From the collective minds at Design Concepts, the following conceptual delicacy has appeared (complete with schematic representation of the constituent food-source origin).  Seems suitable that it appears on the bathroom wall, eh?  I can only hope nobody has ever tried this at home.

I’m wondering if my co-workers have noticed that I smell faintly of women’s perfume today.  Could be embarrassing if they knew the full story.  I know my wife is disappointed and saddened. 

It turns out that my wife’s perfume bottle has a superb atomizer and on a whim I realized that if I spritz a shot of perfume at a aromatherapy candle in our bedroom it makes a most satisfying whoosh-like ball of  flame – sort of a mini special effects explosion on our dresser.  The perfume is evocative, mysterious, haunting, provocative (their words), and mostly alcohol (my hypothesis – presumably correct).  My wife was bemused on so many levels and finally stepped in to point out that my experiments were both dangerous and fairly expensive.

It got me wondering what percentage of mankind’s scientific advances were catalyzed by someone just messin’ around to see what happens.   

I will never forget the expression of total glee on my father’s face many years ago when he guessed (correctly) that our brand new family microwave was most likely operating at the same frequency necessary to illuminate a common fluorescent bulb.  He immediately disassembled my mom’s bathroom vanity mirror, wedged the bulb into our new kitchen appliance, gathered the family and turned the dial. Sparks were ricocheting off the metal bulb bases and the device was making a frightening zapping/sizzling noise but he still fairly danced with delight as the bulb began to glow – a cool spectacle and wireless miracle for us.

Apparently the apple does not fall far from the tree. 

The “what-if” gene can have tragic consequences – think of Marie Curie, pioneer in the field of radioactivity and winner of two Nobel prizes who most certainly died of radiation poisoning resulting from her experiments.  The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were not then known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed, without taking any safety measures. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green light that the substances gave off in the dark.

You think dad would know better.

Of course today, a quick trip to Youtube can scratch your “what-if” gene from behind the safety of your computer monitor.   Want to start your BBQ with liquid oxygen?  Pepsi and Mentos?  Blend your iPhone?  Perhaps the cumulative effect of our exposure to everyone else’s what-ifs will bring a collective power to the age-old “let’s see what happens”.  I’m not sure.  Youtube doesn’t quite do justice to the sight of a modest mushroom cloud of flame rising over my wife’s jewelry box.  You’ve simply got to see that one first hand.

(oh.. and by the way… if you’re one of many people who are wondering if this should be “just deserts” or “just desserts”… you can check this out.. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/just_deserts.  I’d thank my 7th grade English teacher if I could remember her name. Darn)

This is another completely non-design related post but as it relates to cosmic karma I simply could not resist.

I’m a fairly avid bike commuter and try to bike into work at least a couple of times a week when the weather is nice. Last night I was on my way home, biking in heavy traffic on East Washington avenue – a fairly major Madison surface street with a nice fat bike lane. I was passed on my left by a whitish SUV with a rolled down passenger window when there was a blur of motion, a crash and I found myself drenched with a deluge of sticky soda. In my shock I almost face-planted my bike but wobbled and recovered in time to hear the SUV passenger laughing as sped away.

I can’t even begin to describe how infuriated I was. I stood on the pedals with everything I was worth trying to catch up to this fool. I’m not certain what my objective was – probably to get the crap beat out of me, but I at least wanted the satisfaction of shouting a few choice profanities. Traffic was moving pretty slowly and there was a red light in the distance, so for a moment, I thought I’d have the chance, but the driver must have seen me gaining because he pulled into the bike lane himself and sped around the traffic and disappeared.

Soaked, sticky and shaking I continued to slog along the road, sputtering and muttering to myself and cursing the injustices in the world. However, just a bit later, I noticed the pulsing of a red and blue police light in the distance. Could it be???

As I rode up to the scene, there indeed was the same car pulled to the side of the road and hemmed in by not one but FOUR police cars. I pulled up into an adjacent parking lot where another car was parked and the police were questioning the driver. She leaned out and shouted – “I saw the whole thing and called the police!” Awesome! My only disappointment was that by the time the police had finished taking my statement my good Samaritan had driven away, and I never had the chance to thank her.  

Chalk one up for our fair city and just deserts.

Because I was curious, I did the following quick math over the weekend.

This is NOT intended to trivialize the tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but rather to show just how tremendously fragile our ecosystem is and how very careful we have to be to jealously guard and defend our planet.

The estimated volume of salt water in the Gulf of Mexico is 650 Quadrillion Gallons (650,000,000,000,000,000 gallons)
The BP oil spill has dumped approximately 180 million gallons of crude oil (neglecting anything that has been skimmed or recovered).

This means the Gulf is now 0.000000028% oil.
This is the equivalent of dropping 10 drops of crude oil out of an eyedropper into an Olympic sized swimming pool.

Yikes!

Notes:
Olympic sized swimming pool = 2,500,000 liters
Average drop from an eyedropper is .07cm^3