Try asking difficult questions. I was reading this enthusiastic story about smart contact lenses, and I had one big one. It isn’t answered.

Now, Google’s taken another step in normalizing Glass. It’s unveiled a smart contact lens containing a silicon chip so small it’s the size of a piece of glitter.

The lens is intended to help diabetics track the glucose levels in their tears. It has a sensor embedded in the thin plastic and a wireless chip so that it can communicate with other devices. And engineers at Google’s secretive X labs are working on putting LEDs in the lens so that it can show users a visual warning if their glucose reaches dangerous levels.

Scale that up, and what you get is a version of Google Glass that fits in your eye.

Wait, wait, wait. The lens of your eye is not going to focus on something plastered on the surface of the lens. You aren’t going to be able to put a video screen equivalent on there and have text scroll by, for instance. I can see the specific example they mention working — a pulsing flash, out of focus and seen as a changing level of light, could work as an alert — but you’re not going to be able to scale that up into a heads-up display, for instance.

They have a video demo of a similar system. It’s a contact-lens-sized disc, all right, clamped in place with great big connectors leading into it, flashing a dollar sign under computer control. Yeah, I can see it when your video camera is focused on it from a foot away…but try sticking that directly on the lens and then shoot your video. It will be disappointing.

Miniaturizing circuitry is not news. There’s a problem in optics here that the gushing gadgeteers aren’t at all prepared to even think about.

While we’re freezing out here in the midwest, and expecting lots of snow, ChasCPeterson is concerned about what’s going on out west.

It’s going to be a grim year out here in the Mojave Desert. The perennials are already crispy and can only get crispier. We’re already past the winter-rain window that would bring annuals. That means no food for tortoises, so no protein, no growth, low juvenile survivorship, decreased reproduction, and if it doesn’t rain this summer, adult mortality too. Nothing for jackrabbits and K-rats to eat means fewer jackrabbits and K-rats, which means in turn that coyotes will switch to digging up tortoises to eat. Crispy perennials and no annuals mean no insects, and therefore no lizards. No lizards or K-rats is bad for snakes. No lizards or snakes is bad for roadrunners and raptors. No bugs is bad for bats and birds; no seeds bad for other birds.

Drought is bad for west-coast humans, but it means death for the ecosystems that belong here.

There’s nothing bad that can’t be made worse! Governor Jerry Brown has suspended the California Environmental Quality Act to make more water available for California’s agriculture and people, which means that not only are those ecosystems strained by the weather, but the humans have just declared open season on what few resources they have left.

We’ve got a blizzard on the way. Plants do not exist in an uncrystallized state right now.

This is brilliant: a fish that catches birds on the wing. That takes some impressive calculation to be able to snatch a flitting swallow out of the air.

Now…does anyone have any video of a fish catching a cat?

A chemical plant in West Virginia, for a company called Freedom Industries (there’s a name that screams last refuge of scoundrels for you), spilled about 5,000 gallons of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol into the local water table. It turned the water in the rivers blue-green and reeking of licorice. The safety sheet for this chemical has a few cautions.

36: Irritating to the eyes
37: Irritating to the respiratory system
38: Irritating to the skin

26: In case of contact with eyes, rinse immediately with plenty of water and seek medical advice
27: Take off immediately all contaminated clothing
28: After contact with skin, wash immediately with plenty of … (to be specified by the manufacturer)
29: Do not empty into drains
30: Never add water to this product
33: Take precautionary measures against static discharges
35: This material and its container must be disposed of in a safe way
36: Wear suitable protective clothing
37: Wear suitable gloves
39: Wear eye/face protection

I like how the treatment suggestions include rinsing immediately with water. What do you do when the water is tainted with this stuff?

But don’t panic! The director of the West Virginia Water Research Institute is telling everyone not to worry.

Even at its current concentrations, however, the chemical is unlikely to cause any serious harm, Ziemkiewicz said.

“You’d have to drink something like 1,700 gallons of water to even approach a lethal dose,” he said. If a person drank a glass or two of tainted water, “I would be astonished if that caused any serious problems.”

Seriously? They’re simultaneously telling everyone to not drink the green water, don’t bathe in it, don’t wash your babies with it, and hey, the green stinky chemical contaminants coming out of your tap are just fine? Perhaps Ziemkiewicz would like to define “serious”. It seems to be something along the lines of “you’re not dropping dead, your glass of water is just making you vomit.”

Our expectations of what it means to live on a habitable planet seem to be dropping. I don’t think the head of an institute dedicated to researching clean water ought to be downplaying the toxic effects of the coal industry on water quality in the region. But that’s just me.

At least we aren’t getting the Ayn Rand approach to environmentalism yet, which would argue that the chemical tint to the water increases its scenic value, and that that odor is the scent of prosperity.

And we’re only getting a little bit of an effort to tie environmental disasters to biblical prophecy.

So sure, it could be worse. The whole planet could be exploding, but all we’re doing is soaking it with toxins. You could be melting and dying in agony right now, but really all that’s happening is that you’re drinking a slow poison.

Relax.

All misery is relative.

Don’t let the little things bother you, like dilute chemical irritants in your drinking water.

Shut up.

Go fight the big problems, like exploding planets and melty death. Let the little ones slide.

Really. Hush. It’s a little problem.

You can trust a company called Freedom Industries, can’t you?