George Gillson

zebra finches on perch arguing over their next migration

Bird Brains

Posted on May 1, 2018May 1, 2018 by George Gillson

In the last few years I’ve noticed that there is no originality in journalism any more. At least in the magazines that I poke my nose into. Yes, I still read words printed on paper, bound into booklets called magazines. These magazines are mailed to me every month or so. Unless someone scoffs them before they make their way into my mailbox. Which happens occasionally. A lack of integrity among mail carriers has developed in parallel with a lack of journalistic originality. We live in a troublesome age.

I read Popular Science, Scientific American and National Geographic. Back in the 80’s I would dread the arrival of Scientific American, because it was approximately an inch thick and it would take me about two weeks to read one issue. Now most of the articles are no longer than three or four pages, and many of them have a distinct political slant.

I’m trying to figure out why National Geographic is still called National Geographic. It used to be about an inch thick and had lots of maps in it. And pictures of people, roads, buildings, animals, fish and birds. Now it’s a lot harder to see the connection to Geography in some of the articles, and many of them have a distinct political slant.

I guess you could say I’m disillusioned with both Scientific American and National Geographic. Or maybe disappointed.

On the other hand, I’m not disillusioned or disappointed with Popular Science. So I’m stopping here briefly to wonder if instead I could say that I’m illusioned or appointed with Popular Science. Probably not. English can be tricky that way.

I think I’ll just say I’m pretty stoked on Popular Science. For starters, it was never an inch thick. And many of the articles have to do with things that a) go really fast b) look super-complicated c) might involve serious amounts of electricity or d) are just generally dangerous to play with.

Anyway, getting back to the lack of originality in journalism, I’ve noticed that if one of the three magazines I just mentioned, such as National Geographic, was to run an article about a topic such as why the hierarchy of medals handed out in dance competitions doesn’t make any sense from a Chemistry standpoint, then sure as shootin’ that same topic will be covered a month or two later in one or both of the other two magazines I just mentioned.

picture of a gold medal for a dance competition award hanging on a ribbon — Dance competition medal

I don’t have the space here to get into this whole dance medal hierarchy/Chemistry thing because I really want to talk about Ornithology, and in particular I want to talk about the intelligence of birds.

giggling man with large parrot perched on his shoulder — Ornithologist (left) looking quite pleased with career choice

Birds are smart.

Take your basic pigeons for example. If a pigeon runs across one of those fake plastic owls it will figure out in pretty short order that that owl is bogus. Meanwhile you shelled out how much for thing. $29.95? No bird would pay $29.95 for a sham owl. That’s for sure.

And what about this? Just recently I was musing out loud about Normal versus Lognormal statistical distributions and my parrot suddenly chimed in:

Parrot: “No. Remember that the standard deviation is MULTIPLICATIVE in Lognormal distributions and ADDITIVE in Normal distributions.”

Me: “Shit! You’re right. What was I thinking?”

Parrot: “I dunno. May I have another cracker?”

Me: “Yes, if you can answer this riddle: What did the mathematician say when he lost his parrot?”

Parrot: “Polygon.”

See what I mean? That is one smart bird.

I probably made that whole conversation up. I don’t actually have a parrot, but I do have a dog and two cats. None of them can talk. And at this point, if I got a parrot to talk to, the thing would likely outlive me. But I’m getting off topic here.

My point is that bird brains are getting lots of air time lately. Earlier this year, both National Geographic AND Popular Science ran articles discussing the intelligence of birds. Coincidence? I think not. This is a perfect example of the current lack of originality in journalism. You thought I was kidding. And bloggers are even worse because they just pick up the stuff that the magazines are copying from each other and replay that to their followers. All fifty-six of them.

The February 2018 National Geographic article entitled: “Think ‘Birdbrain’ Is an Insult? Think Again” had all kinds of great stuff in it though, including a tool-making cockatoo named Figaro and another expert puzzle-solving cockatoo named Muppet, who was described as ” a little, focused engineer”. (If I ever get another pet I think I will name it Muppet. Even if it’s an iguana or worse yet, a Komodo Dragon.)

There was also mention of some crows in Seattle who began bringing dozens of trinkets to an 8-year old girl and her brother after they started laying out crow snacks (in the form of dog kibble) in their back yard. The trinkets included Lego pieces, tiny gears, lightbulbs, a tiny Waldo (maybe he’s in the photo below, maybe not), a tube of Crazy Glue, the rubbery insert that I lost from one of my earbuds last year, a discarded intracardiac pacemaker electrode, a small plastic squid (not shown) and a Wenger 16999 knife (also not shown). Note that the crows had to team up to bestow the Wenger, as it weighs approximately seven pounds.

cockatoo nibbling on a piece of cardboard in order to make a tool — Cockatoo constructing primitive slide rule

trinkets brought as gifts by crows — Trinkets bestowed on two children in Seattle by a bunch of crows who are partial to dog kibble

As if that wasn’t enough, Popular Science followed suit by devoting their entire Spring 2018 issue to intelligence of all sorts: human, animal, robot, car and sentient public washrooms. The cover featured a crow that was reputed to be smarter than your 5th grader. On page 104 of that issue, I also learned that crows and maybe corvids in general hold funerals for their departed.

With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe: Quoth the raven:”Nevermore” !

picture of a crow hoilding a pencil in its beak — Crow gloating after finishing the SAT in three hours and twenty-seven minutes

This is really great and all, but the best thing I ran across pertaining to birds is some recent research that has determined that birds can see the magnetic field of the Earth. This may be due to special proteins in their retina called cryptochromes. Cryptochrome comes from the Greek meaning “special protein in the retina”.

With the help of cryptochromes, magnetic fields are visible to the birds in the presence of certain wavelengths of blue light. This is due to Quantum Coherence, which may occur whenever a quantum physicist utters a coherent sentence understandable by normal human beings including, but not limited to, Ornithologists. But Quantum Coherence also occurs whenever wave functions “cohere” or have the same phase.

Here is what some theoretical and computational biophysicists think the sky might look like to migrating birds, thanks to Quantum Coherence:

I’m kidding. This is actually what the biophysicists think the sky might look like to migrating birds, especially owls:

No. I’m kidding again.

Seriously, I am really and for true about to show you a picture of what the biophysicists think that birds might see. But first I have to swear on this real picture from the Los Alamos ID badge of iconic quantum physicist and super-genius Richard “Dick” Feynman, that I’m not going to show you another fake picture.

Here we go with the real picture. The top series of images somehow represent magnetic fields and the bottom series is the superposition of the magnetic fields onto the bird’s field of vision:

All the bird has to do is keep itself oriented to the desired pattern of brightness. Pretty amazing huh? What is even more amazing is that other creatures besides birds can detect magnetic fields. Alert readers will recall that dogs exhibit a preference for facing north when they poop. And some birds will also help dogs get their “bathroom bearings”:

parakeet sitting on nose of golden Labrador Retriever — Parakeet whispering to dog: “The bathroom is over there to your right.”

We may not understand them, but we should take our hats off to all the Quantum Physicists of this world, and also to the ones on the Home World of Quantum Physicists.

Better living through Quantum Coherence!

Next column: Robot successfully performs one of the hardest human tasks

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Tips For Traveling Solo

Posted on April 5, 2018 by George Gillson

According to authoritative sources like Solo Traveler and HuffPost, more people are choosing to travel solo these days. Common reasons cited for choosing this vacation option include: a need for breathing room, an urge to: “do what I want to do when I want to do it” , a need to seek challenges/gain confidence, to recharge, to avoid having to wait for anyone, to “get the hell away from my spouse before I wring their ever-loving neck”, and last but not least, as a retaliatory spending strategy.

Say you come home and your spouse says, “Honey, you’ll never guess what I bought today! Cover your eyes.” You dutifully cover your eyes and are led out to the driveway where you behold the following:

Yes! You guessed it! A new car! But not just any car. This is a 1964 Chrysler turbine car! Those things that look like laser cannons poking out of the business end are actually the turbine exhaust ports. Neat huh? This car has a lot going for it.

It sounds sort of like a jet engine revving up.
Although it was designed to burn diesel fuel, it can burn pretty much any flammable liquid including kerosene, jet fuel, peanut oil, tequila and Chanel No. 5. (I swear on the proboscis of an elephant seal that I am not making up the bit about Chanel No. 5.)

3. Jay Leno owns one. (A Chrysler turbine car, not an elephant seal.) In addition to his massive lower jaw, Jay has an equally massive collection of expensive vehicles. He bought his turbine car directly from Chrysler and paid $415,000 for it.

These cars never really took off (!) as a mainstream product because other drivers kept gawking at them, saying to themselves “What in tarnation is that?” and then plowing into things like other cars and trees. Turbine cars would have wound up costing about four times more than a regular car, and you could never get the Chanel No. 5/peanut oil smell out of the upholstery. Long story short, Chrysler only made 55 of these cars, and destroyed most of them.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so in retaliation for your spouse’s financial indiscretion, you think to yourself: “Heck, if he just spent all that money on that stupid turbine car, I’m going to retaliate by taking a solo trip to check out some of those Lost City alkaline hydrothermal vents that lots of people are talking about these days.”

These plumes of hot, alkaline, mineral-rich water which can generate and concentrate a wide variety of small organic molecules, may just happen to be the places where life originated, according to a book by Nick Lane:

If you happen to like geology, electrochemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, genetics physics and saw-whet owls, this is the book for you. (Actually I threw in the saw-whet owls just to see if you were paying attention. As far as I know, saw-whet owls do not get any airtime in Mr. Lane’s book.) Seriously though, this is an amazing book. I’m not kidding. Really. I’m not.

But a trip to check out the vents is definitely an excellent retaliatory spending choice since you will need something like the Ocean Pearl, a nifty little $2.5 million-dollar two-person submersible for the trip. (The vents in question are typically located on the seafloor in about 2500 to 3000 feet of water.)

small-submarine-manufacturer-5 — An Ocean Pearl sitting in Jay Leno’s garage.

Another great retaliatory spending idea is a trip to that Island of Stability that lots of other people are talking about. (I mean the people other than the people who are fixated on the alkaline hydrothermal vents. In case you were wondering.)

This is not The Island of Stability. This is The Island of Only Being Able To Take Your Dog For Really Short Walks And From His Perspective Both You And He Would Probably Have Been Better Off If You Had Chosen An Elephant Seal As A Pet, Instead Of Him. But You’re Stuck Here Now So Make The Most Of It.

There’s one hitch: The Island of Stability is not a real island. It’s a theoretical region of the Periodic Table. As you recall from Grade 9 Science, the Periodic Table arranges all the elements according to their properties and the sizes of their atoms. As the atoms get bigger, they get more unstable, emit radiation and tend to be used for assassinations, smoke detectors and nuclear weapons.

Physics theory predicts that as the atom size continues to increase we will eventually stagger into a region of really big atoms that are once again stable. If you have nothing better to do, you can see where The Island of Stability is if you plot the number of protons in the nucleus vs the number of neutrons in the nucleus, like so:

The elements made from the atoms that lurk up in the top right corner of the plot are called superheavy elements and they might have weird and wonderful properties. For example, they might go on diets all the time. Science-based thrillers might even be written about them. Who knows?

Theicelimit-book — This book might be about a meteor whose surface is made of a superheavy element.

But one of the things we know for sure about the superheavy elements is that they will cost millions and maybe billions of dollars to make, because you will need a particle accelerator. So if you go down this road, it will be one expensive trip, solo or not.

Particle accelerators use massive amounts of electricity and nobody is giving that away these days, but to run a really powerful accelerator you also need to take out extremely expensive insurance against the possibility that you might accidentally create a tiny black hole that could expand and swallow the entire Earth. As you can imagine, this would be very bad. And costly to repair. And who would be the beneficiary? You thought your car insurance premium was bad. Try insuring a planet.

Here are some other potential properties of superheavy elements that some people have suggested:

1) The elements 113 and 114 mark the beginning of the 7p elements. Because of large relativistic spin–orbit effects on the 7p orbitals, these metals are expected to be more volatile than their lighter homologues.

2) Sg (element 106) is expected to be very refractory in the elemental state but should form volatile halides, oxide halides, oxide hydroxides and carbonyls.

3) Element 113 might give off a weird odor such as Chanel No.122. Or burning pepper. Or maybe cooked asparagus.

4) Element 118 is expected to avoid eye contact, and appear vaguely shifty at all times. It may be able to demagnetize the stripes on your plastic at distances of 10 metres or more. Do not even think about dating this element. Or worse yet, marrying it.

Well, at this point it’s abundantly clear that there are lots of exciting possibilities for solo vacations. So plan that trip now. The sky’s the limit, and you don’t have to answer to anyone.

A couple of helpful closing tips:

Helpful Closing Tip #1: Do not, and I repeat, do not drink unfiltered water from rivers, lakes, ponds and ditches on your trip. Otherwise you might end up with laryngeal hirudiniasis. Laryngeal hirudiniasis is easily mistaken for asthma due to progressively worsening coughing and wheezing. Laryngeal hirudiniasis is also known as “having a live leech fastened to some part of your airway.” WARNING: YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO UNSEE THE FOLLOWING IMAGES. DON’T LOOK. I MEAN IT.

thoraxjnl-2017-211394-F1.large[1] — Lee P, et al. All that wheezes is not asthma. Thorax 2018;0:1. doi:10.1136/thoraxjnl-2017-211394

You looked. I knew you would. To make you feel better though, I’m reproducing some tweets from a site that posted the images from the paper:

-So was it the leech that had asthma?

-Everyone should have a pet.

-BRB. Vomiting.

Helpful Closing Tip #2: Try not to overpack. You’ll regret it. Even if your backpack was only $49.95 at Hammacher Schlemmer. (Motto: We know lots of great chiropractors!)

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Testicle Navigators

Posted on February 24, 2018February 24, 2018 by George Gillson

Many times over the years I have asked myself the following question and I’ll bet you have too:

“How in the heck did the ancient Polynesians manage to leave their idyllic villages and navigate their rafts thousands of miles over the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii without the benefit of modern conveniences such as Waze, Google Maps and so forth?”

You don’t have to answer, but I can assure you that you’re not alone in your puzzlement. Thousands of scholars have devoted their entire careers to researching that exact same question! And thousands of other scholars have devoted their entire careers to researching what exactly the ancient Polynesians did when they got to Hawaii. (Well maybe not thousands of scholars in each case, but quite a few, for sure.)

One popular theory maintains that they had to leave their idyllic villages and sail thousands of miles to Hawaii in order to get flu shots.

p1020524 — Primitive Hawaiian flu vaccination clinic

This seems highly unlikely.

But we do have a much better grip on how these people got around their neighborhood, large as it was. To navigate, they used all their senses, observing the wind, the birds, the driftwood, smelling and tasting the ocean, touching it to gauge its temperature, watching the stars and clouds, noting the interference patterns on the ocean surface. And finally, employing their senses of proprioception AND touch, they also used their testicles.

I swear on the PhD thesis of prominent testicle researcher Timothy Ratliff that I am not making this up.

I also happen to think that The Testicle Navigators would make a pretty righteous name for a band. Maybe even more righteous than The Gravity Waves which is my other idea for a righteous band name.

Anywaze, don’t take my word for it. A chap by the name of David Barrie wrote a book on navigation entitled Sextant and on page 264 in Sextant he says:

“The traditional navigators of Oceania made up for their inability to measure longitude by taking advantage of the distinctive patterns of waves and swells, which revealed to them the presence and the direction of land long before it was visible. When the horizon was obscured and its changing slant could not tell them how their boat was responding to the waves, they apparently stood with their legs apart, using the inertia of their testicles as a guide.”

This may be a photo depicting the traditional stance of a testicle navigator. Or it just may a picture of an older dude in a yoga pose.

I know that your minds are literally whirring at this point, but I want to stop you and point out that as far as I know, David Barrie is NOT related to humorist Dave Barry. But he (David Barrie) IS the great great nephew of Sir James Matthew Barrie, the author of Peter Pan.

If you don’t believe David Barrie, you can turn to his source David Lewis, who wrote a book called “Those Twins Were Made For Swingin’ .”

Actually, I’m lying. The title of his book is actually “We, the Navigators The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific.”

If you don’t believe Barrie or Lewis you can also turn to Harriet Witt, writing for The Whole Earth Review Fall 1991 in an article entitled “The Soft, Warm, Wet Technology of Native Oceania.”

Witt says this:

“To get a feeling for what the wayfinder is doing all this time with his testicles (ed. note: besides scratching them), it helps to understand ocean swells. These enormous formations are powered by distant storms and steady trade winds and shouldn’t be confused with surface waves which change direction as the local wind shifts. Swells march in consistent ranks across thousands of miles. The swell entertaining surfers in Honolulu is generated by winds south of New Zealand. If you can read the shape of a swell you can tell the direction and strength of the current beneath it, and this is critical because if you don’t know what the current is doing you can steer a perfect course and still get lost. The wayfinder reads the swell by sitting cross-legged and nearly naked on the bottom of his all-vegetable-matter canoe and feeling it in his testicles.”

No matter what, one thing is clear. Whether their owners sat or stood, the testicles have been playing a key role in ocean navigation for a long time-at least until the invention of Saxx.

But what about sharks? Did these well-hung navigators have any means of protecting their most personal private areas from shark attacks in the event of misreading a swell, losing their balance and tumbling overboard?

Yes they did!

Once again, Hammacher Schlemmer comes to the rescue. (Motto: Protecting Testicle Navigators From Shark Attacks For Quite A Long Time)

I quote:

“Only available from Hammacher Schlemmer, this is the sharkproof stainless steel chainmail suit that has protected testicle navigators head-to-toe since approximately 100 AD. The suit’s sleeves are worn beneath the tunic to provide two layers of armor from the elbow to the upper torso while the crotch incorporates a “trap door” design that allows freedom of movement for any or all navigational aids. The tunic’s extended length and front-split bottom is worn under the pants to provide double coverage from the knees to the waist. The pants’ built-in stainless steel belt sleeve extends the entire circumference of the waist for evenly distributed weight support, allowing one to wear the suit with or without the included military-grade jockstrap. Worn under the pants, the booties secure the feet with hook-and-loop fasteners that enable quick removal for secure footing even in the thickest bed of vegetable matter including coconut husks. The hood provides protection from frigate bird droppings for the head and neck.”

I had no idea.

Well, this column is winding to a close and and so is winter (hopefully). I could finish with a string of really great testicle puns here but a guy by the name of Jesse Bering already did that in a Scientific American blog: Why do human testicles hang like that?

But listen. it’s still not too late to get your flu shot. I hear flights to Hawaii are on sale this week but even if they all sell out you could always take the raft.

1200px-Kon-Tiki — Thor Heyerdahl aboard Kon-Tiki, seeking a “destination vaccination”

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Ghost Peppers And Other Things Peripherally-Related to Kitchens

Posted on February 18, 2018February 19, 2018 by George Gillson

Just to spare you some cognitive dissonance, I feel like I should explain that the feature image for this column has nothing to do with kitchens or Ghost Peppers. The person in the photo happens to be a scientist whom I’ll call Tanner Shpiruk for the sake of argument. “Tanner” was hard at work when this photo was taken, graphing fluctuations in the intensity of the solar ion flux. Or he might have been trying to figure out how to pay off his photo radar tickets. I can’t remember. Either way, he’s a busy fellow.

But the point I want to make here is that I was pleasantly surprised one morning recently when I came into my office to discover that Tanner had given my Dress-up Bigfoot a serious wardrobe overhaul.

I have to applaud Tanner for exercising some initiative and demonstrating his creativity. After all, you have to give your team members room to run. My personal preference was the combination of the fez, kilt and Chuck Taylors, as the kilt has an overall slimming effect. I do have to admit though, that the tighty-whitey/bling ensemble works OK for me too. And the plant in the background is also a nice touch.

I just think that the tight underwear draws attention to Bigfoot’s butt. That’s all I’m saying. Still and all, you get the feeling that this chap is the down-to-earth uncomplicated type of large primate that you might meet anywhere, like on Rodeo Drive for example.

But long before the wardrobe overhaul incident, things really started heating up (!) here at The Department of Lateral Thinking when I staggered into a discussion about the Scoville scale for rating the pungency or “hotness” of chili peppers in the lunchroom. (The peppers weren’t in the lunchroom; the discussion took place in the lunchroom.)

Basically, Scoville Heat Units reflect the number of drops of a sugar solution needed to dilute a standard extract of a candidate chili pepper to the point where at least three out of five highly-trained chili pepper tasters can put a drop of the diluted extract on their tongues and still remain conscious long enough to exclaim: “Holy Crap! It feels like someone just cut loose in my mouth with one of Elon Musk’s new Boring Company flamethrowers!”

elon-musk-flamethrower-promo — Musk sporting an impish expression and wielding his new flamethrower

I’ll likely come back to the flamethrower at some point, but anyway, the lunchroom discussion centered around where the Ghost Pepper sits in the rankings of hottest peppers in the world, with some people insisting that it is #1. Not so!

To settle the issue, I’m giving you a recent list of the hottest peppers in the world along with their Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) ratings.

1. Carolina Reaper (aka The Widowmaker) 2,200,000 SHU

star-trek-discovery-tardigrade-2-1069482-1280x0 — Freshly-picked California Reaper in containment device, awaiting ingestion

2.Trinidad Moruga Scorpion 2,009,231 SHU

trinidad scorpion — Moruga scorpion with stinger exposed. Note that protective gloves are mandatory when handling this pepper.

3. Seven-Pot Douglah 1,853,936 SHU

4. Seven-Pot Primo 1,469,000 SHU

5. Trinidad Scorpion “Butch T” 1,463,700 SHU

6. Naga Viper 1,349,000 SHU

2017_dodge_viper_angularfront — Another hot item: Dodge Viper 850 HP

7. Bhut Jolokia (aka Ghost Pepper) 1,041,427 SHU

nothing — Ghost Pepper in its natural state: barely visible

8. Seven-Pot Barrackpore 1,000,000 SHU

9. Seven-Pot Red (Giant) 1,000,000 SHU

10. Red Savina Habanero 500,000 SHU

As you can see, the Ghost Pepper is still a serious player, coming in at a respectable one million SHU, well ahead of hundreds of other lesser peppers such as the Malagueta pepper. By the way even though the Malagueta is only rated at a paltry 50,000 to 100,000 SHUs it’s still sort of a unique pepper because it bears an uncanny resemblance to a bird.

Fully-ripened Malagueta pepper bearing vestigial red rooting pod from which it develops. Other rooting pods may be seen in the forefront.

Now you may have noticed that several of the other heavyweight peppers listed above bear the “Seven-Pot” prefix in their name. This is because a single high octane pepper of this calibre is reputed to be able to season seven pots of stew.

So the question that immediately springs to my mind is: who the heck has the kitchen cupboard space to safely store seven stew pots? And never mind the stew pots. What about the appliances? We have so darned many appliances these days that kitchen sizes are increasing at an alarming rate.

quickshipmetsls_industrial_Kitchen — Kitchen in average new starter home

Now just like you have a microbiome, consisting of all the various bacteria occupying the ecological niches in your colon, you also have an applianceome consisting of all the various appliances that occupy niches in your kitchen cupboards. In an attempt to make space in the applianceome for more stew pots, appliance manufacturers (some of them human) have been busily inventing weird multipurpose appliances. Here are a few examples:

Clockwise from top left we have:

Some kind of combination blender/broccoli steamer which also allows you to bathe small animals and then somehow do their hair; at 2 o’clock we have a toaster oven/warming tray which doubles as a food dehydrator and coffee perk/sock washer; next is an 8-function alien programmable bagel steamer/rice cooker/bidirectional time machine and teleportation unit; carrying on the alien theme at the bottom of the collage is a mobile high-intensity xenon arc flashlight which doubles as a robotic helper to help keep the damned cats off the kitchen counter, especially when there’s company; last-but-not-least, gracing the 9 o’clock position, is a human-powered coffee grinder/paint stirrer/ argon plasma coagulator although I’m not sure of the exact functions because the verbiage on the site I got it from was in Russian.

Language barrier aside, I’m not saying you shouldn’t check some of these things out in order to make room for more stew pots. Just remember that we’ve already been fooled by this sort of thing with our washing machines, coffee makers, TV remotes, PVRs, home entertainment consoles, vole eradication systems, thermostats, electric toothbrushes, gravity wave detectors, etc, etc. The instruction manuals for the new high-tech versions of all these everyday items are so complicated that they make you feel like you have the IQ of a mouse when you try to read them.

Life is complicated enough. If you’re not comfortable reading 27-page instruction manuals and/or don’t have a PhD in Electrical Engineering you should stick to basics, eat milder chili peppers, make do with the number of cooking pots you already have, find a simple wardrobe look that you like and just keep working it.

Next column: Ancient Polynesian ocean navigation strategies

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Third Annual Lateral Thinking Department Christmas Gift Guide

Posted on January 7, 2018January 8, 2018 by George Gillson

Well Christmas has come and gone. Again. One minute it’s like, July 16th and the next thing you know it’s January 4th. (Obviously that would be January 4th of the next calendar year since as far as most of us know, time travel hasn’t been invented yet.)

But anyway, January proceeds to drag on for what seems like 83 days, followed by February coming in with what seems like 56 days, March at 41 days and so on until July 16th comes around again. Then the rest of the year suddenly seems to vanish with a blinding flash of light, leaving behind an unidentified foul odor, and it’s December 23rd. You still haven’t done any shopping.

So this year I decided to help you out and be proactive with this Christmas Gift Guide.

By the way, I was exaggerating about it seeming like January 83rd. Everyone knows that January only has 31 days. But remember that January is tied with March, May, July, August, October and December in that regard.

Speaking of the months of March, May, July, August, October and December, I decided to rearrange them to spell Charmer, Mabel, Stu, Tobey, Margey, Cud and Cujo, since I didn’t have anything better to do while I was waiting for this column to pick up some momentum.

By an astounding coincidence, Charmer, Mabel, Stu, Tobey, Margey, Cud and Cujo also happen to be the names of the co-stars in the upcoming Tyler Perry remake of Snow White, entitled: “Madea Takes A Job Cooking And Cleaning For Six Other Much Smaller People And Their Dog Cujo, Before Lapsing Into A Coma.”

madea in kitchen — Madea pondering what to feed her dog Cujo (not shown)

I fully intend to get to the Gift Guide but meanwhile, if you’re looking for something else to amuse you, try Dave Barry’s 2017 Year in Review: Did that really happen? Dave is much funnier than I am and he also won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988. I didn’t win anything in 1988 but in 1980 I won a silver tray for the highest marks in 4th year Undergrad Chemistry. Zzzzzzz….

But on that note, as promised, here’s my 3rd Annual Lateral Thinking Department Christmas Gift Guide for 2018:

Official Lateral Thinking Department Christmas Gift Guide

1) Digital copies of movies. (Legal copies, of course!)

Everyone likes movies. Here are what I feel are several great suggestions:

-Digital copy of the as-yet-to-be-released Tyler Perry movie: “Madea Takes A Job Cooking And Cleaning For Six Other Much Smaller People And Their Dog Cujo, Before Lapsing Into A Coma”

six dwarfs — Six Small People Exhibiting Various Reactions Upon Hearing The News That Cujo Is Missing

-Digital copy of the1967 Peter Brook film: “Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade”

This sounds like a fairly weird movie if you ask me. The only reason I chose it is that when I found a list of movies with the longest titles I liked it better than the first-place finisher.

First place went to: “Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil, Mutant, Hellbound, Flesh-Eating Subhumanoid Zombified Living Dead, Part 2”

I didn’t put that movie in the Guide because it sounded kind of lacklustre.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

2) Starbucksology Coffee Mug

Starbucksology might just be a fancy word for Hipsterism, but it is actually the science of predicting someone’s personality traits, favorite animal, political preference, shoe size, etc, based on what they like to order at Starbucks. It’s sort of like Astrology only with more options.

For example, someone who likes venti peppermint with chocolate mocha will probably prefer to work in a medical laboratory whereas someone who orders a tall, skinny vanilla latte most likely works in the accounting department of a medical laboratory. Someone who routinely buys oat fudge bars from Starbucks definitely should NOT work in any accounting department because they are willingly paying about 4.26 times as much as a similar bar sold elsewhere.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

3) Argon Plasma Coagulator

conmed APC unit.jpg — Argon plasma coagulator power supply

An Argon Plasma Coagulator (APC) is a handy gadget which can spray a focused beam of highly energetic argon ions pretty much anywhere you’d want to spray them. (Man, I wish I had had one of those when I was a kid.) APC’s are commonly used to stop bleeding during surgery, so this is a great gift if you happen to be friends with a surgeon. Especially if that surgeon has a propensity for leaving calling cards.

You think I’m kidding but I’m not. British liver surgeon Simon Bramhall is currently facing charges of “assault occasioning actual bodily harm” for marking his initials on the livers of two patients during their transplant surgeries. He also faces the lesser charge of wearing a busy pink and purple tie to the ofifice on occasion.

Dr. Bramhall will be sentenced sometime later this month. I think that at a minimum, he should be ordered to perform 100 hours of community services such as erasing graffiti.

graffiti removal — Maintenance worker using argon plasma beam to remove graffiti

_________________________________________________________________________________________

4) Wenger 16999 knife

This is a great gift. The reason it’s so great is that it has 187 different implements, but the main reason you should get one for somebody is so that they can add their own review to the long list of hilarious bogus reviews on Amazon. Here are a few examples:

-Excellent product. I found the Large Hadron Collider to be particularly useful on long hikes.

–The knife has become self-aware, and is staring at me from the corner of the room.

-As soon as I found out how much my husband spent on this, I left him. Bad move. It represented him at the divorce hearing. I now pay $10,000 a month in alimony.

-This knife actually birthed Richard Dean Anderson for the sole purpose of starring in MacGyver, then it wrote, directed, produced and filmed the entire series on its own without a crew.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

5) Fulgurite specimen

A fulgurite would be a great gift for almost anyone whose desk at work isn’t already festooned with random crap like a sandstone sculpture, a Stirling Engine, small ceramic owls and plants.

I turned to noted fulgurite blogger and all-around highly-educated person Anne Marie Helmenstine PhD to explain fulgurites. She says the following: “The word fulgurite comes from the Latin word fulgur, which means thunderbolt. A fulgurite or “petrified lightning” is a glass tube formed when electricity strikes sand. Usually fulgurites are hollow, with a rough exterior and smooth interior. Lightning from thunderstorms makes most fulgurites, but they also form from atomic blasts, meteor strikes and from man-made high voltage devices falling onto the ground.”

I haven’t been around any atomic blasts or meteor strikes lately but still, I wanted a fulgurite, so my wife got one for me for Christmas from somewhere on line. Some fulgurites look like coral, or a tree root, or a section of someone’s small intestine that has been worked over with an APC. I think mine looks like a piece of dinosaur poop.

Small ceramic owl feeling a bit sheepish because it is posing with a fulgurite that looks like a piece of dinosaur poop

The best way to display your fulgurite is to place it in some other natural formation such as a sandstone sculpture. I happen to have a sandstone sculpture so I tried placing my fulgurite in it, but I don’t know. It just didn’t work out like I thought it would.

The fulgurite looks more like that thing that I thought was Moby Dick in the snow globe featured in my last column. That thing turned out to be an Exogorth Space Slug.

Art is like that sometimes.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

6) Dress-up Bigfoot

I bought one of these to give to my son-in-law, at the same time proclaiming loudly to anyone who would listen, that I too would like one. Who wouldn’t? And here it is!

Dress-up Bigfoot sure as hell NOT posing for cover of GQ

I’m particularly impressed by the fact that his basketball shoes are the same colour.

I’m sure you can think of hundreds of different uses for this thing. If you can, let me know because I can only think of one use for it: put it in my office alongside all the other junk including a Lego Ghostbusters car, which made my boss peer at me dubiously the first time he saw it.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

7) Stirling Engine (since you asked)

The thing sitting on top of the cup is a Stirling Engine, which is a closed-cycle regenerative heat engine with a permanently gaseous working fluid. In other words, this is a bitchin’ little gadget you can set on top of a cup of hot coffee and watch for the next three hours until the wheel stops spinning. Note: your coffee will be cold at this point.

You can get it as a kit from Lee Valley. It’s the perfect gift for a mechanically-minded person. Especially if they already own a Starbucksology mug. Or you could get them the Stirling Engine AND a Starbucksology mug. And an oat fudge bar.

Look it’s only January 6th. You have lots of time to consider your options. There are still 353 days until Christmas. Unless you own a time machine.

Rod Taylor In 'The Time Machine' — Time Machine offered for sale by Hammacher Schlemmer circa 1849 but hastily withdrawn after almost all the machines in stock vanished simultaneously with a blinding flash of light, leaving behind an unidentified foul odor

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Seven Reasons Why You Should Watch Hallmark Christmas Movies

Posted on December 9, 2017December 11, 2017 by George Gillson

It’s been 120 years and a bit since 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to the New York Sun in an attempt to get to the bottom of whether or not Santa is real. And of course we all know what Francis Pharcellus Church replied: “…Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus…”

One of the things I would like to get to the bottom of is: what the heck are Francis and Virginia looking at? I think that Mr. Church (above right) is actually looking at Virginia (at left); Virginia, in turn, is looking at her dog Henry (below).

henry and Baloo — Henry, wearing a style of hat popular in the late 19th century

We can talk about Henry and his odd headgear some other time. The main issue I want to get to the bottom of today is whether or not you should start watching Hallmark Christmas Movies.

I feel like you should. I’ll tell you why in a minute. But first let me give you a three-sentence rundown on these movies. (Wait, wait, wait. Why am I asking for your permission? If you don’t want to read the rundown, you don’t have to.)

Here’s the rundown:

Every year, Hallmark makes a slew of these harmless, squeaky-clean, formulaic, feel-good movies set in small towns. The storylines always unfold in the week or so before Christmas. They’re kind of like burning log videos: nice to have running in the background during the Christmas season.

Seven Reasons To Watch Hallmark Christmas Movies

1. If you have a small town that you don’t know what to do with, or happen to be building a small town, watch a few of these movies to see if you might be able to rent it (the town) to Hallmark for a few weeks. I’m not kidding. If you went to that link a few paragraphs back, you would learn that Hallmark is running out of cozy small town shooting locations.

2. If you’re looking for a new drinking game, the Hallmark Christmas Move drinking game is going viral. I swear on my hepatic artery that I am not making this up. You pick a Hallmark Christmas Movie at random, watch it, and drink up at various points throughout the movie according to criteria such as: “If there’s magic involved – a magical stocking, magical ornaments, a magical snow globe, guardian angel, etc. – take two drinks.” or “If the primary male love interest is a farmer, carpenter or just someone who works with his hands, take a drink. If he drives a pickup truck or jeep, take another drink.”

Speaking of snow globes, I found this thing at left. Do you want to know what my first thought about it was? (Dang, there I go again, asking your permission.) I honestly thought it was Moby Dick engulfing a whaling-ship. But then I thought: Who on earth would make something like that? Then I found out it’s not from Earth.

Apparently it’s a decorative piece depicting an Exogorth Space Slug engulfing a whaling ship. I think you can get one from Hammacher Schlemmer.

Actually I’m lying about several details.

That’s the Millenium Falcon in there, not a whaling ship.

Hammacher Schlemmer doesn’t carry this item.

Honest.

I find this surprising.

OK, where was I?

3. If you’re trying to decide whether or not you should get a puppy, watching Hallmark Christmas Movies will probably help you out. I always give my dog Mickey a big hug whenever I watch one. They just give you a warm, fuzzy feeling. If I didn’t have Mickey I would for sure have gotten a puppy by now. Not that I’m obsessively watching these movies on W (channel 23 if you have Shaw Cable).

4. If you need some kind of temporary bridging fetish because you’re in between seasons of whatever Netflix epic you’re currently addicted to, you could do a lot worse than watch some Hallmark Christmas Movies.

5. You should watch the Hallmark Christmas Movies if you own one of those Polar Express Bells and you can hear it tinkle, or if you can hear someone else’s tinkle. (I know what you’re thinking. Stop it right now. This is a PG-13 column.)

6. If you are looking to graduate from obsessively reading Harlequin Romances such as the one below, which by the way, raises a multitude of highly disturbing questions in my mind such as: Who’s the billionaire-him or her? Did someone give that baby to them? Did they buy that baby? Clone it? Or what?

7. If you’ve ever fallen in love +/- 3 days from December 25th you will definitely relate to these movies. Generally the first kiss/declaration of deep feelings/proposal/wedding takes place on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or worst case: Boxing Day.

So there. Seven good reasons to watch Hallmark Christmas Movies.

If there is someone you would like to fall in love with in the next couple of weeks, I highly recommend that you turn on W, plop down on the couch along with a big bowl of popcorn, some Christmas cookies, a puppy and maybe a snow globe or two.

Don’t forget to include the person you want to fall in love with!

By the way, the feature image for this column is an actual unretouched photo of an Exogorth Space Slug oven mitt. Perfect for when you’re baking those Christmas cookies.

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Why you should turn your kid into a robot

Posted on November 17, 2017December 11, 2017 by George Gillson

Warning: Some parts of this column may not be true.

Before we get started, I feel like I have to emphasize that the events I am about to relate to you did NOT and I repeat, did NOT happen in the state of Florida. Although I also feel like they could have. Quite easily. And I bet Dave Barry would back me up on this. If anybody has their finger on the weirdness pulse of Florida, Dave does.

So let’s start off by pondering this question:

What do “Alaska and Wisconsin” have in common?

The obvious answer is that “Alaska and Wisconsin” can be rearranged to “Asia Sow Ink Scandal” which might be a headline about a female Tibetan pig getting an illegal tattoo, but that’s not the answer I was looking for. The answer I was looking for concerns the shenanigans of parents and kids in Wisconsin and Alaska, specifically where moving vehicles are involved.

The first shenanigan came to my attention recently via my research assistant/office mate whom I’ll call Tanner Shpiruk (not his real name). Anyway, “Tanner” somehow heard about this Fredonia, Wisconsin resident named Amber Schmunk. Amber is currently facing a felony charge of having the common sense of a tardigrade after she was arrested on September 9, 2017 for weighting down a small plastic swimming pool she was transporting on the roof of her minivan. In Wisconsin it’s not illegal to weight down a swimming pool located on the roof of your minivan but the caveat here is that the weight happened to consist of her 9-year old son.

Electron micrograph of tardigrade aka “Water Bear” showing very little common sense by thinking about diving into a pool of liquid nitrogen

An alert driver noticed the diminuitive pool passenger, called police and followed Amber until she pulled over and removed her son from the roof. When the police caught up with her, Amber admitted that her son had been on top of the van, “but only for a short time, maybe 20-30 seconds.” Schmunk is also alleged to have told an officer that she thought the whole thing was OK not only because she had strapped the child to the roof but also because her father, a circus high-wire daredevil, had allowed her to do similar things when she was young.

Amber really IS facing felony charges…for second degree reckless endangerment of safety. But I think she should also have been charged for transporting a swimming pool after Labor Day. And as far as I know, Amber’s father was not a circus high-wire daredevil, but he may have graduated from the Barbara Coloroso School of Safe Parenting. (Motto: “The greatest part of each day, each year, each lifetime is made up of small, seemingly insignificant moments. Those moments may occasionally include being strapped to the outside of a moving vehicle.”)

coloroso II — Parenting expert Barbara Coloroso

Amber waived her right to a preliminary hearing on November 14th and is due back in court December 12th to enter a plea of: “My Dad said it was OK.”

Now parents in Wisconsin may be tough on their kids, but the kids in Alaska are tough enough, even without their parents.

It’s darned cold up there, so Alaskans in general have to be tough, and apparently this starts in early childhood when kids are encouraged to climb huge trees, wrestle bear cubs and body-surf through Class V rapids.

We really shouldn’t be too surprised then, to learn about this six year old boy who rode three miles down the Parks Highway near Wasilla, AK in early July 2013, clinging to the roof rack of his parent’s minivan before tumbling off, incurring cuts and bruises, but escaping otherwise unharmed. No one had any clue he was even up there.

The boy was picked up by another motorist and taken to a gas station, where he was ultimately reunited with his parents just as he was attempting to jump from the roof of the gas station on to a moving semi.

Police reported that on the day in question, the boy had furtively climbed atop the minivan before it left home at Mile 52 (see map) but lost his grip at Mile 49 (see map). He also admitted that this was not the first time he had done this. No charges have been laid, but police did buy the intrepid youngster some body armor. And a helmet. And some disability insurance. Lots of disability insurance, actually.

The boy, who is reputed to be distantly related to Evel Knievel, went on to join the Armed Forces and is the youngest person ever to be accepted into a Navy SEAL program. He is shown below, taking part in a precision-skydiving exercise.

Joint training at 12,500 feet — Reputed relative of Evel Knievel (in forefront) attempting to parachute on to the top of a moving semi (not shown).

So with all this going on, it’s clear that we as parents need better strategies to protect and distract our children. Once again Hammacher Schlemmer (Motto: We sell inflatable Irish Pubs!) has come to the rescue with Ride On Robotic Armor.

You can never be too nice to your peaceful allies so I think this thing is just great. And safe too. With a top speed of 1 mph only two things can go wrong:

1) Your kid will ride on it for approximately 18 milliseconds then give you the same look my dog gives me when I put something unsavory in his food dish. For those of you who don’t own pets, it’s a “Are you kidding me?” look.

2) Either you, your kid, or both of you will lapse into unconsciousness and/or fall deeply asleep from sheer boredom.

At this point, you’re probably knocking yourself on the forehead and saying:
“This is clever! Why didn’t I think of this??”

The reason you didn’t think of this is because you are probably not descended from space aliens. All the left-behind space alien descendants already work for Hammacher Schlemmer.

Next column: Hallmark Christmas Movies

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Even Stranger Things

Posted on October 12, 2017December 11, 2017 by George Gillson

This column is entitled “Even Stranger Things” as you probably already noticed. Sorry, but I’m just not ready to let go of the whole “post-eclipse-disturbance-in-the Force” thing yet and there are some seriously strange things still going on since August 21st. I think you need to know about them.

For starters, I’m still doing doubletakes when I see that darned plastic owl that someone stuck on a post outside my office window. I don’t even know why anyone would do that. Those things don’t fool anybody.

Then there’s this whole Harvest/Thanksgiving-related subculture out there that I just discovered, involving hoisting a massive pumpkin and/or massive squash high in the air with a crane or helicopter and then dropping it into a swimming pool, or on to an old car, or a trampoline, etc.

: Helicopter locked and loaded at 25,000 feet

JGG — The Jolly Green Giant minding his own business, checking the B&G Foods stock price and oblivious to impending doom from above

Then there’s this weird thing going on with my shoes. I walked Mickey last Saturday afternoon, checked to see which way he was facing during his potty stop, came in, took off my shoes and said: “What the heck? My shoes don’t match!”

My first clue was the colour, as I had been labouring under the distinct impression that they were both grey since I bought them a couple of years ago.

The next thing I did was check the size; they both turned out to be size 9 1/2.

Next I conferred with my wife and forensic shoe-expert-in-residence, Jeanette. She noted that one shoe was subtly longer than the other, the wear patterns didn’t match and also confirmed that the shoes were different colors. She speculated that maybe I had gotten one of them wet hopping around on one leg in the foot of snow that fell early in October (another strange thing), or had left one of them out in the sun, or carelessly stepped in a puddle of bleach or worse yet, sulfuric acid.

Then I checked the labels more closely and that was the clincher: they (the shoes) weren’t even made in the same country.

You have to admit; this is pretty weird. It would be like you met identical twins, fell in love with one of them, got married and then a year later you discovered that you had somehow married the wrong twin. Or maybe the one you didn’t marry agreed to sub in for the one you did marry, but they didn’t tell you about the arrangement. If you were in my shoes (!) I bet you would probably have the exact same thoughts. But maybe not.

Wait! You can’t be in my shoes because I’m not even in them! Someone else has one of my shoes! And I have one of theirs! Eclipse or no eclipse, how could this have happened?

Label from brown shoe belonging to someone else, probably Steve Harris

To get to the bottom of things, I called a buddy of mine whom I’ll refer to as Stephen Harris (not his real name), a retired shoe salesman and former Assistant Superintendent of the Livingstone Range SD No. 68. (Not his actual former occupation.)

This was a supremely logical manoeuvre because:

1). I knew for sure that “Steve” had a pair of light brown Converse my size.

2). We had been together with four other lads from high school in early August for “Geezerfest 2017”. “Steve” had those brown Converse with him, and I had my trusty grey Converse with me.

3). When we were 17 years old, “Harris” played accomplice to a guy named Brad Mighton who burned a hole in his denim shirt one night at the “my parents are away for the weekend” party I threw. Steve and Brad proceeded to creep into my bedroom, root around in my closet and swap the damaged shirt for my undamaged shirt, which happened to be identical. (I didn’t find any of this out until about 30 years later.) My mother puzzled over that for several weeks after she patched the burned spot and kept asking me how it happened. And I honestly had no idea. (Sorry Mom.)

By the way, I swear on Manolo Blahnik’s driver’s license that I’m not making any of this up.

Terry_Bradshaw — Manolo Blahnik driver’s license photo circa 1958

So anyway, like I said, I called former Assistant Superintendent Harris:

blahnik — Stephen Harris, Superintendent of Livingstone SD No.68 (ret.)

Harris: “Hello?”

Me: “Hey Harris. Happy Thanksgiving. Have you noticed anything weird about your Converse lately?”

Harris: “Like what?”

Me: “Like maybe one is grey and the other one is brown.”

Harris: “No. They’re the same colour.”

Me: “OK great. See you later.”

Harris: “Not if I see you first.”

But still, I remained suspicious.

The reason for my persistent suspicion is that Steve only hesitated for maybe 50 milliseconds before answering my question. Even if he WAS wearing his shoes, he wouldn’t have had time to look down and check to see if they matched. Try this yourself if you don’t believe me.

I made some other phone calls about the shoes, but I’m not going to tell you about them right now. And I still have absolutely no clue what happened to my other shoe. But we’re still on the general theme of strange post-eclipse occurrences and I need to tell you about our recent visitor.

We have been growing potatoes in a pressurized enclosure at the lab recently, more or less just for the heck of it. One day, Mark Watney aka Matt Damon showed up to check out the crop! Matt’s looking a little stiff these days, but it’s probably that suit. But stiffness or no, the fact that he would take the trouble to come up and check us out is pretty unbelievable. Right?

Rob and Mark Watney — Rob Bitcon, elemental analysis specialist, posing with Mark Watney aka Matt Damon, Martian potato specialist

But speaking of not believing me, I do have one teensy confession to make here: that wasn’t Manolo Blahnik’s driver’s license photo back there. That was actually a high school yearbook picture of Terry Bradshaw, former QB for the Pittsburgh Steelers. (four Superbowl championships in six years!) I don’t know why I used Bradshaw’s picture instead. Must have been that pesky eclipse. And that wasn’t a photo of Stephen Harris either. That was actually the famous shoe designer Manolo Blahnik.

And speaking of shoe designers, I’ll leave you with one last photo. I swear this really is a picture of Chuck Taylor, supersalesman for the Converse shoe company, and also the biological father of the Chuck Taylor All Star basketball shoes.

: Chuck Taylor thinking about something. Probably basketball. Or maybe shoes.

I think Chuck was also fond of this saying: “Never judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. You’ll be a mile away. And you’ll have his shoes. Even if they don’t match.”

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Stranger Things

Posted on September 13, 2017December 11, 2017 by George Gillson

There`s a new series on Netflix called Stranger Things; my kids have been bugging the hell out of me to watch it. They say it’s awesome but I can’t really write about it because I haven’t seen it. I just wanted to mess with your mind for a second and make you think that I was going to write about it. I’m actually going to write about the effects of the recent total eclipse, because there is lots of eclipse-related weirdness out there if you take the trouble to look for it.

For example, animals are known to go weird during a total eclipse and some of this weirdness is outlined on a site I found called World Book:

“4. Unnerved animals.

Many people around the world have noted unusual behavior in some pets and wildlife during solar eclipses. Animals may appear to be restless, “spooked,” or simply confused by the sudden midday twilight…Researchers in Zimbabwe have noted that hippopotami and impalas exhibit alert and anxious behavior following an eclipse. You may notice that the birds stop singing during the eclipse, or that your pets behave in unusual ways.”

I don’t have a pet hippopotamus, but I found this image of a young hippo who was undoubtedly extremely anxious during the eclipse, until it was comforted by its Therapy Oxpecker It doesn’t look very anxious to me; it just looks a bit sly, like maybe it’s thinking about biting your head off if you so much as look at it sideways.

hippo and bird — Oxpecker (upper right) comforting young hippo during total eclipse

It’s not too surprising that animals might be disturbed by eclipses, since they tend to be more in tune with cosmic forces, but many authorities (some of them residents of Earth) believe that eclipses can also exert profound and lasting effects on humans, such as fatigue, weakness, feeling off-balance, increased shoe size, an urge to switch to a different brand of toothpaste and sudden fixation on some of the crazy stuff found in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue.

All I know is that some weird things have happened to me just before and since the eclipse and I feel like I should tell you about them.

Weird Thing #1: I develop a sudden inability to read labels with font size 4 from three metres away

We’re doing renovations at the lab, including installation of large tanks for outside storage of liquid nitrogen and liquid argon. So recently I found myself standing about three metres away from these tanks with my friend Dave, who has a great Scottish accent and also happens to be Scottish.

two tanks — Large tanks meant for storage of liquid gases including nitrogen and argon

Dave and GG — Me (at right) and Dave (at left)

I innocently asked Dave which one was the argon tank and which was the nitrogen tank, and he impishly said,” The one labeled ‘Nitrogen’ is for nitrogen and the one labeled ‘Argon’ is for argon.” Then he started slapping his thigh and rolling on the ground laughing, and saying ,”I thought you were supposed to be smart,” or words to that effect. But I have to admit, it was kind of hilarious at the time.

In my defense, here are closeups of the tank labels. Even from less than a metre away, they’re still mighty hard to read. Darn that eclipse.

Closeup of label bearing the word ‘Argon’ in size 4 font

Closeup of label bearing the word ‘Nitrogen’ in size 4 font

Weird Thing #2: New information about the Earth’s magnetic field comes my way

Just before the eclipse I got this email alerting me to a paper that had been published in Frontiers in Zoology entitled: Dogs Are Sensitive to Small Variations of the Earth’s Magnetic Field. (Hart et al. Frontiers in Zoology 2013, 10:80) This got my attention right away so I checked it out. The authors studied 70 dogs over a two-year period during which they observed 7,475 separate instances of defecation and urination (involving the dogs) and took careful note-follow me closely here-of the orientation of the long axis of their bodies (note that I am once again referring to the dogs) during said defecations and urinations.

For what its worth, over 37 breeds of dog were studied including a Rhodesian Ridgeback, a German Shepherd-Schnauzer cross, a Transylvanian hound, and a Wis Poopski or maybe it was an Oobah Poopoo. I forget.

This is an actual photo of one of the study subjects, a young male Copo Fahrtima, which has apparently had a large wire frame complete with compass needle surgically-implanted on its back, squatting to do its business.

I’m kidding. The dog is definitely squatting to do its business but the compass motif has been digitally superimposed on the image strictly for emphasis, like one of those phony shark- debate images you see everywhere these days.

phony shark attack — Navy SEAL allegedly debating shark

This image is obviously fake because the shark in the photo is a female. No Navy SEAL in their right mind is going to get into this type of situation; everyone knows you can’t win a debate with a female shark.

But in any event, the data from the dog study is definitely not fake. It clearly shows that when the Earth’s magnetic field is quiescent (as in the “0%” circle below) dogs have a definite tendency to poop facing Magnetic North, but when the Earth’s magnetic field is wandering around like crazy (as in the “>2%” circle below) dogs tend to perform their eliminatorial duties facing in random directions.

I’m currently trying to see if my dog Mickey is following this pattern but I only have a dozen or so data points. I might need another year or so.

Weird Thing #3: I am once again gobsmacked by something I spot in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue

I was sitting in a certain room in my house, facing North, and perusing the latest Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue (Motto: “There Are Definitely Too Many People Out There With More Money Than Brains”) when I saw something that just about knocked me off my perch. Here it is:

So many thoughts ran through my mind that I can’t begin to put them all down, but here’s a brief sample:

“What the $%^!!*&# is that?”

“Which way is North?”

“What idiot would actually buy one of these?”

Turns out that any idiot with $5,000 can buy one. (You can get an optional air pump for $79.95) The Inflato-Pub has a spacious 75-square foot interior into which you can place your “preferred bar accessories, garden gnomes, lounge chairs or other decorative accents.” If I were you I would leave the dartboard outside.

Just saying.

Well, I think that’s enough strangeness for one total eclipse. I’m thinking about going to watch the next one on July 2, 2019, visible from Easter Island. That’s a long way to go though. I might save up for a Skyrunner instead.

On sale now at Hammacher Schlemmer. (Other Motto:”We Also Sell Life Insurance”)

skyrunner — Since you asked, this is an ATV that is FAA-cleared to fly to 10,000 feet

zany, offbeat, somewhat silly humor

Man vs Voles

Posted on August 26, 2017December 11, 2017 by George Gillson

Alert readers know that I haven’t posted a column since early June. The reason I haven’t written anything this summer is that I’ve been distracted with the voles that seem to be overrunning Calgary this summer. Not only do they seem to be overrunning Calgary, they actually are overrunning Calgary-at least the part of Calgary that my back yard is in.

OK I’m stopping here for a second because I think that overrunning looks really weird with those double r’s and double n’s. I think maybe it should be over-running…

I just checked online. Nowhere did I see any support for using over-running instead of overrunning. But now I’m starting to wonder whether I should stick with online or maybe use “on line” or maybe even “on-line”…

I’m back. I went online again to resolve this new issue. Lo and behold I’m not the first person to have wondered about online and its variants. It turns out that online is OK.

But where was I? Oh yeah, vole-induced distraction.

The first thing you need to know about voles (aka Field Mice) is that they’re quite cute and mysterious. That’s obvious from the picture of that vole floating mysteriously in midair on a disembodied hand (see above). But the damage voles can do to your lawn is NOT cute. Left to themselves, voles can effortlessly create networks of dead grass “runs.” Well maybe not effortlessly. There’s a bit of chewing involved.

Vole_damage — Man smiling because this is not his lawn

The second thing to know about voles is that they aren’t mice. Voles have shorter tails, smaller ears and blunter snouts relative to mice. They’re compacted, almost as if they’re traveling at or close to the speed of light. But although I said voles are mysterious, they aren’t THAT mysterious.

(Editor’s Note: Einstein figured out that a yardstick or a vole zipping past you at light speed will look shorter. UNLESS you too happen to be moving at light speed. More on that later.)

I dunno. The two animals pictured below look like they’re about the same size. It does look like the vole had part of its tail airbrushed away to make it (the tail) look shorter but I could be wrong. Anyway, who would do that?

mouse and vole — Vole squinting into cosmic headwind above mouse with dorsal fur ruffled by cosmic tailwind

And I resisted the impulse to go online to see whether airbrushed should actually be air-brushed, just so you know…

Hah! Caught you didn’t I? You just went online and found out that there aren’t any sites addressing this issue, didn’t you? I could have told you that. But wait a minute! Let’s think this through. You’re already online! Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this column! What was I thinking?

Clearly, I’m distracted and also a victim of my own logic, because here I am online too, typing stuff like: “I went back online to resolve this new issue.”

Anyway, the third thing about voles is this: certain breeds of dogs, such as Border Collie-Lab crosses, will gobble up dead voles with relish (and maybe mustard). One dog in particular, whom I’ll call “Mickey” for the sake of argument, has been having a field (!) day this summer snacking on the voles that have succumbed to the feral cats in our neighborhood, including one I’ll call “Zoe” for the sake of argument. More on that some other time.

The last thing I think you should know about voles is that the damage they cause is often blamed on moles, so let’s clear this up right now. Moles leave ridges in your lawn, not bare strips. The moles HATE taking shade on account of voles. They have enough problems of their own such as bad eyesight. They also spend a fortune on nail care.

black mole vertical — Mole in need of manicure staring balefully at vole (not shown)

I think I need to regroup at this point. What I really wanted to talk about today is the potentially sub-optimal practice of walking while texting. The Employee Health and Safety division of the company I work for, which I’ll call “LifeLabs” for the sake of argument, just issued a whole blurb about this topic, under the heading “The Walking Distracted.”

The following picture illustrates some of the hazards associated with walking-whilst-texting including missing your cab, dialing a wrong number, failing to notice a weird black oval on the sidewalk which incidentally looks nothing like a manhole, having half your head sliced off by a green thing sporting a suspicious bulge, and wasting data by texting your friend who is only two feet away from you.

But this got me to thinking about all the other potentially sub-optimal scenarios arising from texting, such as:

Distracted Archer: What could go wrong? Really.

Distracted Philospher: “I drank what?”

the death of socrates.jpg — Socrates accidentally drinking hemlock . Cellphone not shown,

Distracted Barista:

“Did you want that no-foam, no-water, no coffee, triple-caramel scammarato to be at 187.32 °F or 187.23 °F?”

Distracted English Major:

Symptoms of Texting While Sitting in English Class:

-Non-sequiturs e.g. voles do not understand English

-improper USE Of capitalS

-Overuse of “literally” e.g. “I was literally blown away by her talk” (incorrect usage) vs “I was literally blown away when that 100 megaton nuclear warhead accidentally detonated down the street” (correct usage).

-Missing deadlines

Well, that’s about it for now. The voles are beckoning me with their tiny, mysterious paws.

vole nibbling something — Vole holding mystery object in its tiny paws

But one last thing: should that have been “deadlines” or “dead-lines” a few lines back? You could always go online and check.

Next Column: The Eclipse, Relativity And Maybe Some Octopus-Related Anecdotes

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Official Lateral Thinking Department Christmas Gift Guide

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