edison

So, apparently Thomas Edison never showered. At least that's what Tesla said. Ohhhhh snap!

oppenheimer

(It's Oppenheimer. As a young man. With a non-receded hairline.)

First in a series of romantic scientist greeting cards.

"now let me smoke in peace..."

Anytime someone says that particularly alliterative phrase to me, this is what I think of. People like to think of Sherlock and Watson as being besties, but I like to think of them as a more profane version of the odd couple.

endangered animals

I feel weird about endangered animals. On one hand, we are supposed to save them. On the other hand, a real one could eat us, and most likely did in pre-modern times.

As weird as I feel about this, I am sure that the endangered animals feel much weirder. After all, they were once our predators and could still destroy most of us in a fair fight. And yet now, they rely on us to save them from extinction.

Although I am sure that the animals appreciate our efforts to preserve their species, I am also sure we come off as a little patronizing. I mean, imagine if creature we currently prey on were suddenly so powerful that we relied on its mercy for our survival. Like if a lab accident created a form of intelligent, giant cow that grazed on houses and fast food restaurants, completely demolishing civilization as we knew it. And if a faction of those house-destroying giant cows decided they wanted to preserve our species by rebuilding mediocre houses in a poorly conceived fashion.

If that happened, we'd be all, "Man, I wish I didn't have to be grateful to those giant cows. Wasn't there a time when we ATE those cows?"

Guess what? That's probably how endangered animals feel. Awkwardly grateful. Belittled but thankful. Someday, when they finally out-populate humans and can again prey on us, they will be fully happy. But for now, they will have to content themselves with grumbling about us behind our backs.

loud noises

I have recently realized that I don't like noise. This is possibly because, when you add sound to anything that does not require sound, it immediately becomes more annoying.

Clearly, unnecessary sound is very grating. Unnecessary volume doesn't help things, either.

Once you notice that loud noises are annoying, you start into a downward spiral of anger and bad moods. You attempt to reduce the amount of noise around you, but that only makes annoying noises seem louder when you go outside.

There are not very many good solutions to this problem. Ignoring it is hard. Moving to a more quiet place is expensive and inconvenient.

You could try to blot out the sound using ear coverings, but that is a little conspicuous. Here are some suggestions for protecting your hearing, incognito.

No matter what you do, you will be existing in a happy bubble of noise reduction. You can once again be happy in the presence of noisy objects.

Of course, reducing your hearing can be dangerous. It can expose you to obvious dangers, such as not being able to hear a car coming when you cross the street. Plus, there are other dangers. If you are employing all three methods at once, you will certainly be living in a bubble of silence. You may think no one is talking about you, but that's only because you can't hear them.

Ignorance is bliss, people!

hail

I really dislike hail. Disregarding ultimate consequences (floods, snow-ins, etc), it is the only weather pattern that is immediately dangerous when it falls on you. This makes it really inconvenient for everyone.

Actually, my least favorite weather pattern is "wintry mix," because I always want it to be an ice cream. But it never is. It's just gross, wet, cold mixture of rain, snow, and hail.

I do, however, like imagining what goes on inside a wintry mix, because I bet that the rain and snow feel the same way about the hail as I do.

I guess the only advantage to hail is that, as a word, it is used in many non-weather phrases. Which makes me laugh.

In political programming:

In sports or religious programming:

And, perhaps most prominently, in sci-fi programming:

Dammit, Jim! I'm a doctor, not a weatherman!

post-its

Post-it notes are fun. I guess they are supposed to be used for reminders, but I use post-its for almost everything except for reminders.

Usually, I do post-it origami. It works particularly well if you manage to expose the sticky side on one end.

You can also play dress-up with post-its. Here are some examples.

The best thing, though, is to combine these alternative post-it usages in order to become:

The post-it pirate is fearsome. The post-it pirate does not care if you have many post-its or only one. The post-it pirate will take your post-its for herself!

I like the post-it pirate. I imagine that she is a frightening yet righteous marauder that punishes office post-it hoarders by stealing their post-its and redistributing them to needy office workers. Indeed, the post-it pirate is the Robin Hood of our modern life.

Sadly, the post-it pirate is mere fiction. However, sometimes when I see a particularly bad post-it hoarder in my office, and a certain temptation arises...