From reading the Wikipedia article you linked I'd say it's because this is a stable combination of two allotropes of Boron. Their example of carbon existing in graphite and diamond form would mean - if this were the same thing - that diamond and graphite existed in a combined state of some sort.

I read an article about Information Theory a long, long time ago (which is probably why I can't Google it) wherein the authors demonstrated that the most efficient means of storing information would be by using an alphabet that had e (2.71828183) letters.

It was pretty interesting and has been stuck in my head. In any event, they surmised further that the closest we could get would be if we came up with some sort of trinary alphabet. They also opined that we were damned lucky to have binary as it's the next-most-efficient alphabet.

So can we expect ISPs to start incorporating in Texas the way that credit card companies like to incorporate in Delaware? Granted, the former would be for protection from industry harassment and the latter is for protection from usury laws, but if I were an ISP I'd certainly look on Texas as a nice place to call "home" for legal purposes.

The Internet isn't very useful if the delivery guy can't bring your ThinkGeek toys to you because the roads are broken.

What this book and the popularity of these alternative approaches to health and healing show is that people don't believe the science education they were given.

Most people are familiar - at least vaguely - with the Scientific Method. They were introduced to it in middle school or earlier.

While it's fun to laugh at the people that believe in this stuff and meet an early grave or a debilitating chronic condition because of their belief in this hocus-pocus, I believe we'd be better served (and more moral) if we were to focus on the big questions:

Why don't people believe in science? Why don't they know or keep the Scientific Method close to their hearts? What could we be doing better to make sure that quackery like this passes away naturally as it would in any system wherein most people subscribed to the SM?

We all know this stuff doesn't work (beyond the power of the placebo), but we're obviously in the minority. As Stephen Colbert might opine, this stuff is succeeding in the market, so it must be true.

If we want to save people from doom, we should look at improving either the quality or the retention of our science education.