Satellite Events Art from the “perfect storm” 0f October 30, 1991, portrayed in the eponymous book (and forthcoming film), from The National Climatic Data Center of NOAA.

A new alternative to fans and heatsinks for cooling off your overheating CPU. It seems to have problems of its own, however. Anyone have experience with these?

How to handle telemarketers. Some of these, forwarded by a reader, seem promising:

1. If they want to loan you money, tell them you just filed for

bankruptcy and you could sure use some money.

2. If they start out with, “How are you today?” say, “Why do you

want to know?” Alternately, you can tell them, “I’m so glad you

asked, because no one these days seems to care, and I have all

these problems; my arthritis is acting up, my eyelashes are sore,

my car won’t start…” When they try to get to the sell, just

keep talking about your problems.

3. If they say they’re John Doe from XYZ Company, ask them to

spell their name. Then ask them to spell the company name. Then

ask them where it is located. Continue asking them personal

questions or questions about their company for as long as

necessary.

4. This works great if you are male: Telemarketer: “Hi, my name

is Judy and I’m with XYZ Company…” You: (Wait for a second)

With a real husky voice ask, “What are you wearing?”

5. Cry out in surprise, “Judy! Is that you? Oh my God! Judy,

how have you been?” Hopefully, this will give Judy a few brief

moments of terror as she tries to figure out where she could know

you from.

6. Say “No”, over and over. Be sure to vary the sound of each

one, and keep a rhythmic tempo, even as they are trying to speak.

This is most fun if you can do it until they hang up.

7. If MCI calls trying to get you to sign up for the Family and

Friends Plan, reply, in as SINISTER a voice as you can, “I don’t

have any friends…would YOU be my friend?”

8. If the company cleans rugs, respond: “Can you get blood out?

Can you get out GOAT blood? How about HUMAN blood?”

9. Ask him/her to marry you. When they get all flustered, tell

them that you could not just give your credit card number to a

complete stranger.

10. Tell the telemarketer that you work for the same company,

they often can’t sell to their fellow employees.

11. Answer the phone. As soon as you realize it is a

telemarketer, set the receiver down, shout or scream “Oh my

God!!!” and then hang-up.

12. Tell the telemarketer you are busy at the moment and ask them

if they will give you their HOME phone number, you will call them

back. When the telemarketer explains that they cannot give out

their HOME number, you say “I guess you don’t want anyone

bothering you at home, right?” The telemarketer will agree and

you say, “Now you know how I feel!” Hang up.

13. Ask them to repeat everything they say, several times.

14. Tell them it is dinner time, BUT ask if they would please

hold. Put them on your speaker phone while you continue to eat at

your leisure. Smack your food loudly and continue with your

dinner conversation.

15. Tell the telemarketer you are on “home incarceration” and ask

if they could bring you some beer.

16. Tell the telemarketer, “Okay, I will listen to you. But I

should probably tell you, I’m not wearing any clothes.”

17. Insist that the caller is really your buddy Leon, playing a

joke. “Come on Leon, cut it out! Seriously, Leon, how’s your

momma?”

18. Tell them you are hard of hearing and that they need to

speakup… louder… louder… louder…

19. Tell them to talk VERY SLOWLY, because you want to write

DOWN EVERY WORD

There’s a crop of interesting articles in this week’s Science Times I’ve just gotten to:

Health Sleuths Assess Homocysteine as Culprit. Elevated homocysteine levels are a new focus of concern as a cause of heart attack and other maladies. B-vitamin supplements are the major way of lowering it, as well as reducing stress.

3 Suits Say Lyme Vaccine Caused Severe Arthritis

Two Stars Collide; a New Star Is Born. Scientists at the first symposium on interstellar collisions report on detecting the aftemath of two- and even three-star collisions.

Mr. Mom Dies; 2 Hatchlings Live. Had been set to become the first weedy sea dragon to give birth in captivity.

Genetic Analysis Yields Intimations of a Primordial Commune: “Everything about the

origin of life on earth is a

mystery, and it seems the

more that is known, the

more acute the puzzles

get…The best efforts of chemists to

reconstruct molecules typical of life in the laboratory have

shown only that it is a problem of fiendish difficulty. The

genesis of life on earth, some time in the fiery last days of

the Hadean, remains an unyielding problem.”

Will the Web Make Us Better Patients? Two doctors discuss the problems and promise of patients’ coming for medical care armed with information from the ‘net. [Slate]

The relativistic heavy-ion collider has begun working and we’re still here. This newest and biggest particle accelerator in the world has been aiming gold ions at each other. The thought is that the quarks and gluons that make up the protons and neutrons in the gold nuclei will be freed for a fleeting moment to exist in a plasma simulating the conditions in the universe in the first millionths of a second after the Big Bang. The problem is that some credible critics feared that this might create a mini-black hole that would suck up all surrounding matter, perhaps destroying the earth. Others felt a new form of matter made up of strange quarks might begin converting all the other matter nearby to its type, sort of like Vonnegut’s Ice-9. Some physicists feared that such an energetic collision might even cause a decay in the fabric of empty space itself which would propagate outward at the speed of light until it changed the entire universe. Brookhaven National Laboratory actually convened a committee to consider such speculative disaster scenarios, which concluded that “…the candidate mechanisms for catastrophic

scenarios at RHIC are firmly excluded by existing empirical evidence, compelling theoretical arguments, or both. Accordingly, we see no reason

to delay the commissioning of RHIC on their account.” Many people have been reminded of the concerns in 1945 that the first fission bomb explosion might set the whole atmosphere on fire. Put yourself in the head of the scientist at the moment her/his finger is poised on the final button to initiate any of these experiments…

The Science of Sex. It makes good evolutionary sense that we find more symmetric faces more appealing. [Nerve]