There we are cruising down the county highway. I’m thinking ahead to Lysol-ing the soles of my favorite travel boots after they come back from a week in Ireland. I envision benzalkonium chloride hitting 99.99% of the unicellular prokaryotes thus causing a little invisible genocide. The cell is dead, the creature is dead. It’s different for us.

Me: “When we die, do our cells cease functioning immediately?”
D: “No. Next question?”
Me: “How long do cells continue to function after?”
D: “A few hours.”
Me: “So, if your cells are still alive, are you really dead?”
D: “It depends on how you define death. You can’t drive a car. Clinically, death is defined as the cessation of brain activity.”
Me: “Then, why do doctors call death on the flatline of the ECG and not the EEG?”

D started a response, but NPR mentioned Dubya’s memoir AGAIN, which immediately turned the mood in the car from scientific curiosity to private stewing. Eight years of American history that will always have that effect on us.

I will have to get Herr Doktor Brother’s opinion on When Death Occurs.

In morbid news you can actually use, it is deer mating season in these here parts and a lawyer friend informed us last night that if your car and a deer happen to collide, always remember: You didn’t hit the deer, the deer ran into you. And, if you happen to be in Pennsylvania, do not for the love of God cut the head off an already dead deer. Or you will end up in the pokey with Ben Roethlisberger.

Tomorrow is the final day of the Science Bloggers for Students fundraising challenge at Donors Choose. Thank you, guys, for helping me raise $461 which will hopefully be doubled by HP some time this week! One of the projects, Rockin Earth, has only $176 left to go! Please, VatulBlog readers, let’s be responsible for the kids of Jacksonville, North Carolina acquiring a decent mineral testing kit. Just one more day and a beleaguered teacher will thank you from the bottom of her heart.

Why should you help kids learn science? So that they appreciate football, of course! Scientific American reports:

In partnership with the National Science Foundation and the National Football League, NBC Learn has created 10 videos that explore several concepts:

* Newton’s three laws of motion
* The Pythagorean theorem
* Projectile motion
* Vectors
* Geometric shapes
* Kinematics
*  Torque
*  Hydration and nutrition

All this week, we’ll be providing additional stories that take the concepts explored in the video further.

Remember those awful word problems in which a dude has to swim across a river flowing at a certain velocity, so how far upstream does said dude have to start, given his own speed, in order to reach a specific point on the opposite bank? In What Are Vectors, and How Are They Used? “you see that quarterbacks must account for their own motion when throwing a pass.” Explains Jay Cutler. Sorry, was that out loud?

And yet, I don’t think angular momentum and torque can explain the big blond FABUlousness that is my very own defensive linebacker, Clay Matthews. Especially against the Cowboys.

The Sack Of John Kitna (Credit: Tom Lynn)

Hey, any excuse to talk Packer football raise money for science.

Remember back when I told you we conducted a study that showed that approximately 80% of Haiti is susceptible to landslides because the ground beneath them is weathered volcanic rock and heavily deforested for charcoal?

Enter Hurricane Tomas. It’s a Category 1, measly by southern Louisiana standards, but torrential rain is the last thing earthquake-broken, landslide-prone, cholera-striken Haiti needs right now.

As you prepare for the holidays, please keep Haiti in your thoughts.

Update: More about the hurricane and associated landslides at Dave’s Landslide Blog.

Live Science | Republican Fiscal Plan Could Slash Science Budgets

… Those agencies include the National Science Foundation, which funds about 20 percent of all federally supported basic research in America, and which would lose 18.8 percent of its budget, or $1 billion. The Department of Energy‘s Office of Science would be set back $835 million, or 18 percent of its budget.

Also hard-hit would be the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). NOAA, which is involved in weather and climate monitoring as well as fisheries management and coastal and marine research, would lose $324 million, or 34 percent of what the Obama administration requested for its budget in 2011. NIST, which has a mission of advancing measurement science, standards and technology, would lose $207 million, almost 30 percent of its budget request.

Also facing cuts under the plan is the National Institutes of Health, which would lose 9.1 percent, or $2.9 billion of its requested 2011 budget.

Please also read Obama Calls For Historic Commitment To Science from early 2009. The door closes just as it re-opens.

Good luck with those sutainable and meaningful jobs. They’re going out of this country.