Gage was an expert at removing rock using explosives. The procedure was to drill into the rock, fill the hole halfway with explosive powder, insert a fuse, and then cover the powder with sand. The layer of sand was necessary to direct the force of the blast into the rock, rather than out the top of the hole, and the sand had to be packed down by pounding it with a specially designed iron tamping rod. Gage had a custom-made rod that weighed 13 pounds (5.9kg) and measured 3 1/2 feet (1.1m) long, with a diameter of 1 1/4 inches (3.2cm) at the bottom, tapering to a dull point at the top.

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones
At 4:30 p.m. on September 13, Gage was preparing a charge, and apparently failed to notice that it had not yet been cushioned with sand before he began tamping it. When the iron rod scraped against the rock, it created a spark that ignited the powder. The resulting explosion propelled the rod out of the hole, through Gage’s left cheek, and out the top of his skull. The rod landed nearly 100 feet (25m) away.

Remarkably, despite the two new and rather large holes in his head and the significant bleeding that resulted, Gage did not even lose consciousness. He remained upright and lucid as his coworkers loaded him onto an ox cart and took him to the nearby town of Cavendish. A half hour later he was sitting on the hotel porch, chatting with the owner while waiting for the arrival of Dr. John Harlow, the local physician. Dr. Harlow treated Gage’s injury as best he could, piecing the remaining portions of the skull back together and cleaning and dressing the wound. Over the coming weeks Gage developed a series of infections but fought them successfully under Harlow’s care. Other than the loss of sight in his left eye, Gage was declared to have made a full recovery in just a couple of months.

Suddenly, I’m Not Half the Man I Used to Be
An experience like this is bound to make anyone a bit grumpy, but even as he healed physically, Gage underwent a profound change in personality. Although he never lost his language ability, memories, or motor skills, his temperament was completely different. He became profane, impatient, rude, obstinate, and unable to carry out any of the endless plans he made. His friends said that “Gage was no longer Gage”; it was as though all of his ethical filters had been turned off. Because he was such unpleasant company, he had difficulty keeping jobs, and at one point put himself on display at Barnum’s Museum in New York City. Several years later, having made his way to California after an extended stay in Chile, Gage began having epileptic seizures. These continued for several months until he suffered a series of major convulsions that led to his death on May 21, 1860—nearly twelve years after his accident.

Gage was buried without an autopsy, but seven years later his body was exhumed. The skull (along with the tamping iron, which had been buried with him) were sent to Dr. Harlow, who examined them and then donated them to the Warren Medical Museum of the Harvard Medical School. Later they were transferred to Harvard’s Countway Library of Medicine.

Brains and Personality
I first heard the story of Phineas Gage in a graduate course in cognitive science; anyone who studies the brain is bound to run across the story in textbook after textbook. Although no one can say with complete certainty exactly what parts of Gage’s brain were damaged, it seems the injury amounted to a very crude frontal lobotomy. This case became famous as the first hard evidence that aspects of one’s personality (and, by implication, behavior) were localized in portions of the frontal lobe.

Neurologist Antonio Damasio has spent years studying brain injuries similar to Gage’s. His research has led him to believe that emotion figures crucially into rational thought and decision-making. If the portion of the brain that processes emotion is damaged, it becomes difficult or impossible to make good decisions. The sad tale of Phineas Gage has produced valuable insights for the field of neuroscience, not to mention a lesson we can all heed: stay far away from explosives! —Joe Kissell

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More Information about The Story of Phineas Gage...

Thanks to reader Bo Lockwood for suggesting today’s topic!

The definitive book on Phineas Gage, covering every conceivable detail, is An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage by Malcolm Macmillan. John Fleischman’s Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science was written for children, but is great for adults too. To learn more about what this accident and others like it have revealed about the nature of personality and behavior, see Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio R. Damasio.

The best place to go on the Web for information about Phineas Gage is the Phineas Gage Home Page, compiled by Malcolm Macmillan (author of An Odd Kind of Fame). Other sites include The Amazing Case of Phineas Gage and the Phineas Gage memorial at Roadside America.

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Sometimes I feel comfortable living in a state of blissful ignorance about the ingredients in my food. Other times—especially when purchasing heavily processed, prepackaged foods—I like to know that at least some part of what I’m eating originally came from a well-known plant or animal source. More and more food products, particularly dietetic foods, list something called sugar alcohols on their labels. Whatever that is, it sounds delightfully unhealthy, so what’s it doing in foods that are supposed to support good health?

Sweet and Low-Cal
A sugar alcohol (also known as a polyol) is any one of a class of sweeteners including sorbitol, xylitol, isomalt, mannitol, hydrogenated starch hydrolysates (HSH), and several other compounds. Despite their artificial-sounding names, each of these sweeteners occurs naturally in various plants. Some sugar alcohols can be just as sweet as sugar—and almost indistinguishable in taste. Their main appeal is that they have a lower caloric value than more common sugars such as sucrose and fructose. They also serve as texturizers, lending foods the same kind of moistness and chewiness they’d have if sugar were used. And they actually reduce, rather than increase, the incidence of tooth decay. All this without the potentially serious side effects of non-nutritive artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and saccharin.

The reason sugar alcohols are lower in calories is that the body cannot digest them as quickly or as completely as sugars. Consumed in moderation, sugar alcohols have little or no effect on blood sugar level, making them appealing to diabetics looking for a sugar substitute. But this lack of digestibility also means that sugar alcohols can have a laxative effect, in severe cases even causing diarrhea.

Carb-O-Rater
The term “sugar alcohol” is somewhat misleading, as polyols are neither sugars nor alcohols. Technically, they are hydrogenated carbohydrates that, at the molecular level, have some of the structural properties of alcohols. But the fact that they are a type of carbohydrate has led to much debate among those concerned about carbohydrates in their diets. Some manufacturers subtract the amount of sugar alcohols in their products from the total quantity of carbohydrates to yield a much lower “net carb” figure for their labels. They base this practice on the fact that indigestible carbohydrates, such as fiber, cannot by definition have the same effect on the body as carbohydrates that are converted to glucose. But sugar alcohols are only partially indigestible. So some people feel they should be counted as carbohydrates in their entirety, while others feel that only half the sugar alcohol in a product should count as a carbohydrate.

Then there are people who don’t believe in counting carbs at all. Personally, I have nothing against either sugar or carbohydrates. Or fat or salt, for that matter. I know, call me unhip or old-fashioned, but the principle “all things in moderation” has served me pretty well. So I might make a special effort to find chewing gum that contains xylitol, but I won’t be using it in my next batch of chocolate chip cookies. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Sugar Alcohols...

Thanks to reader Paul Perkal for suggesting today’s topic!

Get a free recipe every day plus kitchen tips and other useful information for food aficionados at Worldwide Recipes.

To learn more about sugar alcohols, see:

• Sugar Alcohols in the Truestar Health Encyclopedia
• What Are Sugar Alcohols? at the Diabetes Institutes Foundation
• Eat any sugar alcohol lately? at Wellness Weight-Loss
• Important Information for Carb-Conscious Dieters at BodyBuilding.com

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All these tastes would seem to make me an excellent candidate to own a monolithic concrete dome house. Like geodesic domes, this type of building encloses a large amount of area with a minimum of material and offers a distinctive, unconventional shape. Despite these similarities, the two types of dome building are very, very different when it comes to construction materials and techniques, not to mention some of the characteristics of the finished product.

A Dome Idea
The word “monolithic” in this sense simply means “in one piece”—not necessarily massive. As compared to geodesic domes constructed out of hundreds of triangular pieces of wood or metal, a monolithic concrete dome is a single, contiguous surface of (reinforced) concrete. What makes these domes particularly noteworthy is the modern method of building them.

In decades past, building a concrete dome meant creating a pile of dirt in the desired size and shape, pouring concrete over it, and then digging out the inside after the concrete had set. This was a long and labor-intensive process—and it required you to have a sufficient quantity of earth at your disposal as well as the means of moving (and removing) it. Thanks to a patented process invented in the late 1970s, monolithic concrete domes can be built in a matter of days without any heavy equipment at all. The secret is to build it from the outside in.

Inflated Benefits
The process begins with a fairly ordinary concrete foundation—typically in the shape of a ring. A heavy-duty, dome-shaped “balloon” known as an airform is affixed to the foundation and inflated by special fans. Using a spray pump, the builder applies a thick layer of polyurethane foam to the inside of this balloon; the foam provides insulation as well as a bit of structural support for the remainder of the building process. Next, the builder attaches a steel rebar framework to the inside of the foam, and finally applies a sprayable concrete mixture known as shotcrete. The shotcrete reaches a thickness of about 3 inches (8cm), embedding the rebar and forming a reinforced concrete shell. Then the fan is turned off and the interior and exterior of the dome are finished using conventional materials (such as stucco). The airform, by the way, remains permanently in place, serving as an extra moisture barrier on the outside of the dome.

Concrete domes are strong—highly resistant to damage by earthquake, hurricane, or wind (even tornadoes). Because concrete is not flammable, the shell itself is fireproof, and also invulnerable to termites and other pests. And since concrete is a good insulator, monolithic concrete domes are extremely energy-efficient. Although the materials used to build a concrete dome are expensive, you need relatively little of them, so the cost of a monolithic concrete dome is comparable to that of a wood frame building of similar size. Because the cost savings increase with the size of the building, concrete domes are becoming an increasingly popular choice for churches, gymnasiums, arenas, storage facilities, and even airplane hangars.

Concrete Examples
For all their benefits, though, concrete domes are by no means perfect. For instance, they tend to trap moisture inside, making a dehumidifier or air conditioner mandatory except in very dry climates. And of course they have the same problems all dome houses have. Their geometry does not work well in narrow urban lots. Furnishing, decorating, and cleaning a dome home can be challenging. You may have difficulty obtaining financing or insurance for such a nonstandard design. And you may have to contend with neighbors who are concerned about their own homes’ resale value with that alien spacecraft parked next door.

But a “dome” need not look that unusual after all. The airforms used to create monolithic concrete domes can be made in nearly any shape. Although you probably wouldn’t use them to make a cube, there’s no reason a building made in this fashion has to be a perfect dome either. A single custom-made airform can also be used to make a series of interconnected domes, and can include extensions, insets, cutouts, and augmentations—making it possible to integrate doorways, window frames, carports, or anything else you’d like into the shell of your building.

On that hypothetical future day when I can afford to build the home of my dreams, I may or may not choose a monolithic concrete dome. Pyramids have a lot going for them too, and then there’s always the classic elegance of a castle. I’ll cross that drawbridge when I get to it. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Monolithic Concrete Domes...

The best place to go for information on monolithic concrete domes is the Monolithic Dome Institute Web site.

If you’re looking for someone to build a dome for you, check out the listings on DomeBuilders.com.

Monolithic concrete domes have also been discussed in ArchitectureWeek and on Home & Garden Television.

Dome Living: A Creative Guide For Planning Your Monolithic Dream Home was written by David B. South (who developed the modern method of building monolithic concrete domes) and published by the Monolithic Dome Institute.

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℗ & © 2004, alt concepts. All rights reserved.

A trip to Europe without visiting museums would be like a trip to Fiji without visiting a beach. It just seems wrong to ignore such an embarrassment of riches. So when I was in England and France last year, I dutifully walked through museum after museum, taking in art of every kind, and along with it the history and culture of many different lands and peoples. But I soon noticed a strange phenomenon. Every time I think about going to a museum, it seems like a fascinating and engaging way to spend an afternoon, but once I get there, I almost always find myself getting very, very sleepy by the time I get to the second or third gallery. My state of alertness at museums doesn’t have any apparent correlation to the amount of sleep or coffee I’ve had recently; I think it’s some strange psychological reaction to environment. After a while, all those little plaques seem to say the same thing: “This is an object created by a person in the past.” I want to be enthusiastic…I try to be enthusiastic…but usually I’m no match for the long halls of display cases.

There is an exception to this rule, though: science museums. I love inventions and gadgets, learning about how things work and how people went about solving very difficult problems. I can stay awake in a good science museum indefinitely. So while in Paris, I made a point of visiting the holy grail of invention lovers: the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers—the conservatory of arts and trades. Part of this centuries-old institution is a museum that’s open to the public, and it contains a fascinating variety of objects and exhibits including the original Foucault’s Pendulum.

Progress’s Pilgrims
The Conservatoire is off the beaten path; most English guidebooks don’t even mention it. It does, however, attract a certain number of pilgrims who were fascinated by Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum, part of which takes place there. The museum underwent a massive renovation after the book was written, so it’s no longer possible to retrace the steps of the characters. But one hall in particular still looks familiar: a large room that was once the sanctuary of an abbey. The Pendulum still hangs from the apex of the nave, and nearby stand old cars, airplanes, and a model of the Statue of Liberty. In the novel, a secret passage under the floor of the nave connects with the Paris sewers. That isn’t the case in reality, but truth is perhaps more interesting than fiction. There is something under the floor of the nave, a curious part of the building’s long and strange history.

The foundation for the abbey church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs (St. Martin of the Fields) was laid around 1059, about the time of the Norman conquest. The church was dedicated in 1067. In 1079 Philippe I gave control of the church to Hugues, abbey of Cluny, who then transformed it into a priory—its first prior a man named Ourson. Over the next seven centuries, numerous additions and renovations were undertaken; the current nave dates from the 13th century. All the while, though, the building remained a monastic home for the monks of Cluny.

Revolutionary Changes
All that changed in the French Revolution. A great many of the monks fought zealously on the losing side and were beheaded for their troubles. In 1794, abbot Henri Gregoire submitted a proposal to the National Convention: “There will be formed in Paris, under the name Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, […], a depository for machines, models, tools, drawings, descriptions and books in all the areas of the arts and trades.” The now-deserted priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs was designated as the home for this new collection, which began to form almost immediately. The Conservatoire officially opened in 1802. In addition to collecting inventions the way a library collects books, the Conservatoire became a respected educational institution, holding classes and seminars in a wide variety of industrial trades.

The museum closed for a much-needed renovation in 1993, and as part of the process, archeological excavations were undertaken beneath the floor of the nave. For the entire history of the church, there had been rumors that the site on which it stood was once a Merovingian funerary basilica, but this had never been proven. What archeologists discovered was a large necropolis dating from the 6th or 7th century but apparently rebuilt during the Carolingian era (8th and 9th centuries). Inside were about 100 plaster coffins, some of which had been reused for new occupants as late as the middle ages. The rumors were indeed true.

Everything Old is New Again
When the museum reopened a few years later, it was as shiny and up-to-date as any modern science museum—or at least, any modern science museum housed in an 800-year-old building. Almost every museum has many more articles in its collection than can be displayed at any one time, but the Musée des Arts et Métiers decided that their thousands of additional articles should be made available to scholars even when they’re not on exhibit. So they opened a satellite facility in the nearby town of Saint-Denis, where qualified researchers can go—by appointment only—to examine the rest of the museum’s collection.

I’ve been to the Conservatoire on two different occasions—in 2000 and in 2003. As a science museum—even with most of the explanatory text only in French—I found it a sheer delight. The former abbey is only a portion of the museum, and the museum is only a portion of the Conservatoire. But all the history of the building and the institution seems to be concentrated in the large nave with its bones beneath and gadgets above. The odd juxtaposition of centuries of monastic simplicity with centuries of technological progress tickles me in a way I can’t easily describe. Perhaps the Pendulum says it best: as a scientific wonder that’s also meditatively simple, it symbolically bridges the illusory divide between technology and spirituality. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about The Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers...

This article was featured in the 8th Carnival of Transportation: Inspiration.

The Musée des Arts et Métiers has a lovely Web site, which, alas, is only in French. However, that’s what Google Language Tools are for. The Conservatoire does have an overview page in English. Also see the entry Conservatoire National Des Arts Et Metiers at Wikiverse.org.

Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum is well worth reading, particularly if you like complicated conspiracy theories. It’s a vastly better example of the genre than, say, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

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℗ & © 2004, alt concepts. All rights reserved.

Do You Know the Muffin, Man?
Muffin tops are, as everyone knows, truly the upper crust of muffindom. Most people prefer the top to the stump—at least when you’re talking about those jumbo-sized, coffee-shop muffins, as opposed to the kind you make from a mix in your kitchen. But this fact suggests several questions. Why is the top so much better? How does one go about making a muffin with the kind of top beloved by Seinfeld partisans? And how can one obtain a high-quality top without wasting a perfectly good but less appealing stump? These were the questions I set out to answer.

In my book, the ideal muffin has a top that protrudes significantly over the sides of the cup in which it was baked, thus looking rather like a giant mushroom. This large surface area is exposed directly to the hot, dry air of the oven and therefore becomes somewhat crispy, especially around the thin edges—unlike the outside of the stump which barely forms a crust because the sides of the pan hold in most of the moisture. It’s this large crispy surface that gives muffin tops most of their appeal. But most muffin recipes result in more modest, rounded-top muffins. The key, it turns out, is not to take the recipe seriously when it says to fill up the pan only halfway with batter. If you want a mega-top muffin, you have to fill the pan all the way—in fact, with a significant bulge on top. This means, of course, half as many muffins as the recipe calls for, as well as a longer baking time. A further refinement: sprinkle sugar generously on the surface of the batter before baking. This will result in a shiny glaze and a crisper, sweeter crust.

Divide and Conquer
But what you really want is a great muffin top without the bottom. Simply cutting off the bottom, while effective, is wasteful. The best solution so far has been muffin pans that are extremely shallow—only about 1/2 inch (1.25cm) deep. When loaded to overflowing with batter, these provide enough of a base for the top to rise reasonably well, while minimizing the stump. Muffin-top pans are, not surprisingly, quite popular, but they are still an imperfect solution because they don’t enable the top to get quite as large as a full-size pan does, and they still leave a partial stump. The alternative, which has met with mixed success, is to find a way to recycle the stumps. Obviously they don’t qualify as food, but technology now has a way to make oil from organic waste products. That seems to be our best hope for a muffin-stump-free future. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Muffin Tops...

Get a free recipe every day plus kitchen tips and other useful information for food aficionados at Worldwide Recipes.

Muffin top pans are available from Amazon.com and Sur La Table. Other sources include A Cook’s Wares, Kitchen and Much More, and Kitchen Conservatory.

Rogue Engineering inexplicably sells freshly decapitated Muffin Tops for a mere US$9.99 each.

You can read a transcription (such as it is) of the entire script of the Seinfeld episode “Muffin Tops” at NewsGuys.

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℗ & © 2004, alt concepts. All rights reserved.

In our family, I’m the science guy; my wife tends more toward arts and literature. But she also took a college class that covered plate tectonics, a subject I knew very little about. It gave me a warm feeling in my heart to hear her excitedly talking about continental drift and what happens when the edge of one tectonic plate dives below another one. That’s the kind of stuff we should find interesting, especially since we get plenty of firsthand experience with seismic activity here in San Francisco. But one topic from Morgen’s class stuck out as being particularly interesting: the theory of mantle convection.

Passing the Mantle
The mantle is the thick layer of rock below the crust of the earth. It’s not quite molten, but it’s softer than the crust, and because of the enormous pressure it’s under, it behaves almost like a very thick liquid, with the tectonic plates “floating” on top. The big question that has confronted geologists and seismologists since the existence of tectonic plates was postulated is why they move. And the most reasonable theory to explain that at the moment is that the mantle is fluid in a way—though moving extremely slowly. How slowly? Think in terms of hundreds of millions of years for a given portion of the mantle to circulate from its lowest point to its highest point and back. And that appears to be exactly what’s happening: an unfathomably slow but powerful circular movement within the mantle.

You may be familiar with the term convection to describe water or air currents. The idea is simply that hot portions of a fluid rise, and as they cool, they sink back down. The hot bits going up and the colder bits going down need to stay out of each other’s way, so a somewhat circular motion builds up. It isn’t perfectly uniform, though; watch a Lava Lamp for a while and you’ll see the unpredictable convection currents in action. The theory of mantle convection says that a layer of the earth 1,800 miles (3,000km) thick is doing exactly that: responding to heat from the molten core below, moving upward, then cooling and sinking back down. This movement in turn causes the plates above to shift, accounting for many earthquakes and volcanoes, not to mention the formation of some mountains.

Moving Pictures
Sci-fi adventures notwithstanding, no one has been able to dig under the crust and explore to find out exactly what’s happening down there, but seismological data and computer models give us a fairly good picture of the currents beneath the earth. Not good enough to predict earthquakes—at least not yet—but that problem is analogous to predicting the movement of a piecrust resting on a boiling cherry filling. Tricky, to say the least. What the theory of mantle convection can give us insight into, though, is how and why some features of the planet’s topography came to be the way they are. And with time, I’m sure it will lead to a solution to that whole continental drift thing. Or at least a good movie or two. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Mantle Convection...

This article was featured in Panta Rei (#4).

Web sites relating to mantle convection:

• Scott D. King’s Mantle Convection Homepage
• Some unanswered questions from the U.S. Geological Survey
• Convection in the Oilfield Glossary
• Walter Kiefer: Mantle Convection Research
• Mantle Convection at the University of Winnipeg
• Mantle Convection in Three Dimensions by Paul Tackley (UCLA) at NPACI

Recommended reading on mantle convection includes Mantle Convection in the Earth and Planets by Donald L. Turcotte, Gerald Schubert, and Peter Olson (1st edition, 2001); Geodynamics by Donald L. Turcotte and Gerald Schubert (1982; 2nd edition, 2001); and Dynamic Earth: Plates, Plumes and Mantle Convection by G. F. Davies (2000).

You can read more about the International Stop Continental Drift Society in Scientific Thinking LO21985.

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℗ & © 2004, alt concepts. All rights reserved.

Along the same lines, Marie Sklodowska Curie’s discovery of the element radium in 1898 at first seemed to lead the way to a variety of novel medical treatments, but as the properties of radioactive materials became better known, radium’s health benefits came to seem more limited. Once added to everything from toothpaste to face cream, radium’s reputation went from cutting edge to dangerous within a few short decades.

The Element of Surprise
Marie Curie’s eventual discovery of radium was first set into motion by the research of French physicist Henri Becquerel, who noticed that materials containing uranium produced rays that fogged photographic plates. Looking into this phenomenon further, Marie Curie found that not only uranium, but also the element thorium, caused these effects regardless of their physical state (for example, dry or wet, crushed or solid), and from this deduced that the rays were part of the elements’ atomic makeup. She coined the word “radioactivity” to describe this property of these two elements, and along with other scientists of the time, opened the way to a new understanding that the atom was not the smallest unit of matter, but that even smaller particles (notably electrons) existed within it.

Building on this information, and on her observation that two uranium-containing compounds, pitchblende and chalcolite, produced much more radiation than uranium alone, Marie Curie speculated that there were other, as yet unknown, elements in these compounds. After extensive experimentation, aided by her husband Pierre Curie, Marie Curie was able to identify two new elements in pitchblende, which she called polonium (after her native Poland), and radium (after the Latin word for “ray”). Although the process of isolating radium involved processing a ton of pitchblende in order to obtain just a fraction of a gram of radium, even with similar levels of effort, the Curies found that it was impossible to isolate polonium. Later on, when the principle of radioactive decay was developed, scientists realized that the short half-life of polonium—138 days—was the reason for this problem.

Radium Reign
With the help of industrial partners who could produce radium much more quickly in their processing facilities than it was possible to do in the lab, the Curies began to develop new uses for this marvelous material. However, the Curies never became rich because of their discovery, but as a service to the scientific community and the rest of the world, freely shared their method of obtaining radium. One of the first uses of radium was as an anti-cancer treatment, owing to its observed ability to damage tissue. The resulting treatment, known as Curietherapy in France, and radiumtherapy elsewhere, is still used in some instances to treat cancer today.

However, as with any health fad, there are those who take it too far, usually for financial gain. Because radium was seen as providing health benefits in one area, its use was expanded to other areas for which there was no proven benefit. This was especially the case in the 1920s, when advertising campaigns for face creams with names such as Tho-Radia and Radior claimed that “the amazing Energy of Radium has proved a boon to the human skin.” What purchasers of these products didn’t realize was that the “glow” they were seeking was not necessarily the kind they would actually receive.

Losing Its Glow
In fact, the luminescent property of radium was precisely what made it attractive to manufacturers of clocks, watches, and other technical instruments, for whom its glow-in-the-dark ability was commercially advantageous. However, the use of radium-based paints for such applications was eventually found to be extremely dangerous, after many workers exposed to the paint died from the effects of radiation.

The growing awareness of radium’s toxicity made it seem less and less suited to general use, and when Marie Curie died in 1934, it was speculated that her exposure to radiation played a part in her death. Scientists now know that radium damages bone marrow particularly, because the body treats it as calcium, depositing it in the bones and providing it easy access to the marrow.

Although the benefits of radium fall far short of what it was once believed it could do, with careful handling radium still proves useful in medical treatment and scientific research. In addition, the story of its discovery is inspiring and laid the groundwork for many other important advances in science. But the next time you hear something being praised as a miracle cure-all, remember that the truth may be more complicated than it seems.—Morgen Jahnke

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More Information about The Discovery of Radium...

To learn more about the life and work of Marie and Pierre Curie, visit the Marie Curie and the Science of Radioactivity Web site or timelinescience.

If you’re ever in Paris, I highly recommend a visit to the Musée Curie, where you can see the actual office and lab used by Marie Curie in her later experiments.

For more information about radium, go to the Los Alamos National Lab Web site, the Jefferson Lab Web site, or ChemiCool.

It’s possible to see advertisements for Radior and Tho-Radia online.

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• Carbon Dating
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• Polywater
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℗ & © 2008, alt concepts. All rights reserved.

Being the sort of snob I am when it comes to French food, I have a special fondness for dishes—especially desserts—that are decadent, inventive, and spelled with an excessive number of accent marks. I can’t think of any dessert that fits that description better than crème brûlée. All things being equal, I usually prefer desserts that have a high chocolate content, but I do make occasional exceptions. What crème brûlée lacks in chocolate it makes up for in fat, calories, and general impressiveness.

Don’t Cry Over Burnt Cream
Crème brûlée (literally “burnt cream”) begins its short life as a custard—a sweetened mixture of cream and egg yolks that’s heated until it thickens. It’s then usually poured into shallow, single-serving ceramic dishes called ramekins and chilled until it becomes firm. But unlike similar custard dishes such as flan and crème caramel, crème brûlée undergoes an extra finishing step. The top surface is sprinkled with sugar and then subjected to intense heat for a few seconds to caramelize it, thus forming a thin, crispy crust.

Although it is possible to use a broiler as the source of heat, the results tend to be uneven, and the inside of the crème brûlée often warms up, which is not the desired effect. So professional chefs typically use a blowtorch to melt the sugar, creating a nicely browned surface. Another approach requires a tool called a salamander that consists of a heavy metal disk attached to a long handle. After heating the disk over a burner, you place it on (or just above) the sugar to caramelize it.

What makes a crème brûlée’s crust special, though, is not just its appearance but its sound. When I hear the distinctive “snap” of a spoon breaking through the crust of a well-made crème brûlée to reveal the creamy goodness underneath, I always smile and sigh as though I’ve witnessed something magical. If Bernard Pivot (or James Lipton) asked me what sound or noise I love, that would be the first thing I’d think of. It’s just one of those things.

Pass the Torch
If you happen to have a conventional propane torch lying around your workshop, that will do just fine for crème brûlée, as long as you’re careful to use properly heat- and flame-resistant dishes. But most crème brûlée enthusiasts prefer a more compact (and less scary-looking) butane kitchen torch, which can be found at respectable cooking stores for about US$40. That may seem like a costly tool for just a single recipe, but it can be used to add a finishing touch to many kinds of desserts, not to mention searing tuna steaks and defrosting your freezer. And it’s a small price to pay to impress your friends.

As for my chocolate obsession, there’s nothing to say I can’t have my crème and eat it too: people can and do sometimes make chocolate crème brûlée. I’ve also had some excellent lavender crème brûlée, and I’ve seen recipes for many other flavors—including pumpkin and ginger. But although I don’t consider myself a purist, I must admit that the simple and elegant combination of eggs, cream, sugar, and vanilla works best for me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go burn my dessert. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Crème Brûlée...

Get a free recipe every day plus kitchen tips and other useful information for food aficionados at Worldwide Recipes.

Elegantly Easy Crème Brûlée by Debbie Puente is the bible of Crème Brûlée. Debbie also runs the Web site (you guessed it) CremeBrulee.com.

Here are some “classic” crème brûlée recipes…

• Crème Brûlée (4 egg) at GourmetSleuth.com
• Vanilla Creme Brulée at GourmetSleuth.com
• Creme Brulee at Recipe Source
• Creme Brulee I at All Recipes
• Creme Brulee at Lois Maykut’s Kitchen

…and some unconventional flavors:

• Chocolate Creme Brulee at Mimi’s Cyber Kitchen
• Ginger Creme Brulee at Mimi’s Cyber Kitchen
• Lavender Creme Brulee at What’s Cooking America
• Pumpkin Creme Brulee at Culinary Cafe
• Chocolate Chili Creme Brulee (no kidding) by by Paul Rankin at BBC Food

Amazon.com carries a wide range of kitchen torches, ramekins, and crème brûlée sets containing everything but the ingredients.

Other sources for torches and/or ramekins:

• Sur La Table
• Williams-Sonoma
• Kitchen Classics
• The French Patisserie

You can buy a salamander from Sur La Table or Kitchen Conservatory.

Mark Glass’s Creme Brulee Quest has convinced him that the world’s finest crème brûlée can be found at San Francisco’s Hayes Street Grill. I’ve also received a hearty recommendation for the Crème Brûlée at Jimmy Z Grill in Irvine, California.

Bernard Pivot (and later, James Lipton) asked his guests 10 questions that he felt revealed a great deal about them.

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• Absinthe
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• Café du Monde
• Bread Pudding
• Lagniappe
• Fire Pistons
• Fire Breathing

℗ & © 2004, alt concepts. All rights reserved.

That’s Hot
Ward’s initial attempts to interest chemical companies in his new product were entirely unsuccessful; no one took the outrageous claims of this amateur inventor seriously. Then a respectable defense journal published the results of several tests by government agencies. The tests showed, among other things, that a thin piece of Starlite wouldn’t burn even when subjected to temperatures as high as 10,000°C—that’s hotter than the surface of the sun. The material withstood even simulated nuclear blasts and high-powered lasers. That journal article, and others that followed it, began to generate a great deal of interest in Starlite, especially in the defense industry.

One particularly striking quality of Starlite was that it didn’t merely fail to combust; it also insulated astonishingly well. In a demonstration on a BBC television show called “Tomorrow’s World” in 1993, the presenter held a welder’s blowtorch to an egg that had been coated with an invisibly thin layer of Starlite. After several minutes the flame was removed, and the egg was broken to reveal that it was still raw on the inside. In another demonstration, this time on NBC’s “Dateline” in the United States, a piece of Starlite was shown to be cool enough to touch just seconds after exposure to a blowtorch.

Burning Questions
At the time of all this publicity, the only questions seemed to be which company or government agency would get the rights to manufacture Starlite and how many billions of dollars Ward would receive in return. It would only be a matter of time before Starlite was commercialized in some form…spacecraft would have inexpensive, lightweight, and super-durable heat shields; devastating building fires could be made a thing of the past; everything from home appliances and furniture to missiles would be revolutionized by this miraculous heatproof material.

But then something weird happened: nothing. After a few years of relative silence, some vague reports circulated that Ward was actively working with several different manufacturers on the commercial development of Starlite, and also that Ward’s primary interest had recently turned to harness racing, of all things. And since then, there have been no reliable news reports about Starlite or Ward. A 2004 article about Starlite in The Guardian noted that nothing new had been heard since 1997 and ended with the unanswered question: “But whatever happened to Starlite?”

As a matter of fact, it’s not entirely true that nothing has happened since 1997. Maurice Ward is the registrant of starlitetechnologies.com, a site that from roughly 2004 to 2007 did contain useful information about Starlite, such as links to media reports and lists of potential applications. In 2006, a page on the site said: “Delayed for more than 15 years by red tape and incubation in private industry, Starlite has found a second chance to come to market through an alliance with Chris Bennett, an entrepreneur in Austin, Texas.” So far, there’s no sign that this alliance has gone anywhere. The current version of the site has a single page with virtually no information. But at least Ward, who would now be in his early seventies, is doing something with Starlite—even if that’s just fiddling with a Web site!

Curiously, though, it isn’t just Ward’s Web site that has been purged of information about Starlite. Several other sites I consulted also appeared to have gone offline or at least had articles removed in the last year or so. Thanks to resources such as the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, I was able to retrieve a number of these articles as they’d appeared in the past, but the sudden disappearance of all this content does get one thinking.

Flame On
Naturally, conspiracy theories abound. Some people suspect that the U.S. or British government has decided that Starlite should be classified, and has taken steps to suppress all public information about it—or that some huge corporation or foreign power has bought out Ward and is trying to keep things quiet to prevent espionage and competition. Others are convinced that the only possible reason Starlite was never commercialized is that it was an elaborate hoax all along.

My own research suggests that the real explanation is much more prosaic. Given the large number of well-documented tests by agencies of various governments and first-hand reports from numerous scientists and engineers, I have no doubt at all that Starlite’s claimed properties are genuine, notwithstanding the inventor’s background. Back in 1993, reports were that Ward refused to consider any deal for commercial production of Starlite that didn’t involve his maintaining at least 51% ownership—and clearly, he has always believed that his invention was worth billions. At the same time, Ward was hyperprotective of his intellectual property. He declined all requests to provide samples for testing that might enable a company to analyze the substance and potentially discover its composition. He never patented it, either, because doing so would require him to reveal his formula. As of the early 1990s, at least, Ward refused even to allow the formula to be written down; only he and a couple of family members knew it, and it was kept only in their heads. That’s hard-core: not even the recipes for Coca-Cola and Kentucky Fried Chicken are that secret!

In fairness to Ward, his invention is undoubtedly worth a fortune, and he has every right to protect his own interests. However, some have argued that if Starlite is everything it’s cracked up to be, its potential to save lives is so great that it would be ethically wrong to prevent its manufacture just for the sake of a bit more profit. Interestingly, a page on the starlitetechnologies.com Web site in 2006 said: “As a humanitarian, Ward wants to see his invention used for the public good.” That could very well be true; my take on the matter is that financial greed probably isn’t the issue so much as a relentless desire to maintain control. Sooner or later, if it really is all about the public good—and if no technical or manufacturing issues make large-scale production of Starlite infeasible—Starlite is bound to see the light of day. Of course, its success also depends on having a manufacturer and distributor with some wisdom and savvy, qualities that are sometimes difficult for the best of us to judge.

Hot Property
But “sooner or later” isn’t good enough for everyone. More than one person has tried to steal Ward’s formula, and numerous large organizations are rumored to have spent vast sums of money trying to replicate it themselves. Ward himself provided a few clues to Starlite’s composition, which may have given competitors a good place to start. According to the article in International Defense Review that started all the publicity, “It consists of a variety of (organic) polymers and co-polymers with both organic and inorganic additives, including borates and small quantities of ceramics and other special barrier ingredients—up to 21 in all. Perhaps uniquely for a thermal and blast-proof material, it is not wholly inorganic but up to 90 per cent organic.” Ward also mentioned that it could be mixed in an ordinary blender. Following what sounds like a similar recipe, Canadian inventor Troy Hurtubise has created his own heat-resistant product, which he calls firepaste. It appears to have many of the same characteristics as Starlite—it’s resistant not only to fire but to commercialization, and is shrouded in similar secrecy.

I truly hope Starlite turns into a real, commercial product, that it lives up to its hype, that it serves the public good, and that it makes Maurice Ward a wealthy man. And I hope it happens while he still has a few years left to enjoy that wealth. If not, well, best of luck to Troy and to all those evil government conspirators out there. —Joe Kissell

UPDATE (January 23, 2008):: I received an interesting email from Don Schnell, who related the following (reprinted with permission):

In the [late] 1990s, I and a partner from Calgary formed a company named Starlite Safety Solutions to market Maurice’s product. We brought Maurice to Calgary and introduced him to a group of investors and pitched several proposals for marketing his product including one involving the University of Calgary and the establishment of a research and development centre. That little effort cost us $80,000 CDN. My partner knew Maurice personally, and if anyone had a chance to do a deal with Maurice it was us. Like some of the thoroughbreds I have owned over the years (mostly hayburners) Maurice proved to be very unpredictable. The more we offered, the more he seemed to want. We went way beyond what reasonable investors would do, but I have a personal philosophy to help my fellow man and Starlite would help so much. But alas no deal would satisfy his continuously increasing agenda. In short, he was a moving target. It does not surprise me that it is not yet on the market. There was some question as to whether or not he could replicate the formula, and also, the British Government indicated to us that they may declare it a secret product. I have since closed my file on it, but have never lost interest in it.

He later added:

I have videos of tests that were conducted and it is truly an amazing product. I was told that he had participated in some discussions with NASA for obvious reasons. We were working with fire retardant products at that time.

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More Information about Starlite...

Thanks to readers Michael Tighe and Tom for suggesting today’s topic, and to Don Schnell for his additional insights!

The current incarnation of www.starlitetechnologies.com has just a malformed and nearly content-free home page with contact info and a picture of a race horse. (Even using the page’s own search field produces no results other than that one page.) However, when I sent an email to the AOL address shown on the page asking to join the mailing list, I received what appeared to be a human reply signed “mw.” Meanwhile, if you want to see how the site looked in the past, when it had much more (and more interesting) content, check out this link at The Wayback Machine.

Articles on the Web about Starlite include the following:

• The article that started all the publicity was Taking the heat astonishing results with new material by Pamela Pohling-Brown in the International Defense Review (April 1, 1993—I can only presume that date isn’t significant!) [as posted at www. starlitetechnologies.com in December 2004, via the Wayback Machine]
• Wonder Plastic Baffles World by John McGhie in The Observer (April 11, 1993) [quoted in a post to Google Groups]
• Plastic That Can Withstand a Nuclear Blast? by Fred Guterl in Business Week (August 16, 1993) [as posted at www. starlitetechnologies.com in January 2005, via the Wayback Machine]
• A transcript of the Starlite Plastic Report by Jane Pauley on “Dateline” (August 24, 1993) [as posted at www. starlitetechnologies.com in February 2005, via the Wayback Machine]
• The Starlite Mystery Page was last updated in 2002, but appears to have no information about developments more recent than 1997.
• Vanishing Starlite by Mark Pilkington in The Guardian (April 8, 2004)
• Too hot to handle at Alternative Science [from July 2007, via the Wayback Machine]
• Starlite in the Wikipedia
• Material erregaitz harrigarria by Jon Otaolaurretxi at Zientzia.net (January 1, 1994)—note that this article is written in the Basque language Euskara, about which I’ve written previously on Interesting Thing of the Day

The article Inventor spurns burns with red-hot invention at BayToday.ca (October 4, 2003) describes Troy Hurtubise’s firepaste.

By the way, since I know someone is going to call me on this, various sources estimate the temperature of the sun’s surface to be anywhere from 5,500 to 6,000°C. The interior of the sun, however, is much hotter.

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℗ & © 2008, alt concepts. All rights reserved.

When I was a teenager, I once carved my initials and those of my girlfriend into a tree, something I thought of at the time as being a permanent statement of our eternal devotion to each other. When we broke up a year later, I felt obliged to return to the tree, put an X through our initials, and add the words “Null and Void.” The next time I went to find the tree, a number of years after that, it was gone. My guess is that the tree was so ashamed at having been defaced with self-contradictory graffiti that it simply fell over in an act of suicidal protest.

The urge to leave one’s mark on the landscape—whether in a tree, a newly poured sidewalk, or the wall of a cave—goes way, way back. One rather unusual form of ancient markings is found in the picturesque, pastoral setting of rural England. About a 30-minute drive from the city of Oxford is a large area covered with the rolling green hills and herds of grazing sheep that have found their way into countless works of literature and film. Beneath the veneer of grass and soil, some of these hills are made of chalk. And over the millennia, the landscape has become dotted with at least 50 large images made by carving through the top layers of earth to expose the chalk beneath. Of these, about a dozen are pictures of horses, and of the horse carvings, the oldest and best known is the Uffington White Horse.

A Horse of a Different Color
Although less famous than, say, Stonehenge, the Uffington White Horse ranks right up there among ancient and inexplicable English monuments. It is a highly stylized outline of a horse—recognizable, but not as well-defined as the other, more solid horse images. The carving is about 374 feet (113m) long, with the lines forming it ranging in width from about 5 to 10 feet (2 to 3 meters). This particular carving doesn’t actually go all the way through the crust to the chalk beneath; instead, a relatively shallow trench was dug and filled in with chalk to make it almost flush with the surface.

The Uffington White Horse has the distinction of being the largest of Britain’s horse carvings (measured from head to tail). It’s also one of only four such horses facing to the right, though no one knows for sure the significance of the horse’s direction, if any. And it’s the oldest horse carving, meaning it may have served as a prototype for the others.

This Old Horse
Scientists have determined that the carving is about 3,000 years old (give or take a few centuries), and though it is mentioned in literature dating back to the 11th century, its original purpose—along with the identity of its creators—is uncertain. It may have been a religious symbol, a monument to a victory in battle, a territory marker, or simply (perish the thought) a giant piece of abstract art. Although it has been referred to as a “horse” for at least 1,000 years, there are some who believe it was intended to represent a dragon. If so, then dragons must have been much more horse-shaped in those days. In any case, the carving has been well tended over the centuries. Every seven years, weeds are removed and the outline smoothed to maintain its original size and shape.

One of the most interesting things about the Uffington White Horse is that the only place to get a good view of the whole thing is from the sky above. There are a few spots several miles away that provide a fair view of most of the outline, but the local topography is such that there is just no vantage point from which you can get a good view of the whole horse. This has, predictably, led some people to speculate that it was created as a signal to UFOs, although what exactly it would signify is a bit unclear (“Horses for sale—next exit”?). Be that as it may, this peculiarity of perspective must have made it a challenge to carve, and it makes the horse’s original purpose all the more mysterious. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Uffington White Horse...

If you would like to read about the Uffington White Horse in great detail, check out the extremely expensive book Uffington White Horse and Its Landscape by G. Lock, C. Gosden, D. Miles, and S. Palmer.

Other resources on the Web:

• The White Horse of Uffington, and Dragon Hill at Mysterious Britain
• Uffington White Horse at Britain Express
• The Uffington white horse at Wiltshire Wild Horses
• Uffington White Horse at the Hillfigure Homepage
• White Horse at Tourist Information UK

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℗ & © 2004, alt concepts. All rights reserved.

The Crust of the Matter
The crust, of course, is the trickiest part of the pie to master, and I’ve messed up more than a few. In the course of my pie experiments, I’ve accumulated a pretty thorough collection of pie paraphernalia—a variety of pie pans, weights that are used to hold down a crust when baking it “blind” (without a filling), the special metal guards you put over the edges to keep them from burning, and so on. I considered myself quite well versed in the apparatus of pie-making until my wife came back from a trip to a large kitchen store with a shocking discovery: there was a Pie Thing I didn’t yet have, and indeed had never even heard of. It’s called a pie funnel.

My first thought upon hearing the term “pie funnel” was confusion at why someone would want to pour a pie into a bottle. Then I discovered that pie funnels are in fact devices designed to improve the top crust of a pie as it bakes. When you put a crust on top of your pie filling, you’re creating a sealed vessel containing a lot of moisture. As the pie bakes, some of that moisture turns to steam—and if the crust is completely sealed, the steam pressure can blow a hole through it, covering the inside of your oven. This is why lattice piecrusts were invented: not only do they look impressive, they leave plenty of holes for the steam to escape. But there’s more than one way to skin a pie.

Four and Twenty Ceramic Birds Baked in a Pie
A pie funnel is a hollow ceramic doohickey (to use a highly technical pie term) that stands a few inches high, with one or more openings near the bottom and a vent at the top—thus approximating the design of an upside-down funnel. In fact, the exact shape of a pie funnel is irrelevant; they are often made in the shape of birds (and called “pie birds”), but you can also find gnomes, chess pieces, and a variety of other designs that serve the same purpose. To use a pie funnel, you cover the bottom of the pie pan with dough as usual, place the funnel in the middle, and pour the filling around it. Then you lay on the top crust, with the pie funnel poking through and its top vent exposed; for best results, pinch the crust around the outside of the pie funnel to seal it.

As the pie bakes, the pie funnel vents steam from inside the pie, which helps to keep the crust from splitting, prevents the filling from boiling over, and serves to reduce and concentrate the juices. It also supports the top pie crust, keeping it from sagging into the filling and getting soggy. Depending on the shape of the pie funnel, you may or may not be able to remove it before slicing the pie. Either way, your pie will be a little goofy-looking, but that’s a small price to pay for an otherwise perfect crust. —Joe Kissell

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More Information about Pie Funnels...

Get a free recipe every day plus kitchen tips and other useful information for food aficionados at Worldwide Recipes.

Read more about pie funnels in Robin Young’s article I’ve got funnel vision in The Times.

Amazon.com sells pie birds from Cock-A-Doodle’s Country Store, Pfaltzgraff, and Gooseberry Patch.

Other sources for pie funnels online:

• Cooking.com
• inspire company.com
• Nic’s Place
• Sur La Table (search for “pie funnel”)
• Donnaware Pottery (UK)

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