive before being observed.  The experiment also has nothing to do with the observer “deciding” anything.  The act of observation collapses the quantum wave function to one state or the other, but no choice of states is involved or possible.

The Flash Forward thought experiment was an not an example of quantum superposition since no quantum state was involved, and it wasn’t Schrödinger’s/Schroedinger’s Cat.

Posted in Flash Forward, Science, Television | Tagged: , , , | 11 Comments »

Traces of Liquid Nitrogen

Posted by Karl Withakay on October 21, 2009

Tonight’s episode of NCIS, “Code of Conduct” featured the murder of a US Marine by ingestion of liquid nitrogen (LN2).  We are told by the forensic pathologist, Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard, played by David McCallum (fans of classic TV may know him better as Illya Kuryakin in The Man From Uncle) that the Marine “…ingested enough nitrogen to freeze his internal organs, but technically that was not the cause of death.” The Assistant medical examiner tells us that the cause of death was actually breathing, “The nitrogen gas entered his lungs, essentially suffocating him.”  Ducky also tells us that the victim lived on for several minutes after ingestion of the liquid nitrogen, and that “single gulp” was all that was necessary to kill the Marine.

It’s late, and although it would be an interesting and relatively easy exercise in math & chemistry I haven’t used since college (specific heat capacities, heat of vaporization of N2, heat of fusion of water, etc) to determine how much liquid nitrogen would be needed to freeze a human’s internal organs, I don’t feel like taking the time do it now.  Maybe I’ll do it before watching Mythbusters tomorrow.

What I do want to first address is the claim that the victim was asphyxiated when the nitrogen gas (produced when the liquid nitrogen in his stomach boiled) entered his lungs.  I’m not a doctor, but I see a few things wrong with this concept.  Problem one is that the stomach does not really  have a direct connecting pathway to the lungs.  I suppose you could argue that he essentially burped up so much nitrogen from his stomach, that it displaced the air around his nose and mouth so that he was only able to breathe nitrogen.  However, I’m thinking that his throat would have likely been frozen shut by the liquid nitrogen and that he would have choked to death instead.  It might also be possible for his carotid artery to have frozen shut and for him to have essentially died of a stroke.  I could be mistaken on htese points, and I’m hoping my friend Scott will chime in with a comment or two on this.

Also, several references were made in the episode to “traces of liquid nitrogen” being found or detected.  At atmospheric pressure and temperatures above 37K (-196C) nitrogen is a gas, and would not generally leave “traces” behind that would indicate that LN2 had previously been present.

Finally, it is claimed that the LN2 was stored in a lunchbox thermos, and it is implied that the victim may have drank the contents of the thermos on his own (rather than being forced to drink it) because he was caught unaware by the contents of the thermos.  I cry BS raise my eyebrow on both of these ideas.  I doubt that a lunchbox thermos would contain any LN2 for long enough to be used in this way.  Without a pressure relief valve, there’s a good chance it would pop its top off in less than a few hours.  I also doubt that the thermos wouldn’t have been cold enough for the victim to notice something was fishy; it’s a thermos, not a laboratory grade vacuum flask.

Posted in NCIS, Science, Television | 3 Comments »

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