FROM time to time this column has mentioned claims that magnets have
mysterious yet useful properties. Sales catalogues advertise devices you put in
your car鈥檚 fuel tank to help boost economy, others that allow you to run your
washing machine without detergent and, the best known, magnetic water softeners
that promise to banish lime-scaled kettles and furred-up central-heating boilers
forever.
Stephen Lower, associate professor of chemistry at Simon Fraser University in
Canada, has made it his mission to debunk the pseudoscience peddled by
manufacturers of what he calls 鈥渕agscams鈥�. On his website at
www.sfu.ca/chemcai/magscams/magscams. html
he highlights some of the 鈥渟cientific鈥� effects that manufacturers claim for their
equipment, and promptly sets out to deflate them.
This one, for instance: 鈥淭he magnetic field deflects the ions in the water,
causing them to move in opposite directions to the direction of flow, increasing
the chances that they will combine and precipitate out before they have a chance
to form scale or do other bad things.鈥�
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Lower鈥檚 spin on this is: 鈥淐harged particles moving in a vacuum are indeed
deflected by magnetic fields, but ions in solution are too massive and too
locked into the `cage鈥� created by the surrounding hydrogen-bonded water to be
able to undergo any significant deflection as they pass by the magnet.鈥�
And there鈥檚 lots more like this, prompting a simple thought: attempts to
soften water with magnets have been around for decades. The benefits claimed for
them are so great that if they really worked you can be sure we would all have
one by now.
WE HAVE no ambition to join the dot.com millionaires, so we are happy to pass
on a notion we had when we discovered we were the half-millionth person to log
onto a Website that relays the view from a webcam in a seabed lobster pot. (Yes,
really.)
All round the world, police forces and local authorities set up
closed-circuit TV cameras to watch over us. These can cut crime, but obviously
work best if there is enough money to pay for staff to sit 24 hours a day
watching the screens. Otherwise, suspicious behaviour may be missed until
someone reruns the logging tapes long after a crime has been committed.
So here鈥檚 the idea. If the feeds from these cameras were put onto the
Internet, with resolution dulled just enough to preserve the privacy of innocent
individuals, anyone anywhere in the world could log on and watch for burglary,
mugging or suspicious behaviour. A note at the bottom of the screen would give
the phone number of the CCTV centre or maybe add a hyperlink to alert it with an
urgent 鈥渃heck out camera 3 now鈥� message.
This could surely be every bit as interesting as the view from a lobster
pot.
AND here鈥檚 another nice website. It belongs to the Dihydrogen Monoxide
Research Division, which is apparently located in Newark, Delaware.
The whole site is devoted to the chemical DHMO. It deals with such issues as
鈥淲hat is the link between dihydrogen monoxide and school violence?鈥�, 鈥淗ow does
dihydrogen monoxide toxicity affect kidney dialysis patients?鈥�, 鈥淐an using
dihydrogen monoxide improve my sex life?, and 鈥淲hat are the symptoms of
accidental dihydrogen monoxide overdose?鈥�
The FAQs section displays this caution: 鈥淪hould I be concerned about
dihydrogen monoxide? Yes, you should be concerned about DHMO! Although the US
government and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) do not classify dihydrogen
monoxide as a toxic or carcinogenic substance (as it does with better-known
chemicals such as hydrochloric acid and saccharine), DHMO is a constituent of
many known toxic substances, diseases and disease-causing agents, environmental
hazards and can even be lethal to humans in quantities as small as a
迟丑颈尘产濒别蹿耻濒.鈥�
A noteworthy feature of the site is that it never mentions DHMO鈥檚 more usual
name鈥攕o we won鈥檛 either. Go to www.dhmo.org if you鈥檇 like to know
more.
SMUG isn鈥檛 the word for all those people whose computers are immune to the
current spate of Microsoft-hostile viruses. Here is a message they are
currently sending each other: 鈥淵ou have now received the Unix/Mac virus!鈥�
Ooops, you may think. But the message continues: 鈥淭his virus works on the
honour system. Please forward it to everyone you know and delete a bunch of your
files at random. Thank you for your co-operation.鈥�
As we said: smug or what?
AND talking of viruses, last week we pointed out that, following the Love Bug
epidemic, company press offices are at last starting to send their releases as
plain text files instead of attachments laden with fancy fonts and graphics that
can harbour viruses. But as we noted at the time, even some of the best-known IT
companies unfortunately seem to find this beyond their capabilities.
A couple of days after writing that piece, we received this from AltaVitsa:
鈥�05 June 2000 ALTAVISTA PROPELS THE 鈥� UNSEEN鈥� INTERNET
REVOLUTION http://www.ffgb.presscentre.co. uk
/news/releasemail.asp?ReleaseID=1810 AltaVista鈥檚 new service is just
鈥榯he tip of the iceberg’ . . .鈥�
Long live the Internet revolution.