Six Pounds of You Isn't You
Researchers have recently mapped 99 percent of the approximately 10,000 types of microbes that populate our bodies . . . 100 trillion bacteria, weighing six pounds, and while this isn't as sexy as discovering the Higgs-Boson in the Large Hadron Collider, it probably has more siginificance to our everyday lives: our unique microbiome assists in the digestion of food, trains our immune system, and protects us from harmful bacteria . . . and bacterial imbalances have been shown to cause obesity, mood disorders, and obesity . . . bacteria can even cause specific behaviors in mice and rats-- toxoplasmosis gondii is spread from cats to mice and rats, and makes rats and mice less afraid of cats, so that they are easier prey . . . and I love this because it's something else to blame, if you get sick or have about of toxic flatulence or simply act whacky, then it might not be you causing this . . . it might be your bacteria (and soon enough, we will have a legal clause for this . . . instead of the "insanity defense," we will have the "bacterial defense").
Bonus Post For Dog Lovers At G:TB!
If you dig dogs, then head over to Gheorghe: The Blog for a special "Summer Dave" pet post that also includes original photography, shot by yours truly.
I am 60% Through the Ripliad . . . How Far Are You?
I just finished the third novel in Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley series . . . Ripley's Game is more of the same as far as the talented Tom Ripley is concerned-- he handles murder with as much aplomb as anyone in the literary canon-- but Highsmith introduces another character, a man corrupted by Tom Ripley's games-- his situation reminds me of Jonathan Pryce's role in Glengarry Glen Ross (and, coincidentally, the character's name is Jonathan) and so you get the interesting juxtaposition of a man well-versed in the art of murder and a man still wet behind the ears in the ins and outs of homicide . . . and then throw in his French Catholic wife and you've got another excellent novel: nine garrotes out of ten.
Physics Exclusive at G:TB!
Science buffs are probably aware that physicists at CERN glimpsed the elusive Higgs Boson yesterday, but you might not know that I scored an exclusive interview with the long sought after particle, which you can read over at Gheorghe: The Blog.
Will This Happen Someday Soon?
At the end of a day at the pool, not only do I not want to have to tell my kids to take a shower, but once I get them in there, doing what they're supposed to be doing, then I also don't want to have to go back into the locker room, fifteen minutes later, and tell them to stop wasting water and get the hell out of there.
Iberian Unity
Catherine and I made another soccer pilgrimage to The Madrid and Lisbon Bar and Restaurant, and we learned a few things that I'd like to note for the future: 1) Portuguese folks will root for Spain when they play Italy . . . so I guess the Iberian Peninsula hangs together against outsiders 2) the bartender has incredibly distracting cleavage, so you have to stay focused on the game or you might miss a goal 3) the sangria, the clams casino and the garlic shrimp are amazing . . . the calamari not so much-- perhaps that's something you should only order in an Italian place 4) if Spain wins, then apparently drunk driving laws are suspended in Newark for the day . . . despite the insane heat, everybody was out in the streets, honking their horns and waving their red and yellow flags (although we did see a few dejected Italy fans here and there).
Is This Really Better Than Dead Air?
I wouldn't want to be a soccer announcer because there is a lot of space to fill . . . check out The Simpsons take on this in the above clip . . . but maybe the announcers should allow a few moments of silence, instead of saying vapid things like this-- and remember, Spain was coming off far less rest than Portugal-- and so, "Spain's fatigue may or may not have an effect on the outcome of this game."
Plumbing The Depths of Irony
So if you find yourself at the Plumbing Supply Store (because Home Depot doesn't carry any parts for one piece toilets) and you ask for a gasket and flapper for an American Standard toilet and the old man behind the counter asks, "Which one?" and you say, "Aren't they all the same . . . I mean, they're called American Standard," then you are setting the old man up for some excellent plumbing humor, as I found out when he said, "That's what they call themselves, but they don't mean it . . . did you bring the broken parts?" and I had to admit-- sheepishly-- that I did not, and the actual plumbers behind me in line were all laughing now at my naivete in trusting a brand name . . . but the old guy did come through in the clutch, with the right part, and now we have a working toilet again, but it has cost me my plumbing innocence and my faith in advertising.
Miracles On Top of More Miracles
All week, I had the nagging feeling that I was missing something-- but I couldn't put my finger on what it was-- and then Thursday morning when I went to the track, to do some intervals, I noticed a pair of blue Crocs near the soccer net and I realized what it was I had been missing, the lacuna in my life, for days and days-- my blue Crocs!-- I had worn them to soccer Sunday morning, changed into my cleats, and then left them there . . . and they were still there, unharmed-- four days later! a miracle!-- so maybe everything does happen for a reason, and the reason I went running Thursday morning was so I could be reunited with my hideously ugly blue Crocs and now the universe is back in order (aside from all that stuff in the middle East).
Yet Another Miracle
In preparation for summer, Catherine depilated my back and shoulder hair with Veet hair removal cream and then I used my beard trimmer to tame my chest and leg hair, and now-- miracle of all miracles-- I can dry myself off with just one towel (instead of the usual three towel routine that I used to practice).
Bomp Chukka Bomp . . . A Bicycle?
The music in the Canadian documentary series How It's Made is decidedly pornographic sounding, and-- oddly-- this fits the content of this wonderfully mindless "educational" show . . . as there is no end to the thrusting, riveting, pounding, compressing, and generally pneumatic action that goes into the manufacture of the featured articles . . . and the camera lingers on these activities for an extensively graphic and gratuitous amount of time, so that you can truly enjoy the rhythm and the motion of the machines, while you zone out to the cheesy techno riffs and beats.
You Get The Ads You Deserve
The final lesson in Michael J. Sandel's book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets is that although a "fire hydrant with a KFC logo still delivers water to douse the flames" and "children can learn math by counting Tootsie Rolls" and fans still root for their home team in Bank of America Stadium, that doesn't mean that markets don't leave their mark . . . when ads appear in schools they undermine the purpose of education: critical thinking; when a person gets a tattooed body ad it demeans them; product placement corrupts the integrity of art . . . when everything is for sale it leads to the "skyboxification" of American life . . . we live and work and play in separate realms and this is not good for democracy . . . and so I am discontinuing my line of tampons with Sentence of Dave emblazoned on the penetrator, and instead I will try to allow my sentences to penetrate people's consciousness the old fashioned way.
Spearguns Aren't As Dangerous As You Think!
If you were wondering if it's okay to allow your children to play with spearguns, the answer is: go for it! . . . because even if your kid shoots himself right through the skull, he very may well survive, as Yasser Lopez did . . . so don't deny your children the fun and good times of spear-fishing . . . and I am definitely going to give my parents a piece of my mind, because every Christmas I put a spear-gun on the top of my list, and Santa never delivered one.
Costa Chica!
In contrast to the all-encompassing logic of yesterday's post, today I will give some exceedingly specific and local advice: if you live in the New Brunswick area, and you like authentic Mexican food, then try Costa Chica Mexican Restaurant and Pizzeria . . . it's right in the middle of the barrio, on Handy Street, and everything we ate there was delicious . . . excellent chips, salsa, and fresh guacamole; tender and spicy marinated pork in the tacos pastor; great verde sauce; spicy chicken mole (although the chicken was on the bone, not a breast, but still super-delicious) and we had some kind of weird sweet tamale for dessert, which was also tasty . . . the place was loud and crowded, the waitress spoke a little English, and the chairs are especially festive and brightly colored.
All Encompassing Logic
Some people believe Everything Happens For A Reason, but other people are annoyed by this philosophy-- so if you'd like, you can buy a t-shirt with Everything Happens For No Reason emblazoned on it-- but logically, both these statements are identical . . . if everything happens for a reason, then nothing that happens has any greater reason than anything else . . . the fact that you spilled your coffee and the fact that thirty volcanoes erupt simultaneously on your birthday are both equivalent-- in fact, if everything happens for a reason, then everything is already determined and laid out in some sort of clockwork pattern and the universe is deterministic . . . and if everything happens for no reason, that doesn't mean that things are random and meaningless, because it's statistically impossible for every single thing to happen without reason, so it must mean that the universe was set rolling and now it's just proceeding like a column of dominoes, one event knocking into another in a chain reaction, without individual meaning . . . but possibly in some master pattern . . . so really the only interesting variant of these statements is Some Things Happen For A Reason, and Some Things Are Totally Random because that means there's something out there that can control things, and this thing occasionally takes an interest in the affairs of the universe and occasionally falls asleep at the wheel . . .
Into The Wild With Condoms
Cheryl Strayed's new memoir Wild: From Lost To Found On the Pacific Coast Trail is the female version of Into the Wild, John Krakauer's story of Christopher McCandless (a.k.a Alexander Supertramp) . . . both hikers change their names to something apropos and both Strayed and Supertramp escape their lives in the wilderness . . . and both find that the wilderness is no place to escape-- Strayed thinks she will reflect on her mother's death, her own divorce, and her flirtation with heroin addiction . . . but all she ends up thinking about is her boots, her heavy pack, rattlesnakes, and bears . . . luckily, her story ends happily, and there is some romance along the way-- my only complaint is that Wild drags on some at the end , Krakauer tells McCandless's more epic and more tragic tale concisely, but the books are still complementary and good reads for the summer if you like to get outdoors and hike (and I am still wondering if my prediction will come true about my wife's book club).
If You're Rich, You Can Shoot A Walrus
Michael Sandel examines the inevitable corruption of ethics in a society where market mentality is pervasive in his new book What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets . . . and while you may have heard that hunters can pay 150,000 to shoot a black rhino in South Africa-- and that this seemingly vile practice has actually increased the endangered rhino's population manifold, because now it's worth it for South Africans to protect the creatures from poachers-- you may not have heard that you can pay an Inuit guide six grand and he will will allow you to shoot a walrus . . . the Inuits have a walrus quota and the Canadian government allows them to sell the rights to shoot the walruses to "hunters" . . . though it is hardly a hunt-- journalist C.J. Chivers describes this practice as "a long boat ride to shoot a very large beanbag chair," and if these anecdotes disgust you and you can't stand the fact that everything has a price on it, then perhaps you should move to Finland, where they want to preserve the moral rectitude of a speeding ticket-- they don't want the wealthy to view a ticket as a simple fee to be paid for the right to drive fast, they want the ticket to be viewed as a fine that is levied because you did something dangerous and wrong-- so when you show up in Helsinki traffic court, your ticket is a percentage of your salary, and so Nokia executive Anssi Vanjoki-- who earns seven million dollars a year-- was fined 217,000 dollars for driving 80kilometers per hour in a 40 km/h zone.
Commencement Anxiety
The high school where I teach holds their graduation ceremony down in Trenton, at the Sun National Bank Center, and every year I forget how long a drive it is to get there and how much traffic piles up around the arena . . . this year I actually did an illegal u-turn over a grass divider when I realized that was the way to avoid the long line of cars trying to make a left off of Hamilton Street . . . but though I ineptly timed my trip to the arena, once I got into my robe and sat down to listen to the names of seven hundred and fifty graduates, I improved: as the enunciators started their arduous task, I took a few samples, made some back of the envelope calculations-- without an envelope!-- and added my figure to the current time posted on the large red digital clock hanging from the arena ceiling . . . 46 minutes plus 12:04 . . . and I announced to the students around me that the reading of the names would be done at exactly ten of one . . . and forty-six minutes later, the last of the students lined up at the foot of the stage, waiting to be called, and I started getting nervous . . . it looked like I might be right . . . my palms started to sweat . . . one of my students said, "I think you're going to hit it on the nose" and the other students in my vicinity starting saying things like "Hurry up" and "Come on" and, though there was nothing on the line, I really, really wanted my prediction to come true . . . but, alas, there must have been some small flaw in my calculations, because the last student was announced at 12:51 . . . but the kids were nice about it and one consoled me: "That was still a really good guess."
It's Not Like I'm Trying To Be A Gymnast
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