Halloween. The day where we, the living, dress in strange outfits to confuse the spirits who roam among us. Or, conversely, the day where North America’s sugar intake trebles and the good people at Nestle and Hershey do little jigs around their respective offices, commemorating one of the greatest marketing coups of the 20th century.

Whichever.

But Nunc Scio likes to celebrate Halloween in its own way. So here, for your reading enjoyment is an index of truly scary things, historical and contemporary, that happened on or around this fine holiday.

• According to traditional accounts, Oct. 31, 2007 was the day Martin Luther chose to pin his 95 Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. This event kicked off the Protestant Reformation, and forever cleaved the Christian Church into dueling sects of guilt-ridden party animals and dour, black-wearing capitalists. Scary for: the Pope, the Catholic Church, and makers of fine church doors now forced to reckon with the wanton politicization of their product.
• Despite being rendered largely obsolete by machine guns and massed artillery, Australian cavalry troops launched a surprise cavalry charge on the Turkish-defended town of Beersheba on October 31, 1917. The really surprising thing about this tactical gambit was that it actually worked, marking the last successful cavalry charge in military history. Scary for: Turkish soldiers, horses, and those with an unswerving faith in the power of technology.
• On Halloween, 1922, Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy, dragging it into two decades of fascism, war, and defeat. Scary for: Italians, friends of democracy, and people who dislike killing dictators and hanging their corpses from meathooks in front of gas stations.
• Magician and escapologist Harry Houdini died on October 31, 1926, proving yet again the difficulty of escaping from multiple blows to the abdomen. Or, if you believe the conspiracy theorists, a band of marauding spiritualist fraudsters. Scary for: escape artists, boxers, or anyone who hates the letter ‘H’.
• On Halloween, 2007, reports begin to surface that Iraq’s Mosul Dam is dangerously near collapse, threatening to unleash a trillion-gallon wave on the cities of Mosul and Baghdad. To put that in perspective, take the worst thing you can think of, multiply it by 10, then stick your head in a bucket of water. Scary for: residents of Mosul, and anybody who requires oxygen to live.
• In the week leading up to Halloween, 2007, reports begin to emerge from India of trees eating cows. And you’ve got to wonder: once trees start eating cows, can man-eating trees be far behind? Scary for: anybody who lives near, or conducts a portion of their daily business by, a tree.

So there you go. The world is a scary, scary place…at least if you belong to certain select constituencies. But I think we can all agree: man-eating trees are bad news.

The typical Jack-o-Lantern. Scary, yes. But can it eat you?

Karl Marx, the authour of Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto, may owe more to a thoroughly unpleasant skin disorder than historical materialism. From the Globe and Mail:

Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology at the University of East Anglia, believes the revolutionary thinker had hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) in which the apocrine sweat glands – found mainly in the armpits and groin – become blocked and inflamed.

“In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem,” said Dr. Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology.

“This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing.”

Interesting theory. I’m not entirely convinced, especially since Dr. Shuster’s boils-alienation connection seems predicated on a total misreading of the famous thinker. And, it’s hard to chalk up Marx’s entire critical enterprise to boils. Of course, he did make this comment to Friedrich Engels in 1867:

“The bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles until their dying day.”

Well, we will now, anyway.

This ranks up there with the ‘Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo because of his hemorrhoids’ theory. Totally reductionist, but somewhat compelling. And gross. 

H/T to MN for this one.

So itchy.

Looks like this week is shaping up with an ‘Unfortunate Things Done to Animals’ theme on Nunc Scio. Yesterday, we had the story of how scientists discovered the world’s oldest animal by killing it. Today, we have pigeons-as-missile-guidance-systems.

During WWII, weapon designers had a problem. Missile guidance systems were in their infancy, and could easily be jammed by enemy defenses. So they thought to themselves, “what can we use that can’t be jammed?” The answer was simple: pigeons. They may be dumb flying rats, but by golly, they can sure fly a missile. And from this totally bizarre premise, Project Orcon (Organic Control) was born. From Wikipedia:

The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognize the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile’s flight controls, cause the missile to change course. Three pigeons were to control the bomb’s direction by majority rule.

I love that the pigeon-guided missile was a democracy. So progressive, those pigeons.

Democratic pretensions aside, the pigeon missiles never worked very well. The idea was briefly revived in 1948, but again dropped. No word on whether the cancellation was due to unacceptable casualties among old men sitting on park benches and tossing out bread crumbs. I mean, the pigeon is gonna go where it wants to go.

Interestingly, this the world’s only experiment with organic control. There was the American Bat Bomb and the horrendous Soviet Anti-Tank Dog. The latter actually saw service in battle, up until the point that a contigent of the explosive-laden canines went nuts, and forced the retreat of an entire Soviet division. I would say something here about teaching old dogs new tricks, but that seems somewhat tasteless.

H/T to Kottke.org for this one.

The last word in modern military technology. And eating garbage.

Humans are marvelous creatures. One of our more endearing traits is to accept apparently contradictory ideas with a smile and without a second thought. Example: no one seems to think it odd that the Manhattan Project- which gave us the ultimate spicy meatball of atomic weapons- was based primarily in Los Alamos, New Mexico. And if the Pace Salsa ads are to be believed, New Mexico is to New York as Poland is to the Wermacht.

But a new book,  The Manhattan Project, reveals the largely secret origins of the Allies’ nuclear weapons program- smack dab in the middle of North America’s largest urban centre.

Turns out, Manhattan had at least 10 sites dedicated to the A-Bomb project, most of which are still standing. Columbia University was heavily involved, and at one point the entire football team was enlisted to truck crates of Uranium around campus. I’d be interested to find out how the football team did that year- did they a) lose, due to acute radiation poisoning, or b) have their best season ever, since their quarterback ‘somehow’ developed the ability to shoot lasers out of his eyes?

The vast majority of New Yorkers have no idea of their city’s nuclear heritage. Probably because none of the former nuke sites are marked. But fear not: according to the US Department of Energy, “Radiological surveys show that the site now meets applicable requirements for unrestricted use.” Phew.

So there you go. The Manhattan Project’s name actually makes a lot of sense. Take that, New Mexico.

Live from New York…

I like science. Science does groovy things like cure diseases, put people on the moon, and make twinkies last for a million years. But sometimes you have to wonder about the scientists.

The zoological world is all abuzz with the discovery of the oldest animal ever recorded. It is a clam, an Arctica islandica to be precise, and it is somewhere between 405 and 410 years old. To put that in perspective, the clam was an awkward teenager back when Shakespeare was writing Hamlet.

But sadly, Rip Van Clam is now dead. It was killed by scientists who had to saw through its shell so they could count its growth layers to figure out how old it actually was.

Said researcher Al Wanamaker:

“Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it. For our work it’s a bonus, but it wasn’t good for this particular animal.”

Well, duh. Congratulations, guys. You’ve managed to discover the world’s oldest animal and prevent it from getting any older all in one fell swoop.

In unrelated news, I now plan on discovering the solar system’s largest asteroid by blowing it up.

Just because you have an advanced science degree doesn’t mean you always make the best decisions about your work! If you want to look into another area of expertise, try online universities. You can earn your Masters or Bachelors degree online in your free time so that you can pursue the career of your dreams, whether it’s science or zoology.

From the CBC:

An eight-centimetre-long tress of hair supposedly clipped from the head of Ernesto “Che” Guevara grossed $100,000 at a U.S. auction on Thursday, with a Houston bookshop owner taking home the Marxist rebel’s iconic locks.

Ewwwww. Man, people sure do dumb things. Of course, what really rankles here is that, as a bald man, neither myself or my heirs will be able to financially benefit when I inevitably lead a revolution to overthrow some tyrannical something-or-other. Unless…

Ewwwww.

The UK’s Daily Mail has an article out today, allegedly containting an ‘alarming prediction‘ of humanity’s genetic future.

According to ‘evolutionary theorist’ Oliver Curry at the London School of Economics, humans will split into two separate species- a tall, intelligent breed of super-foxy people, and a troll-like genetic underclass. Said Dr. Curry:

“The report suggests that the future of man will be a story of the good, the bad and the ugly. While science and technology have the potential to create an ideal habitat for humanity over the next millennium, there is the possibility of a monumental genetic hangover over the subsequent millennia due to an over-reliance on technology reducing our natural capacity to resist disease, or our evolved ability to get along with each other. After that, things could get ugly, with the possible emergence of genetic ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’.”  

An interesting theory, to be sure. But there’s something fishy here. First, Curry is not a biologist, so I suspect his predictions need to be taken with a grain of salt. Second,  his report was made for a men’s satellite TV channel, Bravo. It features ‘Dog: The Bounty Hunter’ and a healthy assortment of half-naked women. So perhaps their publication standards aren’t as high as say, oh, any reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal.

And the kicker: he’s clearly stolen the idea for his report from H.G. Well’s classic novel The Time Machine. You know, the one with the genetically superior Eloi ruling over the beastlike, subterranean Morlocks in the distant future. Sound familiar? My theory is that Doc Curry was a bit behind on his deadlines and decided to cannibalize a novel, pad it our with some tepid science, and call it a report. Lame.

Lucky for him, H.G. Wells never built an actual time machine. Otherwise, a pissed-off Victorian gentleman would be beating Curry with a crowbar somewhere in downtown London.

UPDATE [28/10/2007] The Bad Science blog has a go at ol’ Doc Curry.