I stumbled across something today that I find utterly hilarious: apparently a few well-designed 'spoof' web sites that chronicle the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide were able to fool a southern California city government into very nearly passing a law outlawing the use of foam cups because the 'dangerous chemical' dihydrogen monoxide was used in their manufacture.
The websites, spearheaded by the now infamous www.dhmo.org, describe dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) as "a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the unstable radical Hydroxide, the components of which are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol." (dhmo.org faq section)
Now, dihydrogen monoxide is more commonly known as H-2-O, a compound composed of two atoms of the element Hydrogen and one atom of the element Oxygen. Ask any child who has passed sixth-grade science and they will tell you that "H Two Oh" is a fancy schmancy way of spelling 'Water.' Yes, that's right. The 'colorless and odorless chemical compound' that so scared the city council of Aliso Viejo, California, is WATER.
What I particularly love about this satire is that they haven't lied ... there is no false information on the pages. Dihydrogen Monoxide clearly IS a component of acid rain, contributes to soil erosion, and causes short-circuits if it contaminates electrical circuits! It is the very honesty, albeit tinged with a sense of deliberate misrepresentation, that is so funny. The scientific satirists so cleverly spoofed the chemical lingo and descriptions that are more commonly associated with Carbon Monoxide (the colorless, odorless killer) that they were able to scare a bunch of science-illiterates into humble submission. (The aforementioned science illiterates, when asked for an explanation, vaguely blamed a 'paralegal who did bad research.')
Which only goes to show just how crippled we ordinary human beings can become when the river Lethe has washed away our memories of most of what we ever 'learned' in school. It further goes to show the power of specialist lingo over the non-initiate.
On a recent episode of Alias, the resident CIA techie genius, Marshall, was asked to explain something he had just said in 'plain English' because not everyone in the room spoke 'Science'. Though I would like to believe that a regular reading of Discover Magazine and the like has kept me fairly knowledgeable, I have to admit that in some instances, it's all Geek to me.
Case in point: I recently learned from my mother that the special sub-category of specialist terms and acronyms found on her company web pages are not SAP lingo or SAP jargon - no, my friends, they are 'SAPanese,' which I find a fitting description, and a telling one: it means, at the very least, that those who speak SAPanese are aware that the words coming out of their mouths would hardly be understood by the average layman. It is a frank self-awareness that I highly admire.
Oh yeah, and the other thing I learned? Never, ever, ever blindly trust something that you read on the internet.
18:54
