Date started: 08/12/19 Date completed: 08/12/19 Date first published: 08/12/19
I'm going to start with a rundown of who Mary Sue is, to give you context:
An observation was made, that Star Trek fan-fiction often featured unrealistically and story-ruiningly over-competent characters. The observer then made a parody of this fan-fic malaise, calling their main character Mary Sue - a 15.5 year old heroine that left all of the Star Trek protagonists in the shade.
And that's Mary Sue - a character that is, to put it in two words of unsurpassable succinctness - nauseatingly wonderful.
You might wonder what's wrong with a character being wonderful. Isn't that the point of a hero/heroine? That they're so wonderful that they save the day, and get the girl, and so on and on and on... Well, no. It isn't. Close, but no vaping pen.
What makes strong characters are not their strengths, but their weaknesses. A strong person in real life always makes the right choices, resists any corrupting temptations, and is so staggeringly vanilla that their only possible reward can be to have a library named after them when they're dead. This person in real life has a strong character, but in fiction, they have a weak character, because they're so boring. Even reading about them, you're probably having an attack of Vyvyan Basterd Syndrome, shouting "I'M BORED" at the nearest wall.
In order to make a fictional person interesting, you have to strengthen their character by giving them traits that, in a real person, would weaken their character. This is why the greatest characters in fiction, are the ones you'd least like to meet. Vyvyan Basterd, for example. Hannibal Lecter. The Sherriff Of Nottingham. Arnold Rimmer. James Bond. Even Lord Flashheart, who's depicted as a kind of Mary Sue within Blackadder's fiction, is the kind of guy you'd have nailed to the wall with a rolling pin within two minutes of his entrance to the room, because he'd be that UNBEARABLE.
All of this has led to the term 'Mary Sue' being used as an insult toward painfully over-competent characters in fictional works. Especially painfully over-competent female characters in fictional works, with alternatives like 'Marty Stu' being used for male characters. Inevitably, it has sometimes been used wrongly. Female supremacists are a population who can easily be relied upon to use words wrongly. Generations of them have strived to change the world, by writing stories about the world that aren't true. And as a result, the term 'Mary Sue' has become the subject of feminist hatred. Well, if they will keep putting Mary Sues in their stories, people will keep deriding them for putting Mary Sues in their stories, won't they. But they don't seem to understand that. Armed with deliberately-encouraged misunderstandings of the term, however, they've actually had success at persuading people to treat the term 'Mary Sue' as taboo.
Most recently, and most certainly receiving the ire of feminists, the name Mary Sue has been applied to the character of Rey, in the latest Star Wars cashgrab trilogy. She appears out of the desert, with unsurprisingly deserty skills, but then she's revealed to know how to wield a lightsaber, without ever having been shown which is the pointy end (and let's face it, that's a 50/50 chance of the trilogy ending in part one) and that they can use the Force without ever encountering it before, and can even employ Jedi mind tricks, and so on and on and on. Her character arc is basically this: random kid becomes most powerful wizard in the galaxy in one hour of movie. If she's not a Mary Sue, then i'm a dinosaur.
We must be clear, given the deliberate misunderstandings that frequently happen, that it does not matter whether a character 'has a backstory' (translation: excuse) for being nauseatingly wonderful, or whether another character in the same story is also nauseatingly wonderful. If a character fulfils the definition of being nauseatingly wonderful, then they are a Mary Sue. QED.
However...
Don't make the assumption that the use of Mary Sue characters is always bad. The story in which this kind of character's name originated, was a very short, but very amusing story, in parodying its now-eponymous phenomenon. And i can actually give an example of a really good story that deliberately employs a Mary Sue for entertainment's sake, and does it well. I've already mentioned Arnold Rimmer, and it's their fictional universe that we're going to now.
In one episode of Red Dwarf (Dimension Jump) a Mary Sue character jumps from one dimension to another, where they bump (quite literally) into the crew of Red Dwarf, aboard Starbug. Who are they? Ace Rimmer - a character deliberately made to be brilliant, like a hero of comic strip proportions, so that they would contrast with the 'normal' Rimmer. If you can call Arnold Rimmer 'normal' without wincing.
Arnold Rimmer, Rimmsy, Big Arn, or Duke, as he is never known, is a "gutless, spineless, gormless, directionless, neurotic, underachieving, snivelling, cowardly pile of smeg". And that's a description provided by his best friend in the whole universe! He's pompous, he's anally retentive, and is, in the words of Kryten, who cannot lie: "an overzealous, trumped up little squirt, and an incompetent vending machine repairman with a Napoloen Complex, who commanded as much respect and affection from his fellow crew members as Long John Silver's parrot".
The whole point of Ace Rimmer, was to provide as sharp a contrast to Arnold Rimmer as possible. In the context of the story, their extremity of wonderfulness was what made them so fantastically funny. As a regular character, they would be awful. As a serious character, they would be awful. But Mary Sue finds herself a place, in that episode of Red Dwarf, because characters as cartoon as her are apt material in an outright comedy. And let's face it - Star Wars just isn't that funny.
This mini-essay, suprisingly, was inspired by Thunderf00t. Not surprising on its own, but if you know Tf, you'll understand what was surprising about it.
P.S. The title is a reference to 'We Need To Talk About Kevin'. We didn't really need to talk about Mary Sue, but i hope you found it interesting and/or amusing anway :-D
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Date started: some time in July 2018 Date completed: about July 2018 Date first published: 08/06/19
Hello folks. I'm back, and i'm doing it again. [link: last time i did it] Here's an advert for the lovely Doctor Ed Hope [link: YT video] this time - the original Dr Mike, and with less of an ego.
I'm going through the quiz and adding interesting information (including the right answers) with the huge advantage of INFINITE TIME. But this one's different. This one's correcting the quiz - not the quizzed.
The video was published back in July 2018, and i wrote most of this soon after. So yes, this is one of those posts that sat around for ages before being finished off. Sorry if that bothers you :D
1) Which of the following was not included in the original Hippocratic Oath?
As Dr Hope points out, Germ Theory did not exist when the HO was written, so they could not have known about all the microbiota - all the creepy-crawlies - that lurk in water, and on surfaces, and so on. [link: pond scum] Germ Theory is one of the exceptions that i get to point at, as a trend-bucker of the 19th century. That time period hosted the ideation of a panoply of superstitions - many of them pseudo-medical. Homeopathic fraud, chiropractic, reflexology, palmistry, hypnosis, spiritism and spiritualism, and so on. Germ Theory FTW :-D
2) What tree does Aspirin come from?
Here, the answers are all wrong. And this is the trouble with multiple choice - getting your choice right doesn't necessarily mean getting the answer right. If the right answer isn't there, you can't select it.
You can't get aspirin from ash, beech, oak or willow, because aspirin is a synthetic chemical invented (at least) twice: in Germany, and then in England. Why twice? Not by accident - all stocks were previously imported from Germany, but then a world war happened, so a lab in Nottingham [link: Nottingham] had to reinvent it. Aspirin is a chemical derivative of salycylic acid, called acetylsalicylic acid, which means various chemicals were attempted, and none of them had a desirous effect, until SA-plus-an-acetyl-group: Aspirin.
Why bother developing it? Because the desired effect - analgesia (painkilling) - is not a property of salycylic acid. [link: SA's effects] SA is, however, a mild anti-inflammatory (Aspirin is too) and a mild emetic. So you can chew on willow bark all day long, and it'll only make you sick - it won't make your pain go away.
3) What condition was the drug Viagra originally developed to treat?
The answer is right, but this is an interesting and easily-misunderstood subject. Sildenafil's effect [link: sildenafil] (Viagra's a brand name, like Aspirin) is to widen blood vessels, which includes the vessels in the penis. And yet... erections are not achieved by widening blood vessels. Counterintuitive, huh? What makes erections happen, is restriction of blood flow out of the penis. This is how men don't get faint, trying to pump huge amounts of blood into their phalluses, like pouring water into a leaky bucket. And it's also how men don't have obvious boners, when they're taking sildenafil for high blood pressure!
Without arousal, blood leaving the penis is not restricted, and so an erection can't happen. So if you get aroused by taking Viagra, that's actually a placebic effect. It's purely psychological.
Incidentally, arousal and blood flow are mildly connected, as the sensitive tissues in the genitals are made more sensitive by increasing bloodflow through them. This means that there's no reason to think women couldn't benefit from mildly increased arousal, if they took viagra too.
4) What is the recommended maximum daily level of salt intake in grams?
This is another question that isn't really about medicine. The first was history, the second was chemistry, the third was, well, history again, and this one's about... law? Recommendations, of course, vary around the world. As i've said before, on this blog, recommended fruit intake varies according to how much the local medical organisation thinks it can persuade the local people to eat. [link: fruit] So in some places it's 10-12 pieces per day, and in Scotland it's 3 pieces per day. 4, 6, 8, and 11 grams of salt, could all be the right answer somewhere in the world. In the UK, it's 4 for women, and 6 for men.
The reasoning for advising reduced salt intake, is that sodium damages the cardiovascular system, especially the heart. And because salt (table salt) is made of sodium chloride, it's a plentiful supplier of sodium. So, as per usual, the bigger your body the more diluted it will become, and the smaller you are, the less sodium you should consume, if you want to maintain a healthy heart. Salt is often added to pre-made food to compensate for the loss of flavour compared to freshly-made food. The second biggest source of sodium is in baking soda (bicarb/sodium carbonate) so you might find it worthwhile to peruse cake packets too.
5) Why does the room start to spin when you've had too much drink?
Easy: you're spinning. Next?
Oh, that's not an option. They say the true answer is that the density of the fluid in the inner ear drops, causing it to misjudge motion. The first thought in my mind is: what difference would density make? It's the feeling of fluid on the cilia, in the ear, from which the sensation of motion comes. Maybe if alcohol were less viscous, though? If the Vestibular Disorders Association is to be believed, then the effect is real, but it's more likely to be the "composition" of the endolymph (inner ear fluid) that produces the effect, which would mean its viscosity rather than "density" that matters. [link: VDA]
Secondarily, one of the 'wrong' answers was that the alcohol causes regions of your brain to "short circuit". Well, ethanol (the kind of alcohol that gets called 'alcohol' when it's in drinks) is a psychoactive drug - it has a debilitating effect on mental function. People lose physical control of their bodies, their reaction times are worsened, and they lose track of what they're doing. Under these conditions, the term 'short circuit' would have to be idiomatic, but true.
So is the room spinning because you're dizzy? Or is it because you're spinning, due to ethanol-caused loss of motor control? Discuss [10 marks]
6) How long does an average, healthy, red blood cell live for?
Erythrocytes (red blood cells) [link: RBCs] can not reproduce on their own. This factor discounts viruses from being classed as 'alive' in the minds of most biologists. Except viruses have DNA, whereas erythrocytes don't. That's another factor that discounts things from being classed as 'alive' in the minds of most biologists. So are viruses more alive than red blood cells? Discuss [20 marks]
It's preferential to refer to individual cells, and viral particles, as 'denaturing' rather than 'dying' because of this classification. If you were never alive, how could you die? But on the subject of erythrocytic longevity, i've seen a broad range of estimates for how many of them are made and disposed of, every day - orders of magnitude, in fact. And people don't vary in size by that much! Wiki goes with 200 billion per day. So if that figure varies so widely, how reliable can this estimate of RBC 'life' be? [link: estimates of life length]
7) What is the common name for the vitamin B3?
Well, i can't argue with this, can i. The question clearly states "the common name" and then lists some rather uncommon names for B4, B6, B2 and B1 respectively. What could i possibly have to comment on, here? Other than this: don't mix up thiamine [link] and thymine [link]. It's too easy to do :-P
8) Where is the patella bone situated?
Dr Hope jokes, but if you kneed yourself in the head during gymnastics practice, then he wouldn't actually be wrong :-D
9) What is the least common form of skin cancer?
Well, the answer to this one's obvious*, but i'd just like to point out that melanomas are usually very aggressive tumours, in which melanocytes have gone rogue. But you're no more likely to get them** if you have dark skin than pale, because 'melanic' skin doesn't contain any more melanocytes than pale skin. The melanocytes in dark skin actually work harder, to produce more of the same two forms of melanin - eumelanin and pheomelanin - that exhibit brown and red colours respectively. [link: melanin]
I'd also like to point out that these same pigments colourise hair aswell as skin, so blondes are really just pale brown. Pinky skin is produced by the same pheomelanin that makes people's hair ginger or strawberry blonde. So if you've got ginger genes, your hair might not be red, but you might have a red mole or two, and you might have pinkish palms or nipples, where it's common for pigment to collect. People around the world have these genes, without realising it, as it's only in pale-skinned people that ginger genes are really obvious - eumelanin easily drowns pheomelanin out, when it comes to colouration. [link]
*sarcasm
**based on evidence available at time of writing
10) What part of the body does an otolaryngologist specialised in?
Is this question supposed to be hard for physicians? Or is this one supposed to compensate for the non-medical nature of the first four questions?
11) Which dangerous infectious disease has been 'extinct in the wild' since the late 1970's?
Well, sidestepping the egregious greengrocer's'' apostrophe' for a second [shakes fist] let's just question that "in the wild" clause. Smallpox has genuinely been eradicated from the world, beyond a laboratory somewhere on Earth, and some people are paranoid about it getting out. Personally, i think they've been made paranoid by smoking cannabis, because it's not that hard to control a smallpox sample. When you consider what could be learned from it, with currently-mid-development techniques, the potential benefits clearly outweigh the potential costs. Smallpox did not mean certain death when it was 'in the wild' before, and it wouldn't if it escaped in one person, in the future.
Another incidental: smallpox is small, because syphilis was the large pox. When Europeans migrated to the Americas, they swapped smallpox for syphilis. The latter is still among us. As are diphtheria, when it's spelled correctly [shakes fist a second time], leprosy, and tuberculosis.
12) Which of the following diseases is not hereditary or genetic?
This question is self-defeating. Hereditary means passed from parent to offspring. By whatever mechanism. That can include pathogens like HIV (transmitted in the womb) or the Epstein-Barr Virus, which causes Glandular Fever (transmitted from mother to child in saliva, because they can't stop kissing them) and which also causes mononucleosis. And that's supposed to be the right answer. If they'd left "hereditary or" out of the question, then it would have been the right answer. Sorry, Dr Hope, but parents do give their kids mono. Like with leprosy, chance of transmission is actually low, so extensive exposure to saliva in a domestic parent-baby context is actually one of the most potent mechanisms of transmission. [link: E-BV]
13) What is the definition of congestive heart failure?
There's an anecdote about perpetually-overweight comedian and actor Fred Emney, who was probably least well known (while alive) for playing that guy in The Italian Job who put interruptors in bins under traffic lights pre-heist. [link: Fred Emney] [link: Italian Job scene] The anecdote goes that he complained of putting on weight if he went uphill. In a TIJ documentary from a decade-or-so ago, members of the production crew attested to this. They went up into the Italian Alps for filming, and soon he had to take his shoes off, and then his socks, and then he ran out of room in his trousers.
This is almost certainly the result of heart failure, in which his heart was incapable of pushing his blood around his body, and so oedema occurred (fluid collection) starting in his lower body. This gave the impression that he was putting on weight. The solution: go downhill, where air pressure is higher, the partial pressure of oxygen is higher, and therefore the heart is more able to do its job of pumping blood.
14) Which of the following anxiety disorders is a fear of failure?
The longest one. Apparently.
15) Which of the following discoveries happened most recently?
This is actually a medically salient question. It's part of the job remit of a medical doctor to keep on top of research, in order to inform their decisions about what interventions to employ or to advise to their patients. This means it's useful to know how long a product's been on the market, or how long an operation's been performed, as time is proportional to experience, and experience is proportional to reliability. Something that's only been done since summer last year is less reliable, as an intervention, than something that's proved its worth over many decades.
This applies to drugs and to surgery, as familiarity with rare effects of pharmaceuticals won't come until they've been widely used, and surgeons become better at surgical procedures with practice. A new procedure will not look as safe, in the stats, as it will after years of practice, making new procedures look worse in comparison than they really are.
In practice, it's not effective for doctors to do all of this research-poring themselves, which is where epidemiology comes in.***
16) What is referred to in the term 'good' cholesterol?
Here's one of those famous proxy values (or 'surrogates', as they're called in medicine) that are used as substitutes for things that actually matter. The argument in favour of lowering 'bad' cholesterol, or even raising 'good' cholesterol, is that they're associated with heart problems and conditions that are associated with heart problems. [link: surrogates]
But are things like cholesterol, blood pressure, and body temperature, causes of harm, or barometers of it? Fevers are popularly assumed to be consequences of infection, but they are actually beneficial, and deliberately made by the body, because they increase the effectiveness of the lymph nodes, thereby improving the body's defences against pathogenic invasion. If you've only got a cold, however, you don't really need the fever, so taking a paracetamol is probably the wiser thing to do.
Blood pressure goes up and down like a yo-yo as you get up and run around, and then sit down and relax. Doxazosin has been shown to cause heart attacks and strokes, even though it was prescribed to reduce blood pressure. And cholesterol? Well, your body makes it if you don't have enough. So even if fake butter did work, would it help you? You're much better off pursuing a lifestyle intervention that causes your cholesterol to change along with other things: sure, eat less fat and red meat, but also get more exercise, and avoid smoke, alcohol, and major stresses.
The concept of 'good' cholesterol is a medically mysterious one, so how can it really be used in a helpful way, when trying to communicate health problems to the public? Discuss [1 mark]
17) Gout is a form of which illness?
This was a really good explanation of gout, by Dr Hope. Dr Ed? Are we on first-name terms yet? If you've been reading my article through without watching the video, then go back to the top of the article and click the link. Second thoughts: here it is again. [link: YT video] Now you won't lose your place :o)
18) How many people have been estimated to have died from AIDS since it was first recognised in 1981 to January 2006?
Fun fact: AIDS doesn't exist. Unfun fact: HIV does. The 'S' in 'AIDS' stands for 'syndrome' and a syndrome is a bunch of symptoms that consistently occur together, but have no known common cause. Like Gay Bowel Syndrome. [link: GBS] The observation was made that MSMs (men who have sex with men) exhibited much higher frequencies of genito-rectal infections and cancers than men who didn't (viruses can turn cells into tumours, which is how the cervical cancer vaccine is a thing that works) and so this syndrome was named. [link: cervical cancer vaccine]
With the increased use of contraception, and the curtailing of HIV, Gay Rectum Syndrome has gone away, and is now regarded as obsolete. As soon as HIV was proved to be causing the symptoms defined by AIDS, the name 'AIDS' became obsolete too. Anti-HIV campaigners continue to refer to 'AIDS' or 'HIV-AIDS' simply because they don't want to fail people who aren't aware that 'HIV' is the initialism they should be looking out for.
Aside: it's rather irritating that genetic conditions are often referred to as being syndromes, even though their cause has been known for a very long time. Down, or Down's, for example, is still referred to as Down/Down's syndrome, even though the cause has been known to be a whole or partial duplicate of the 21st chromosome since the 50s. Rather confusing, huh? [link: Down history]
19) What effect does the hormone oxytocin have?
An interesting answer. Most people think of oxytocin as the 'cuddle chemical' for its supposed effect in making people really caring, after the birth of a baby. The endocrine function is not something i'm going to argue with, but the behavioural effects are certainly quibblable. Other research has found that oxytocin makes people more spiteful, which conflicts with the finding of increased affection. The most logical conclusion is that really it's a 'factionalism chemical' rather than a simple 'cuddle chemical' with those experiencing a large blast of it internally, in turn subjecting anyone they're fond of to large doses of affection, while excoriating anybody deemed to be 'an outsider'. [link: effects]
20) Whose was quoted as saying "Hospitals are only an intermediate stage of civilization"?
Setting aside the bads grammars, it's clearly always the longest answer. Silly Ed. Ed? {Ed: Ed}
And that was the end of the quiz. How did you do?
*** Ben Goldacre mentions doctors reading studies in this talk. They really shouldn't be the ones bearing the burden of all that work. The task should be deferred to epidemiologists and done properly. In fact, it's not possible for GPs to read all of the salient medical literature, because their domain is so broad that it would take more hours than there are in a day, to keep up to date on it all!
'Dr Ben Goldacre: RCGP AC 2018'
https://youtu.be/MJppm_h0a9Y
Ben Goldacre's fantastic, so here's another link to something he's done, too:
'Guest Keynote: Challenging Status Quo'
https://youtu.be/7RGqY8YirNo
And here's that web-site he mentioned. I've looked up my local surgery, and i have to say [adopts smug expression] they're doing pretty well :-D
https://openprescribing.net/.
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Date started: some time in April Date completed: the same time in April Date first published: 02/07/18
This is a response to:
'Astronauts Answer 50 of the Most Googled Space Questions | WIRED'
https://youtu.be/dikG4vMJG1s
It's a shame they didn't get all the answers right :-D
Here are the correct answers...
#50 Can birds fly in space? (wrong)
Yes, they can, and do. But not in outer space, where there's no medium for them to achieve propulsion in. Caveat: does the atmosphere of another planet count as 'outer space'? If so, then birds can fly in those atmospheres, if they already exist there, or are put there.
#49 Does space ever end? (wrong)
Yes and no. It depends whether you mean 'end' spatially, or temporally. It's not possible for the universe to be spatially unlimited, as it would take an infinite time for the previously finite universe to expand to infinite size, and it's only had ~14 billion years. On the other hand, if you mean 'end' as in time, then the answer is a probable 'no' because it's expected to die a 'heat death' in which it just expands unceasingly.
#48 Can you see the space station from Earth? (right)
Yes. When its solar panels reflect light toward the ground, where you're standing, it looks like a very square planet zooming by. I've seen it myself :o)
#47 Why was NASA created? (right)
The question 'why' supposes that the creation of NASA had a reason behind it. It's easier to answer 'how' describing motives, which are basically: scientists wanted to study inner and outer space, and were pressurising the government to make an agency for that purpose; and the nationalist government wanted to be seen as superior to the CCCP government, so they built a 'civil' organisation, to disguise their efforts to build massive, massive rockets, to threaten each other with.
#46 How was space created? (wrong)
The words 'how' and 'created' suppose design, of which there was none. The physics that caused spacetime to form is unknown, but the breadth of spacetime that exists today, is the result of almost 14 billion years of cosmic expansion since the start of spacetime.
#45 How much does a space shuttle weigh? (right)
That depends whether it's loaded. I'll take the astronauts' word for it that it used to weigh 2000 tonnes when taking off, and 100 tonnes when coming back. The difference is the weight of cargo transported into outer space.
#44 Can you see stars in space? (right)
Usually, yes. You might be able to make out individual stars, if you're in intergalactic space, as well. All of the stars we see when we look up into outer space, from Earth, are part of the Milky Way galaxy.
#43 How fast is the International Space Station moving? (almost right)
All orbiting bodies, the ISS and the Moon examples, follow ellipitical orbits (just because it's highly unlikely to be perfectly round) meaning their speed increases and decreases along their journey. The ISS' speed averages out at: 7.67 km/s 27,600 km/h or 17,200 m/h - not 17,500 m/h as stated.
#42 What is the temperature in outer space? (right+wrong)
It varies hugely, just as it does on Earth. The corona of our star - Sol - extends millions of kilometres beyond its atmosphere, and can be as hot as 3 million kelvin, and 100 million kelvin inside a solar flare! In contrast, the surfaces of bodies beyond the Kuiper belt are known to regularly be as cold as 25 kelvin. That's -346 degrees celsius. But then, the word 'temperature' means nothing in a near-vacuum, so what is the temperature of the space inbetween? N/A.
#41 Can you shoot a gun in space? (right)
Absolutely. The powder inside the cartridge/round contains enough oxygen and fuel to work, even outside the artificial atmosphere of a space station. But you probably don't want to be letting a live round off, if you're inside one. The air will leak out, the oxygen tanks will empty ahead of schedule, and everybody will be asphyxiated before Earth base can come to your rescue.
#40 What is the Goldilocks Zone? (right)
The volume around a stellar heat source, that is 'not too hot, not too cold' so that water can exist there, in liquid, solid, and gaseous forms, simultaneously. It's not actually necessary for a cosmic body to be inside the Goldilocks Zone, for water to be in all these states there, as sunlight isn't the only source of heat. Tidal forces, volcanism, and nuclear isotopes can work too.
#39 What orbits the Earth? (almost right)
Lots of things. The Moon, the ISS, lots of artificial and non-artificial satellites, and a whole load of junk too: bits broken off satellites by asteroid damage, bags of poo ejected from early space missions - you name it, there's one of it floating around, up there. In fact, objects don't really orbit other objects - they share a barycentre between the two of them - so the Sun and the Earth share a barycentre. If you stretch the definition of 'orbits' you could include Sol in that list :D
#38 How many rovers are on Mars? (i'm gonna say they were right)
Now here's a question that invites pedantry. The distinction between rovers and landers is that landers are static, whereas rovers move around. But if the rover's broken, does that make it a lander? Sojourner, Curiosity, Spirit, and Opportunity, are the four rovers called 'rovers' that have made it to Mars, and worked. Curiosity and Opportunity are the two that are still working. But then Beagle 2, Mars 2, and Mars 3, were designed with components that would detach and rove around on Mars. All of them failed, along with their roving components. So that makes seven, if you count the broken rovers. Viking 1, Viking 2, and Phoenix were successful Mars landers; Mars 5 was a lander that failed in orbit around Mars, Mars 6 didn't survive the descent to Mars' surface, and Mars Polar Lander is presumed to have crashed. So the answer's two, four, seven, eleven, thirteen, or fourteen, depending on whether you count broken equipment as being "on Mars", whether you were thinking of landers too, when you said "rovers", and whether you assume that Mars 5 fell to Mars' surface, after contact with it was lost. So now you know.
#37 How long does it take to orbit the Earth? (right)
It depends how far away you are. An orbit at the height of Earth's surface would take 42 minutes (if all the atmosphere and mountains weren't there) and any orbital distance further away is just going to take longer than that.
#36 How was Mars named? (right)
Somebody thought "you know that shiny thing in the sky? what shall we call it?" and somebody else said "how about..." (paraphrase) The English names of the planets are inherited from Roman nomenclature; and they humbly and unsuperstitiously named them after their favourite deities. Probably. We might never really know.
#35 What is a cosmonaut? (right)
The Russian translation of 'astronaut', except it makes more sense. 'Astronaut' means 'star sailor' or 'star ship' whereas 'cosmonaut' means 'universe sailor'. So in the way those words are used, to refer to people, 'cosmonaut' makes more sense.
#34 Do you age in space? (right, but the caption's wrong)
Of course. If you mean 'age' as in 'passively submit to the progress of time' then yes, but faster in outer space than in inner space, down on the ground, because as described by Special Relativity, gravitation slows time down. If you mean 'age' as in 'senesce' as in 'decay, bodily' then also yes, because there's little provocation to exercise; bones and blood atrophy, causing the body to be poisoned by calcium and iron; and cosmic rays and light radiation that is usually attenuated by an atmosphere can damage your body, especially your skin, making you look older than you would if you lived indoors, on terra firma.
#33 What is a space probe? (right)
A probe that's sent into space. Next....
#32 Does Mars have gravity? (right)
Yes. But as Mars has less mass, it produces a less strong gravitational field, that is less consistent due to the lumpiness of Mars' shape. So on Mars, you would generally weigh ~38% of what you do on Earth.
#31 Where is Kennedy Space Center? (right)
Here.
#30 How fast does a space shuttle go? (almost right)
The speed any ship has to reach, in order to remain in low-Earth orbit is 17,500 m/h or 27,870 km/h. But that's an orbital speed. If it were to orbit lower, it would start to travel faster, until it were slowed by friction from the Earth's atmosphere. So what starts off as 17,500 mph temporarily increases on re-entry, until the ship reaches ~80 km up, when the speed starts to plummet. At ~80 km, the velocity has actually increased to something more like 17,800 m/h or 28,600 km/h
#29 What is space time? (right)
Spacetime is the fabric of the cosmos. The idea of it, ideated by Albert Einstein, revolutionised understanding of large-scale physics, because it meant that people could finally get to grips with questions about light, gravity, etc. If you want more than that, you're going to need a heck of a lot more than this paragraph.
#28 Can we live on Mars? (right)
Yes. But currently, nobody does.
#27 How far is space? (right+wrong)
How hot is temperature? Space is the medium in which you measure how far away things are :-P
#26 Why is space black? (wrong)
Space isn't black. It's bathed in colour, but in a range of colours that your eyes can't see. If all the colour from stars could be evened out to one wavelength, the universe would look beige, but this doesn't include the light from other sources. The Spitzer Space Telescope sees some beautiful panoramas in Infra-Red, and the Cosmic Microwave Background, which also can't be seen with the naked eye, can be seen in all directions (yes, even the 'black' bits) through any telescope that can pick up microwaves.
#25 Who was the first woman in space? (conditionally right)
Valentina Tereshkova. As long as you mean 'outer space' otherwise the question's meaningless, as explained by Richard Dawkins more times than he'll ever want to recall :-D
#24 Where is the Asteroid Belt? (right)
Between the orbital distances of Mars and Jupiter
#23 When was Mars discovered? (wrong)
This depends on what you mean by 'discovered' as Mars is easily visible in the night's sky. It's almost certain that some synapsids are going to have looked in its direction, hundreds of millions of years ago, but whether they had any idea that they were looking at an object structurally similar to the one they were standing on at the time, is a different and much less likely prospect. The word 'planet' means 'wanderer' in Greek, so we can take from that that they had no understanding of what they were looking at, either. So who were the first organisms to understand that they were looking at the Mars that we think of as Mars, today? I'm going to plump for a generation of astronomers, but i refuse to pick one right now :-P
#22 What does orbit mean? (right)
It's a kind of chewing gum. Or it's from 13th century French 'orb' meaning a circular thing; then referring to the socket of the eye in 14th century latin; then being used to refer to a course or journey, in 16th century Latin; and being used to refer to the paths of cosmic bodies, in English, by the 1690s.
#21 Can you see the Great Wall Of China from space? (wrong)
Yes, if you're standing on it. Or, if you're in 'outer space', yes you can. You still can. As correctly captioned for #27, the edge of inner space isn't that far. It's very easy for mapping satellites to spot TGWOC from there. I mean, how do you think Google Maps got those pictures? People commonly mix up "Can you see [this] from space?" in their minds, with "Can you see [this] from the Moon?" You definitely can't see TGWOC from 380,000 km away.
#20 When can you see Mars (almost right)
At night. Or if you're in outer space, away from Earth's day-night cycle. Or during the day. The planets are faint, during the day, but with good seeing it is possible to see them during the day. I mean, think about it - you've seen the Moon during the day, haven't you? Well, the planets are fainter, but Mars can be seen, and so can Jupiter.
#19 Who was the first American in space? (conditionally right)
Alan Shepard. Unless you're going for the first American, in which case you might count that as Benjamin Franklin.
#18 Does Mars have an atmosphere? (right)
Yes. Except on Thursday nights. Never do gigs there, on Thursdays :-P
#17 Who was the first man in space? (conditionally right)
Oh no, not again! Let's just say Yuri Gagarin.
#16 How long does it take to get to space? (right)
Again, depending on what you mean by 'space' about 9 minutes.
#15 Where is the International Space Station? (right)
As i write {wrote} this, it's 405 km above the Caribbean. But now, it's here.
#14 How long is a year on Mars? (right)
As long as you want it to be. If you want to keep using Earth years, then go ahead, but you might find it slightly confusing - a full orbit of Sol takes 687 Earth days, over there, and because its tilt is about the same as Earth's, it has seasons that are all twice as long, too.
#13 How much do astronauts make? (quibblable)
I'll presume this means money, and not clay pots, or 'making money' in the literal sense that banks and mints make money, and say: "iduno"
#12 Is Mars bigger than Earth? (right)
No. It's substantially smaller.
#96 Why is Mars red? (right)
Mars isn't all red. Iron oxide dust floating around in the atmosphere makes it look red, from the outside. From the surface, it looks much greyer. P.S. Why is this question #96??
#10 How many satellites orbit Earth? (duplicately right)
Isn't this the same as #39??
#9 Is space a vacuum? (almost right)
Outer space is not a perfect vacuum, as a vacuum is defined as empty space. We know it's at least got Earth floating around in it, so it can't be an actual vacuum. The gaps in-between the things, however, are near-vacuums, with only a few hydrogen atoms per cubic metre in intergalactic space... if you ignore the quantum foam. And what about all the photons of light that are pinging around? In fact, the more you think about it, the less vacuumy outer space seems to be.
#8 What is the temperature on Mars? (right)
It depends on where you're standing, and what time of the year it is, of course, so recorded temperatures range from a 20 degrees celsius average at the equator, and 35 degrees in the shade during the day, to -153 degrees celsius at the poles, during winter. So, it's colder than Earth, but it has similar temperature variations.
#7 Can you hear sounds in space? (questionable)
Here's another good question for pedantry. There's a difference between "are there sounds in outer space?" and "can you hear sounds in outer space?" because: sound is much weirder than people generally admit; and hearing sounds doesn't mean they're there. Tinnitus, for example, is a medical complaint in which ears send signals to the brain (or at least, the brain infers that it's being sent signals) even though nothing happened in the outer ear - no sound was picked up. Even if you don't have tinnitus, in perfect silence, eventually your brain will acclimatise, like with sight in the dark, and then you'll start to notice things that you usually don't: the sound of your breath, the creaking of your joints, the pumping of your heart, and the flow of your blood. In the quiet of outer space, you might well hear all these things, as the sounds are transmitted through your body. But can sounds be transmitted from someone else's body to yours, through the vacuum? Well, this is where it gets really weird, because sound is made of longitudinal waves, and we're all told that this means they can only propagate through a medium - air, metal, our body, whatever. But in air, the particles aren't actually touching. They push each other remotely, by the same electro-static forces that define touch. So the 'sound wave' is an abstract concept, transmitted mostly across the gaps in-between particles in the air. This is impossible, unless you accept the fuzziness of location, that is understood to be part of Quantum Physics. So if you try to broadcast sound across a chamber with lots of air in it, the gaps are small, and the wave propagates effectively; and as you suck air out, the gaps broaden, and the wave propagation weakens, making the sound quieter. But in QP it's known that you can't keep an electron in a well - there's a finite chance that it can be anywhere. So you can't say that an empty chamber can't transmit that wave at all. Can you? I don't know the actual answer to this, but i suspect that it's theoretically plausible for sound to propagate, even in a perfect vacuum, let alone what we colloquially call a vacuum - the dusty gasyness of outer space. So i'm going to answer the question "can you hear sounds in outer space?" with: Yes, yes you can. Probably.
#6 How to become an astronaut (right)
There must be numerous possible paths, but i'm not going to disagree with actual 'nauts on this one, am i :-D
#5 What is an asteroid? (almost wrong)
The definition of 'asteroid' is a splodgy mess of spilt ink. There are stars, there are planets, there are dwarf planets, there are moons, there are comets, and then there are asteroids. Asteroids are basically everything else. They don't have to orbit Sol (if an asteroid gets slingshotted out of the Solar System, does it cease to be an asteroid? No) and they don't have to be small. Do they have to be rocky? I'm going to turn that one down, too. Asteroids are... everything else.
#4 Is there life on Mars? (right)
Nobody knows. There could be cellular or even acellular life on Mars, living somewhere currently unperturbed. Despite the various space agencies' extensive efforts, some Earth bacteria might have contaminated the surface; or it might have developed there independently. Either way, none has been found.
#3 How many moons does Mars have? (right)
Two: Phobos and Deimos. There might well be many smaller satellites (maybe including Mars 5, mentioned earlier) orbiting it, but they don't count as moons. There might even be Russell's Teapot, floating around over there :-P
#2 What does NASA stand for? (right)
Because they ran out of money for seats. No, seriously, it's a running joke that climate change deniers and obstructionists forget what the first 'A' stands for. NASA's purvue is not just outer space - it exists to study Earth, too.
#1 How long does it take to get to Mars? (right)
Well, Curiosity took 8.6 months to get there, but it depends on the relative locations of the two planets, when you leave. If Mars is coming toward Earth when you leave, then the distance to travel will be lower, so it'll take less time than the current distance suggests.
Adding up the scores: that's 6 wrong, 31 right, 4 almost right, 1 almost wrong, 2 right and wrong, 1 i'm gonna say they were right, 3 conditionally right, 1 quibblable, and 1 questionable
Not bad for a bunch of astronauts, huh? But then, they didn't have long to think about their answers before they gave them. I'm sure they would have got a much better score if they'd had the same amount of time and freedom as me.
But i couldn't let the unnecessary constraints of that video's filming result in some highly-respected space-travellers being unrectifiedly wrong on the internet now, could i? :-D.,
..
Date started: 02/07/18 Date completed: 02/07/18 Date first published: 02/07/18
Yesterday morning, i turned on the TV, and accidentally caught some live broadcasts before checking on the previous night’s recordings. And i was horrified by what i saw: a woman, with a class of single-figure-aged children, telling them that they must respect diversity, and encouraging them to embrace and enclothe themselves in the attire dogmatised by various malevolent ideologies. [1]
I shall clarify that i had, and still have, no reason to believe that she was a BBC employee, nor that she was doing this under BBC instructions. However, it is still the responsibility of a broadcaster to smother deceitful material in caveats, to make sure the audience isn’t deceived into thinking: 1) that the deceptions are true, 2) that the broadcaster condones the deceptions.
The woman in subject was giving them a rather stereotypically fake-progressive speech about embracing diversity, so you can probably use your imagination to effectively fill in the gaps (though she didn’t have blue/red hair) of what the scene looked like. Kids sitting on the ground. Deluded moron standing. Leaning over them, and talking patronisingly. Lots of silly hats in a box, as props. Her telling the kids that all the silly-hat wearing is just fun and frolics. And then getting the kids to wear the silly hats themselves. Indoctrination out of the 101 book, basically.
This is a common and generic method of indoctrination: 1) lies by omission, in leaving out the crucial details that might lead to the audience making an informed decision, in which they will avoid that superstition as far as they can afford to; and 2) ridiculous happy-clappy attempts to associate the superstition with happy thoughts, so even in the face of evidence of harm, the indoctrination victims will still embrace the perpetrators of said superstition, because it makes them happy to do so.
I do not object to acknowledgements of diversity. And i do not object to embracements of diversity, when there is evidence that that diversity is beneficial. Biodiversity, for example, is excellent for mitigating the spread of disease – all of the massive pandemics of the last century have been fomented in homogeneous environments – Spanish Flu, that killed more people than WWI, evolved in the trenches, where there were only young men and rats; various avian flus have evolved in the bird markets of the orient, where birds are stacked high, in cages; and swine flu evolved in the sprawling pig farms of Mexico.
And then there’s the species itself – sapiens – every one of the 7.5 billion humans who live now, is a descendent of the humans who lived during a populationary bottleneck, just thousands of years ago, when there were only 3000 humans around. In other words, this species is highly inbred, and so people should be encouraged to embrace other people, with markedly different ancestries to themselves, for breeding purposes! It’s not just pretty – it could be a saviour of our species.
But there is a big problem with embracing diversity, when that diversity is destructive. It remains a fact, that there is almost always only one answer for every one question.[2] All of the others are wrong. Wrong. That means incorrect. And it doesn’t matter how obstinately you insist upon it, if your ‘explanation’ does not agree with reality, then you are wrong, and your actions based upon those beliefs will not have the beneficial effect that you intend them to have.
This is the same with any superstition, whether it dogmatises clothing or not. What’s the harm? Whatstheharm.net
The vast majority of evil perpetrated by the species that calls itself ‘sapiens’ is as a result of good intentions, that motivate the application of superstitious beliefs. Writ short: superstition causes suffering.
And it is with this acknowledgement, that i find the wholesale indoctrination of primary school age children so horrifying. Plus, the awareness that this kind of child abuse has still not been stamped out. To tell kids that superstition is all fun and frolics, is a dangerous lie. And to tell kids that the items of clothing that are dogmatised by those superstitions are only indicators of fun and frolics, is also a dangerous lie.
The items of clothing were not limited to: a rasta hat, a hijab, a kippa, and a turban. Rather conspicuously, there was no big pointy white hat with a burning cross motif. Oh no! Because they couldn’t be that stupid? No – because they were more than sufficiently superstitious. And not smart enough to see the commonality of motive by which they are worn – ideological.
All of the items of clothing kept in that woman’s box are not mere items of clothing. They are not saris, clogs, or anoraks. They are not worn to keep cool and safe in the summer sun, or to keep your feet dry. They are items of clothing deliberately worn by superstitionists, in order to declare to the world that they are ‘a believer’ of those respective superstitions.
Do you recall that mantra popularised a decade ago, when the exposure of the RC Church was commencing? It goes like this: “Treat your religion like your penis. Don’t get it out in public, and don’t shove it down children’s throats”
But what is the point of a rasta hat, a hijab, a kippa, a turban, or a dog collar? The purpose of a dog collar is to make known to all and sundry, regardless of context, that you are a professional god-botherer, and a paid-up member of a set of sects of a faction of one form of factionalistic superstition.
In short: its purpose is to shove your superstitious beliefs down people’s throats. Including children’s. That’s what it’s for. It’s not just fashion. Do you think Churches would be happy if a bunch of hipsters started going around with dog collars on, because they thought it looked cool? And where do you think the motive comes from, to censor film genres such as Nunsploitation? [3]
“Nuns in films, right? That’s cool, isn’t it? We’re getting ‘represented’ aren’t we? Oh no, wait – they aren’t believers at all! Censor it. Censor it, i say” – a hypothetical nun
All of these items, so credulously presented as symbols of fake-love and fake-peace and fake-harmony, are worn through political motivations. Which prompts an important question, that simultaneously asks a deeper question about your respect for your own autonomy: if you do not approve of the manifestation of that respective superstition in the world, then why are you wearing it at all?
If you don’t agree that ritual genital mutilation is a good thing, then why wear a kippa? If you don’t approve of glorification of violence, then why wear a turban? If you don’t agree that women should be executed for having been raped, then why wear a hijab? Or a niqab? Or a burqa? If you don’t agree that the systematised sexual abuse of vulnerable people left in your cohorts’ care counts as ‘pastoral’ then why wear a dog collar? [4]
And if you don’t agree that Whites are a put-upon minority, that’s been subject to extensive crimes of violence and corruption, and that their culture is being wiped out by a 'system of oppression', and so on and so forth, then why wear a pointy white cone hat? And why sign your tweets off with #whitelivesmatter?
It’s not just clothes. They aren’t designed that way to serve a utilitarian function. Not to keep you cool, not to keep you dry, not to keep you safe when the arrows start to fall – they are designed that way in order to brazenly broadcast to the world that you are an advocate of a particular form of superstition.
If you don’t agree with it, then DON’T DO IT. Do you not value your autonomy?
And more than that, there is danger for any kid (or adult) who wears those garments without being an affiliate of those ideologies. Many superstitionists are prompted to be spiteful about ‘abuse’ of ‘their’ silly hats. It actually puts kids in danger, to encourage them to play around with symbols of superstition, because the believers might not be ‘happy’ with the way the kids are treating them.
Remember the school teacher who was subject to imprisonment and a murderous mob, under charge of blasphemy, because her class of 6-year-olds had voted to call its teddy bear mascot ‘muhammad’? It can be that mad. And it very often is. [5]
If you think that’s an unreasonable expectation of superstitionists, then remember this: it’s intrinsically unreasonable to be superstitious. By hoping that superstitionists won’t behave like this, you’re just crossing your fingers and hoping that they don’t really believe it. Or don’t believe too much of it!
An excuse that i would accept, for wearing politically-motivated clothing, despite not believing it, is if you genuinely feared reprisal, ostracism, bullying, or even worse, if your peer group – friends, family, colleagues, and so on – were to find out that you didn’t really believe the things that your chosen outfit suggests you do.
But even this excuse must have its limits, because all the time you’re doing this, you’re saying to other people “i approve of this” and are thereby peer-pressuring them into doing the same. Humans are a social species – they spontaneously mimic each other. They don’t like to be left out. And they will mimic the delusions of their peers, if they fear isolation from not doing so.
This feeds into a wider point that can be made on this subject.
Humans, in general, are far too willing to sign up to movements and the ideologies that motivate them. It’s always bad news to get involved with a superstitious movement, because even if you agree with some of its notions, there’s no guarantee of any kind that any of your company will continue to do so. Superstitions are horrendously fickle.
Fuelled with self-deluding self-righteousness, superstitionists will wholeheartedly make anything they touch worse, with no regard for effect. If they cared about the effects that were evident, then they’d care about evidence. And if they did that, then their movement wouldn’t exist at all.
This is why the majority of people, who casually pin their flags to other people’s metaphorical poles, and say “I’m up for that”, are so willing to condemn the owners of the flagpoles, to which they have pinned their flags, as ‘fundamentalists’ or ‘radicals’. What they’re saying is “how dare you believe more of your superstitious ideology than i do? I insist that being less enthusiastic about your movement, is better than being more enthusiastic about it” which is absolutely mentally-bonkers!
So my advice to you, dear reader, is this:
Don’t sign on the metaphorical dotted line until you really know what you’re dealing with.
Don’t believe any of the claims you hear, until you’ve put in sufficient effort to expose any tricks that might have been played on you. (Deliberately or accidentally)
Don’t regard acquaintances as allies.
Don’t get the pin badge.
Don’t pledge your heart and soul to the cause.
Don’t pay the direct debit.
And whatever you do, don’t wear the silly hat.
[1]
For clarity, i shall state here that the advocation of diversity was
limited to political garb - it was not about racism, sexuality, or
anything else like that. It was just about the clothes in her box.
[2]
There are exceptions. Take the Maths example of resolving the equation
(x+3)(x-2)=y. When drawn as a graph, the curve passes through the x-axis
at the values -3 and 2 so both answers, in that context, would be
correct. Or the wave-particle duality of light, in which light behaves
both as a wave and as a particle, with each model getting the right
answer depending on context. For most questions, there is only one
‘right’ answer, or one ‘best’ model.
[3] https://www.grindhousedatabase.com/index.php/Nunsploitation
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Sikhism#Violence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Blue_Star
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_teddy_bear_blasphemy_case
