I haven't been a scout since I was kicked out of the cub scouts for stabbing a fellow cub with a pencil (no, you may not touch my pinewood derby racer, you lout). And since I always knew they'd never let me back in, I gave up on being a scout -- even though I'm honest and virtuous and I help old ladies cross the street all the time. So imagine my excitement when I came across the Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physique. What ho!
Potential members need the following qualifications:
- not opposed to alcohol.
Check. Possibly double-check.
- fond of IPCC reports (especially the pictures).
I've seen not only Gore's movie, but also Gore himself dissecting it and providing many colorful charts, some of which I think maybe could have come from the IPCC.
- mostly in agreement with the "truth."
Get thee behind me, Intelligent Design!
- into badges.
Oh, you mean those badges. Yeah, sure I dig them. I even had a few of my own before I got booted. I never managed that knot one, and I didn't fare well on the bead count.
- grieving for the slow and miserable death of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Sure. Many a desktop wallpaper has come from the Hubble. I'm sad enough to see it go.
- possibly possessed of supernatural powers.
Hrmm. I'd have to think on this one...
- not in the business of total world domination
Nope.
- committed to the constant and diligent presentation of science stories, be it to editors, producers, directors, educators, relatives and/or friends of various ilk, in an effort to lessen the gap that is this thing we call public scientific literacy.
I've forwarded the occasional link. And many people have (probably unfortunately) heard me go off into the conversational weeds about arcane nonsense like why clouds are like pork and beans cooking on the stove, or why cashews aren't really nuts, or what the mineral composition and method of deposition are of the rocks on the side of a highway. I've even written a thing of two about such topics.
So I think I'm a shoo-in. If they let me in I'd even promise not to get stabby (as long as they don't touch my junk)
They have various merit badges, which I think is the best part. Here's the ones I think I'm qualified for (click on the links to go to the OOTSSOERAAAP description for that badge):
As stated above, it can take a few minutes between the zoning out and the "That's great dear"-style pat on the knee.
I once used old cash register parts as a server monitoring system. Does that count?
The "I'm pretty confident around an open flame" badge.
I think anyone who knows me knows the answer to that one.
Back in the early 90's my roommate and I used a part surplus, part kit-built HeNe laser to shine Morse code at the dorms of our university.
The "destroyer of quackery" badge.
I'm going to have to take this one, even though I wish I could suspend the pedantry sometimes.
The "I may look like a scientist but I'm actually also a ninja" badge.
Well, I own a belt-fed, tripod-mounted, crew-served weapon -- and the first thing I did with it was take it apart!. That's lethal, I guess. Not so sure on the ninja front, though. I'll look at this badge as partially earned. It's a goal.
The "sexing up science" badge.
Halfway through my 9th grade biology class, the teacher decided he wasn't really teaching me much of anything, and put me and a couple other kids on a special science project for some self-paced learning. It involved breeding various fruit flies and counting them and such. After a couple weeks, we wound up soaking cotton balls in the ether used to anaesthetize the flies, turning the lights off in the lab and playing flaming hockey to pass the time. Until they caught us, that is. Then we decided to turn the flies loose and let nature decide if the recessive ones ought to live.
The "my degree inadvertently makes me competent in fixing household appliances" badge.
Tess will call me remiss if I don't choose this one, too.
The "I can be a prick when it comes to science" badge.
And she'd make me pick this one, too.
The "will gladly kick sexual harasser's ass" badge.
I'm probably not legally allowed to talk about this one.
The "has frozen stuff just to see what happens" badge (LEVEL I)
Yep. When I was a kid, I spent all weekend rounding up carpenter ants. I put a bunch into separate jars and then froze them all for varying times in the deep freezer on the back porch. The aim was to see how long an ant could stay frozen and still wake back up. I'm not going to say whether or not the "wake back up" part ended up involving a magnifying glass or not.
The "has frozen stuff just to see what happens" badge (LEVEL II)
All sorts of things have gone into a cooler with dry ice. Some of it may have been alive at the time. I'm not going to say.
The "I bet I know more computer languages than you, and I'm not afraid to talk about it" badge.
I think I'm going to have to take this one as well. Though I come across plenty of people every day at work who beat me by a mile in this category, I think I hold my own. I've even written (and run!) programs in Chef and Brainfuck. Beat that, COBOL-lovers!
The "respect me - I've published at an upper tier publication for popular science readership" badge.
In college I went on a trip to the Petrified National Forest to look for evidence of bee burrows in the petrified wood. The goal was to answer the question of which came first: the bee or the flower? As a result, I was a co-author of a paper on the topic. I wish I could recall the publication. I've tried looking for it, but it pre-dates the web. It's probably widely available via gopher.
An odd aside, on that trip I also found a really cool fossil that's in a museum in Colorado now. It's true. I was off taking a whiz against these large, flat rocks sticking out of the side of a dry stream bed, and wound up peeing the sand right off this one that had really cool symmetrical ripple marks in it. After my business was done, I scraped off more of the sand, only to find all these paw/claw, tail, and tongue marks from a small reptile embedded in the ripples. Turns out this little guy liked to feed at the water's edge, and did so by hopping back and forth and then using its tail to launch it into the water, at which point it stuck its (presumably) sticky tongue out to catch insects in or on the water. The reptile in question was called Hesperosuchus agilis, and fossils of it are very common in the Park. But up until then, nobody knew for sure how (or what) the thing ate, and the marks in the sand clearly showed what its mehtod was. The downside? I had to carry that goddam 60 pound piece of pee-moistened sandstone 5 miles back out to the trucks. Shit, I'm taking the badge just for that.
Oh yeah, I'm not going to tell you if the bee or the flower came first. That would spoil the mystery! You'll just have to go to Arizona and destroy radioactive glass logs with a pickaxe to find out. Oh, all right. The entire story is here.
The "I've done science with no conceivable practical application" badge.
Lots and lots of it.
The "I know what a tadpole is" badge.
But of course! Though I've never frozen, burned or electrocuted one. I've blown a few up I think.
The "have used a dental drill and I've never been a dentist" badge
My best friend's dad when I was growing up was a dental technician. He made dentures and crowns and so forth. They had a lot of dental equipment in the garage that got put to good use.
The "experienced with electrical shock" badge (LEVEL I)
Sadly, yes.
The "experienced with electrical shock" badge (LEVEL III)
I've woken up on the ground after a big jolt, sure.
The "totally digs highly exothermic reactions" badge.
Hells, yeah! I've done more work in this area than I'd admit to publicly. Put it this way: when I was a teenager I built a rocket launcher. That is to say it was a shoulder-fired method for launching model rockets. All perfectly legal. Had a range of a few hundred yards, and was pretty accurate after I got the guidance system worked out.
The "science has forced me to seek medical attention" badge
Yeah, been burned by flame and acids, had to use the eye wash station once, been cut a few times.
The "somewhat confused as to what scientific field I actually belong to" badge
Started out in biology, spent a lot of time in geology, now it's computer science. So I guess I'd have to take this badge as well.
The "I'm into telescopes astro" badge (LEVEL I)
Who hasn't?
The "I'm into telescopes astro" badge (LEVEL II)
Indeed, a very large one at U of A. Even when it wasn't for a class (I took a few Astronomy course as electives), I'd go down there when the seeing was good or I was bored.
The "I've set fire to stuff" badge (LEVEL I).
Lots and lots of stuff.
The "I've set fire to stuff" badge (LEVEL II).
You bet. Magnesium rocks.
Not any more, but I have in the past.
The "I build robots" badge (LEVEL I)
I have indeed. Not for a long time, though. When I was growing up, I wanted to do this for a living.
So there it is. Not a bad lineup! I can see them all sewn onto my sash right now...