Archive for Science & Nature
October 1, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Science & Nature, Technology & Computing, Food & Drink
One of my favorite pieces of kitchen kit has always been a simple plastic pastry mat I received as a gift many years ago. It did an excellent job of keeping flour off the counter and was imprinted with circles showing how far dough should be rolled out for different sizes of pie and tart pans. The mat also made it easier to get pie crusts into a pan, because you could invert the pan onto the dough and then just flip the entire assembly over. Try that with a countertop! Well, a few months ago, my faithful pastry mat finally gave up the ghost, so I headed down to my favorite kitchen supply store to buy a replacement.
Kitchen stores are dangerous places for me, just like hardware stores and computer stores. Everywhere I look there’s some newfangled, high-tech gadget calling out to me, and my mind races as I […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
September 10, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Science & Nature, Society & Culture, Food & Drink
When I was in college, I had a professor who was known for being a bit on the odd side. Although he was smart, friendly, and much loved by the students, he had some strange and inexplicable habits. For one thing, he had a very peculiar way of speaking, including about a dozen idiosyncratic phrases that he repeated over and over. A friend and I, when we got bored, used to sit in the back of the classroom and keep a tally of how many times he used each of these phrases. The professor always kept a pen clipped to his collar, even if he was wearing a shirt with a pocket (a practice that amused me so much I adopted it myself—and keep it up to this day). And he encouraged us, on multiple-choice exams, to write in our own answers in the margin if we didn’t like any […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
September 8, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Science & Nature, Mind & Body
Sometimes I make jokes about the exact extent to which some event has affected my mental state. For example, my wife will walk into my office with a plate of freshly baked cookies, and I’ll say, “Wow, I’m now 7% happier!” Of course, the reason it works as a joke is that happiness (or the lack thereof) is not only subjective, it’s multifaceted—I may be ecstatic about the cookies, yet still quite unhappy about my taxes.
Doctor, It Feels Like I’m Treading Water
All joking aside, I wondered whether there might be some way of measuring despair. We can certainly tell if it exists or not, and whether it feels severe. But surely psychiatrists have some sort of semi-objective scale of measurement, I figured. I couldn’t imagine one doctor saying to another, “My 10 a.m. is a Venti, but with some Prozac I’m sure we can get him down to a Tall.” […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
September 4, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Science & Nature, History
When someone asks me how I’m doing, I habitually answer, “Fine,” because that’s what social convention dictates—whether or not I really am fine. Most people probably don’t want to hear the detailed truth, and would be sorry they asked if I told them. Similarly, when people ask what I do for a living, more often than not they’re looking for a quick and easy way to categorize me, rather than a litany of the sundry and somewhat unconventional means by which I earn a living. So I tend to oblige with a short answer that requires no further discussion.
One day, however, I was at a party, and being in an uncharacteristically charitable mood, I decided to tell people what my occupation really is. One guy I spoke to—let’s call him “Bob” (for that is his name)—seemed particularly intrigued by the notion of Interesting Thing of the Day. He scribbled down […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
September 2, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Science & Nature, Language & Literature
You may think of yourself as a scrupulous person—you may have even said indignantly when accused of some fault, “I have scruples!” But exactly how many scruples do you have? If you’ve recently finished a meal or taken a stroll down a gravel-covered path, chances are you have more scruples now than you did an hour ago.
The calculation is quite easy to make: there are 4,900 scruples in a stone, though a single stone can also be a scruple. You may be thinking this is like saying, “4,900 angels can dance on the head of a pin, though a single pin can also be an angel.” But that’s just plain silly. I don’t know a single angel who can dance on the head of a pin, and besides, I must imagine that angels have much better things to do with their time. On the other hand, both stones and scruples […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
August 29, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Science & Nature, Technology & Computing, Society & Culture, History
As an American, I have always been a bit ambivalent when it comes to units of measurement. I learned units like inches, pints, and pounds first, but all through elementary and secondary school, the metric system (or S.I., Système International) was taught, along with dire warnings that we’d better get used to the new measurements because the U.S. was going to be giving up Imperial units Real Soon Now. That would have been fine with me, because I’m fluent in meters, liters, and grams too, and they all make more sense to me than their Imperial counterparts. (Temperature, strangely, is the exception: I can’t seem to switch my brain out of Fahrenheit.) The entire world—excluding us wacky Americans—has come to the sane conclusion that units of measurement based on outdated and arbitrary standards should be abandoned, and that everything should be based on easy-to-calculate units of ten.
Everything, that is, except […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
August 27, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under Science & Nature
The official Interesting Thing of the Day style guide stipulates that within reason, all measurements expressed in American or British units (pounds, gallons, miles, etc.) should also be given in S.I. (metric) units. We do this partly because many of our readers are located in other parts of the world, and partly because metric units just make so much more sense. And yet, all units of measurement are ultimately arbitrary, and however convenient calculations may be with systems based on the number 10, there are always other ways of looking at things.
Faster than a Speeding Snail
When I was in high school, for example, I heard someone use the expression “furlongs per fortnight,” an odd juxtaposition of measurements that struck me as very funny. I thought it would be interesting to figure out how to express the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight. It turned out to be a huge […]
Original post by Joe Kissell
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