Physics

Last Friday my coworkers had a small sendoff party for my boss who's going to be away for the next month on an Eisenhower Fellowship.  Lucky guy.  Well, smart guy really.  Anyway, in honor of Halloween as well, they got a cooler full of dry ice for making party tricks and spooky drinks etc.  By the time the sendoff wound down at about 12, there was still 3/4 of a cooler full of solid CO2 left, and I decided that I might need to take some home with me.  I filled a Tupperware with the stuff and then headed back home.  When I got back, I thought, "Won't this stuff stay frozen a lot better if I put it in a thermos?" 

Check out the dented metal cap.  Probably where it destroyed the light fixture.

Getting out my trusty stainless thermos and dropped in the dry ice cubes.  I sealed the cap nice and tight to make sure that the air didn't get in to warm up the cubes and then Jennifer and I headed off to bed.

Glass Shards EVERYWHERE

At about 1:30 in the morning we were awoken by a giant exploding thud followed by some broken glass shattering down stairs.  "What the hell was that?"   We headed down and found exactly what anyone who has half a brain and understands physics just a little bit would have known.  The plastic cap from the thermos had failed (thankfully) and blasted the top of the thermos off, up through the light fixture and through the drywall into the ceiling.  We never found much of it, just a ton of glass and plastic shards as well as the metal cup/cap thing.

3 inch hole in the ceiling.

Soooo, I spent my evening picking glass shards out of the ceiling and did a full kitchen sweep.  Not like I should have been surprised by this, since I spent much of my teen years thinking of ways to make things explode, I should have known better, or at least put the thermos in someone else's house.

My favorite sport is run by cock smokers

I must say that I've really been enjoying the combined cycling media communitiy's coverage of the UCI defamation suit against Floyd Landis.  It seems that pretty much every story includes the laundry list of things that Floyd Landis can't say about Hein Verbruggen, Pat McQuaid or the UCI.  

For example, this from Velonews

"Piguet’s ruling forbids Landis from “stating that the UCI, McQuaid and/or Verbruggen have concealed cases of doping, received money for doing so, have accepted money from Lance Armstrong to conceal a doping case, have protected certain racing cyclists, concealed cases of doping, have engaged in manipulation, particularly of tests and races, have hesitated and delayed publishing the results of a positive test on Alberto Contador, have accepted bribes, are corrupt, are terrorists, have no regard for the rules, load the dice, are fools, do not have a genuine desire to restore discipline to cycling, are full of shit, are clowns, their words are worthless, are liars, are no different to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, or to make any similar other allegations of that kind.”

Similar stories can be found all over the media sphere, which kind of makes me wonder, isn't the reporting of this case merely magnifying and repeating all the allegations that Landis has made against these dudes?  Well, if so, good.

It reminds me of a story from Alf, my old roommate:  It was a new school year and the principal of Alf's high school called an all school assembly to address what he considered to be a plague of swearing that was sweeping through the student body.  The principal took the podium and after describing how it was disrespectful to use vulgar language,and how stiff penalties would be levied against anyone using swears in the halls or classrooms of the school.  he then proceeded to enumerate all of the words which would not be allowed.

"Students of Shorewood High school will not be allowed to say the following:  fuck, bitch, shit, fag, pussy, whore, cock smoker...."

And all the kids were like, "Cock smoker?  Nobody says cock smoker?"  Guess what the most popular swear was for the following year.  That's right.  

Maybe the UCI is run by a bunch of cock smokers after all.