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19 pages.

Stick a fork in it. It's in the committee's hands now.

I defend at 9am tomorrow. I don't know what room yet.

Really, this is taking the last minute to an unacceptable extreme even for me.

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2pm. Still no room assignment. Die, Facilities, diediediediediediedie.

Over on the Boost mailing list people are talking about a domain name for the community site they want to set up and someone suggested pimpmycode.com. I think it'd make a hell of a refactoring site.

</whistling-in-the-dark>

Edit (2:50pm): 9am, 22 Sheaffer Hall. It's all over but the shouting. Well, that and writing up the slides.

Pathetic nanotech FUD

Press release from an anti-nanotech group whose members protested topless outside the Eddie Bauer store in Chicago recently. A quote from the release:

Eddie Bauer’s line of water and stain resistant clothing utilizes nanotechnology, a radically new and untested technology that involves the manipulation of matter at the scale of the nanometer (nm), which is one-billionth of a meter. At this scale, materials behave differently than their larger counterparts, and can possibly be more reactive and toxic, posing unknown risks to human health and the environment.

No points for pinpointing the key FUDword here, guys: any claim which uses the word "possibly" and provides no supporting sources should immediately raise a red flag. They could just as easily have said any one of the following:

"At this scale, materials behave differently than their larger counterparts, and can possibly cause breathing disorders as loose particles become lodged in the lungs."

"At this scale, materials behave differently than their larger counterparts, and can possibly pose a fire hazard by clogging the lint trap in your dryer with fibers so small you can't peel them off like ordinary lint."

"At this scale, materials behave differently than their larger counterparts, and can possibly dance the tango and cause virgin births in mice."

Thumbs down to Howard Lovy for reprinting this tripe unremarked upon; if you're going to describe your blog as "independent nanotechnology information and commentary," then for God's sake comment on it. I can't comment on the science, because I don't know enough about what safety research has been conducted to be able to speak about it intelligently, though give me an hour of free time, a phone, and a web browser pointed at the materials science faculty page of any major university (or even an engineering-journals citation index) and I'll at least know where to look. I can, however, comment on the lack of intellectual rigor exhibited in the "article". Hell, for all I know their claims do have some substance: but without giving the reader that substance, all they're doing is spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Well, okay, and boobies too.