Science, Songs, Uncategorized

Goldfish Bowl on Head

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Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano has written a blog post about the experience of having his helmet begin to fill up with water during a space walk. I think it’s fair to say this is a sensation most people will never know – the feeling that you are floating 240 miles above the Earth’s surface, moving at 17,000 miles per hour, and drowning.

It’s definitely not one anyone’s top ten list of things to worry about – or at least it wasn’t. Though I have this vague recollection that I’ve seen a cartoon where an astronaut’s helmet (Bugs Bunny?) fills with water and he watches goldfish swim in front of his eyes. Could that have happened?  Probably.

goldfish-bowl-head

At any rate, it’s not hard in the year 2013 to find an image of someone with their head inside a goldfish bowl. Thanks, Internet!

In his account, Parmitano describes reluctantly informing mission control that something wasn’t right, suspecting (correctly) the ground controllers would respond by deciding to end the space walk early. He is told to head directly back to the airlock while his partner, Chris Cassidy, attends to some other details before joining him. At this point water is floating inside Parmitano’s helmet.

“… the Sun sets, and my ability to see – already compromised by the water – completely vanishes, making my eyes useless; but worse than that, the water covers my nose – a really awful sensation that I make worse by my vain attempts to move the water by shaking my head. By now, the upper part of the helmet is full of water and I can’t even be sure that the next time I breathe I will fill my lungs with air and not liquid.”

Parmitano has to wait for Cassidy to return to the airlock so pressurization can begin, and then he has to wait a few minutes more for the process to complete before he can remove his helmet. All the while the amount of moisture increases and he is losing communication with those outside his space suit.

“The water is now inside my ears and I’m completely cut off.”

I’m not sure how a person could manage to stay calm in such a situation, though one possible technique would be to sing a song.  Any popular song would do as a distraction, but the disc jockey in me wonders which song would be most appropriate for waiting to see if one will survive an outer-space helmet flood.

Here’s one possibility:

What song calms your nerves?

Uncategorized

Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

My boyfriend says he absolutely loves the Minnesota State Fair and if I care for him I’ll go and enjoy being there all day every day for 12 days straight like he does, every single year.

I think that’s asking a lot, even of me.

We are ALL Dr. Babooner
We are ALL Dr. Babooner

And I am solidly in the Fair Fanatic demographic. I am the only person I know who actually enjoys eating cotton candy. I look forward to riding the Space Needle, and I have no trouble finding thoughtful things to say while taking a very, very close look at the eyelashes of a pig. I have a high level of tolerance for mundane things even though I do sometimes think while watching another endless hour of butter head sculpting that the unbridled passion for new frontiers and unique experiences that was the hallmark of my youth is now very much a thing of my past.

But do I complain or balk? I do not. I go to The Fair because it pleases him, and when he’s happy, I’m happy.

This year, however, I’m thinking of cutting back a little, like maybe going every other day. Or maybe just once – on Wednesday. Did you realize that The Fair has only one Wednesday? I think that makes it a rather special time. But I’m afraid when I suggest it to my boyfriend he’ll think it just means I don’t love him anymore. That’s not true, of course. But if I’m forced to go to the stinking fair with him every damn day again this year, it might become true.

Sorry, I slipped a little right there. What I mean to say is that I’ve come to the conclusion that having everything in excess is not very satisfying, and I’m starting to cherish the small, rare, quiet moments.

I don’t think there’s anything about The Fair that’s small or quiet. I suppose the beef is rare, but that’s because it’s still on the hoof.

Dr. Babooner, am I asking for trouble by trying to back out of my boyfriend’s tradition of Total Fair Immersion, or might this strengthen our relationship?

Sincerely,
Already Had Enough Mini-Donuts And Pronto Pups

I told A.H.E.M.D.A.P.P. that a person should never feel pressured to do something distasteful for love. Being honest with your boyfriend is always the best policy, and if he genuinely cares for you, he’ll understand. But if he’s on the fence about you, the fair is the best possible place to meet someone else who unequivocally shares his total fascination with this annual event. Eleven days there alone is more than enough time. In fact, you may not even need to go on Wednesday. Wednesday is the sixth day of the fair – and the midpoint. The most intense animal barn smells will just kicking in by then, but your relationship could already be history.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Uncategorized

Millionaire Surplus Chases Story Shortage

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Today’s post comes from Wally, proprietor of Wally’s Intimida, home of the Sherpa S.U.V. – the world’s most massive car.

Hello buyers!

Today is a great day to add a Sherpa to your collection of things that took a bundle of money to own.  I say that knowing  we have just been through a few years  when spending was something that even people with too much cash simply did not do.

But there was great news coming out of California last week – someone spent 27.5 million dollars on a car! And I don’t mean a car company – I mean one single, individual car.

You have no idea how this cheered up people in my business who have spent countless hours haggling with stubborn cheapskates who balk at forking over an extra $300 for the paint treatment. Finally, a great feel-good story about gaudy excess. It’s about time!

The car in question, a Ferrari NART Spyder, is special, there’s no doubt. In fact, the auction house produced this beautiful, lump-in-the-throat video about it.

What a great story – a fondly remembered father’s well-loved prize benefiting charity and helping to soothe the pain of loss. This tugs on the heartstrings of exactly the type of millionaire who buys a collectible automobile. I wish I had something as sentimental to give the Sherpa buying public, but our commercials only show the Sherpa plowing through muddy fields and crushing things. Of course it can look as fetching in the misty early-morning light as a pricey, rare Ferrari, but being a plus-plus-plus-size automobile, the Sherpa has to conform to the limited expectations of a public that is not ready to accept that a package brimming with raw power can also be alluring  in a skimpy, sexy negligee.

But another thing that does wonders to sell a 27.5 million dollar car is the paralyzing fear that some other rich cat will swoop in and buy it before you can. And there was one quote in the story that spoke to this – from McKeel Hagerty, CEO of a company that insures collectible cars.

“The supply of millionaires is exceeding the number of available great cars. An awful lot of collectors are now clamoring for event-eligible models, and they’ve become a permissible splurge. The values are climbing.”

This is music to my ears – the very idea of too many millionaires chasing too few desirable cars spells opportunity for Intimida and the Sherpa, especially when there are signs that car lust in general is on the decline. All a great car really needs to break into the uber-million dollar category at auction is a great story, and while I’m sure potential buyers would like those stories to be true, it can account for a lot if they are, at the very least, good.

Some of the story lines I’m thinking about attaching to specific cars for future sales –

  • The Sherpa that drove Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to the top of Everest
  • The Sherpa the Von Trapp family took over the Matterhorn in The Sound of Music
  • The Sherpa that made the wheel-well slush chunk that grew into the Titanic iceberg
  • The Sherpa where Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address

There’s more to come as the automotive business transitions from being about transportation to being about nostalgia. But there’s still time left to buy a Sherpa of your own, so you can start making memories that will mean millions to your descendants, down the road. 

No pressure, honest.  Just think about it!

Your faithful car peddler,
Wally

What value-boosting story could you tell about your car?

The Baboon Congress

Tiny Paper Storm

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Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee.

Art Fry is my hero.

That’s right, my hero. I know, I know. Heroism brings to mind Superman, Wonder Woman, firefighters and soldiers – the sort of super-human person who arrives a the last moment to rescue the helpless and the lost. For me, that guy is Art Fry, an inventor who provided me with an essential workplace tool.

Art Fry was born on August 19, 1931 in Owatonna, Minnesota. He studied chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota and while he was still in school, he took a job at 3M; back then it was called Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company. From the beginning he worked in the new product development area. In 1973 he came up with a use for another engineer’s unique adhesive; he got the idea because little slips of paper that he used to mark his choir book always fell out. It was the birth of the Post-It® Note.

Post-It note

I’ve been in love with Post-It® Notes from the time I entered the workforce. I can’t get enough of them! Little notes about which store to call, little notes about ordering more of that bestseller, little notes with birthdays that I don’t want to forget, little shopping lists, little to-do lists, little bookmarks – you name it.

No matter the task, I can figure out how using a Post-It® Note will improve the process! And I’m not alone. Take a look at how these guys have used Post-It® Notes to waste vast amounts of company time.

PostIts

Seeing all this Post-It® Note carnage is fun but also troubling, since I don’t like waste and I’ve become something of a collector. At home I have a little basket in my studio with all my Post-It® Notes pads and at work I have over 40 pads of notes, from little arrow-shaped notes to large lined notes. I have funny workplace notes and notes from hotels around the world, Disney notes and Muppets notes. I have a couple of pads that are over 25 years old; these are the ones that I think are particularly hilarious so I have used them sparingly over the years. If anyone ever creates a Post-It® Note Museum, I’m destined to be a major benefactor.

And now as a promotional deal, 3M is running a Dreams for Good contest for people who “like” their Post-It® Note Facebook page. The rules are rather involved, but basically you write down your idea for improving the world on a Post-It® Note and send in a picture of it. If your entry is a winner, you get $25,000 to start putting your inspiration into practice.

Sounds like it would be fun to enter, but winning would be a lot of work.

All of this commotion can be traced directly to Art Fry’s brilliant solution to a rather ordinary problem. So you can have your winged and caped heroes and crusaders. Art Fry rescued me from a world without Post-It® Notes. And for that, I will always be grateful.

Name a simple invention that has improved your life.

Uncategorized

The Mean Girl Strategy

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Today’s post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th district – all the water surface area in the state.

Beechly addresses some "cool" people.
Beechly addresses some “cool” people.

Greetings, Constituents!

I’m enjoying my summer break at home in the 9th district by spending endless hours fishing, swimming, floating around on inner tubes, and thinking about clearing out weeds along the shoreline. I probably won’t do any aquatic plant management though, becuase I always wind up taking a nap once I start to read about it.

One thing I’ve learned about lawmaking is that it gets very, very dreary once you start to read and study the regulations you’re considering. Working out a compromise with other people can get even more complicated! Thinking is hard!

It’s much more fun to just react emotionally to random things you’ve heard. That’s why I’m so excited about this new development in the 2016 Presidential contest, courtesy of Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Party.

He has issued a challenge – if NBC and CNN choose to air some planned and assumed-to-be-complimentary docu-dramas about expected Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Republicans will refuse to cooperate with them on the broadcast of 2016 presidential debates.

This is smart because in the last election cycle, Presidential Debates were showing signs of getting to be too popular. If you’re like me, you don’t want to get drawn into something that a lot of people look at where you don’t control every detail.

I’m not a Republican (or Democrat), but I want to congratulate Reince on finally getting us to the place where we all want to be – from a capital where people work hard on details and pay lip service to compromise and bi-partisanship, to a Congress where there’s no need to pretend – all the animosity is out in the open and the Mean Girl Strategy can be freely applied.

You may remember the Mean Girl Strategy from Junior High – “Be friends with Hilary if you want, but if we catch you hanging out with her, it’s over between us forever!”

Some people may call this childish and petty, but those people are losers and should be shunned!

This gives us a nice, easy short-cut to our difficult decision making. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how incredibly difficult it is to represent you in the Halls of Congress, but let me be blunt – your flip-floppiness on major issues leaves me wondering, sometimes, what I should do. For example, on the recent events in Egypt I’ve heard from you that we should:

  • Cut off all aid to Egypt’s military
  • Increase aid to Egypt’s military
  • Invade
  • Bomb the pyramids
  • Fund more Walleye farms on the Nile.

Too many options! What am I supposed to do?

When it comes to complicated issues like this, it’s much easier to figure out who we all hate so we can listen to their pronouncements and just be against whatever they say, regardless of the reasoning.

Soon I’ll be going back to Our Nation’s Capital to do the Work You Elected Me To Do – pointing my finger and stomping my foot!  Yes, it’s a difficult assignment, but not nearly as hard as it could be!

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

When the work gets complicated, what’s your favorite short cut?

Poems

A Few Lines For The Olinguito

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Olinguito

It’s with some trepidation that I share this news:  A previously unidentified mammal has entered the known-by-humans universe. Of course the Olinguito would have been fine without us, but we have been desperate for it, having exploited and anthropomorphized every other available creature.

This little beauty was pursued by a curious observer who must be wondering right now what he has wrought for this apparently harmless dweller of the rain forest canopy.

The good news in this development is that for storytellers, there is finally an animal who hasn’t already been employed as a muse. What writer, for example, has not despaired of creating a poem featuring a nightingale, knowing that Keats got there first and ruined it for everyone.

An Ode to the Olinquito

No creature has been more discreet, oh
Undiscovered Olinguito.

Unlike Hippos or Giraffes,
who, mugging for the easy laughs,

were captured with abundant ease
while you hid out in tops of trees.

Alone, alive, aloft, alert
a totem for the introvert,

concealed in clouds of jungle fog,
the world now gasps and points, agog!

Alas, your cover has been blown,
but now at least you know you’re known.

Prepare yourself to be festooned,
bedazzled, storied and cartooned.

Oh Olinguito, please stay fleet
and pray that you’re not good to eat.

An Olinquito walks into a bar and hops up on to the stool next to you. After a few drinks he reveals he and his kind have been in hiding for thousands of years, but now they’re out. You’d like to take his picture, but out of respect, you don’t. Good thing you don’t – he is beside himself with worry about deforestation and paparazzi from the National Geographic. Finally, he turns to you and says,

“What would you do if you were me?”

Uncategorized

Menu Planning

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Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a smart phone in the woods.

Bart Blackberry2

Yo, Bart here.

So I’m seeing a lot of articles about this group of humans who let themselves be locked in a crate out on the barren slopes of a mountain in Hawaii for three months – all to see if they could make interesting meals out of nothing but the kind of ingredients that could be shipped to Mars. You know, freeze dried beef, rice, lentils, dried fruit and Spam.

It’s called HI-SEAS,for Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation.

The project just finished up and you can read all about the different things they did, including exploring around the site wearing “spacesuits” and alternating their meal schedule between pre-packaged dinners and feasts they invented or put together using suggestions from online visitors. I guess one of the best recipes they got came from a professional chef who told them how to make Moroccan Beef Tangine.

That one really hit home for me. We bears are pretty much all about making the best possible balanced meal out of the stuff we can find around the edges of an ordinary campground. Here’s my recipe for Scavenger Salad:

Ingredients:

  • Twinkies
  • Doritos
  • Half eaten Buffalo Wings
  • Gummi Bears
  • Marshmallows
  • Graham Crackers
  • Juice Boxes
  • Ketchup and Mustard Packets

Directions:

  1. Throw everything in a pile.
  2. Eat.

It’s kind of cool to look at the ingredients list they had to work with at HI-SEAS.  It’s a better selection than we bears usually get.   Seeing this, I’m pretty sure I know what I would have done if they’d picked me to be on the crew.

  1. Eat all the cashews.
  2. Eat all the beef, sausage, pepperoni and Spam.
  3. Eat all the peanut butter and nutella.
  4. Eat all the molasses and brown sugar.
  5. Rest.
  6. Eat everything else.

Surviving on Mars wouldn’t be so hard!

Your pal,
Bart

What meal do you make when you don’t have the makings for any of your favorite meals?

Uncategorized

Tube Boobs

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Today’s post comes from Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty.

At ease, civilians! But stay vigilant. Sound the alarm whenever radical new ideas expose you to risk! Even theoretical risk, which could lead directly to imaginary dismemberment or even hypothesized death.

Yes, I’m thinking of industrialist/inventor Elon Musk’s intriguing, controversial Hyperloop. Musk has imagined an enclosed travel-tube stretching from Los Angeles to San Francisco. He pictures us climbing into vehicles that shoot through the tube on cushions of air, propelled by a magnetic pulse to speeds of up to 800 miles per hour.

tube_room

If you’re thinking of one of those pneumatic devices that carries cash, checks and dog treats from the parking lot to the teller and back to your car in branch banking, Elon Musk will call you a moron and take his billions elsewhere in head-shaking disgust. But that’s what I’m picturing anyway, and it does not comfort me. Even if everything is OK on the journey from point A to point B, what about the people who handle the tube when it arrives at its destination? During the heyday of pneumatic office communication, the weak link always happened in the basement where all the tubes ended and various boobs and imbeciles fumbled to open the capsules and spilled the precious contents onto a dank cement floor. Or at least that’s how I picture it.

Receiving Musk’s scorn now is a small price to pay compared to what it would feel like to climb into one of his tubes and realize, too late, that you’ve been had. But then climbing into a tube of any kind is alarming. I had a bad experience once with a water park tube slide that had to do with someone else’s bodily functions and not enough space between travelers. And I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you that once you knock off the wings and the tail, an airplane is tube-shaped. Risk minimizers will tell you that a large, commercial airplane is incredibly safe, but look how easily I knocked off the wings and the tail! It didn’t even take an entire sentence.

I like having escape options, so I would want Musk’s speeding travel pods and the tubes they rocket through to have frequently spaced egress hatches in case I have to climb out for a breath of fresh air, or to escape flames, or to run away from snakes. But at the same time, I would worry while pfooshing down the California coast line that some low-level workman had left a hatch ajar. That can’t end well!

As a professional public-safety scold, it’s my job to seriously consider every worst-case scenario. So I worry about the pull of gravity every time I lift one of my feet off the ground! After all, think of the possibilities! Most of them aren’t pretty.

People say Elon Musk is our most imaginative business leader and technological visionary. But when I dwell on all the ways you could be mangled in his Hyperloop and then hear him say the thing is perfectly safe, it’s obvious that he’s just not imaginative enough!

Yours in Safety,
B.S.O.R.


What could go wrong?

Uncategorized

A Little Light Opera

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When I decided to change the 20 year old lights hanging outside the house, I figured it would be a simple matter of unscrewing some things and twisting a few wires together.

After turning off the electricity, of course. Then – instant makeover!

The good news is – I was successful in turning off the electricity. The rest of it was an overly optimistic dream. I’ll spare you the gruesome details except to say when bolt holes and bolts don’t line up, one particularly useless strategy is to keep looking at the same pieces arranged in the very same configuration while hoping they’ll somehow change their shape between one glance and the next.

My half-hour project took 6 hours to complete thanks to my insistence that magic was the real answer.

In reality, success required the random discovery of a couple of spare connectors in a basement jar, my clever wife’s suggestion that I rotate one backing plate a quarter turn, and a frustration-fueled last-minute improvisation ignited, in part, by the certain belief that I was 20 minutes away from being devoured by late evening mosquitos.

Now the new lights are up and shining so harshly that squirrels scurrying over the driveway are cast in sharp relief against the house across the street. Our entire front yard is illuminated with that special compact fluorescent intensity that says “Go Away!” And because I’m intimately familiar with how these appliances are connected to the wall, I’m waiting for the first mild gust of wind to put them in the bushes.

In short, exactly the effect I was going for. Make-over complete!

Describe a recent project that took longer than you expected.

Uncategorized

Time Stands Still

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden, who has been held back in his grade at Wendell Wilkie High School every year since 1983.

Public domain image, royalty free stock photo from www.public-domain-image.com

Hey, Mr. C.,

Well, school is about to begin again and I’m going to be a sophomore for, like, the 30th time!

Some people tell me I should move on, but when I ask them what part of their life they remember best, it usually turns out to be those crazy high school years. A lot of folks say they wish they could do it all over again, but everybody knows you can’t go back.

So I’m trying to find out if you can just refuse to leave.

Sometimes people ask if I’m bothered to be so much older than my classmates, and the answer is “No!” The other kids treat me like I’m Yoda, which is great! Every now and then I’ll pull someone aside and say something like “Very powerful with this one the Force is.” They eat that stuff up. In fact, there’s gaggle of freshmen following me around right now. They’re hoping I’ll teach them to levitate, but when stuff like that comes up I try to stay enigmatic. You’ve got to keep people guessing.

Especially when you don’t really know how to levitate. But I can throw around a five dollar word like “enigmatic.” That comes in handy. People are really easy to impress these days.

One thing that I’m sure works in my favor is standardized testing. Now that the scores the school puts up are such a big dang deal, the principal is kind of grateful to have someone around who knows the exams backwards and forwards. I’m really, really good at filling in those multiple-choice ovals, and I make sure everybody stays serious at test time!

You’re probably wondering how somebody who is so good at test-taking still manages to be kept back year after year. Here’s the deal – I take lots of days off. About two months all told, every year. A lot of times I only put in a three day week. I can get away with it pretty easy. It’s not my fault the administration cut Truancy Officers so they’d have enough money to serve fresh vegetables at lunch.

Me being a high school sophomore pretty much forever is kind of like the Jeff Bezos-funded 10,000 Year Clock, which is being built right now inside a mountain in Texas. People laugh about it but I think the idea is super cool! These clockmakers really take the long view. I heard from somebody that the movement is so slow, it ticks one year and tocks the next. And it gets its energy from temperature changes and the in-and-out movement of visitors who come to hear its chimes.

That’s just like me – I’m super relaxed and I never get upset, but every now and then I’ll put on a bit of a show just to remind people I’m still here. For the most part, people think I’m charming. Another 30 years and the girls will start to think I’m cute again. One thing for sure – I’ll be at Wilkie a long, long time. Probably not 10,000 years, but who knows? They say “time flies when you’re having fun,” but I’m having a blast, and time is going very, very slowly.

Your Pal,
Bubby

I do think of Bubby as living a life that is a work of art with an extended time horizon. He occasionally writes to me about various schemes that he hopes will support him “when he grows up”, but we both know being a Sophomore at Wendell Wilkie High is (and will always be) his real job.

Name a place you’ve been that you would be happy to never leave.