Category: Feedback Solicitation

Explicit solicitation of opinions and information from readers

Microbial Fuel Cell netcast…

It’s only my first attempt at anything like this, so constructive comments are welcome…

(Hopefully you can see the embedded audio player here…)For those of you just tuning in, this is a 90-second explanation of Why Microbial Fuel Cells work. A longer (though still simple) explanation can be found at a slightly older post here.[Update: this was featured in the November 6, 2007 broadcast! Hooray, I can now claim to be an international “radio personality”!]Presuming hosting this file doesn’t kill my bandwidth, I’ll leave it up here. BelowAbove, you should see an embedded flash player (assuming you have Macromedia® Flash® player installed) which you should be able to click on to start the audio. I’ll also place a direct download link below. It should be noted that like everything else on this blog (unless otherwise specified), this audio is also available under the Creative Commons non-commercial/attribution/share-alike license, so as long as you have no problem with the terms of that license you are welcome to copy, redistribute, put up on bittorrent, host a public performance, turn into an interpretative dance art project, or whatever else you might want to do with it so long as you give me credit for it, don’t use it for commercial purposes, and distribute any derivative works of it under the same terms.

You can download the audio directly from here – right-click on the link and select “save link as…”. Ogg Vorbis format available on request…

Poor-boy science: should I build my own electrophoresis platform?

I want to build my own little electrophoresis gizmo to play with.

I did pick up a small tube of powdered graphite and some liquid tape. With this, I should be able to make a waterproof electrically-conducting glue that I can use for the electrodes. I’ve got numerous old “wall-wart”-type power adapters that I ought to be able to use for power supply.

The main thing I’m trying to work out in my head before I start trying to actually put this together is exactly how I’m going to arrange it so that I can have either a thin gel or a piece of paper or other fibrous material in between the electrodes so that I can best separate things.

I suppose it’s kind of bizarre, but this is actually part of the ongoing Expired JellO® projects. I was wondering to myself what actual changes might possibly occur in a packet of dry gelatin mix over time, and how would I be able to tell?  My previous experiments have shown no indication that there are any easily detectable differences (no obvious changes in taste or texture, no strange eerie glow, no acquisition of superpowers upon eating it…) so I’ll have to look more closely.

It occurred to me that just maybe over time the strands of protein that make up gelatin might get damaged by oxidation from the air in the pouch (or do they seal the pouch in a relatively inert gas, like argon or nitrogen?). This isn’t something one can really tell just by looking, obviously. One MIGHT be able to tell indirectly by making fresh and “expired” packets of gelatin with the same precisely-measured amount of water, poured on at the same precisely-measured temperature, and ideally with the same amount of mixing. Believe it or not, there are actually special scientific devices for measuring the firmness of gels like this. The hypothesis would be that expired gelatin might end up “degraded” into smaller strands of protein than a fresh packet, and that this would be reflected in a reduced firmness of the gel, or perhaps reduced water-holding capacity.

However, I don’t have access to precise devices for measuring things like that, and in any case since I suspect the difference would be pretty minimal, I’m not sure any difference in firmness would really be detectable with any kind of instrument I could cobble together on my own. What to do?…

I thought that if I had a way to subject a sample of dissolved gelatin to electrophoresis, I could then use a protein-staining substance to see how broad of a range of protein-fragment sizes were existent, or perhaps even spot distinct fragments if oxidative damage tended to happen at the juncture between particular amino acids or something.

I’m not quite sure why, but I have a strong desire to do this experiment from scratch as a “hillbilly biotech” exercise (including building the equipment and obtaining my supplies from grocery or hardware stores rather than specialty scientific supply places).

There are special protein staining compounds I can use at the end to see where my bits of protein ended up after electrophoresis. “Coomassie Brilliant Blue“, for example, but they don’t have that down at the grocery store. (And if you think that’s a funny name for a dye, consider “Light Green SF Yellowish”…)

Then, I ran into a post indirectly about henna over on scienceblogs.com. It seems the natural orange-staining ingredient in henna, called lawsone, may be specifically a protein-staining substance. I’m not certain about this, but a dark-orange protein-staining dye would work for my purposes I think. If so, that solves my need to get a protein stain from an ordinary store.

It’ll be a little while before I can try to put this plan into action, but I think I’ll be able to get to it in the next month or two.

In other news, I think I’ll try to post my “Microbial fuel cells in 90 seconds” audio sometime tomorrow. Then I can work on more. Anybody want to hear me attempting to explain something in 90 seconds? So far I’ve considered MRSA, and perhaps how cow flatulence threatens the world’s climate (which is also a microbiological topic). I’m sure there must be plenty of other possible topics. Any suggestions?

P.S. Who wants audio in Ogg Vorbis format in addition to mp3?

A short update…

I’ve got an Art History exam in the morning which has been consuming my time, but I wanted to get some kind of post up. Especially since it almost looks as though I just don’t post on Thursdays. I swear the recent several weeks of “no post on Thursday” is purely coincidental.

I’m still waiting to hear if This Week In Science got the audio file I sent them and whether or not they liked it. I did manage to find a legally-free embeddable flash-based audio player that I can use, so I’ll probably post it for listening to online or for downloading soon.

Meanwhile: One of my competitors in the College Blogging Scholarship 2007 competition had an interested post up the other day. Famous neuroscientist Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle posted about a bunch of computer people getting together to have a “hackfest”, where they all work on their projects and exchange ideas. She wonders if something similar might not be possible for scientists.

I have regularly found myself thinking about the possibility of a similar gathering for scientists. I wonder – would an international society of Peripatetic Scientists be feasible? What I envision would be a combination of “Science Cafe’” and “Semi-spontaneous field trip” (or even perhaps a “Flash Mob of Nerds”).

I picture groups of scientists, engineers, and other interested people converging on relatively short notice (say, no more than a week or so) to explore something together, whether it’s a section of a national park, or an observatory, or a grocery store, or even to just wander around in a public space discussing some topic. Rather than a carefully planned and organized event where people take turns “giving presentations”, I tend to suspect a more spontaneous exploration by a group of diverse people like this would result in much better horizontal meme transfer potential. It’s so much easier to participate and listen when one isn’t busy focusing on one’s own presentation material…

How many of you reading this might be interested in participating in this sort of thing?
(UPDATE: TO clarify, I mean how many of you, if you heard something like this was happening where you are, would be interested, not how many people are so incredibly impressed by me that they would travel across the world to be where I am…)

Electricity-breathing bacteria! (Microbial fuel cells)

I made a 90-second “pod”cast of why microbial fuel cells work. I don’t yet know if This Week in Science is or was interested in playing it. [Update: this was featured in the November 6, 2007 broadcast! Hooray!] Either way, once I find a way to make it available without killing my bandwidth I shall. I’ll probably do more of them – if nothing else I obviously need the practice.

It was oddly difficult getting myself to actually talk to the microphone – more so than actually publically speaking to real people. I’m not sure why. It strikes me as something I’ll get over quickly once I’ve done it a few times, and my voice won’t sound quite so bland in the future.

In any case, microbial fuel cells are possibly the topic that got me really interested in a college education in applied biotechnology. I’ve been meaning to do a post on why they work for a while, so here’s one, in somewhat more detail than the 90-second audio version.

First, some quick review: We all remember that atoms are made of positively-charged protons, uncharged neutrons, and negatively-charged electrons, right? Protons and usually neutrons in the middle, and electrons hovering around. When atoms chemically react with each other, they’re really just having a fight over who gets to keep the electrons. When the reaction is over, some kinds of atoms or groups of atoms will have gained at least partial custody of electrons that used to belong to some of the other atoms or groups of atoms. The ability of a kind of atom to take electrons away from other atoms is called “electronegativity”. The second most electronegative element in the universe just happens to be a major part of our atmosphere – Oxygen.

As bacteria break down food molecules to get biological energy, there are electrons left over along the way. The bacterial cells have specific carrier molecules that take these extra electrons away, where they can be later dumped elsewhere into any of a variety of other useful biological reactions that need them. The one we’re concerned with today is called the Electron Transport Chain.

In many bacteria, and in the mitochondria of plants, fungi, and animals, the Electron Transport Chain regenerates a huge amount of a cell’s biochemical energy. The extra electrons get sucked into the beginning of this chemical chain, and as they are pulled along, the force of this pull drives a process which regenerates the cells’ main energy-carrying molecule, called ATP. This process is “respiration”, and it’s also exactly the reason you need to breathe oxygen. Humans need so much energy just to remain alive that we couldn’t survive without the huge amount of extra energy that respiration provides.

What drives this whole chain is some chemical at the other end pulling the electrons out. In aerobic organisms, this is oxygen. Some bacteria can use other chemicals, like nitrates, sulfates, and ferric iron (yes, there are bacteria that can breathe rust…) None of these chemicals provide quite as much energy as oxygen does, but it’s better than nothing and gives bacteria that could be damaged by oxygen something to breathe.

Normally, this last step happens inside the cell, but some bacteria have ways of extending this last step so that the final hand-off of the electrons happens outside itself. Some bacteria even make electrically-conducting biological “nano-wires” that this can happen through. Others make “shuttle” molecules that can pick up electrons, dissolve out of the cell, hand off the electrons somewhere outside, and then dissolve back into the cell to pick up more.

Now, we can make a microbial fuel cell. An electrode is put where the bacteria are growing – without oxygen – and a wire runs from this, out of the area where the bacteria are and to another electrode which is exposed to oxygen. It’s like an electric snorkel for bacteria. From the electrode and through the wire, the oxygen sucks electrons away from the bacteria. An electrical device stuck between the ends of the wire can use this energy exactly the same way that it could use the energy from electrons being sucked from one end of a battery to another.

Interestingly, the common “simple stain” Methylene Blue can also act as an artificial “shuttle” molecule. When reduced (carrying extra electrons) methylene blue is actually colorless, and I would swear I’ve seen protocols somewhere that use this to measure just how active a yeast culture is, and one of the demonstration microbial fuel cell setups actually uses a culture of yeast in methylene blue rather than a microbe that can naturally breath through electrodes.

By the way, if you thought you could tell a human from a realistic humanoid robot bent on world domination by the fact that only humans eat, I’ve got bad news for you. One interesting application of microbial fuel cells is Gastrobots. Literally, robots with digestive systems, where bacteria breaking down the contents of the “stomach” act as a microbial fuel cell to power the robot.

I hope you find this explanation useful and interesting. If you have (or even if you haven’t) please let me know. I can’t necessarily tell if I’m doing anybody any good without feedback!

Stir-fried random…

Just a few brief random comments for the moment:

  • Am I the only one who is already completely sick and tired of the word “spooky”?
  • I think I’ve figured out what Descartes’ problem is. He’s gone on this meditation where he’s convinced himself that as far as he knows, nothing exists…except for himself. I think what happens next is that he gets horribly lonely, so when he realizes that his thoughts also exist with him, that’s when he developed that unwholesome passion for them and inability to bear leaving them that I’d previously mentioned. “But what kind of thing am I? I’m a thing that thinks. A thinking thing is what I am. But what kind of thing is that? Oh, yeah, I already said, it’s a thinking thing. Did I mention I was a thinking thing that thinks thoughts?….”. Okay, Descartes, we got it the first time…
  • One of my fellow “college science bloggers whose obscurity currently keeps them low in the vote totals” actually has a pretty neat blog. The Biourbanist focusses on features and attributes of urban areas. Well worth adding to your RSS feeds, I think. After you’ve already voted for me, of course…
  • I am currently attempting to put together my first netcast, in which I shall attempt to crunch an explanation of why microbial fuel cells work, in a form hopefully comprehensible to anyone with a good junior-high-school science education (or a mediocre high-school education, which is probably sadly more common), that fits into 90 seconds. Wish me luck.

More to follow…
UPDATE: Got the “pod”/netcast done – a real blog post on the subject of Microbial Fuel Cells to go with it may be found here tomorrow (Tuesday, October 16th) sometime, so long as nothing unexpected happens…

Saturday Night Meta-Blogging

I’d like to thank (profusely and repeatedly) everyone who has been coming to check out my blog via the College Blogging Scholarship site. Whether you’re deciding to vote for me or not, I hope you’ll keep coming back.

First, the bad news. We all know how this goes: the finalists are announced, and they all go ask all their friends and associates to vote for them, and to pass on the message to go vote for them. When someone, given the “Go vote for Sean” (or whoever) message, lands on the voting page, they’re confronted by a list of 19 other blogs besides the one they went there to vote for. How many of them REALLY think “Gosh, I should probably check out all of the other blogs to see which one really deserves my vote!”. The vast majority, I’m sure we all realize, just click on whoever they came to vote for and leave. Obviously whoever has the largest network of affiliated bloggers to send out repeated “vote for my buddy” posts every day has a huge advantage. Checking my server logs, I see that this is definitely true. (I’m lookin’ at YOU, scienceblogs.com! Unfair? No, actually, not at all. Jealous? You bet your sweet bippy I’m jealous!)

Since the start of the competition, I’ve gotten a total of 465 unique visits referred from the scholarship finalists announcement page. At present, there are 19,740 votes that have been cast – so less than 2.5% of the voters have bothered to check out the other blogs.

Now, the good news: This is actually much higher than I would have guessed. Given the comparative obscurity of my blog (at the moment), the fact that more than one in fifty voters have at least looked over the first page of my blog makes me very happy. So, again, thanks, and I hope you’ll keep coming back.

In other news, Josh Charles of “[website]$sudo life” suggests that my post suggesting a “War on Science” could be a good thing for science would make a good basis for an entertaining spoof documentary. I’m kind of liking that idea…

Enough of that for now, though. I’ll be getting back to my science communication, amateur science, and microbiology roots in the next few posts. Stay tuned…

“Dog Philosophy”

But first, a quick request for information for anyone who happens by: where you live, what is the job market like for Ph.D. Geologists (with a background in stratigraphy, mining, and petroleum, among other things) and what kind of opportunities for non-medical biotechnology graduate programs are in your local colleges?

(And a quick side-question: is it obvious to most people that you get extra information if you hover over or click on things that look like this? I’ve never formally checked the usability of this trick for normal people…)

No login required to answer – they’ll appear as soon as I’ve filtered out any spam. Okay, on with the meat of this post.

In case anyone’s wondering what the “Epicanis” handle is all about: it’s a pun on the concept of “Dog Philosophy”, based on the name of the famous Greek philosopher “Epicurus” and the word “Canis”. Yes, I know, “Canis” is Latin, not Greek, but I figured “Epicanis” would be more a more recognizeable pun to most people than “Epicynus”.

Properly defining “Dog Philosophy” involves a joke which necessarily incorporates mild profanity and adult situations. In case any of the readers are of more delicate sensibilities, I present instead a more matter-of-fact (but sadly less funny) version.

Plato once famously wrote that dogs were philosophers. Like all philosophers that I know of, dogs consider the nature of what is real (metaphysics). To the dog, everything that exists external to the dog can be assigned to one of four categories:

  • Food
  • Toys
  • Companions

    • and

  • Everything Else, which is generally useless except as a surface for territory marking

You may wonder what that has to do with “Applied Empirical Naturalism” or science blogging.

The explanation is simple: science is fundamentally a method for examining the natural world to determine how and why it works. That’s what I like about science. One can find novel or unexpected applications of any system or thing by learning how and why they work, or in other words, it’s a method for, among other things, taking things from the “useless” category to one of the “useful” categories. Finding ways to make otherwise-useless things beneficially useful for people strikes me as a particularly rewarding purpose in life.

In addition to wanting to make the world a better place, I’m also kind to puppies and kittens and I think people should be nicer to one another.

(This shameless display of sympathy-solicitation has been brought to you by my participation in the following competition:)

Calling on the entire internet to study for a Philosophy exam…

I’ll probably do two posts today, but only because this one is a preview and an attempt to gather opinions…

I find writing helps me think, and we’ve got a Philosophy exam day after tomorrow. We’ve got a “study sheet” with eight concepts and fourteen potential essay questions that might come up on the exam. Is anyone reading this particularly interested in any of these (some of these have been addressed in earlier posts, but here’s the whole list)?

Concepts: “valid argument”, “sound argument”, “a priori knowledge”, “a posteriori knowledge”, “epistemology”, “metaphysics”, “doctrine of recollection”, “Objective reality/formal reality”

Essay topics (in short):

  • Describing the “Socratic Method” and contrasting it with the sophist method.
  • Discuss some of the Socratic philosophical positions that might call into question the view that what is right for a person is whatever that person believes is right.
  • Discuss Socrates’ claims that evil harms the evildoer and that “the unexamined life is not worth living”, and whether or not he’s justified in these claims
  • Critically discuss Socrates’ claim (at his trial) that he could not have been knowingly and willingly corrupting the youth
  • Discuss Socrates’ arguments in the “Apology” that death is not something to be feared
  • Discuss the “Learner’s Paradox” in the “Meno” (roughly – is it possible to “learn” something without being “taught”, and if so, how can this be?)
  • What was the point of the “slave boy” portion of the “Meno” (Socrates’ attempts to demonstrate that someone who doesn’t understand Geometry can come to have knowledge of geometry without being taught.)
  • Discuss Meno’s definition of “virtue” and Socrates’ objection to it
  • Discuss the distinction (in the “Meno”) between “true knowledge” and “opinion”, and how it relates to the question of whether virtue can be taught
  • From “Euthyphro”, discuss the issues around whether or not whether something is “pious” because The Gods love it, or if The Gods love it because it is “pious”.
  • State clearly and describe Descartes’ three levels of doubt
  • Discuss Descartes’ contention in the first Meditation that he cannot know if he is not dreaming
  • Discuss The Cogito (“I think, therefore I am” and why Descrates couldn’t instead say (for example) “I walk, therefore I am”
  • Discuss: “I hear a noise, I feel heat. These things are false since I am asleep. Yet I certainly do seem to see, hear, and feel warmth. This cannot be false.” (A quote from our translation of Descartes’…)

That’s what we’ve been given to work with. What are the odds that any of that is interesting to any of you? If so, please comment (no login required, and go ahead and put a fake email address in the comment form if it bothers you – as long as it doesn’t appear to be spam I’ll post it.). Come on, you’ll be doing me a favor, and you’ll automatically sound like a genius because we’re discussing philosophy.

Followup post later today…

I’m an interdisciplinary nerd…

Oh woe! Oh woe! Last time I checked, I was dead last on the College Scholarship Blogging Competition! Now, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I may be a cynic but I’m an optimistic cynic, and therefore think that surely if I apply my full mighty nerd powers, I can figure out what’s wrong and fix it.

First, what is going wrong? I thought for a while, and came up with a few possibilities:

  • God Hates Me
  • God Loves Me And Wants Me To Win, But Doesn’t Exist And Therefore This Does Me No Good
  • The divine is not involved, but there is a conspiracy against me involving the CIA, the NSA, the BATF, The Teamsters, the Freemasons, and the World Aquaculture Society.
  • Blatant Age Discrimination by a bunch of dang whippersnappers (Git offa my lawn!)
  • Dang Yankees
  • Perhaps my young and under-promoted blog is simply still too obscure and not well enough established to have the large number of connections that older and better-promoted blogs have, and this is just a natural result of more popular blogs being able to get their “vote for me” message out to more people, who in normal human fashion will vote for the blog with which they are most familiar.

    • (Hey, I was brainstorming, so even crazy ideas like this were considered…)
    Then, finally, the problem became obvious to me:

  • It’s too much work to vote for me

It’s so obvious now! Hordes of adoring fans are coming out of the metaphorical woodwork and going to vote for me, but are becoming exhausted and collapsing before they manage to find my name, buried near the bottom of the list of 20 different blogs!

You may not realize this, but I’m back in college because I’m trying to start my life over. I may be microbial biotechnology nerd now, but in my former life, I was a professional “computer nerd for 15 years. My amazing nerd powers are therefore being applied to solve this problem (see also the update at the end of this post):

There – one click on the image (aw, look, Cornelia wants you to vote for me!), click the confirm button that pops up, and you’ve voted for me. Problem solved. When clicked and confirmed, a new window should open and you should see the current standings. If you are presented instead with an unselected voting form, it didn’t work – let me know. Now go! Go, my fellow conspirators! Click us to victory!

But seriously – I may yet come up with a way to gain enough fame quickly enough to have a shot at the prize, but right now I’m in last friggin’ place…which means I’m free! I don’t have to worry at all about “oh, gosh, if I do that will I lose the crucial vote that loses me first place?!?!?” and I can pretty much do whatever I want, within the bounds of ethics and legality, and it’ll make no difference. Therefore, I want to point something out:

Down at the bottom of this post, you’ll see that this material is made available under a Creative Commons license. Basically, as long as you’re not a commercial venture and you give me credit, you’re allowed to take and use anything you like from here, including taking and remixing the one-click-vote thing there. And, yes, this explicitly applies to my competition (Money or no money, I really can’t imagine how a scholarship competition counts as “commercial”.)

I’ll even go one step further: if any of you other finalists happen to see this and would like to use this on your own blog, let me know and I’ll send you a version tweaked to vote for you blog instead of mine. I’ll even try to help you get it inserted into your blog if you’d like. All I ask is that you mention and link to my blog somewhere in one of your posts. Obviously I’d prefer something complimentary, but if you feel the urge to write “I hear that Sean at The Big Room rapes puppies, eats babies, and has an unnatural attraction for maple trees”, what the heck, as long as there’s a link…

What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea?
UPDATE: Dangit, I swear it looked like it was working yesterday, but the ‘one-click’ (plus confirmation) thing is unexplainably just not getting the vote in, though everything else was working correctly. For the moment, I’ve reverted to having the link bring up the official vote form in a separate window…

The offer to make it available to others still stands, however, if anyone’s interested. I’ll re-revise this post if I figure out how to get it working.

Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Park

Here’s a brief interlude for my new readers. Members of my immediate family have seen this before elsewhere, but what the heck, I may as well share with you all.

Related to my recent posts about this year’s field-trip to Yellowstone National Park, I am reminded of a trip my wife and I took last year to Norris Geyser Basin in the same park.

I’ve heard of “communing with nature”, when the natural world seems to speak to you and put you at ease. Well, on this occasion it didn’t just seem to be speaking to me, and it hardly put me at ease. The conversation between me and the park went something like as follows that day. (Forgive all the scrolling, it WAS a several-hour conversation after all. If it bugs you, feel free to say so in the comments…)

Sign:No Restroom in Geyser Basin

Well, okay, I don’t smoke, I didn’t bring a bicycle, we left the dog at home. And I guess we can hold it until later. It’s a small price to pay to go out to nice, happy, peaceful trails, away from, for example, all the annoying road construction.Traffic cone, in the middle of the trailWow! Look at that! Do I spy the Fruiting Body of the rare Yellowstone Giant Orange Holewarning Mushroom?!?!?No, wait…that’s just a traffic cone over a hole in the trail! What the heck? I thought I was getting away from road construction!

Well. Maybe things will get more natural-looking once we get a chance to walk off into the wilderness. Maybe the map’ll show where we can go.

Map of Norris Geyser Basin, with Warning to Stay On Designated Trails
Ah, look at all the lovely trails. Plenty of space to roam around in.
What? I can’t leave the trails?
sign:Stay On Designated Trails

Can’t I take a mere step or two off? Just a little bit???

Sign:Stay on TrailSign:Stay On WalkYeah, yeah, whatever. What are you going to do if I don’t – have me arrested?

 

Sign:Unlawful to Leave Walkway
What kind of criminal act could possibly be involved with just leaving the silly walkway? Littering? Vandalism?
Sign:It is UNLAWFUL and UNSAFE to: Leave the walkway in thermal areas or throw objects into or deface thermal features

Oh, come on! Look, there’s a beautiful green pool over there, full of no doubt fascinating little animalcules. Can’t I just go over and take a little look?

Sign:Keep Off - Thermal Area
“Thermal Area”? What the heck is that supposed to mean? It’s a little windy and chilly today, maybe I want to be warmed up a little. So, why not? What’s so bad about a “Thermal” area?

Sign:Hazardous Ground - Thin Crust - Boiling Water

What’s that supposed to mean?

 

Sign:Dangerous Ground -with illustration of kid falling into ground and getting broiled-
Children are prone to explode out of the ground unexpectedly?Walkway shown crossing the top of the steaming opening of Green Dragon SpringWhat the heck? Is Green Dragon Spring actually devouring the ground under that walkway?!?! Oh! I get it – you’re saying the park itself can swallow you up and and cook you?
So everything here is flaming hot death, then, right?

Sign:Warning: Trail My Be Icy

Is there no end to the dangers this place threatens innocent visitors with? Can there possibly be anything else this park can do to us?!?!?

 

Solfatara: Very Dangerous Landscape spewing Sulfuric Acid Gas!
“Thin Crust”? “Boiling Water”? Broiled flesh cooked in acid? Ice?
Is this a park, or the kitchen at a Chinese restaurant? Is this how “Hot and Sour Soup” is made?!?!? Is there nothing that can stand in this realm of violent burning chemical death without fear!?!?!?
Fearless Geyser

But what of us poor, fragile fleshy people? We aren’t safe here!That does it! I’m getting out of here! No more of these horrible Killer Thermal Death Areas of Doom for me! I think maybe I’ll just go look at the nice cuddly animals that Yellowstone is also famous for.
Sign: Caution - Wild Animals are Unpredictable and Dangerous!
This whole friggin’ place wants to gore, dismember, maul, cook, devour, and digest me! That does it. No more of this dangerous stuff for me – I think I’ll just go read a nice book for a while…
Bookstore:Closed
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooo!!!!!!