I have had to do this on my toenail a couple of times. Just heat up a paperclipper's end with a flame and stick it through the nail while it's still red hot. It's actually quite painless and takes away the pain that is caused by the elevated pressure under the nail.

I love how the painting becomes loose, spattery and erratic in his lines as the action heats up and the animation focuses on the moment of 'escape.'

As an MR researcher, the 'Why don't you just turn off the magnet' complex is a safety issue we battle everyday. It's easy to make mistakes , even if properly trained, because you can't see the magnetic field, and by the time you feel it, it's often too late. Almost every MR researcher I know has had their credit cards wiped (at least once) by forgetting their wallet in their pockets when they go grab something from the MR suite. This case is more serious but luckily it looks as though no one was injured.

To clear things up, clinical MRI's use Superconducting Electromagnets. After installation, the current is slowly ramped up until the desired field strength is reached but they *DO NOT* require additional power to keep them running. There is NO power cord for the magnet and the current will run FOREVER so long as the coil is kept cool enough to remain superconducting (usually using liquid helium as mentioned previously).

An enormous amount of energy is released when a magnet "Quenches" i.e. heats up and becomes non-superconducting. Once the coil has non-zero resistance a ton of heat is generated, the liquid helium boils off, and the coil can expand causing permanent damage to the magnet. Furthermore, when the helium gas boils off it can displace all the oxygen in the room creating another hazard: asphyxiation.

While most systems have a "Quench" button which has been engineered to be as friendly as possible to the magnet, it is a costly and risky maneuver which is reserved for cases when human life is in danger i.e. someone walks in with a non-MRI safe gurney which pins someone to the magnet... It has happened.

The point is, this is not a magnetic field that can switched off easily/cheaply and turned back on quickly/cheaply!!

As for metal implants, it is important to remember not all metals are magnetic, and most implants are made of MRI Safe materials i.e. won't rip out of your skin in the presence of a strong magnetic field. However, most are not "MRI Compatible" meaning they will cause image artifacts in a small area around their location.

MRI is safe, working with humans around an MRI is the dangerous part.

We need Oxford C-3PO to tell us politics and religion influence American science?

You could say the same thing about the government-paid shills who claim secondhand smoke is "deadly" and greenvangelicals who think water vapor in the atmosphere is heating up Mother Earth at unnatural alarming rates.

Religion will still be with us hundreds of years after Dawkins is dust. And the nations with the most numbers of faithful will in turn be the strongest and therefore evolutionary winners.

A *promote as the campaign rhetoric heats up to remind us all that the substantive issues eating away at the US are not getting any airtime.

Astronomers say the entire solar system is heating up:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1998/triton.html
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-05-04-jupiter-jr-spot_x.htm?POE=TECISVA
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warming_021009.html

Solar physicists say that the current lack of sunspot activity may predict abrupt global cooling:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/06/the-sunspot-mys.html
"solar scientist, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is certain that it’s an indication of a coming cooling period."

Government studies say it's man made.
Conspiracy theorists say it's all a hoax.
Alex Jones (quite rightly) points out that CO2 feeds the trees.
Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal in London doesn't believe that humans will survive past the end of the century.


My thoughts -
Humans are killing the planet by our servitude to the unsustainable system of development we have created, and that is now our master. And how we *love* our servitude to it, and how it rewards us with shiny *things*.

The mess we are in now was completely predicted in the 1950s. Huxley and many others warned of it.

I believe the situation will have to get worse before the message of "doing something about it" will be potent enough to act as a catalyst for real change, real sacrifice, and a real return to the archaic.

This is how it has always been. Christianity would not have brought the Roman empire to its knees had the empire not been so brutal and destructive. The worse the situation, the more potent the spark of hope when it appears over the horizon.

oooooooooooo, so close! It's a "Lava Grande" (Big lava lamp) which upon heating up at first created these weird alien looking thingies out of the wax in there...I should send you the better resolution pic, it's crazy...
Then of course there's the old worn "Wayne's World" hat gracing the top, with fern fronds looking like hair!

In reply to this comment by dbot2006:
I'm trying to figure out what your new avatar is...I give up. What is it?
A psychedelic crystal ball on a pedestal with a fern for hair and a baseball cap?

Was wondering when the warmachine would heat up and put Iran on the spotlight again...Could it possibly have anything to do wiiiiiith THIS?

@notarobot:

Thats acutally a quite logical phenomenon: Pressure effects get worse as your sizes increase.
Thats the reason bicycle-tyres have higher pressure then the ones of cars...

What they did is heating up the air inside the car, and then closing it. This can be easily done by just burning a big blowtorch inside until all the air has been replaced by hot combustion gases.

If they get the temperature to 300C (not that hard), and close it, after cooling their will be a pressure of 5 tons per m^2. Which is a lot. For a vacuum tank this size, i would use walls of solid steel, at lest 2cm thick.

Edit: should have read the description of the original movie: The reason for the pressure differential here was just by the emptying: per meter of "falling height" of the liquid (might be a lot when filling an underground tank), there is one ton/m^2 pressure on the walls of the tank. Different reasom, same effect.

Looks like a gophersnake.
Ground squirrels and rattle snakes are an impressive example of coevolution. Adults of some species/populations, are immune to rattlesnake venom, but their pups aren't.. and snakes love to eat them.
Adult ground squirrels (and several other ground-dwelling rodents) actively signal at snakes to let them know that the snake has been spotted, and will get bit to shit if he tries to eat that squirrel's pups.
Recently it was demonstrated that ground squirrels can even heat up their tail when they see a snake.. sending such a signal to pit-vipers which can 'see' in near-infared.
..and there are tons more cool stories:
Squirrels disguise their scent by chewing on rattlesnake skin!
and
A nice little article.

"The scientific debate is over. Unfortunately the political debate is not."
what he said.

Actually, I decided not to care about Global Warming or Climate Change, I only care about people being more environmentally responsible. I like Clean Water and Clean Air, we pollute like mother fuckers and we rape this planet of its resources, were running out of em.

I dont fucking care if the world is heating up or not, lets just be more responsible for the planet we live on.

I've made that same comment before as a joke, but the reality of the situation is that global warming isn't about the temperature outside your window at any given time. Shifts of even a couple of degrees from established norms in certain areas of the globe can have serious implications to the natural processes that occur there.

Think about homeostasis in your body, we're endothermic which means our body temperature remains the same because for us to function properly at the basest levels we need to remain at about 98.6F. If you were to shift that temperature several degrees up or down, like when you have a fever of 103F, you feel horrible and sick. Imagine it weren't a transient virus or bacterial infection, but a permanent state caused by abusing your body over the years. I don't know how long the human body could last at a permanent feverish state, but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant.

The science about the effect of carbon dioxide and other pollutants has been proven in the laboratory, there's no denying that if you pump the atmosphere full of it, heat has a much harder time escaping; simple greenhouse effect. Think about the amount the human race pumps out every minute of every day and then think about what possible effect that might have in 100 years from now. You might be dead, but somebody is going to have to pay for it. Nobody is saying there will be "The Day After Tomorrow" apocalyptic events (that's just shock value for entertainment), but crank the heat up a few degrees and you'll have major climate changes, rising sea levels, changes in rain fall and deserts forming where there were none, etc. etc., and then what will we do? Guaranteed, the cost in manpower and material to cope with those kinds of events over time will be far greater than the immediate short term cost of tightening our belts, learning to live without being grossly excessive, and developing new technologies to reduce our impact.

We're making changes to this planet that it has never gone through. There's absolutely nothing natural about the path humanity is following and the high impact technologies we've developed over the last 200 years. On the grand scale, we're behaving like bacteria, multiplying in exponentially greater numbers each year, consuming natural resources and excreting toxins... what happens when a human body is completely overrun by bacteria? They die. Is it so hard to believe that if we shit all over our planet without a care in the world, it won't begin to die as well? Then where does that leave us?

Just think about it.

I should add that the action heats up at about :20 into the clip.

Choggie, it's about dinner time here. You know, sometimes when it's late and I'm a little bit hungry, I heat up some ol' stale beans, open up a can of sardines, eat crackers, and dreams of somebody to cook for me.

And, if that gives me gas, don't you know, I'll be "sufferin' from the worstest of curses."
....oh my oh my...

...and, when the spin is needed for the candidate groomed for the position this go-round, fox and all the others will be there, to wring the public's minds again.....Voting for the President, has become a novel idea, an imaginary privilege...farcical.

When the spin really heats up, lesser candidates will be put into abox, and the dem and repub. candidates, Plan A, and Plan B, will get the attention.....ron Paul, if he starts to be trouble....will be dealt with cheap pokes and Diebold.....and, most importantly, the powerless and apathetic public...