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

Intentional Play on Words?

I’ve heard of blue bloods, but never blue bloods with blue blood.

Enhance!

Another show where we create resolution out of thin air and enhance a blur into recognizable image.

Scientific Method or Bust?

Walter:

“A wedding is the perfect laboratory.  You have the target group, the Stakers, and you have the control group, everyone else.”

Olivia:

“You think this was a science experiment?”

Hardly the perfect laboratory.  The conditions are essentially uncontrolled, and confounders are innumerable.   I think Walter is not talking about a typical scientific experiment conducted in a controlled environment such as a laboratory, but is actually describing a field trial.

Later Walter says:

“A scientist always tries to recreate his results.”

Well, technically a scientist conducts an experiment to determine whether to accept or reject the null hypotheses each time they do an experiment, and I think I know what Walter means, but intentionally trying to recreate your results is likely to result in success, but not good science.  I also suppose one could argue that a scientist does not “always” try to validate his results through repeated experimentation, and that ultimately results can only be truly validated by other researchers repeating the experiment independently.

Try Rephrasing That, Peter

Peter:

“You may have to rework your hypothesis, Walter.  Maybe this toxin isn’t transmitted genetically.”

Walter’s hypothesis was that the toxin targeted victims with specific genetic traits, not that the toxin was transmitted genetically.

Wow, Nice Tinker Toy Set

That was a REALLY complicated and massive molecule Walter was displaying on the screen, as in HUNDREDS of atoms worth.  I have a hard time believing a molecule that heavy could be quickly disseminated through the air, if it could be airborne at all.

Three Chances to Get it Right, & Two Were Wrong.

It sounded like Walter said “das seepferdchen” (neutral gender), but the closed captioning said “die seepferdchen” (feminine gender).  The correct form is “der seepferdchen” (masculine gender).  And some people say English is a gender biased language.

1-29-10 NOTE:  See comments section below that corrects my mistake regarding the correct form of the article “the” in German used in this context.

Das Herrenvolk

A toxin that kills all non pure-blood, ethnic Germans (whatever a pure blood, ethnic German is supposed to be) might not have worked out to well for old Adolf.

Coincidence?

So the one guy who buys Walter’s rare German book just happens to be an artist obsessed with the Nazis?

Oh Boy, Chemistry!

The reaction for producing chromium trioxide from sulfuric acid and sodium chromate is:  H₂SO₄ + Na₂CrO₄ → CrO₃ + Na₂SO₄ + H₂O.  The other products are water and sodium sulfate.  The other toxic mentioned is good old hydrogen cyanide HCN.

Safe, I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think it Does

Listen closely to me: Just because you do not currently detect any poison gas in the air of the suspected hideout of a poison gas creator, does not mean it’s safe to take off your gas mask, OK?

1-29-10 Followup: Intentional Play on Unspoken words?

Scott pointed out that I forgot to bring up the Prussian blue blood.  I forgot to review my notes after finishing the post, because it was in there.  I don’t have time to deconstruct the absurdity of the blueness of the blood, but do have time to cover the unspoken play on words:

Prussian blue, Prussia, Germany, Nazis…Access to East Prussia was one of the pretenses for the invasion of Poland by the Nazis in 1939, get it?  Is there anyway the color was intentionally Prussian blue to make us think Germany & Nazis?

2-3-10  Update

I made a followup post to this Deconstruction: Followup Deconstruction on Fringe, Episode 13, Season 2, The Bishop Revival

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.

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.

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.