Category: sighing in exasperation

Two Videos

Karen
Here is a video “trailer” for the Mars Curiosity rover landing on August 5, found via Bad Astronomy. It is worth the five minutes to watch it because in five minutes you can have your mind blown and your faith in humanity reaffirmed:
I usually dislike taglines but “Dare mighty things” at the end kind of made me tear up a little.
And here is a video created by the European Commission as part of the “Science: It’s a Girl Thing!” campaign to encourage girls to study science (it’s now been pulled from the campaign).  This also blows the mind and brings you close to tears–but not in a good way:
To quote Elwood Blues, “Jesus H. Tap Dancing Christ.” To quote the article in The Atlantic where I found this, “…science sells itself. It needs no polish or varnish or manufactured appeal to be attractive to women. To imply otherwise is an insult. To science and to women.”

Canning: It Also Rquires Measuring

Karen

When I posted that Thing #28 was “easy,” I didn’t mention that I did it with my mom, at her house, with lots of supervision. Well, pride goeth before a fall, and lack of spatial awareness goeth with my second canning attempt.

I had half a box of peaches and big plans to make jam with some and then just can the rest in syrup. I imagined jars full of lovely peach halves like little suns. I planned the steps carefully. I peeled the peaches beautifully. And then the halves didn’t fit in the jars and I had way too many.

As it turns out, I had half pint jars that I thought were the larger one pint size. Never in all the planning and peeling did it occur to me that the peaches were almost as big as the jars. No, I was convinced I had pint jars; peach halves fit in pints; it would all work out.

This wasn’t a total canning fail, because after I cut everything into smaller pieces and kept going, it all worked out. (I ended up slicing and freezing the leftovers.) It’s just that I now have seven successful single servings of peaches, laboriously canned.

Seven servings! I’m stocking up for the long winter!

You know what goes well with peaches? Bourbon.

It Writes Itself, Folks!

Karen2 Comments

So I changed my Tribune subscription to Sundays only, but for the last three weeks it’s been delivered every day, and today there was this gem: Let’s Tax Caffeine, Legislator Argues

[Rep. Craig] Frank, R-American Fork, has asked lawmakers over the next year to study the potential for taxing caffeine, a response to proposals this session to hike the tax on cigarettes – all of which failed

[…]Frank said he has seen research that caffeine can cause spontaneous abortion, psychological abnormalities and other disorders.

“We’re going after people who have problems with addiction for a revenue stream, only caffeine would be one that is more broad-based,” said Frank, who calls himself a “social caffeine drinker.”

That Diet Coke can KILL, people! Also, global warming is fake.