Word.

Happy Egguinox

Last Saturday, Nico and I went to a cookout that my cousin Amethyst hosted to celebrate her daughter Custard's 10th birthday. My cousins had heard that at 12:32 PM on the Spring Equinox, it's possible to stand an egg on end. Sunny managed to get the egg balanced just so, and it stood there for a few minutes until Custard jarred the table and the egg fell over. After that, Sunny couldn't replicate the feat. I had heard the egg / equinox thing before, and our experience seemed to corroborate the tale. But, being a science nerd and someone who is in charge of teaching science to kids, I always triple-check my sources before talking about anything vaguely sciencey in order to avoid looking like a dumbass. Turns out this is a good thing, because the balancing egg story is a myth. It's possible to balance an egg on its end any day of the year, if you're talented enough. Click here for a cool article explaining the whole thing.

Even though the myth is busted, I think we can all agree it's still pretty impressive that she managed to balance an egg on a folding table set up on a deck on a breezy day.

In which I let my geek flag fly

I've written a few times before about cool things to see in the sky, and last night I was appreciating a good view of Orion on my way home and thought of another cool thing to talk about. Or at least cool to geeks like me.

Here's Orion, hunter and wearer of a very snazzy skirt:


This is what he looks like in stars alone, clearly showing the three stars of his fancy belt:



The stars you want to take special notice of are the upper left (the orange one) and the lower right (the big blue one). The blue one is Rigel, a supergiant about twice as hot as the sun and 70 times larger. That seems impressive until you consider the orange guy. That one is called Betelgeuse, which I have heard variously pronounced as Beetlejuice, Baytel-gyse, and Baytel-joose. According to this article, the star's name means "hand of the central one," but I read somewhere that it means "armpit of the giant," and if that doesn't make you laugh like a 12-year-old boy, you're living life way too seriously.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, the largest type of star known to exist. How large? Well...let's do some analogizing.

Here's the Sun:


The Sun is 865,000 miles across.

Here's the orbit of the Earth around the Sun:


As we all know, it takes the Earth an entire year to travel one loop around the Sun. But here's something you may not know:  the Earth is going 67 THOUSAND miles per hour. And it still takes us a year to make a lap. Craaazy.

And this will really bake your noodle:  take the Sun, 865000 miles across, and the Earth, taking an entire year to go a loop at 67000 miles per hour. All of it -- the Sun, the Earth, and the Earth's orbit around the Sun -- could fit inside Betelgeuse.

Next time you're outside and spot Orion, give that orange star a second look, because dude...he's kind of a really big deal:

Happy Pi Day!

To celebrate Pi Day, the bibliophile invited everyone over for a Pi(e) potluck. I had planned to go hiking with MB and Indy today to celebrate my birthday (which was yesterday), but the weather did not cooperate. I've never made a pie before and didn't want to drop a fortune on out-of-season fresh fruit, so I needed to come up with something to make for the party, and quick. And then it occurred to me:  Pi-shaped cookies!

I was going to attempt to make cookie cutters using this ridiculously cool example as a guide, but in the end I came up with a slightly simpler solution.

STEP 1: Set up stand mixer, passed down to me by my mother during the Christmas baking season. Also known as the savior of my arm, since I didn't have to give myself tennis elbow trying to make sugar cookie dough with my woefully inadequate hand mixer.


STEP 2: Dough is done, hooray!


STEP 3: Trace Pi template onto plastic lid and cut out.


STEP 4: Roll out dough and cut Pi shapes.


STEP 5: Forget that a quiet dog is usually a dog up to no good.


STEP 6: Impress everyone


STEP 7: Use up the rest of the dough and decorate appropriately


STEP 8: Eat cookies


Reading:  Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth R. Miller

Playing:  the Coraline soundtrack

You look like a monkey and you smell like one, too! *

February 12 of this year marked Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, and the 150th anniversary of what is arguably the most important scientific work ever published, On the Origin of Species. As a professional science geek, much of my February was spent researching, talking about, thinking about, and formally celebrating the life and works of a guy who seems like he was above all a pretty cool dude. My background is not in biology, and there are dozens of bloggers who already wrote more eloquently and with more authority about Darwin and his work, so I won't get into the heavy stuff.

I would encourage everyone to track down a copy of this month's National Geographic and read the cover story about Darwin. Like the biggest project I helped with at work, the article focuses mainly on the man behind the myth, the guy who had no formal scientific training and yet went on to write books that are still accepted as accurate today on subjects as varied as botany, geology, the formation of coral reefs, the mechanisms of orchid fertilization, and the ways in which worms turn vegetation into soil. And of course there's that whole natural selection thing. You know, only the foundation of all modern biology.


Happy birthday, Darwin. The day a reliable time machine is invented, I am coming back there to buy you a beer.



(Many thanks to evilducky for the festive Darwin photo.)



* Did everybody else add this verse to the end of the happy birthday song, or was that just us?

Dude...

I will admit that I'm a sucker for this particular Coheed & Cambria song anyway, but even without it, this looks TOTALLY BADASS:



Here's the whole song, for full effect:

I'm in ur chats, talkin dirty

vbg:  May Day is a good holiday, too
in a semi-related note, good Lord ancient myths are ALL ABOUT TEH SEX

Tam:  or death
sexxing and dying

vbg:  I'm trying to find egyptian myths about the stars, and everyone's a pervert

Tam:  BWAAAAAAAAAAH

vbg:  something about Seth wanted to have sex with Horus
so Isis said, go ahead, but steal his sperm
and so Horus "pretended" to have sex with Seth and caught the semen in his hand

Tam:  yup

vbg:  and then Isis cut off Horus's hand
threw it in the river
made a new hand
jerked off HER SON

Tam:  always puts me off the name Seth

vbg:  took HIS semen

Tam:  as you do

vbg:  and put it on Seth's lettuce
and then he ate the lettuce
(not a euphemism)
and got pregnant
and then birthed the sun disk out of his head
to which I say, "Please pass whatever you were smoking, ancient Egyptians"

there is something sort of hilarious about the fact that she put the illicit sperm on the dude's LETTUCE PATCH, though

Im in ur lettis patch, plantin stolen seed

Tam:  I feel I should warn you that I have just called my husband in here so he could read your entire conversation

vbg:  ROFL
he'll be traumatized
stay away from the lettuce, Mr. Tam!

Tam:  everything from 'I'm trying to find Egyptian myths about the stars' down to 'stolen seed' needs to be a blog entry

just copy and paste

vbg:  Just so.

I guess I should find out what my husband prefers

I can't decide if I want to put this on my car or tattoo it on my ass:


(available here)

Placeholder

I'm working on a long post with pictures and interesting stuff like that, but it's taking forever to finish, so here's something that I find endlessly amusing (though the tune does get stuck in my head something fierce. Sorry about that.):



Bum buh buh buh bum. Dee dee-dee-dee!

Hōkūhele *

This is Venus:


Girlfriend has a hot date with this guy:

"Hey, Zeus! We all just decided your hair is super attractive! Hooray for you!"

As everyone knows, Venus is the goddess of love, beauty, and fertility.

"Shit. Where'd I put my clothes?
I can't see anything without my contacts."

In the old days, Venus was joined in holy matrimony with the god of the underworld, but these are modern times, and sister is a liberated woman these days.

"Does this drape make my butt look big?"

Well, she's getting there. Anyhoodle, Venus is on her way to meet this handsome dude, who also happens to be head honcho and king of the gods:

"Who needs clothes? My hair looks damn good.
Throw a little Aquanet on there, and I'm good to go."

Even the deities are getting caught up in the reality dating craze, and we all get to watch. As the sun sets each night between now and November 30, look to the south / southwest and watch for Jupiter. It'll look like a freaky bright yellow-orange star, pretty low in the sky. Keep your eye on Jupiter, and you'll see Venus sashaying toward him from the lower right. True to her "goddess of beauty" title, she's a beautiful bright white star-like object, and is actually the second-brightest natural object you'll ever see in the night sky, after the Moon.

If you want to be scientific about it, what you see when you look up into the evening sky is sunlight reflecting off of Jupiter, the largest planet in the Solar System, and Venus, the hottest planet.


As we all know from science class, Jupiter is a gas giant with no solid surface. It's so large that if it was hollow like an Easter egg, we could fit nearly 1000 full Earths inside. It has 63 moons that we know about, and a storm on the side twice the size of our entire planet. Pretty wicked.


Venus is a terrestrial planet like Earth, and the two are nearly the same size. The ridiculous amount of clouds account for a monster greenhouse effect, which keeps the surface at a blistering 860+ degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, and they also rain sulfuric acid down onto the surface. Very romantic!

On November 30 and December 1, the two lovebirds will meet up in conjunction, and will be only an apparent finger-width apart near the Moon in the evening sky. After that, Venus will pass Jupiter and wander off, getting a little higher in the sky each night. It's definitely a rare spectacle, not to be repeated until 2012. I know I'll definitely be checking it out.

"Back the fuck off, goat boy. I've got a date.
Don't make me smack you with my handbag."

cool article #1

cool article #2


*ancient Hawaiian name for the planets. It means "wandering stars."

Also

Squee! :D

Maybe it's the English geek in me...

...but I'm kind of horrified that Sony has appropriated the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V for a freaking Playstation 3 commercial.





Is nothing sacred? *shakes fist*

Nerds are the best kind of people

MB:  I figured out how they make skim milk.

VBG:  Yeah?

MB:  They put regular milk into a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats and let it sit. Then they remove all the good sugary stuff, and you get what's left.

VBG:  You'll get used to it. Think how many tons of 2% milk I drank, and I got used to it.

MB:  Hmm.

VBG:  Actually, I wonder how many tons of milk I've had. Can we calculate? Because I drink what...about 10 gallons a month?

MB:  Yep.

VBG:  So that's 120 gallons a year times let's say 20 years, since I probably didn't drink that much when I was little. What is that?

MB:  2400.

VBG:  Holy crap! And how much does a gallon of water weigh? Eight pounds?

MB:  I think so. Wait...yeah.

VBG:  Okay...2400 times 8 divided by 2000. HOLY CRAP. 9.6 tons! I drank almost ten tons of milk!

This blessedness of life sometimes brings me to my knees *

Life has been pretty kickass these last few days. I spent Thursday and Friday at a wetlands education workshop with my friend S, which was a blast. Learned lots of cool stuff, met some cool people, and spent some time outside on two beautiful days. I came back feeling really recharged.

Adding to the fabulousness, there was an earthquake on Friday morning. As it was going on and I was waking up, I thought, "Damn, S's house shakes a lot in the wind." Then, "No, that's gotta be a mine blast." Then, "No WAIT. EARTHQUAKE." As I came fully awake, my phone rang and it was the bibliophile, and as soon as I saw her number on the caller ID, I knew for certain it had been an earthquake. Why else would she be calling me at 5:30 AM (4:30 her time)??

On Saturday, I spent the whole work day in workshops with 15 extremely awesome 4th - 6th grade girls. We studied optical illusions and made silly putty and slime and wired circuits and built bridges out of straws and paperclips. The girls were amazing. They were enthusiastic, intelligent, and basically proved that inquiry-based learning can be fantastic. While making slime (glue + water + a spoonful of saturated borax solution), one of the girls asked why adding an additional liquid to the glue / water mix makes it less liquidy. Then, when one group got done assembling their circuit, they asked, "What would happen if we took our stuff and hooked it up to the other group's stuff?" So we let them hook two circuit kits together. By the end, they had hooked all seven circuit kits into a giant loop and got the buzzers to work.

After that they spent nearly an hour assembling their bridges, which were then tested to see how many marbles they could hold suspended in a bucket before collapsing. The winning bridge (prize:  bragging rights) held 147 marbles -- all the marbles we had. The girls were ecstatic, and I left work remembering why I love my job and feeling inspired to keep looking for new programs and new ideas to keep kids engaged in this crazy world of ours.

Oh, and last night? Kitters came into the kitchen to sing for his supper, and Indy followed. He sat down about 12 inches away from the cat, and nobody tried to eat anybody else's face! Miracle!


Here's a semi-crappy video of Indy giving MB a high five and a handshake. He's been living with us for six days, people. My friends who have dogs tell me this means we're in trouble:

Not all who wander are lost

After leaving Turkey Run, MB and I took the scenic route to Mounds State Park. We hit the Target in Anderson for provisions and long-sleeved shirts for MB (who packed for the summer weather we were expecting but thankfully didn't get). I scored this wicked T-shirt from the guys' clearance rack:


We had dinner with college roommate Spanish Monkey, and went back to Mounds to camp for the night.

home sweet home

On Monday, we drove to Muncie to go to Minnestrista. It was okay, but only had three smallish galleries. One of the art exhibitions was REALLY cool. In the Indiana Acres exhibit, I saw these somewhat disturbing little spectacles:



I like chicken nuggets as much as the next person, but this is a little freaky. Hmmm...or maybe I feel less bad about eating them since given a chance they'd eat each other.

Minnetrista did have a really cool (and ENORMOUS) sculpture out front:



We ate lunch at a Thai place that MB had been wanting to visit for more than two years, and it was very good. After that, we went back to Mounds to hike:

the White River

honey locust
(yes, those are GIANT SPINES on the tree)

Holy crap!
(and could I be any whiter?)

weird but cool shelter on the trail

The park had this hilarious picture posted in several places as a warning about the incredible cunning and appetite of raccoons:


Speaking of raccoons, one apparently tried to raid our cooler at some point:

I found this little guy on Tuesday morning while I was taking down the tent:



After we packed up, we drove down to Indianapolis to go to the Indiana State Museum. But first, we headed back toward Turkey Run on State Road 32 to take pictures of the coolest lawn ornaments in the entire damn world:


And how cool is MB, truly? He's a very linear person, and yet he approved an hour-long backtrack, just so I could get photos of giant dinosaur sculptures for my blog. I am the luckiest girl ever.





The State Museum was pretty rad. We went to see Dinosaurs 3D:  Giants of Patagonia in IMAX, and liked it so much that we went right back in to see Sharks 3D. After the movies and lunch at the eerily deserted cafe (The museum is MASSIVE, but we only saw about 20 other guests the entire time we were there. There weren't even any field trips, since it was state standardized testing week. Nice, but unnerving.), we checked out the first three "Story of Indiana" galleries. It started with a geologic history. The second gallery (and my favorite) was the ancient seas exhibition, which had dozens and dozens and dozens of mindblowing fossil specimens. I LOVE me some fossils. The last gallery that we went through was the Age of Ice gallery, which had wicked-cool Ice Age fossils. Most of the other galleries deal with historical times and industry, which is neat but not my favorite stuff to see, and the museum was about to close anyway, so we headed for home.

huge calcite crystals (bigger than my head, dudes!) and crinoid fossils

Check out the mastodon in the back! And the stag moose!

giant short-faced bear and Harlan's musk ox
(which has the best Latin name in the history of classification:  Bootherium bombifrons)

Gil the (impossibly cute) Glyptodont says, "Thanks for reading!"