the airport and some Californians

Today I learned by helping drop off our visitor that even at 5:30 am the Tucson airport reeks of exhaust fumes. It was still kind of neat to be able to go along for the ride.

Onward to the news. On Friday, AsianWeek, a San Francisco newspaper with a circulation of about 48,000, demonstrated a, um, lack of judgment by publishing a column titled "Why I Hate Blacks" written by a young man who has now earned his fifteen minutes of infamy. He has also, as pointed out by angry asian man, earned himself some songs that predate the current controversy. As you would expect, I had to go track down the offending document, so here it is, in its almost-funny unbelievability.

Moving south to Los Angeles, people are wondering what, exactly, a fifteen-year-old tagger was thinking when he spray-painted his nickname on the window of a bus carrying not only his school's principal and the mayor, but also a photographer. I obviously don't know the kid, but I would bet it was something along the lines of, "Hey, a blank surface!"

Here in Arizona, it's mourning dove nesting season again, and from our first vine tenant we only got one egg that was sporadically sat on, so here's a picture of it, a chicken egg, and the ostrich egg.

voter priorities and whole wheat doughnuts

Today I learned that Barack Obama smokes! But he's trying to quit! Ok, so some voters apparently care, but as long as I don't have to be around him, I find that I don't really give a @*#%. This could be an issue if he's elected, fails to quit, and we finally have that march on Washington everybody likes to talk about but is, in general, too sick to go; it's kind of a long shot.

In other news, Krispy Kreme's stock price was once $50. It's around $10.71 now, and the announcement of a new whole wheat doughnut has not helped things, despite the fact that I found a food blogger who says that the whole wheat doughnuts taste fine. He also noted that they probably have the same 4 grams of trans fat as the 'less healthy' kind, but I don't think that's a big deterrent for most Krispy Kreme fans, the same way the whole wheat is probably not much of a draw. Now that I think about it, the most interesting thing I learned in that article was that whole wheat pastry flour exists, which I think I knew once but forgot.

genetically engineered mice, illegal immigration, and toothpaste

Today I learned that you can fix up mental retardation in mice that have something similar to Down syndrome using a neurotransmitter blocker. I had no idea that mental retardation could be caused by too much of a neurotransmitter.

Then I learned that there was a huge surge in illegal immigration in the beginning of 2004 because President Bush mentioned a possible temporary worker program. I still think we need to at least do something about seasonal workers being able to cross the border to pick fruit, but I didn't know that merely discussing something like that caused a whole bunch of people to cross illegally. But according to the New York Times, putting first-time illegal border crossers in jail for a couple of weeks and repeat offenders for longer seems to be a reasonable deterrent, along with increasing border patrols. I recognize that we'll have to wait and see how that works in the long run, but I'm pleased that it looks like there's an alternative to fences, which outside of urban areas, still sound to me like expensive, environmentally stupid, hugely embarrassing monuments to our inability to enforce our own laws.

In other news, I can smell conventional toothpaste from behind the closed door of the guest bathroom while I'm sitting on my couch, which is all the way down the hall in the living room. I remember when we first came to Arizona and got our crash course in what products to avoid, and our coaches (now friends) said toothpaste was smelly stuff, but I had no idea.

a big egg and an actress

Today I learned that an ostrich egg is equivalent to 24 chicken eggs, but it costs $15. It also gives you kind of a start every time you open the refrigerator door because it looks kind of like there's an egg-shaped, ceramic cantaloupe in there. Also, according to my husband, ostriches are obnoxious, and in case you needed to know, Hermione Gingold was an actress.

brains and brawn

Today I learned by reading Mark Morford that 13% of Americans in an internet poll have never heard of global warming. Mr. Morford wonders who those people are, but I want to know how they stumbled across an internet poll.

In other news (and a new sick-lady personal best), I rode 21 miles in just under two hours and found a less spiney way through that park on the way to Fantasy Island. I'm sure I could say something self-congratulatory about that, but I'm going to bed.

male body parts in the news

I can't imagine that anyone missed the raging debate among librarians about the children's book that uses a scrotum injury as a plot device. Today I learned that parents in Maryland are upset because they can just point to the back end of some cars and trucks if they need a plastic model to help explain to their kids what a scrotum is.

The headline about the plastic body parts was "Fake Private Parts Are No Joke, Myers Says." I thought, I don't know, it sounds kind of funny to me, but, being me, I had to go look for pictures, and I guess I'm not in the right demographic because they look kind of dumb. I mean, I thought the idea sounded funny because guys were making sure their trucks were well-endowed, which would just be a goofy expression of guyhood. But my problem appears to be that these things are hung way out in the back where they could get hit with road debris or potentially dragged through the mud, and I didn't think guys treated those kinds of body parts like that unless they had belonged to an enemy and the victor was a barbarian. I guess that means that these things are funny in theory, but the execution leaves something to be desired. Well, except for the blue ones. Those are hilarious.

what is it now?

So besides the sweater than went through the Denver airport, I realized today that I left a folded up vinyl air mattress by the sliding glass door not very far from my totally excellent couch, and I think it was killing me. I think I'm feeling better again, but we'll find out tomorrow.

I did manage to read the news today, so I know my local moderately stinky Wild Oats will probably by April be a Whole Foods, which may be less stinky but potentially cost even more. I also learned that there's a lost parrot at the Tacoma Humane Society who knows someone named Bert.

phones are evil

I may have ridden too hard the last couple of days, but today I think I learned that talking on the phone for several hours is really exhausting. Ok, it could be that I react to the plastic if I hold it wrong.

I gotta find a new phone, so have a picture of the side of the road to Arivaca.

it doesn't take much

Yesterday I said something about better, stronger, faster, and today I'm paying for it. I might have gotten away with getting up at a reasonable hour, going riding, fixing a flat, stuffing a mattress, and cleaning bike parts all in the same day if I hadn't had a contaminated sweater in the house.

We have a visitor (a visitor!), and she had to change planes in Denver, which merited itself a whole rant last year. So anyway, now the sweater is living in a nice plastic garbage bag awaiting its return trip through Denver, and the house is ok again.

The other thing I learned is that my hair, even braided, can get pretty contaminated, so I'm still threatening to pull a Sinead O'Connor. I thought about pulling a Britney, but I just don't think I could handle all the associated craziness.

tired

Today I learned that if I ride quickly through the north entrance to Fantasy Island in a strong west wind, I can actually get into the park without getting in too much trouble with the air from the landfill. Unfortunately, I got there through a park that doesn't have designated biking trails in it, so I picked up about five big cactus spines in my front tire, and I forgot my tweezers. By the time the tire went flat I'd already gotten tired, though, so it was about time to go home anyway.

In other news, I can stuff a camping mattress in about 1/3 of the time it used to take me. Better, stronger, faster! (Just not radioactive.) (As far as we know.)

the ATM and architecture

Today I learned that I can go to the drive-up ATM. The trick is to go on a Sunday when there's no line and turn off the engine at the machine. This information would be more interesting if I tended to go to ATMs more often than about once a year, so have a picture of a mission with an unfinished bell tower:


a bunch of potholes in the granary:


and, for comparison, an example of modern architecture:

paperclips and embalming fluid

Today I learned that you can't string ethernet cable from the bottom of one wall through the end stud in a wall perpendicular to the first one using just a clothesline, a butter knife, and a paperclip. With that stud in the way, I think I'm gonna need a few more paperclips.

In other news, if you type 'embalming fluid' into Google, the first link you get is to a site that claims people soak marijuana cigarettes in PCP or embalming fluid to make their marijuana hallucinogenic. I thought smoking embalming fluid sounded pretty weird, so I went on to the next link, which was Wikipedia, and it said that was a myth that had made its way into anti-drug literature, citing the first site. The Wiki article's other references didn't work, though, so it's not clear that I learned much on that little foray, but they at least had the following quote:

A famous arsenical embalming compound in the late 19th century was Professor Pludeman's Eternal Egyptian Embalming Elixir. It was also recommended as a tonic and nostrum, reported to cure a litany of afflictions. Professor Pludeman claimed to consume a tablespoon daily, until he died of heavy metal poisoning.

welcome to Southern Irrelevantia, or maybe Nontox City

Today I learned to run our scanner and watch Heroes episodes on NBC's website. You can't skip the ads there, so I learned that Heroes is sponsored by some kind of Altima, which is a kind of car I really don't need, so it's unclear what effect making me watch Altima ads could be expected to have, and by cars.com, so clearly Heroes viewers are expected to be serious car shoppers. I'd get right on that, except I don't think cars.com has a lot of beater vans I could make into a safe camper.

It occurred to me that when I see commercials, which happens infrequently, they are for things that would poison me, like air fresheners, fabric softeners, hair dyes, and pharmaceuticals, or for things I can't possibly afford, like cars and cruises, which I couldn't go on even if I could afford them.

I can't help but think that ads are aimed entirely at people who have nothing better to do with their lives than spend money, so they go out and support the economy while I sit on my couch made out of mattress springs (I have a couch!) in my house that doesn't smell like much and is safe, and I think, except for a bad habit of watching Maury when they're DNA testing potential baby-daddies, I'm not an American anymore. I live in a totally different place, and one of these days I'm going to name it.

middle of the night edition

Today started kind of early. I woke up about 1:30 this morning and eventually wrote this:

So I'm reacting to my hormones, and it's keeping me up, but this reaction isn't nearly as bad as it used to be. I mean, I'm able to make snide comments at 4 am in the middle of what used to be a debilitating twelve-hour reaction, so you'd have to pay me money to complain about it.

Anyway, so far I've learned that

• The New York Times has articles on safer cleaning products and the safety of cosmetics this morning.
• Here's a dolphin with hind legs.

Then, lacking snide comments, I went back to sleep.

I still don't have any good snide comments, but to make up for it, this evening I found the following truly excellent quote of the day:

Q. I am having trouble finding fire-roasted crushed tomatoes for a recipe. What can I substitute?

A. Oh boy, can we relate to that! Just the other day we were looking for some 4.36-ounce, malt-infused, wasabe-scented, sliced-on-the-bias, free-range, southern-Washington-state, line-caught, hand-massaged salmon fillets for a special recipe, and in the end, we just used salmon.

junk science and party tricks

Today one of my friends taught me this weird little thing, and she said it had to do with electrical circuits in your body, which I freely admit that I, a low temperature physicist/radio frequency engineer, don't understand, but that's ok.

So here's what you do:

1. Make an 'o' shape with the index finger and thumb of your non-dominant hand.
2. Put the index finger and thumb of your dominant hand together like a duck's bill.
3. Stick the duck's bill into the 'o,' and think 'yes,' while opening the duck's bill to try to push the fingers of your non-dominant hand apart. Note the result - your fingers may have come apart pretty easily, or they may not have.
4. Repeat step 3, only this time think 'no,' and note the result.

My results were the opposite of my friend's results, but I got actual results, with no being different from yes. So you know, it doesn't work on my husband at all.

Theoretically, however this thing works (or doesn't), you're supposed to be able to go around and test stuff to see without hurting yourself if you tolerate something or not, just by holding it and trying to open the fingers on your non-dominant hand. I will certainly report back if that works, but I was kind of surprised that the yes-no thing worked all by itself, so I had to stop and report it.

Other than that, I learned that according to one of these scale thingies (scroll down some) that I have the metabolism of a thirteen-year-old, whatever that means, but at least it's entertaining to be told your metabolism looks young.

nerds at work

Today I learned not to accidentally inhale microwaved CD odors.

You may be asking yourself how, exactly, I ended up doing that, but we're nerds, and there was a dead CD, and we were near a microwave, so it was pretty much unavoidable.

Now I'm wondering what other nerd reflexes we have that haven't manifested themselves in the last two years.

still outside

Today, in honor of being able to go outside all day, I went for a ride and a walk and then helped clean the patio. The only thing I learned was that if someone attempts to describe Michigan left turns to you, it's just easier if they go find a diagram.

she's out!

Today I learned about Toxic Tours, drug overdoses, and citizen journalism. I'd probably have something to say about them, too, but there's a front blowing through town right now, plus the gem show is ending, and I can go outside again.

shampoo substitute

There's a hair powder product by a company called 'Cake' that you sprinkle onto your dirty hair, and it makes it look less greasy and smell like Cake's marketers think your head should smell. If you use it two days in a row, you run the risk of itchy, unwashed scalp.

Holy @#^&, unless you're in the hospital or something.

the molecular number of tapioca

Today I think I learned that Netflix has a new commercial out because 27 people visited this blog after searching for some variant of 'netflix molecular number tapioca,' all between 10:41 and 10:54 pm MST last night. If this happens again tonight:

• We here at broken physicist are sorry to report that there is no such thing as a molecular number. In addition, tapioca is very likely a mixture of molecules, so you are similarly out of luck if you were looking for the molecular weight or the atomic number of tapioca. There's a reason you ended up on some sick physicist's blog instead of somewhere real.
• I'm not even sure a commercial started this whole thing.
• Never drink anything hot out of styrofoam - do you know what kinds of chemicals come out of that stuff?? (Sorry, that's usually the sort of thing we report on around here.)

But, as of 3:39 pm MST today, I'm honored to still be at #1 on Google for 'netflix molecular number tapioca.' Thank you all so much.

better part of valor

Lately I've been having this debate with myself about staying home and feeling lousy vs. driving somewhere safer, thereby adding to the pollution. This morning the appropriate course of action was no longer debatable, so today I learned:

• The website for the Tumacacori National Historic Park says there are three missions on 310 acres, but you don't get access to anywhere near 310 acres, not that we were up to a lot of hiking.
• That belltower on the mission everybody has access to was started in something like 1801, but the last priest went back to Spain in 1829, and the mission was abandoned in 1848 and no one ever finished it. Ok, don't quote me on the dates, but it took forever and was abandoned with the scaffolding still up.

That only used up an hour, so we got back on the freeway, where I learned

• The road to Arivaca is a fun biking road on which even I might be able to withstand the traffic.
• From Arivaca, you can get to Arivaca Lake, which, from where we were, was totally unimpressive. Its dirt parking lot was a fine place for lunch, though.
• I can recognize a dog playing chase with another dog when the first one goes sprinting across the road in front of the car in front of us. I say that because I thought, I wonder when the second dog is going to run across the road, just about the time the second dog ran into the front bumper of the car in front of us. I'm pretty sure he at least dislocated his elbow, but he looked alert after a few minutes, and people from the ranch to which he belongs showed up quickly, so we're assuming he'll be ok. I suspect he learned not to run across the road without looking. I learned from a cop who happened by that having three cars stop for an injured dog is unusual, and the cops appreciate it.
• On our way back to town we learned that the Titan Missile Museum looks way more entertaining than going home, so I took a chance and went on the underground tour (which was only three other people, so it smelled pretty decent), where we got to see not only the decommissioned missile, but the control room and the key turning procedure, too. Given that there were a lot of buttons available to be pushed, the whole setup looked remarkably straightforward.
• To make the site into a museum, they had to prove that it couldn't be used to launch a missile, so one of the giant bay doors was stuck open with an observation deck on it, and the other was blocked shut by a lot of concrete on its tracks. The missile had to spend several weeks lying outside on the ground so everybody's satellites could see the big holes cut in the fuel tanks and the whatchamacallit part where the warhead would be.
• There was ancient Roman indoor-outdoor carpet in the control room, but it pretty clearly had had a long time to offgas, and the rest of the place was all concrete and steel, so I did ok in there. It's not every day you get to see a decommissioned missile facility, so I might almost consider making a reservation for a Tuesday at 2 pm when they give ex-crew led tours through the living quarters and everything.

one more thing

You're going to wonder how, exactly, I could have forgotten to report this, but

⇒ I'm sensitive to romaine lettuce. ⇐

traffic

Today I learned while fishing for traffic cameras to watch for entertainment since I've been stuck in the house that the reason we have frontage roads along the freeway here is so that we have someplace to drive while they widen the freeway for the next 3 1/2 years. I thought it was just some western freeway feature, since Albuquerque and Dallas have the same thing, but maybe they had to widen their freeways, too.

In related news, the high pressure ridge hanging over Arizona is supposed to move on around Sunday, which is also when the gem show ends, so Monday I expect to be free to move about the city and maybe even drive on the freeway, which is less entertaining than watching other people drive on the freeway. What I really wanted to find this morning was a traffic camera pointed at a poorly-designed fast food restaurant parking lot complete with a drive-thru off a busy intersection. If you've ever seen one of those, that's entertainment.

In other news, as you've likely heard by now, Anna Nicole Smith died today, and the multitude of articles about her made the points that

1. She was battling her stepson's estate for her second husband's zillion dollars;
2. Her son from her first marriage died five months ago;
3. Now she's dead.

Either life is imitating Shakespeare, in which case we're due another couple of bodies at least, or life is imitating a pirate movie and the money's cursed.

non-air, eggs, and uncooperative inanimate objects

Today the air really sucked, and I mean beyond all expectation, particularly because the ozone and particulate readings were still in the 'good' range. So all I learned about was mixing depth, which was really not deep today, and unripe chicken eggs, which are apparently really tasty but look icky.

mass confusion, Play-Doh, and my couch

Today I learned that a group opposed to Washington state's gay marriage ban cooked up an initiative that would give straight people three years after the wedding to produce kids, and if they didn't, the marriage would be annulled. Judging from the comments on the article, Washington has a bunch of worried straight people who are completely missing the point.

In other news, by reading an article on the science behind Play-Doh, I learned that the Play-Doh smell is an added fragrance, and the universe has shifted because it never occurred to me that I'm probably sensitive to Plah-Doh. But it turns out that you can make almost exactly the same thing at home, but it's less brightly colored and has to be refrigerated. Life is hard sometimes.

So onward to the important news: for the first time ever since we came to Arizona, we sat on the couch and watched tv. The couch could use some more work because you can still kind of feel the springs when you sit down, but that didn't stop us from sitting on it for the last 4 1/2 hours.

criminals and exhaust fumes

Today I learned that people who go to jail are expected to go right out and resume criminal activity upon release. From an article about deporting illegal immigrants who did something illegal besides immigrating, and don't get me started on what I'd be doing if I were Mexican and my food prices skyrocketed because the US decided corn was fuel instead of food, here is the quote:

"The benefit is these people who are committing crimes aren't being released onto our streets to commit more crimes. They are being removed from the United States," said Jim Hayes, director of the Los Angeles field office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting what he said, but I thought the party line was that jail straightens people out. I guess we're done with that, so now I'm not clear on why we aren't drugging the heck out of them to change their aberrant behavior.

In other news, I learned that exhaust fumes affect presumed healthy people, making them more likely to have a heart attack within an hour of a bicycle or bus commute. I find this information really interesting because exhaust fumes give me three reactions: a numb feeling in my forehead, gut cramps, and heart palpitations, which could lead to a heart attack. What really got me was that I thought non-EIs didn't react to exhaust fumes, but instead it appears that they can't feel it, so I feel lucky that I can detect these kinds of things. Don't you all want to be chemically sensitive, too, and feel crappy and potentially have to leave town when the gem show traffic shows up?

Also, WKRP is coming out on DVD in April, and the maker of that turkey-and-gravy flavored soda you hear about every Thanksgiving is switching all its soda sweetener from high fructose corn syrup to sugar, which is probably a good move if corn prices continue to rise.

are we ready for some football?

Today I learned that:

• You can actually feed cats vegan cat food, but some of them will get urinary tract difficulties that, particularly in male cats, can be life-threatening, not to mention expensive, so people should either keep a very close eye on all things veterinary or just go ahead and feed them at least some meat.
• Nobody likes it when chemicals make them sick, so it turns out that breast cancer patients don't take the drugs they're supposed to take as long as doctors tell them to. Since the drugs were tested on healthy people, doctors thought they were more tolerable than they actually are to a bunch of people who, in my admittedly biased opinion, probably got breast cancer from chemicals in the first place.
• There is a whole society up in the mountains of Jamaica made up of the descendants of escaped slaves, and they still live pretty much like they used to and speak the same language their ancestors spoke in Africa, although after 300 years, the group is shrinking and the culture is getting diluted.

Last but not least, the quote of the day was delivered at halftime during a Super Bowl party in response to the question, "If that guy is playing an electric guitar in the rain, couldn't he get electrocuted?"

The answer:"One can only hope."

"Yeah, but I'm taller."

Today I learned that even though my social skills were fired in the crucible of a physics education, it appears that deep down, I'm still a chick. I may be able to play guy games, but sometimes I think they're stupid.

Take for example the Dilbert guy's recent blog post about asking people a trick question and silently weeping when they get the answer wrong. If your friend asks you a trick question, it's like dogs play-fighting - they're just messing with you. In pretty much any other case I can think of, it's a dominance thing, which is to say, not play-fighting, and I don't think I've ever heard a woman do it. The guy asking the question is checking to make sure you're dumber than he is and know it, or just to confirm his generally poor opinion of humanity, which still means putting somebody down. So I'm all for trick questions between friends, but as described in that blog post, I think they're obnoxious.

My next example of chick-thinking involves San Francisco Mayor Newsom's sleeping with the wife of his campaign manager and friend, who then quit. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to San Francisco politics unless they're about chemicals at bus stops, but apparently women seem willing to forgive and forget and still potentially vote for Mayor Newsom, but men see it as a totally unforgivable betrayal and will never, ever consider voting for him ever again. My first reaction was that yeah, that's pretty unforgivable, but it still wouldn't stop me from voting for the guy.

So here's the latest round-up:

• plasticized kidneys - amusing
• burning action figures - amusing
• trick questions - obnoxious unless between friends
• having sex with your friend's wife - theoretically forgivable, but we're glad we don't know any of the people involved.

Hey, maybe the mayor should go on Jerry Springer.

baby formula and cocaine

Today I learned that powdered baby formula is a target for thieves because a 25.7 oz (0.73 kg) can goes for $25. Besides its worth as food, apparently drug dealers find this substance useful for cutting into cocaine. You know that made me wonder what people usually cut into cocaine, so I went out and found this list that specifically mentions Italian baby milk powder, which, even accounting for British English, makes me wonder if the list makers know what the heck they're talking about, unless Italian baby formula has some gourmet quality I don't know about. I'd have thought preferred cutting substances would be cheap, like baking soda or sugar, but I'd likely make a lousy drug dealer.

poison dust bunnies, boy boobs, and dream arsonists

Today I learned that I am really sensitive to dust bunnies if they formed from bedding that had a little borax in it.

On the news front, back in July I reported on a Washington Post article on boy boobs, but they seem to think it's news again, so we'd all better cover it again: essential oils give some boys reversible boobs. Speaking of stuff you don't need to smear yourself with, I'm part of the 16% of women in the US who have not worn makeup in the last year. Hmmm, I know I reported on a 16% somewhere.... Oh, yeah, 9% to 16% of the population has moderate MCS. (Never mind that there are some tolerable cosmetics; I'm just being a pain in the neck tonight because the dust bunnies kept me up and then I had this dream about tainted gasoline making people from Denver into obsessed arsonists, and they were coming to get us, and we were hiding in this house, and other people's nightmares aren't very interesting, are they?)

And last but not least, we're all going to die, and there is such a thing as a 238-foot-long trailer.