With Twitter Abuzz About Keys of Bees, 'Twas Time to Channel Stevie and McCartney

This scientific fact has recently been making the rounds on Twitter: “Bees normally buzz in the key of A, but when they’re tired, they buzz in the key of E.”

No, I neither own a piano nor play the piano—but that didn’t stop me from tickling the Ebony and Ivories about this bee-musing fact and writing a song that goes a little something...like this:

Every bee that I can see
Buzz together in the very same key
Side by side in their hive or swarming, oh lord, they’re after me

We all know that bees bring the news in Sacramento
There is good and bad in every bee
Some are humble, some will bumble
But they won’t bother us if we mind our own beeswax, that’s a fact

Every queen in Ulee’s apiary
Could breed drones for a ten-pound beard of bees
Side by side in their hive or swarming, oh lord, they’re after me

We all know that bees buzz in “A” ’less their lids are low
There is sweet nectar in every bee
Some make honey, some cause you fright
“E” is the key when bees don’t have the might to take flight


Every bee has got no knees
It’s a phrase that was made up falsely
If Sting got stung, the bee’d die and he’d cry profusely
John Belushi was killer singing “I’m a King Bee”

Every bee that I can see
Buzzing together in harmony
Ruth Buzzi so funny
As angry Gladys Ormphby
Ruth Buzzi socked it to me
When whacking dirty, old Arte

(Fade)

(Image of Bumblebee Man copyright Fox Broadcasting; image of John Belushi copyright NBC.)

Apparently, The History Channel Don't Know Much About History

I was recently re-watching episodes of How the Earth Was Made, a 25-episode History Channel series that premiered in 2009. I had some gripes about it during the original run but never put them to keyboard. So it’s high time I vented about the series—particularly Episode 9 of Season 2: “Mount St. Helen’s.” Clearly, the writers and producers of the show were starting to scrape the barrel for topics in Season 2, but this episode’s premise is especially ridiculous.

As you no doubt surmised, this episode centers on the eruption of Mount St. Helen’s in Washington State—the only major volcanic eruption in the continental United States in modern times. Twelve years old when the volcano blew itself apart, I know full well the significance of the event and remember well the havoc it wrought.

But that was 1980—and this is a series about how the Earth was made. By all scientific consensus, the Earth is 4.6 billion years old. I hardly need to do the math for you, but to illustrate my point…

Earth’s 4.6-billion-year age had long been established by the episode’s debut

This episode first aired in February 2010—30 years after the eruption

So, 4.6 × 10⁹ – 30 = 4,599,999,970 years.

Therefore, 4,599,999,970 years—or 99.99999934782609% of Earth’s existence by this episode’s original airing—had already elapsed by the time Mount St. Helen’s erupted in 1980.* In other words, Earth had long been made when the Washington volcano went kablooey. To purport that the Mount St. Helen’s eruption had anything to do with the making of the Earth would be like a centenarian trying to pass off his latest birthday cake as his birth certificate.

* Even in Christian fundamentalist Ken Ham’s creationist world of nonsense, a volcanic eruption so recent would mean that 99.5% of the 6,000-year-old Earth’s history had already elapsed—making Mount St. Helen’s just as irrelevant in the context of this series.

But the Mount St. Helen’s episode wasn’t the only relatively recent event that made for highly questionable television. How the Earth Was Made also featured episodes about the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883; the Vesuvius catastrophe of ad 79; the formation of the Sahara, which occurred a mere few thousand years before that; and a general overview of tsunamis—which have absolutely nothing to do with the formation of the waterless Earth and have less to do with ongoing processes that currently affect it than any other phenomenon spotlighted in the series. 

Don’t misinterpret my harsh criticism as utter disapproval—I enjoy the series and find it highly informative. I just think that the series’ title is deceptive and ill-conceived. Considering the immense timeline of topics covered, it would have done much better with a less-specific title…perhaps something along the lines of How the Earth Did Stuff or When Bad Things Happen to Good Planets.

After all, it’s not as if History Channel doesn’t have a…um…history of broadcasting programs and series that utterly contradict its mission statement, viz., Life After People. (It similarly ran the future-based The Road Warrior several times about a decade ago.) Hardly the stuff of history…

I don’t demand much from History Channel…but I do demand thematic fidelity!

Valleys of Neptune Not in Tune With the Times

Released last week, Valleys of Neptune contains twelve previously unreleased tracks by Jimi Hendrix. This is just another example of popular music promoting bad science. Regardless of the fact that the album title is taken from the song of the same name, Legacy Records should know better: Neptune is an "ice giant" and thus has no valleys because it is composed of gases thousands of miles thick, with no solid surface. Hendrix, who wrote the song in 1969—twenty years before the Voyager 2 fly-by—probably possessed little knowledge of Neptune's internal structure. But by the album's release last week, the planet's composition had long been commonly known, and one would think that Legacy Records should have an astrophysicist on staff to prevent such egregious errors. Unfortunately, a new generation now being introduced to Jimi Hendrix's music is liable to believe that Neptune is a terrestrial body, misleading countless young minds. Such a cavalier attitude toward scientific fact might have been "rock & roll" in 1969...but it's no more "hip" now than patchouli oil and moon landings.

Such scientific liberties have long posed a problem in the music world. For instance: Bonnie Tyler's 1983 hit, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"—the heart never undergoes and eclipse because nothing revolves around it. Alright, for the sake of argument, let's postulate that a cholesterol blob is circulating around the pericardial sac. This blob would be so small compared to the heart that it would constitute not an eclipse, but rather a transit, such as when Mercury transits the sun or one of the Galilean moons transits Jupiter (seen above). Ms. Tyler scored her biggest hit with the song, but "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was an affront to the field of astronomy.

Likewise for Peter Frampton's "I Wanna Go to the Sun." Sure, Peter, you do that. But I sure hope I don't feel like you do as you're being fatally irradiated long before you approach the sun, your last words agonizingly whimpered with a voice that now sounds the same as through that talk box that once made you famous.

And the same goes for Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun." Which one's Pink? They'll all be pink—and juicy—before they even get inside Mercury's orbit, let alone anywhere near the sun.*

* Actually, the above is not Pink Floyd's only scientific slip-up. In "Cirrus Minor," David Gilmour sings the couplet: "On a trip to Cirrus Minor/Saw a crater in the sun." Of course, the sun has no craters—it's an incendiary ball of gas with no solid surface to be cratered. As the chief proponents of "space rock," such factual sloppiness on the Floyd's part is puzzling, to say the least, and clearly what kept the More soundtrack album from spending longer on the Billboard 200 chart than The Dark Side of the Moon's 741 consecutive weeks.

Even a stylish and ostensibly less rebellious crooner such as Stevie Wonder got into the misinformation act, singing "My cherie amour/Distant as the Milky Way." A beautiful sentiment sung to a gorgeous melody. Problem is, Stevie's in the Milky Way. He hardly can sing with any accuracy of something distant while physically occupying that very object—at least not without specifying how distant his cherie amour is.

Now, what Stevie should have sung was, "My cherie amour/Distant as the fuzzy arms of the Milky Way which are visible only under extremely dark skies and most easily during the summer and winter months"—and damn the problematic meter and rhyme scheme!

In more empirical terms, don't think The Who are any more scientifically reliable. Roger Daltrey sings that he "can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles..." Given that each miles represents a minimum of two miles to justify its plural form, multiplied by the 5 miles sung in the aforementioned line, Daltrey's claiming to see for at least 10 miles.

However, the accepted limit of human visibility, as determined in nautical miles—because, of course, the ocean will afford an unobscured horizon, unlike London and New York, where the song was recorded—is calculated (according to multiple nautical sources) as:

Visible distance (in nmi) = 1.17 × the square root of the eye's height (in feet)

Thus, [the square root of Roger Daltrey's height (5'7", or 5.583 feet) = 2.363] × 1.17 = 2.765 miles.

So Roger Daltrey actually can only see 2.765 miles, or just over one "lyrical" mile. This hardly even constitutes the song's title, let alone "I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles..."*

*Even if we base the calculations on the 6'0" Pete Townshend, who wrote the song, this still only comes out to a paltry 2.866 miles.

For anyone in The Who to have seen for "miles and miles and miles and miles and miles," he would have had to been recording the song at a height of at least 73 feet—something not even the loony Keith Moon would have attempted.

Frankly, I think Daltrey was probably just high on beans...

* * *





For an example of popular music that promotes good science, see the Mount Drinkmore entry, "They're Special, So Special, Alright..." of July 23, 2009, via the blog archive or keyword science.

(Transit of Io courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.)

On the Fast Track to Apathy

In the early hours of March 2, an asteroid between 70 and 150 feet in diameter missed Earth by a paltry 49,000 miles. That's a near-miss. Scientists estimate that it was large enough to have caused damage on par with the Tunguska event that obliterated 800 square miles of Siberian forest in 1908.

Among the flurry of reports peppering Internet news sites in the wake of Earth's near-miss was the link to an article published in Geophysical Journal International in 2003. This article reports that a 1.1-kilometer-diameter asteroid named 1950 DA has a 0.0% to 0.3% chance of impacting Earth on March 16, 2880. Sure, an impactor that size would cause catastrophic regional damage and result in a massive death toll for whatever is roaming the planet in the 29th century—long after even Duck Dodgers is dust. But as can be seen in the article's top left corner, this was a "fast track paper," which means that its importance and timeliness were great enough that the journal bumped it ahead of other articles so that its information could be disseminated as quickly as possible.

What fascinates Mount Drinkmore is not the possibility of a cosmic collision with the earth, but the fact that this article was fast-tracked 877 years before it's expected to become a relevant topic. Yes, the editors' confidence that their journal will still be publishing in 2880 is admirable, especially considering that the last tree on Earth is scheduled to be cut down in May 2017, effectively ending the age of print media. And it's always crucial that scientific journals remain on the cutting edge.

But to publish something nearly nine centuries in advance? Scores of generations will pass without panicking. Our great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will dust off yellowed copies of this article, see that the asteroid is still 400 years away from possible impact, and return unconcerned to their hover-beds or astro-juice. Continuous complacency across unaffected generations could genetically predispose our remote descendants toward apathy for the asteroid—similar to how the interminable delay of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy album permanently deadened the public's interest in Axl Rose. (Imagine if Chinese Democracy wasn't released until 2880—the Chinese might actually have democracy by then and be able to listen to the album...but who among their recently liberated populace would care after nine centuries of jading from the wait?)

I can understand Geophysical Journal International's desire to sell issues with such articles—and let's face it: an issue that includes news of a potential Earth-impacting asteroid essentially is a science journal's annual swimsuit issue—but an Editor-in-Chief has got to have a cutoff...say, a maximum of 100 years in advance.

Otherwise, a journal's impact factor goes right to hell.

The entire article can be accessed here:
http://es.ucsc.edu/~ward/papers/gji_final_35N.pdf

...but don't forget to return to Mount Drinkmore!

(Title page of article copyright Royal Astronomical Society.)

So, We Have 30 Years to Live.....

"U.N. urged to take action on asteroid threat

SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters)—An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday.

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036."

I, for one, am gonna start drinking more.

(Excerpt from Associated Press article http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/02/19/asteroid.deflector.reut/index.html. Photo courtesy of www.thunderbolts.info.)

Paradise by the Speed of Light?

Did I just disprove Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity?

My phone rang. A coworker kindly offered me tickets to a Meat Loaf concert. My vehement refusal commenced at some point during the changing of the t sound into the L. Approximating the time elapsed from when her mouth began forming Meat to the time at which I turned down the tickets in an expletive-laden panic the instant the subject of the offer became recognizable as really, really fast, my nerve impulse made a mad dash from brain to larynx at a rate surely rivaling the speed of light.

Certainly, I don’t purport to possess even a fraction of Albert Einstein’s intelligence. However, Einstein died 22 years before Bat Out of Hell made Meat Loaf a radio favorite—thus, he knew nothing of Meat Loaf's music or the human brain’s ability to achieve unthinkable speed in sheltering itself from sickening tripe-rock.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory cannot confirm my theory...but at least they were listening to Zeppelin when I called.

(Photo of Einstein copyright The Nobel Foundation, 1921.)

"1st and 9.144": The Chaos of the NFL Switching to the Metric System

Watching the Philadelphia Eagles battle the New York Giants yesterday, it occurred to me that if the metric system of measurement is ever officially mandated in the United States and enforced, the American game of football will only be able to be enjoyed by those proficient in mathematics. 1 yard = .9144 meters, which seems simple enough as long as you are dealing with 1 or 10 "old yards"—but what about when it's 2nd down and 4.557 meters? Beer-swilling, overweight men, with painted faces will be replaced by frail, conservatively dressed men, with horn-rimmed glasses and pocket protectors. Cheerleaders will, consequently, act less enthusiastic and wear baggy clothes. Hot dog vendors, too, will suffer after these new football-going nerds run a full analysis on a hot dog specimen and highlight the number of rodent hairs and bug parts contained in them.

The players may change as well. When it's 4th and 109.728, you have to be able to make a quick decision as to whether that's a manageable distance or whether it's even humanly possible to travel that far on one play. Athleticism will be replaced by book smarts, and thus, games will become more like comedies of utter ineptitude rather than "sporting events." Progress, my friends, is destroying our game. Enjoy it while it lasts.

(Photo copyright Jeff Victor.)

E = AFC²

Tony Dungy and Herm Edwards, head coaches of the Indianapolis Colts and Kansas City Chiefs, respectively, have been the best of friends for more than thirty years, when they played against each other in several college bowl games. After their NFL playing careers, Edwards served for five years as Dungy's assistant head coach with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Each man's lengthy football career is well documented in the record books, the media, and the public eye.

Or is it?

Am I the only person on Earth who's realized that Tony Dungy and Herm Edwards...are the same guy? I mean...look:















Quantum mechanics predicts that subatomic particles can be in two places at once. Although neither Tony Dungy nor Herm Edwards qualify under current NFL regulations as subatomic particles, scientists understand so little about this bizarre possibility that they cannot rule out Dungy and Edwards possessing the ability to act like photons.

If all of this scientific jargon is too confusing, look again at the bewildering similarity of these "two" men:

They even point the same.

I realize my assertion is hard to fathom in the wake of Dungy's Colts and Edwards' Chiefs squaring off in yesterday afternoon's AFC Wild Card game, during which each man was clearly visible on his own sideline (and can even be seen before yesterday's opening kickoff, above, possibly forming with their arms an Einstein-Rosen bridge—what we generally know as a "wormhole" in the space-time continuum—which would explain a lot). Certainly, much more work needs to be done in the field of theoretical physics if we ever hope to understand the phenomenon of a single NFL coach piloting two different teams at the same time.

Some say the NFL should keep its nose out of the atom—and maybe they're right. So if the strange potential of quantum mechanics isn't the culprit, then this Dungy-Edwards matter is being done with mirrors, and we're all victims of the greatest illusionist since Houdini.

Why have Terry, Howie, Jimmy, and J.B. not uttered a word about this during the halftime report?

(All photos copyright Associated Press.)