Bring on the soup dish

[austin_dern]

A note: when one is out of paper plates or towels to use as means of holding cooked or otherwise bulky food prior to eating it, it is possible -- and there even are advantages -- to use the real, ceramic plates as plates, instead of as large ceramic pieces filling up shelf space. And I'm proud to say it only took me a day to realize that. I mention this just in case you ever think mathematics PhD's might have a narrowly focused sort of intelligence and be sort of dumb in everyday life.

For amusement value, I've uploaded a picture from some Star Trek: Enterprise episode. When you've got it loaded, here's my caption: ``And after this, you're going to come back and take one with a camera, right?''

Somewhere in the various news about space science discoveries, which I don't follow as much as I should given that I've always been fascinated by it (the third book I remember reading was a science popularization, author and title long forgotten, explaining in part how the Moon was ripped out of the Pacific), headlined an article about one of Saturn's exceedingly many moons with, ``Enceladus More Interesting Than Previously Thought.'' I'm trying now to remember, when's the last time something in space was found less interesting than previously thought? ``Albiorix Just A Rock''? I don't think I've ever seen an instance when a close-up look at a planet, satellite, asteroid, or other turned up nothing big and unexpected. Maybe the Mariner pictures showing that Mars didn't have canals, cities, or hemisphere-encompassing fields of lichen were disappointments, but that's before my time. Still, ``Space Object More Interesting Than Previously Thought'' seems like the way to bet for the foreseeable future.

Trivia: The southern span of Timothy Palmer's arch bridge across the Merrimack river near Newburyport, Massachusetts was found unsafe and sold at auction in 1809. Source: Yankee Science in the Making, Dirk J Struik.

Currently Reading: The Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Of course, such science journalists (there are some surviving?) do need to leave room for events such as the Tempel 1 impact and its aftermath, lest we be left with little more range for surprise than "HOLY FARK! Object WAY THE HELL MORE interesting that any sucker had imagined!", although I would like to see CNN loosen up a little in that direction.

I want to see an in-the-future episode of Star Trek include a Franklin Mint collectors' plate from a previous-in-time series.