Author: Tim

It’s in human nature to try and measure everything around us, to better understand us. However, some are not happy with meters, kilograms or liters. Instead, they create new ways of analyzing nature. Some are just bored, and create funny units. Others create new scales to look at data in new and exciting ways. But all of them make you scratch your head and think “why can’t we just use the metric system on this problem?”

14. Big Mac Index

The Big Mac Index only sounds crazy, until you realize what it’s there for. Created by the magazine The Economist, it provides an independent way of judging the purchasing power parity nations. There are McDonalds everywhere, right? And they all serve Big Macs (or a local equivalent). So you take how much it costs to buy one in a country, and compare that to the cost of the burger in another. If the difference in cost is substantially different from the actual exchange rate, it shows there’s a disparity between the stated value of a currency, and what it’s actually worth. You can also look at how long it takes someone to earn a Big Mac, based on their salary, as a way of analyzing pay in different cities.

13. Football Fields

For some reason, whenever a distance or area has to be used on the news, it’s always measured in “football fields”. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in, or what variant of football they play (soccer, handegg, or rugby), the same measurement is always used. “It’s 75 football fields long!” “That’s the same area as 17 football fields!”. For some reason, we’re all meant to have this perfect idea of how big a field is, and just how large a cluster of them would be. Ever heard of standard units? What exactly is so wrong with yards or meters, that we need to compare to the equivalent sports field?

12. Tons of TNT

When it comes to explosives, it all links back to one thing: trinitrotoluene. TNT. You know how nukes are measured in megatons or gigatons? Yeah, that’s how many tons of TNT it’s the equivalent of. It’s a handy way to compare, assuming you know the destructive capabilities of a ton of TNT. The thing is, do you? I have never worked with explosives. No one I know has (except for one guy who spent a bit of time working on fireworks, which don’t quite count). What exactly does a ton of TNT do? Is it a metric tonne or an imperial ton? How big of a boom is it? Could it knock down a building? A city block? A football field? Sometimes it’s good that people use an appreciable standard measure, but it only works if there’s a frame of reference for most people.

11. Tanner Scale of Sexual Maturity

The Tanner Scale isn’t weird in itself, but the way it’s used is a bit disturbing. It’s a method of judging the physical sexual maturity of a child or teenager based on physical characteristics. Size of the secondary sexual characteristics, development of pubic hair, that sort of stuff. However, it fails to take into account something very important — namely that people can vary mammothly. And due to the Tanner Scale, a guy almost spent 20 years in jail. See, there’s this porn star Little Lupe, who is absolutely tiny and used to have tiny breasts. She’s since had implants, but her old videos are still around. So this guy buys one of her DVDs, completely legally, and then gets busted for child porn. A pediatrician testified that due to the Tanner Scale, there was no physical way the star of the film was over 18. The judge even refused to admit evidence from the porn company’s records showing Lupe was of age. Eventually, the porn star actually showed up in the courtroom to prove she was legal, and so was the DVD. It’s terrifying that a rough guide is now being used as an absolute scale, with enough certainty to doom someone to jail for most of their life.

10. Smoot

Following the finest tradition of the US system of measurements, a Smoot is a very specific length as defined by the human body. In this case, a very specific human body, that of Oliver R. Smoot. As a freshman at MIT, his frat elders decided that Smoot’s stature made him an excellent height for measuring. Laid across the Harvard Bridge over the River Charles in Boston, a line was painted at Smoot’s head, some 5′7″. Again and again, they lay him down, crossing the bridge, and measuring it’s length at an official 364.4 Smoots. To this day, every year those lines are re-painted on the bridge, memorializing the Smoot. Smoot went on to chair the American National Standards Institute and become president for the International Organization for Standardization.

9. FFF System

Lets face it, the imperial system the US uses for measuring is pretty stupid. The rest of the world uses metric, and it makes a lot more sense. The FFF system was devised as a way of measuring using intentionally outdated units, just to poke fun at the impractical nature of the imperial system. FFF stands for furlong/firkin/fortnight, used for length, mass, and time respectively. A furlong is 220 yards/201.168m; a firkin 90 lbs/40.823kg; and a fortnight 14 days/1,209,600 seconds. Fortnight is still used pretty frequently in Commonwealth countries, but a firkin? That’s pretty obscure. The system is most famous for a “microfortnight” or 1.2096 seconds, and a “furlong per fortnight” which is around 1cm per minute.

8. The Galactic Year

Using the scale of an Earth year when talking geological or astronomical events is a problem, the unit of this time period dwarfs when compared to the length of time referenced. Hell, a million years is too small for some of it, but a billion years is too long. Enter the Galactic Year. This is a measure of the time it takes the solar system to orbit around the center of the Milky Way — somewhere around 250 million years. It provides a handy yardstick for great lengths of time, as well as providing a conceptually clear origin for the time period. Following this way of counting, the Earth is around 20 galactic years old, and the galaxy itself is around 80. Man, I can’t wait for Earth’s 21GY birthday! It’s going to be such a tight party! By the way, humans have been around for 0.001GY.

7. The Dol

How do you measure pain? It’s incredibly personal and variable. What you might think stings a little, someone else might find agonizing enough to cause tears. Or, you might start wailing at what others would scoff at. There’s no absolute way to measure pain, and asking the person to say how much something hurts on a scale of 1 to 10 is flawed. After all, I really have no idea what a 10 is. Broken limb? Three weeks of torture in a dungeon in the Middle East? Passing a kidney stone? James D. Hardy, Herbert G. Wolff, and Helen Goodell attempted to create something a bit more scientific than saying “it hurts”. They created a unit of measure called the dol — equivalent to a just noticeable difference in the level of pain. Unfortunately, this falls in the trap of relying on self reporting, and requires that patients be able to correctly gauge these differences. Unsurprisingly, it never took off. Full points for trying, though.

6. Attoparsec

A parsec is a really, really large unit of measurement. It’s used in astronomy, and is around 3.25 light years, or 3.085×10^16 m (around 31 trillion km). Atto- is the SI prefix denoting 10^-18 or 0.000000000000000001. So an attoparsec a really small version of a very large measure. So what does that end up being? About 3.085cm. A nice, small length, gathered by combining to ludicrous measures. So why do it? Shits and giggles, more or less. It does create a humorous oxymoron sort of measure. Though utterly impractical. Frankly, I blame physicists. Coincidently, 1 attoparsec/microfortnight is nearly 1 inch/second.

5. Beard-Seconds

Remember what I just said about physicists? Well, this one is definitely their fault. Everyone knows what a light-year is. It’s the distance light travels in a year, in a vacuum, around 10 trillion km. It’s very handy for things far, far away. So what happens when you want something similar, but on a small scale? You take the average length that a beard grows in a single second. Light-year = fast moving thing over long time period. Beard-second = slow moving thing over short time period. Haha, very funny, bearded physics guys. In case you care, it’s 5 nanometers.

4. Bristol Stool Scale

As Scrubs once so eloquently put it, “Everything Comes Down To Poo”. And they’re right, you can learn a lot about someone’s health by their feces. So, how do you go about describing crap on an equivalent level? Enter the Bristol Stool Scale. Your poop gets rated on a scale from 1-7, constipated to diarrhea. And, for some unknown reason, four of the seven are described in relation to food. That’s right, nuts and sausages are used frequently when describing the consistency of the feces. You should apparently be able to differentiate between sausage and italian sausage when it’s coming out of your ass. Remember, try for types 3 and 4, they’re ideal!

3. The Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale

Life can be pretty bad sometimes. Finances, relationships, stress — it can all take a toll on your health. But how much of one? Ah, now we get into the science! The eponymous Holmes and Rahe put together a list of stressful events that happen in your life, and assigned each a point score. You look at how many have hit you in the last 12 months, total the score, and if it’s above 300, you’re at a pretty bad risk for illness — ideally you want to keep it below 150. The worst possible occurrence is the death of a spouse, which clocks in at 100 points. Then divorce (73), marital separation (65), imprisonment (63), and death of a close family member (63). At the lower end of the scale are little things: Christmas, breaking a minor law, changing your eating habits. But they all add up. They also made a similar list for “non-adults”, which pretty much boils down to teen pregnancy and school sucks.

2. Scoville Scale

The Scoville Scale is pretty well known — a way of measuring the heat of chili peppers, but when you think about, it’s kinda crazy. Someone’s legacy is a way of figuring out how spicy little red fruits are. While today the measuring of a pepper’s heat is a thoroughly scientific endeavor, using high-performance liquid chromatography, the original test was far less precise. The first method involved making an alcohol extract of the capsaicin oil from a measured amount of dried pepper, which was then incrementally added to a sugar/water solution until the heat is just detectable. In other words, it relied on someone being able to feel when something gets spicy. Since spicy food binds to receptors in your mouth, the more hot food you eat, the less spiciness you would feel, making the original scale more or less bunk. But these days? It’s the gold standard of spice!

1. Schmidt Sting Pain index

Justin O. Schmidt deserves a medal for the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Personally stung by 78 species of insect, he compiled a a scale of the pain they caused. From 1-4, he classified and described the pain they caused — with vivid detail. In fact, reading his descriptions might cause you to question Schmidt’s sanity, but hey, being stung by all those critters might drive anyone up the wall. Rather than wax lyrical about the index, I’ll let the WTFery speak for itself:
•1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
•1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet and reaching for the light switch.
•1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
•2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
•2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
•2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
•3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
•3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic and burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
•4.0 Pepsis wasp: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
•4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel

A Wall Street Journal article today draws attention to yet another unexpected way in which Facebook’s privacy practices have not complied with its public statements and have disregarded users’ privacy rights. Just last week, when asked about Facebook’s privacy practices with advertisers, Facebook executive Elliot Schrage wrote:

We don’t share your information with advertisers. Our targeting is anonymous. We don’t identify or share names. Period.

As the Wall Street Journal report shows, this was not true. In fact, Facebook’s architecture at the time allowed advertisers to see detailed personal information about some Facebook users.

The article identified a security flaw concerning referer URLs, a basic part of the web’s architecture. For readers who aren’t web gurus: A “referer” is a piece of information sent whenever you click on a link. It tells the site you’re visiting what URL you’ve just come from. (The term’s strange spelling is one of the web’s many historical in-jokes.) In some instances, the referer URL will also include a “query string” that reveals additional information.

Ordinarily, the query string doesn’t reveal anything sensitive. In fact, it’s a maxim of web engineering that sensitive information (like passwords) should never be placed in the query string, exactly because doing so can cause security and privacy problems.

It’s a maxim that Facebook apparently forgot. A paper published last August by researchers at AT&T Labs and Worcester Polytechnic (blogged by EFF here) showed how Facebook’s referers revealed information to advertisers that could be used to personally identify visitors. The problem was made far worse by the changes Facebook made in December and April, which designated radically more user data as “publicly available information” and created new tech tools for mining that data.

Yesterday, facing the pressure of the impending Wall Street Journal article, Facebook fixed the worst aspects of that loophole. They say they’re in the process of fixing the rest.

The fixes come not a moment too soon. The flaws were not only in conflict with Schrage’s public statements, but with Facebook’s own privacy policy, which states that “We don’t share your information with advertisers without your consent.”

Beyond the fixes Facebook has already made, what steps can be taken to prevent this kind of data leakage in the future? There are some steps Facebook could take, like moving users to HTTPS, which can limit transmission of referer URLs. And users can protect themselves by using plugins like Firefox’s RefControl. We also encourage both social networking services and web browsers to adopt emerging standards like ‘noreferrer’, which would allow sites much simpler control over how referers are handled.

Of course, as demonstrated in the AT&T/WPI paper, referer strings are not the only path by which social networks leak personal information to advertisers. That paper found that 11 of the 12 social networking sites it examined leak personal information to advertisers by one method or another. Hopefully, today’s WSJ article is a sign that all of these methods will soon be receiving closer scrutiny.

Every drug has side effects, and we usually just ignore them. Hell, even your toothpaste has warnings and cautions about unintended effects — a laundry list of possible things that could go wrong. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea. It seems like anything that comes in pill form could give you that. But some drugs…some drugs are scary. They can permanently change you. They can fuck up your life. They can give you man boobs. These are the worst of the worst.

13. Antidepressants and Depression

Coming at you straight from the halls of irony comes one of the most common side effects of antidepressants: depression. That’s right, they caused the very thing they were meant to cure you of. Like the rest of the internet, I don’t actually know what irony is, but I’m pretty sure this qualifies. Prozac was especially renowned for this, and young adults seem to be hit pretty hard. Lets face it, life’s shitty when you’re in High School. So your parents decide to make your already crappy existence even worse by sticking you on antidepressants, which just make you feel even worse. Plus, they make you fat. Yeah, that’s more or less the worst thing you can do to a 15 year old.

12. Sex and Gambling

ReQuip is a drug designed to help Alzheimer’s and Restless Leg Syndrome. More scientifically known as Ropinirole, it’s a non-ergoline dopamine agonist, and one of only two drugs that the FDA has okayed for dealing with RLS. However, one of the long, long list of side effects associated with the drug — including liver, kidney, eye and skin problems — is compulsive behavior. While on the drug, there’s a chance you’ll completely lose your ability to control your impulses. Not just any impulses, but specifically you’ll be hit with a major need to have crazy-ass sex, and go gambling. Which could lead one of two paths: dapper, baccarat playing, seducer — like James Bond. Or, skeezy pervert who lost all his money at the dog races. Guess which you’d be more likely to be stuck with? You don’t even have to have had issues with that in the past, and all of a sudden you’re blowing your mortgage on underage hookers and back-alley craps games. Thanks, GlaxoSmithKline!

11. Hormonal Contraceptive

Another of life’s horrible fucking ironies, which seems only to exist in order to make fun of us. The pill, the patch, the ring, the implant: they’re all effective ways of not getting up the duff while having sex. So, yay for you, you’re getting some! You’re in a happy, monogamous relationship, so you’re not worried about STIs! You both get checked out, are clean of all bugs, and you go on the pill! Time for some hot, hot bareback action! Not so fast, girly! Common side effects of hormonal contraceptives are: loss of sex drive, vaginal dryness, and weight gain. You don’t want to have sex; you can’t have sex; and you don’t feel sexy. Oh you pharmaceutical sons of bitches! That’s a bastard of a catch 22!

10. Oily, Leaky Stool

Alli and Olestra are the two evils here, for similar but separate reasons. Alli was billed as a miracle weight loss cure — you don’t absorb fat anymore! No fat absorbed, eat as many pizzas as you want, you overweight git! Olestra was marketed just as a fat replacement, it goes in food, and you get all that delicious oily goodness, but none gets absorbed by your body. Now kids, what happens to things we ingest that don’t get digested? That’s right, they come out the ass. Now, the anus is usually pretty good at stopping solids coming out, but when it’s pure oil? It’s not designed for that abuse. And so, you get uncontrollable anal leakage of oil that looks like grease off a cheap slice of pizza. When you lest expect it, oily shit will come leaking out your ass and into your underwear. Frankly, I’ll rather just absorb fat normally, thanks.

9. Gray Skin Syndrome

There are at least two drugs in existence that can make you look like a movie-star from the ’40s. Amiodarone is an antiarrhythmic agent, so it’s used to help regulate your heartbeat. In some cases, it has the bewildering side effect of making your skin turn grey/blue. How freaking weird would that be? To have your skin gradually change color, to a hue no human should encounter? You know what’s worse? Chloramphenicol, and antibiotic sometimes given to newborns. How bad are its effects? The term for what happens is “Gray Baby Syndrome”. That’s right, your kid has had the saturation slider pulled all the way down, thanks to an antibiotic.

8. Delayed Orgasm

Another absolute horror associated with antidepressants — this time SSRIs. Of those on the drugs, somewhere between 35%-70% of them get hit with major issues with their sexual health. Officially listed as “decreased libido, delayed orgasm, anorgasmia, erectile dysfunction, and difficulties with arousal”, these problems can be major. Calling it “delayed orgasm” is putting a rather nice spin on it, because what actually happens? You can’t come. You can tug that thing till you wear the skin off. You can rub your coffee bean until you’ve chafed through an entire bottle of lube. You can fuck for 24 hours straight, while watching porn on 14 screens at once. Nothing. Nada. Zip. You just can’t come. Jeez, at least if you’re on cocaine and can’t get off, you’re still a stinking rich stock trader from the 80s; if you’re on SSRIs, there’s a pretty good change your life already sucks. And now you can’t orgasm.

7. Permanent Eye Color Change

Bimatoprost is a drug used to control glaucoma, with the side-effect of making your eyelashes grow longer. So Allergan had an idea. They took the glaucoma drug, and created the fake disease “inadequate eyelashes”, and market it as Latisse. Slap everywoman Brooke Shields on the ads, and you’ll have women flocking to buy a product to make their thin, anemic eyelashes grow into mighty branches. So as long as you keep pouring this gunk into your eyes, your lashes are long, but if you stop, they evaporate. But you know what effect is has that’s permanent? It’ll turn your iris brown. Say what? That’s right, if you have blue or green eyes, you might never see them again. Using Latisse causes irreversible pigment change in the eyes of some people, leaving them with brown eyes, regardless of their original color.

6. Coffee Grounds Vomit

Plavix is a drug to prevent your blood from clotting after a heart attack or stroke, so you’re already in a pretty serious position if you’re taking it. Naturally, as it stops your body from clotting bleeds properly, there are all sorts of horrific side effects, the most terrifying of which is “coughing up blood or vomit that looks like coffee grounds”. What happens, is that any minor bleeding in the stomach doesn’t heal properly, and that blood has to come out somewhere. So you either get “black, bloody, or tarry stools” or it comes out your mouth. Looking like coffee grounds. I’m sorry, if I’m coughing up coffee ground looking blood, I’m stopping whatever the hell you have me on. That’s freaking terrifying!

5. Manboobs

Oh man, you’re going bald? That sucks, why not go on Propecia? Then the ladies will love your flowing, sexy, full head of hair! Of course, using something that fucks with your hormones on such a fundamental level is bound to have some issues: testicular pain, abnormal sexual function, irreversible impotence and erectile dysfunction, gynecomastia…wait, what was that last one? Bitch tits. Moobs. Man boobs. Great big sweaty tits on your chest. Not sexy, not for anyone. Girls don’t like it, guys don’t like it. So, while you might have some more hair on your head, you have horrible sexual dysfunctions, and tits. Somehow, I don’t think that was worth the trade-off. But hey, that’s just me.

4. Fucking Everything About Ambien

Ambien is meant to help you get to sleep. But, if you hold out on going to bed, something interesting happens. There’s a scientific term for it, which is called “going fucking crazy”. Seriously, it will make you balls-to-the-wall insane. It’s so fucked up, that people have started doing it as a recreational drug. You hallucinate, call people you haven’t talked to for years, eat huge amounts of food, have crazy sex, sleep-walk, sleep-drive, and generally become a completely different person. It’s essentially a Jekyll and Hyde drug, leaving you with the cleanup, but none of the awesome memories. The internet is littered with stories about people taking Ambien, and calling all their ex-girlfriends, and holding complete conversations while under the drug. That’s scary, yo!

3. Suicide

Chantix is a drug designed to help you with a very specific problem — quitting smoking. Giving up the lung darts can require an iron will at the best of times, and a bit of pharmaceutical help is always appreciated. Except Chantix makes you want to kill yourself. Not just depression, because God knows there’s enough of that when you try and quit smoking. Chantix actually makes you want to off yourself. It puts suicidal ideas in your brain. According to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, in Q4 2007, this drug was more responsible for reports of serious side effects than any other on the market. Woohoo, you’re number 1! Now, if only the people taking you didn’t want to get all up close and personal with the Grim Reaper.

2. Brain Zaps

So, after seeing the horrible side effects of anti-depressants on this list, you decide to quit the pills. After all, is life really that bad, that it’s worth the utter horrors that SSRIs reap on your body? Welcome to the worst fucking comedown ever. You think trying to quite heroin is bad? Dead babies and the shits have nothing on what SSRIs will put you through. It takes at least 10 days to push through the pain, and believe me, you will feel pain. Because you get the brain zaps. Imagine someone shoving a taser in your brain. Every 5 minutes. For two weeks. Now combine that with dizziness, sweating, nausea, insomnia, tremor, confusion, and vertigo, and you get an idea of what people go through coming off these drugs. You will crawl into a ball and want to die. You won’t be able to talk to anyone. You won’t be able to leave the house. Even the most basic task will be nigh on insurmountable. Fun, huh?

1. Death

The big one. The be all and end all of side effects. Once this one hits, there’s no going back. That’s right: death. The funny thing is, it’s a surprisingly common side effect. Not that you’ll ever get it, but I’m pretty sure if you go rifling through your medicine cabinet, you’ll find at least one drug that has that tucked away in the “side effects” section, in tiny, tiny print. Adderall, Tamiflu, Celebrex, Gardasil, Accutane, and Botox. They’re all out to get you. Thankfully, this worst possible side effect is rare enough, that if there was ever a major risk from it, a product would never reach the market. We hope. FDA, don’t fuck it up.