November 12 is the 316th day of the year (or in the case of leap years such as 2008, the 317th).

Today I was looking for something to write about and thought I would note a few things that have happened on this day in history:

1933:
The first known photographs of the Loch Ness Monster were taken by Hugh Gray, a British Labour Party politician and lecturer at the University of London. Gray was walking back from church when he saw a large object making a big splash. Armed with his camera he snapped the photo to the left. Skeptics dismissed the photo as being too blurry to show anything.

1935:
The first Lobotomy is performed in a Lisbon hospital by Portuguese neurologist Antonio Egas Moniz. At that time things were done a little different. He essentially drilled two holes in the patients skull and injected pure alcohol into the frontal lobes of the brain. This destroyed the tissue in an effort to alter the patients behavior. No word on what happened to that original patient, and my brief efforts to find out who it was came up blank.

1970:
The famous “exploding whale” incident occurs when The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting and beached Sperm whale. This turned out to be not such a good idea as onlookers were covered in little bits of whale remains. This YouTube video of the incident tells the whole story

Well, I suppose the dead mouse itself is not alive and well, but Japanese geneticists have created healthy clones from mice which were dead and frozen 16 years ago.

An article at National Geographic News reports that the team successfully extracted dead brain and blood cells from the frozen mice. These cells were then injected directly into unfertilized mouse eggs. The result, happy little baby mice primed for poking and scientific testing.

The article goes on to note that this same process could be used to bring extinct species back to life, such as the woolly mammoth. My question: Isn’t this going just a little too far? I saw Jurassic Park, and I have to say, I don’t really have any interest in becoming breakfast for some resurrected 100 million year old dinosaur.

I was opening up a bottle of Coke the other day and got to wondering. What percentage of global CO2 emissions were caused by the release of CO2 found in soft drinks?

I have done some digging to get the numbers I require for this incredibly rough estimate. I will point out that these figures are very far from accurate as I have not tested anything myself, just grabbed and crunched what figures I could find.

How Much CO2 in a Bottle of Soda
I came onto a blog article by Dr. Davig G. Haase, “How Much CO2 is in a Bottle of Soda”.  I will not go into great depth on how he made the calculations, you can read his article for that, but the end result was an estimated 2.2 grams of carbon dioxide per 454 mil bottle of Pepsi One. (I will assume that the numbers for Coke and all other soft drinks would be about the same.)

Soda Consumption
I found it difficult to get figures on soda consumption, but I did find this random site, DentalGentleCare.com . I have no idea where they get their numbers, but they claim that the average American drinks more than 53 gallons of carbonated soft drinks each year. Lets assume this is true. If we take the population of the US as of July 2007 (according to cia.gov ) of 301,139,947, this gives us a total of 15,960,417,191 Gallons of soda. Really? Wow! 1 US gallon = 3.78 liters, so this makes a total annual consumption of soda in the US roughly: 60,330,376,981.

CO2 Emissions from Soda
60 Billion liters of Soda? That’s insane. I should double check these sources to find others that confirm this, but I’m lazy – lets assume its correct. If this is true, that would result in 292,602,328,362 grams of CO2 emissions from Soda in the US each year.

Lets get an easier number to work with. According to google 1 gram is equal to 0.00220462262 pounds. If we do the math that equals 645,077,711 pounds of CO2, or, since 1 metric ton is equal to 2204 pounds, that works down to 292,684 metric tons of CO2 – I know cause I made an excel sheet.

Now that we know the numbers for Soda, lets figure out what percentage this is for the total US emissions. The total annual CO2 emissions is estimated at 27,245,758,000 metric tons according to, yes I know, Wikipedia .

So now we can break this down we end up with a really small number. 0.001% of all CO2 emissions in the US are contributed by Soda. (1 thousandth of 1 percent).

So there you have it. If you drink soda you are contributing to the end of the world, 4.85 grams at a time.

Raw Data
- Grams of CO2 per liter of soda: 4.85
- US population (July 2007): 301,139,947
- Soda consumed by average American Each Year: 53 Gallons
- Liters of soda consumed: 60,330,376,981
- Annual CO2 (in Grams) from soda: 292,602,328,362
- Annual CO2 (in Pounds) from soda: 645,077,711
- Annual CO2 (in Metric Tons) from soda: 292,684
- Total annual CO2 emissions in US: 27,245,758,000
- Percentage of total CO2 released by soda: 0.001%

Note: I just realized that I have no idea where the CO2 that the soda companies put into the beverages comes from, so perhaps, the CO2 would end up in the atmosphere anyways?

It is just about that time again. For many of us in around the world the clocks will go back an hour on Sunday November 2nd at 2:00am, giving us that much needed extra hour of weekend sleep.

Daylight savings time (DST) has been around for a while now – far beyond my lifetime, but do you know the history behind it?

When do we set our clocks?
DST begins on the second Sunday in March when we set our clocks ahead 1 hour. Clocks are then set back an hour on the first Sunday in November. These dates changed in March of 2007.

Why was daylight savings created and when did it start?
If we want to get technical, daylight savings started, in various forms, back with ancient civilizations. At one time the daylight hours were divided up into 12 equal portions. This resulted in longer hours in the summer and shorter hours in the winter.

DST as we know it today, started at different times in different countries, but for the most part happened around the turn of the 20th century. During World War I, a scarcity of resources resulted in Germany instituting the first daylight saving laws in 1915. This reduced the number of hours after dark that people stayed up before bed, and reduced the strain on fuel sources.

Canada was one of the many countries to follow suit and adopted the policy back in 1917. The US followed shortly after in 1918. Canada was the first jurisdiction in North America to adopt the policy.

Where is daylight savings time used?
Many countries all around the world use DST, however, the majority of these are located in the northern hemisphere, and almost all of North America practices with the exception of a few pockets. From a population standpoint, the total number of people who follow daylight savings are in the minority on a global scale.

Daylight savings misconception…
I had to add this as I saw a post on FailBlog that cracked me up. It is well worth taking a quick look for a laugh.

Perhaps this guy, Chris Hill, needs to be taxed!

Physicists have made a recent discovery that just might affect you this Christmas. It seems that when you peel scotch tape off of the roll, it emits X-Rays lasting about a billionth of a second long. no need to be too worried though – apparently this phenomenon only occurs within a vacuum.

When the tape is pulled away from the roll electrons jump from the roll to the sticky underside of the tape. When hitting the stickiness of the tape, the electrons slow down and that is when they emit the X-Rays.

Unless you plan on wrapping your Christmas presents inside your Electrolux, you really have nothing to worry about, but its interesting never the less.