Archive for February 2016
February 9th, 2016 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
How old is the complicity between cosmetic companies and the press? Very old. Take a look at an excerpt from this article titled “The Poisonous Beauty Advice Columns of Victorian England.” “Glass and tin bottles hide snug in a case, waiting for a woman’s daily ritual. She reaches for a bottle of ammonia and washes it over her face, careful to replace the delicate glass stopper. Next, she dips her fingertips into the creams and powders of her toilet table, gravitating toward a bright white paint, filled with lead, which she delicately paints over her features. It’s important to avoid smiling; the paint will set, and any emotion will make it…
February 9th, 2016 by Dr. Hannah Sivak
The year was 2000. They told us that nanotechnology is great and that it is the “decade of nanotechnology”. Then they tried to sell us stuff by using the word “nano”. Ten years later, Robin Cook wrote a medical thriller titled “Nano”. Soon after, some people began to say that nanotechnology is bad. They ask for money to fund “non-profits” to put pressure on Congress so that everything nano can be banned. What is nano? You probably learned about this term in high school, when studying the metric system. The nanometer is one thousandth of a micrometer, which is one thousandth of a millimeter, etc. How small is a nanometer? Below is a (logarithmic) scale showing where the atom is compared to a giant sequoia. …