Once in a Blue Moon

4 out of 5 Facebook users express that their presence on Facebook makes them a worse person than they really are.

The night air is so still you can see the eddies and currents of smoke form and change as they rise from a smoldering fire through otherwise undetected changes in the local atmosphere.

I eat a piece of key lime pie.

We make pizza dough from scratch.

A kid scrapes the skin off the knuckles of his foot.

A different kid gets a bloody nose.

The TV stays off and books gain a significant share in the balance of the conversation.

You look up why a blue moon is called a blue moon because it definitely isn’t the color.

Molecular Tinker Toys

I think this stuff is pretty cool. Just like Legos or Tinker Toys can be assemble into complex and cool designs, simple molecular component are assembled to make other cool things. Gold star to anyone who identifies the molecular toy that is shown tinkered above.

Good in a Pinch

When short on nacho cheese simply lay slices of American cheese over a bed of tortilla chips.  Sprinkle Tabasco over the chips and cheese.  Microwave for 30 seconds and enjoy.

Cost Benefit Analysis

Leaves have a job to do. In the economy of the plant they are the producers. Chloroplast in the plant harness photons from the sun to turn water, acquired through the roots, and carbon dioxide, obtained from the atmosphere, into sugar. Sugar is molecular gold for the plant because it can be broken down to be used as energy or repackaged and assembled into more complex carbohydrates like cellulose and starch.

However when the economy is down due to shortages in natural resources the tree has to make some savvy business decisions.  The most productive leaves are those that get the most sunlight, the ones on the outermost part of the canopy. The central leaves also produce but with much less efficiency. When times are good there is more than enough resources to be processed by the efficient and less efficient leaves. But when resources are scarce the tree closes down its least effective factories and reallocates the available raw materials toward the best producers. 

Then, like any factory that becomes unoccupied, the vacancy leads to disrepair and in the end the leaves fall in the middle of summer rather than fall in the fall when they should.

What I Learned From a Magnum Opus

Tonight, after several months of sometimes intermittent and sometimes intense reading, I finished Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. The first thing that struck me when I first started was the artistic writing style and what impressed me throughout the thousands of page swipes required to finish was the artistic writing style.  As a guy who has spent some time writing over the last several months I know that maintaining quality is tough. When I was about 60% into the book I watched a documentary about Rand and Atlas Shrugged.  I learned that she thought Atlas would be written relatively quickly but in actuality it took about 6 years to complete. That’s a long time, but it ended up being a really, really long book and really good too.  

I enjoyed the read a lot. One of the eerie/interesting aspects was how much the book, written over 60 years ago, reflected some of the things going on today.  There were several times during my months of reading when I heard our prominent politicians expressing ideas almost directly from the book.  I found myself thinking, “That sounds just like the bad guys in Atlas Shrugged.” It was weird, but not that weird, considering the divided landscape we are in and the extremely polar political and philosophical climate Rand portrays.

I really enjoyed the book but not everything sat well.  Rand is an atheist and holds a rejection of any supernatural concept as invalid for shaping her philosophy. The hero in Atlas explicitly expressed this position in an extended monologue over “3 hours” of novel time. The moment was meant to be a triumph, a line drawn in the sand, which would initiate the final dismantling of an already crumbling society.  However the clearly articulated philosophy was desiccated and disconnected in the speech where it had been passionate and relevant as it unfolded in the struggles and hesitancy of even the strongest people.  The book reminded us that people are flawed and in those flaws life gets messy. Where Rand’s philosophy falls short is where she fails to see that the messiness of life can yield amazing results.

Internet down. posting from a phone. the wired world sure does have us by the... wires.

Stumble

Not sure if any of you have ever used StumbleUpon but it is basically a website that suggests different websites based on the interests you plug in. It is in large part a(nother) good way to waste time on the internet which is what I have been doing tonight instead of writing.  Well, back to it.