The Observer's Blog

PPV I: Toilets, etc.

In chronological order in which I had them, here are some thoughts from today's talks at the science meeting:

- Gender in science is depressing. Women just don't seem like they're treated as equals, but the inequality is subtle and difficult to characterize, which makes it all the more insidious. It occurred to me that back when there were would only be one or two women at such a meeting, that was actually worse than having none. Having only one or two women attend is effectively an endorsement that they don't belong in science at all.

- A review talk should make people in that field uncomfortable. If you're giving such a talk, you shouldn't just throw up a bunch of familiar, accepted figures and images. This basically makes people in the field feel warm and cozy. If you use those images or plots at all, they need to be perversions of the original. Making people in the field uncomfortable challenges the way they think about their work, if they are awake and care.

- The perfect murder weapon is something that cannot be traced directly back to the killer, a found object not owned by anyone.

- So the hotel's automated toilets use only 0.5 gallons per flush. Awesome. But how conservative is this when you have a billion people using the toilets in a row at coffee break. The toilets end up using like 1 gallon per minute. If the toilets are so smart and automated, they should be like "Hey, okay, a bunch of people are using me, I'm just not going to flush for 15 minutes or so until this rush is over." Then after 15 minutes, if the rush is still going it can repeat that affirmation to itself.

What Would the World Be Like Without Christians?

"This rain it will continue through the morning as I'm listening to the bells of the cathedral. I am thinking of your voice."

I think it's an open question as to whether the cathedral bells triggered the character in the Suzanne Vega song to think of someone's voice or whether the two thoughts are unrelated. In any case, it made me wonder what if there were no one to ring church bell towers? There are no bell towers nearby where I live, but I've lived places where church bell towers could be counted on daily to provide a surreal soundtrack to otherwise typical urban happenings.

So what if there were no one to ring church bell towers? What if there were no Christian church? I think at this point in history the question "What if there were no Christians?" is highly hypothetical and politcal. I'm definitely trying to be hypothetical, but I don't mean the question to be political but cultural. And I know there are some places in the world where the Church is not welcome, but what if it were like that in all the world with no hope of change? No church bell towers. Pretty sad. More room for commercials maybe though.

The reverse question is totally fair, by the way. What if all people were part of one (Christian, maybe) church? What if there were no non-Christians? No commecials. Pretty sad.

Five Minute Entry

Somehow I ended up with the sunglasses of prophecy, but I'm not sure if they're a crutch. I need persuasive arguments as to why 28-year-old girls should date boys five years younger than they. This would be mostly an academic exercise, but also to see some very high-level girls get challenged. I should read something by C.S. Lewis so that I can accurately judge him. I need to figure out who my super-star (actress OR singer) girlfriend is. This is surprisingly hard, but my first pass at it is Natalie Portman. I have a sitemeter now, and I am apparently one of the first people the international community turns to when they want to know how to preserve spinach.

The Great Spinach Experiment

Since spinach is one of the items that spoils/wilts fastest in my fridge, I tested a new way to preserve spinach for longer lengths of time. It failed. Apparently freezing spinach is no better at preserving it than refridgerating it. Actually, I'm not sure if it's the freezing or the thawing out part that is most damaging. I'm not totoally satisfied with the experiment though. The problem with my freezer is that my roommate buys a lot more frozen food than the average person, and on top of that he buys his food 1 month at a time. It's possible that the spinach underwent more than one compression under the weight of overlying layers of frozen meats. The compression of the spinach clearly doomed prospects of preserving of individual leaves.

To date, the best spinach preservation method is found to be wrapping the spinach in a double layer of paper towels and placing this bundle into a tupperware.

Going Natural

I am a causcasian American male. I think that one of the coolest things in America is when an African-American female goes natural. It's joyous.

Oral Self-Cleaning

I think if I had to describe myself in matters of hygeniene I'd have to say that I'm a slob that has gradually learned how to be clean. I'm not saying this is the state of all people; maybe most people start off with hygenic instincts. At some point in freshman year of high school I learned about self-cleaning your mouth. I had been treating the toothbrush and floss as crutches and had become far too dependent on them. After all, if you only rely on those to clean your mouth then by the end of the day you have totally gross teeth. Those days my lunch bag (the insulated kind) typically contained a sandwich, a fun-size bag of chips, a juice box, and a dessert. I don't recall bringing Oreo's often, but I must have done so occasionally because of a distinct incident. A guy I sat with at lunch (who would later become famous for his sparse but squirrelly sideburns) decided to call me out one day on my oral self-cleaning. I had probably been done with my Oreo's for a good 5 minutes and my teeth still had the equivalent of half a cookie in crumbs lodged in them. I hadn't been talking over-much, so my tongue was definitely available for the cleaning, but I just wasn't really wise to the process. After being made fun of publicly for having poor self-cleaning skills I vowed never to let it happen again. The last thing I have to say is that self-cleaning after eating Wheat Thins is typically very painful for some reason.

The Germans Have The Scoop On Dr. Sasaki

Take a break from "Britney & Kevin: Chaotic" to hear the story of something truly bizarre. There is a man who annually travels from Japan to a Heidelberg lab where he entertains the locals with his antics. Those who knew him there had no idea who they were dealing with. Last week he mistakenly traveled to Kauai for what he no doubt thought was some sort of Pacific film festival, and here he unveiled his latest creation. Some have called him the new Tarantino, but the German lab notes him primarily for his vaporous emissions and not his mpeg prowess. The short untitled film (unofficially dubbed "Baked Beans") stands a good chance of winning an award this year . . . as soon as it's screen at an actual film festival. Sasaki's brilliance was unfortunatey lost on most of the astronomers at the Kauai science meeting, and the Heidelbergers were no exception. Who could blame them really? All they've every known is the rude (by Continental standards), bumbling fool who gets his laser pointer and microphone confused when giving a talk. If you're to believe the Heidelbergers, it's Japanese custom to burp and fart as loud as possible. Now, I'm not saying that isn't so, but I ain't saying it is so either. All I'm saying is that Sasaki is a genius.