Nice Try, Universe. Nice Try.

A week or so ago I put up a poll:

I am currently in-between books. Should I get the new Stephen King novel?

• No. Time travel be damned, remember your vow. For the love of God, remember Under the Dome.
• Yes. It will probably be fine and the universe has better things to do than to try and trick you into reading another crummy novel, anyway.

The results are in! Four votes of “yes”, and four votes of “no”. Well, that figures. Thanks for nothing, Internet.

I am leaning toward “no” anyway because of Siun-Kelan's comment about one of his books “The Cell”. I read that book, too, and she has an extremely good point. I went to Wikipedia and found a list of his works and discovered that all the way back to the third book of the Gunslinger series I swear to never read his stuff again only to break that vow every three years or so at which point the promise is reaffirmed.

You know, I might have the same deal going on that Lewis Black has with candy corn...

I spend an above average amount of time trying to solve puzzles, especially those of the type that are in the sidebar on the right. I really, really love a good challenge. I try the Kryptos puzzle every now and then even though I feel I am seriously outclassed by the worldwide efforts underway 24/7 to crack the code. I have devoted an embarrassing amount of time to the Kahn's Cons puzzle even though an Internet search seems to indicate I am the only one on the planet trying this one, forcing me to assume that I am the only one that has not been let in on some sort of twisted inside joke. :)

What does this have to do with Stephen King? Well, while looking through today's WIRED posts I found this:

A&E released seven exclusive videos from its upcoming mini-series Bag of Bones, with a catch: to access the videos, first solve a series of increasingly difficult puzzles hidden in the lines of text complementing an online photo essay, Dark Score Stories. … Puzzles are integrated into the experience through messages hidden within each photo essay. Bold letters in the website’s introductory message instruct readers to “go down left side” for clues to seven increasingly difficult challenges.

Increasingly difficult challenges? Say, that sounds really interesting... I think I'll just cli... Ah, ah, ahhh, Mr. King! I don't think so!

As the saying goes “Fool me seven times, shame on you. Fool me eight or more times, shame on me.”

Drunk On the Go...

A friend of mine recently celebrated, against all odds, another birthday!  Congrats, man!  Nothing for it but to give him whiskey stones. 

No, that's not something you need an antibiotic or surgery for.  It's a product.  Nine soapstone cubes you put in your freezer, you understand. What better way to cool a drink than to drop a few hopefully sanitized playing-die-sized rocks into your whiskey?  Well, sure, there's ice, I guess, which is cheap, plentiful, and effective, but where is the potential choking hazard in that? 

Actually, he gave them a go and said that its not really a hazard since they sink.  Unless you are a child or like to chug your whiskey (or both, I guess) it's not a problem.

Sticking with the motif here he also got a flask.  This one, I think.  Jim Gaffigan's routine notwithstanding he was wondering what to have engraved on it.  I told him I don't know but I would ask the Internet for him.  He said go ahead.  I said are you sure?  He said yes.  I said okay, but don't be surprised if you end up with, say, suggestions for lots of Hello Kitty themed nonsense. He basically said "Bring it."

Now in order to help you appreciate the Hello Kitty engraving idea you should have a better idea of who we are talking about here. 

Weighing in at twenty stone and built like a brick privy, his quiet intelligent demeanor cleverly hides the fact that this family man and community organizer is actually tightly wound spring made of hundreds of Brock Sampsons.  Not the sissified introspective version he has morphed into in the later seasons of the Venture Brothers, either.  I am talking old school Brock "they hit me with a truck" Freaking Sampson. 

I have no evidence to support this... yet.  Personally I think the whole "being constantly surrounded by pushy, petulant idiots while maintaining a calm a Zen Master could only dream of achieving" thing is a carefully maintained act - one that can't last forever.

But when he goes, even Dr. Banner's darker side would probably tell him "Hulk think you need take it down couple of notches".  This would be especially true when he descends on the local Apple store and demonstrates to the Illuminati shopping there that you can cram an iPad pretty much anywhere if you are persistent enough about it and you don't take "No!  Oh, dear God, nooooo!" for an answer.

I hear he once made Chuck Norris cry.

Also, he's Irish. 

Thank God he has a good sense of humor...

I think this is all you need to suggest a tasteful engraving for his new gift.  Leave a comment if you have an idea.

Foodstuff

It has been twenty years since I have been wowed by a Thanksgiving dinner, but last Thursday's feast was one for the books.  Don't get me wrong - the food is routinely fine and plentiful but there has always seemed to be something missing. 

Most likely my "complaint" stems from the differences between food selection and preparation between where I hail from (Western New York) and here (Southeastern Virginia).  You know, as I review the previous sentence I see of course it would be that way.  I mean, what the hell else would it possibly be, the color of the flatware or the lighting or something? I really felt confident going into that sentence, too...

Regardless, two decades of the missing whatever decided to show up all at once last Thursday, kicked in the door, and demanded to be included in this year's festivities. 

It was awesome.  In addition to the traditional fare, which was exactly correctly perfect FWIW, my wife made a leek casserole that was out of this world.  Also she made a huge tray of meatballs that were apparently molded from raw hunks of primal deliciousness and cranberry sauce.  Also she made this really exotic garlic and fruit-based stuffing that was as complex in texture as it was in flavor.  It even looked interesting.

I ate.

I ate not until I was full.  Oh, no, dear friends, no.  You see, technically, I was full before the meal started since she also made these killer deviled eggs.  Now,  if you served me eight scrambled eggs and told me that it was not, as it would first seem, four days worth of breakfasts but instead just an appetizer I would probably gag a little.  Or maybe a lot.  But add a little mustard, mayo, and vinegar and all of a sudden I magically poof into Adam Richman or that Japanese hot dog dude.

No.  I ate until I was tired.  This has never happened to me before (well, probably as an infant...) Whether I was physically exhausted from the non-stop hoisting of goodies from my plate to my gob or whether I was in a near narcoleptic state from endorphin poisoning, I didn't know or care.  I needed a snooze.

I fell into a self-induced coma about the time my son went down for his nap.  Two hours later, much to my shock and delight, I woke up.  I was also shocked and delighted to discover there was food left over.  O, most frabjous day! 

There were only two things missing to make this the perfect Thanksgiving, though.

The first is the traditional drunken shouting match and near fistfight initiated by someone forgetting the canned cranberry sauce (again, if you can believe it... I mean they only had one thing to remember and they couldn't even do that right) and ending in the sullen tears of a randomly picked "loved" one cascading miserably into an ashtray crammed with the butts of semi-extinguished Marlboro Reds. 

Say... that would be an awesome Norman Rockwell painting, dontcha think?  Let's give it the working title "Pumpkin Pie and Domestic Incident Related DUI".  Picture it: Two Irish cops are hauling a blue-suited but disheveled and clearly drunk man past a traditionally-laden dining room table while family members cower tearfully behind the remains of an overturned china hutch.  The man is shaking the remains of his  crumpled fedora angrily at the onlookers and through the open, broken front door you can make out aghast neighbors assessing the damage to a 1949 Packard and a light pole.  One of the neighbors is smoking a pipe.

Ah, memories...

Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  The second thing that was missing was green olives in the veggie platter.  Man, I love those things.

Sigh.  Maybe next year...  Happy Thanksgiving, all!

This Forest Smells Funny...

Ah, yes, the majestic Pretreated Pine.  The vacuum-sealed denizens of this largely insect-free habitat love to romp and splash in its many carbon-filtered streams...

I.J.A.S.B.

A couple of years ago I was walking into a local 7-11 as another dude was leaving.  He looked at me, beamed, drunkenly shouted "GO YANKEES!", and left.

I was startled but I managed to breeze on by with a non-committal grunt and went to get my chips or beer or whatever I was in there for.  I had no idea why I was targeted for that guy's outburst until I went to get my wallet to pay for my stuff. 

It was then I noticed I was wearing the New York Yankees t-shirt my wife picked up for me a while back from someplace. Target, I think.   Later I found out there was a World Series going on and the team was doing well.  The guy saw my shirt, was a fan, and assumed I was, too.  Mystery solved.

Oh...  A side note, here.  This post might seem to some people like some kind of anti-spectator-sports rant or some other elitist garbage.  That is sooooo not my intention here, nor is it how I feel.  If you like to seriously follow all kinds of sports or are a dedicated fan of just one or two teams, that's awesome. Good on yeh, mate.

Personally, though, I don't pay too much attention one way or the other.   I occasionally check to see how well a handful of teams across a couple of sports are doing this season, but I don't have a dedicated "watching sports" plan.  I would like the Sabres to bring home the Stanley Cup and I would really like the Bills to bring home something more than a "Super Bowl Participant" certificate and a GOOD TRY smiley-face sticker but it doesn't really affect me one way or the other.

Pfft... While I'm at it why don't I just wish for a unicorn?  Let's get back to what I was talking about.

Basically, my dresser is full of comfortable shirts that advertise various sports teams or products I have no particular loyalty to.  As with my collection of ballcaps close to 100% of the time I am not aware of what they say.  I just grab one and go.

So while I am warming up my lunch at work, standing in line at the bookstore, or even just walking through the mall, about half a dozen times a year I will be hit with what I think are utterly random yet upbeat questions or comments from total or near-total strangers.

From my point of view stuff like "Hey, ya' think they got a shot?", "Did you go there?", "I just got me a set of Pings", or, yes, "GO YANKEES!" are totally out of the blue until I have time to mesh gears properly with the world around me and respond like someone who hasn't just dropped out of the freakin' sky.  

I have gotten quicker at recovering but a two-second puzzled stare to a stranger or coworker who is just trying to be friendly looks pretty much like the non-verbal equivalent of sighing heavily and saying "Now, what do YOU want?"  It might even appear hostile. 

Since I am not going to ditch all of my comfortable t-shirts and well-worn hats I need to come up with a good "cover story" to explain those lapses away in a way that 1) is friendly and 2) results in the fewest follow-up questions possible.  The second requirement is very important since I usually don't know jack about the current events surrounding the team or product the person chatting me up assumes I support. It becomes obvious very quickly that I have no idea what I am talking about and the uncomfortable silence that follows doesn't do anyone any good.

Any suggestions are welcome but hurry because I am very close to responding “The pearl is in the river” or “Is it safe?” just to see what would happen... This violates Rule 1 above. At one time I was seriously considering taking a bunch of my t-shirts to an embroidery place and having them tastefully stitch the initials I.J.A.S.B. on the fabric somewhere. But having to explain that I.J.A.S.B. means It's Just A Shirt, Brother over and over again violates Rule 2 like crazy.

This is all pretty embarrassing but it is more so when you consider I pride myself on having a significantly better than average "situational awareness" – closer to Jason Bourne than to Mr. Magoo or Inspector Gadget.  I guess really need to reassess that self-image.

For example...

At the gym earlier this week I got off the treadmill, went to the bathroom, and changed my sweat-soaked shirt.  I like to do that before I start using the weight machines as a courtesy to others. No one likes to mount a pre-moistened ab workout station, after all. Well... no one worth speaking of, anyway.

About two minutes into my benching routine I notice the reflection of myself way off in the distance and I see this:

Damn it.

See, my wife picked this shirt for me from an airport gift shop when she went to Philly for a conference some months ago.  I have never seen a game, I don't know what their team is called, and I have no idea what they are known for outside of the current heinous scumbaggery.

What I do know, though, is that this is not the shirt to be wearing right now.  Saying "It's just a shirt, brother" is simply not going to cut it.  I covered the logo as quickly and casually as I could manage with my gym towel, made my way to the bathroom, and changed back into my damp but thankfully nondescript plain white Haynes cotton undershirt. I don't think anyone noticed but still...

The Penn State shirt was soft and comfortable and fit well but now I will have to see how it does in its new role as half a dozen new, good quality shop rags. Meh.... it's just a shirt, brother.

SnowUrchin's Got a Brand New Poll

I had a colossal “situational awareness” fail at the gym today but I don't have enough time to get into that right now – Rocksmith calls.

Tomorrow... I'll write it up tomorrow.

In way of a space-filler, though, here is something else. After reading Under The Dome by Stephen King I vowed to never, ever read another one of his novels again ever ever ever. To realize the strength of this statement you need to realize that The Stand had held the top spot in my favorite books of all time for the better part of two decades.

I love time travel stories. I love alternate history stories. I will watch the Back to the Future trilogy whenever I notice it is on TBS (Federal Law mandates it is on at least once a week). I even “get” Primer.

Today, I learned from a Wired article that Mr. King has a new book out. It's called 11/22/63. It's about time travel. It's about alternate histories.

So here's the poll: I am currently in-between books. Should I get the new Stephen King novel?

• No. Time travel be damned, remember your vow. For the love of God, remember Under the Dome.
• Yes. It will probably be fine and the universe has better things to do than to try and trick you into reading another crummy novel, anyway.

The poll is in the sidebar on the right. It will be up for a week. If you can't see the poll, it doesn't work for some reason, or you just feel like commenting, leave a comment.

New Puzzle Hint, Halloween Puzzle Answer

It's been a while since I have posted a hint to one of the Secret Puzzles on the Secret Puzzle Page.  Here is Hint #3 for the New Desk Puzzle:

Hint 3 (Posted 11/13/11): Gur svefg yrggre vf "J".

As usual the hint is posted in ROT-13 encoding as to not spoil the fun for those of you not quite ready for some help.  You can find all the other hints and all the other puzzles in the sidebar on the right.  If you think you know the answer, post a comment or shoot me an e-mail.  Good Luck!

Oh, yeah, since this post pushed the Halloween Puzzle off the bottom of the page, here is the answer to that one (spoiler below):

Here is the puzzle:

Coloring the jack-o-lanterns black and the pumpkins white then giving the pic a couple of flips results in this:

Scanning this image with your smartphone gives you the message "Happy Halloween from the 36th Lock!"

Sacrilegious, You Say? Try Sacri-Awesome!

One of the things I was going to build in my workshop this fall was an Advent calendar. I remember them being neat. Thing is, I think that project is going to be on hold until next year at least. Why? While we were in DC the wife and I were able to get away to do some early Christmas shopping and what to my wondering eyes should appear but the item on the left.

Yep, we picked one up.

Is there anything that says Joy to the World more than a Yoda minifig dressed up like Santa? If there is, keep it to yourself because, frankly, I just don't think I could handle it. On the other hand, if you find absolutely nothing positive to say about this ridiculous amalgam of Star Wars, Legos, commercial Christmas, and traditional Christmas ask Santa to get you an autopsy this year cuz you, my friend, are officially dead inside.

I am soooo looking forward to December 1st.

Headed Out

Headed to DC this weekend to visit some relatives and to get some awesome food.

Feel free to talk amongst yourselves. 

Say... I have a topic.  With the holidays approaching we are starting to get a whole lot of catalogs in the mail, one of which is called Hammacher Schlemmer.  This is my first experience with one so I have a question for those of you who have seen this catalog before:  Is this some kind of a twisted joke or something?

I mean, I am not sure it would ever occur to me that this item is the answer to any question I could come up with, other than "How shall I fritter away $350,000 today?"

My 740 Cents Worth

A couple of days few months ago my father-in-law mentioned that he has been rolling pennies since 1997 and he has about one hundred dollars worth squirreled away. He is aware that pre-1982 pennies are mostly copper whereas post-1982 pennies are mostly zinc, so he asked me “At what point will the pennies I roll be the mostly zinc kind?”

“Huh. That is a really good question. I don't know. Why?” I asked.

“Well, with copper prices being so high I was wondering if it would be worthwhile to melt them down just for the bullion and I don't want to sort the coins.”

Fair enough. Even if it only took me three seconds to grab, orient, read, and sort a penny I doubt that I would want to spend the next eight hours scrutinizing tiny numbers on hunks of metal on the off chance I was going to get something other than self-induced nearsightedness and blue-green fingertips for my troubles.

I told him I would get back to him with an answer. This post is that answer.

So what determines the distribution of dates of the coins in a coin roll, your pocket, your soda-goo-filled drink holder in your car, your change jar, and your kid's piggy bank?

Assuming that the pennies have been sufficiently shuffled through the hands of the multitudes before you get your grubby little paws on them there are three main forces at work:

1) The quantity of pennies released each year by the Mint.
2) The length of time that has passed since their release.
3) Hoarders and collectors.

The number of coins put out by the Mint varies widely from year-to-year. The list below shows the number of pennies made each year since 1959 (the year they switched from wheat reverse to Lincoln Memorial reverse).

1959 1,340,731,500
1960 2,167,289,000
1961 2,506,611,700
1962 2,399,193,140
1963 2,528,130,400
1964 6,447,646,500
1965 1,497,224,900
1966 2,188,147,783
1967 3,048,667,100
1968 4,852,420,571
1969 5,684,117,200
1970 5,480,313,904
1971 5,355,669,059
1972 5,975,265,508
1973 7,594,998,883
1974 8,876,665,183
1975 9,956,751,442
1976 8,895,884,881
1977 8,663,992,300
1978 9,838,838,400
1979 10,157,872,254
1980 12,554,803,660
1981 12,864,985,677
1982 16,725,504,368
1983 14,219,554,428
1984 13,720,317,906
1985 10,935,829,813
1986 8,934,262,191
1987 9,561,856,445
1988 11,346,550,443
1989 12,607,002,111
1990 11,774,659,533
1991 9,324,386,076
1992 9,097,578,300
1993 12,111,355,571
1994 13,632,615,000
1995 13,540,000,000
1996 13,123,260,000
1997 9,199,355,000
1998 10,257,508,500
1999 11,597,665,000
2000 14,277,420,000
2001 10,334,590,000
2002 7,288,855,000
2003 6,848,000,000
2004 6,836,000,000
2005 7,700,050,500
2006 8,234,000,000
2007 7,401,200,000
2008 5,408,400,000
2009 2,354,000,000
2010 4,010,830,000
2011 5,481,686,000

I include this list here because the Google refused to give me the answer in the form I needed however nicely I asked and I wanted to give others a chance to find the info easier. All data is from the 2011 Official Red Book: A Guidebook of United States Coins. Please note 1) any errors are my own – this was a lot of tedious data entry and I may have messed up in places 2) the numbers represent the sums of all non-proof-set types from all mints for that year 3) the 2011 number is just an estimate based on the average of the previous five years.

In case you were wondering, 439 billion Lincoln pennies have been minted since 1909. Twice as many pennies as there are stars in our galaxy... Wow.

Over the past five years I have rescued three wheat pennies from my change. One is from 1921 and the other two are from 1947. One time my mother found an Indian Head penny in her change but that was about about 25 years ago...

“And once I sawr a blimp.” Jeebus, SnowUrchin... Focus, wouldja?

The point is that when the Mint decided to change up the look of the penny in 1959 people started hoarding wheat pennies like crazy (many people still do this) so there is a statistically significant lack of pre-1959 coppers in our change today. It is reasonable to assume that there are no wheat pennies in my father-in-law's coin rolls.

How long does a coin stay in circulation? According to this site, “most modern coins that circulate last about 25 years”. That answer is 100% accurate while at the same time 100% useless for our purposes. What is “most”? What is “about 25 years”? What happens to them? Do these hunks of metal just decay away?

No, they don't decay away... not really. They get lost. Or turned into jewelry. Or thrown into wells. Or crushed by railroad cars (awesome, btw) or by those 51-cent souvenir maker dealies. Or hoarded and rolled and placed in a box in the closet. We can assume that people take pennies “out of play” in some form or fashion all the time independent of the date of the coin.

Hey... If that is a valid assumption then we can actually assume they decayed away and we can figure out what percentage of coins of a certain year are still in circulation by using a formula that is typically used to determine the amount of radioactive material left in a sample after some time has passed.

Here N0 is the original number of coins, T is the amount of time that has passed, and t ½ is the half-life of a penny. “The half-life of a penny,” you say. What have you done here besides turning a barely interesting question about coins into a nearly unreadable geeky one about coins?

Half-life is just a term that means the amount of time that needs to pass before the sample have been reduced to ½ its original size. If I have a stash of pennies laying around I should be able to figure out this alleged half-life by looking at the dates on a small number of them.

I searched my son's piggy bank (calm down – he was napping and he got them back anyway), rifled through the junk drawers, and checked the cars and came up with 73 pennies. Probably not enough for a good sample but that has never stopped me in the past so let's see what we got.

Of the 72 American pennies (there was one Canadian coin in the lot) two were from 1982. They started making the zinc-core pennies in October of that year so it was a coin-toss to determine what their composition was... literally. The newer pennies sound different than the older ones when dropped – I had one of each. Check it out for yourself. I'll wait.

Those of you who actually did this little experiment will notice the pre-82s have a distinctive “ring” when they fell, while the post-82s have a duller, almost-clunky sound. Go ahead and try as many times as you need to hear the difference or until you hear “Hey! What the hell are you doing in there?!” coming from the next room, whatever comes first.

All of the coins were collected during this year (2011). I sorted them by date and discovered that 50% of them were from 1995 to 2011, and the others were from 1959 to 1994. I weighted my radioactive decay formula with the quantity of pennies minted and adjusted my guess at a half-life until I got the same 50/50 date as I found in my little pile of pennies. This gave me the half-life of a penny of about 23 years... Pretty close to the 25 year number from the source above. Cool.

You know... I had a lot more to say on this, but I have been circling the runway here for over a month. Let's land the plane already and present the data cuz I am really tired of having this post in my “to do” list. If anyone out there wants to chat more about it, shoot me an email or post a question in the comments section. Here is the graph:

Here you can see that my father-in-law needed to start collecting pennies in 1990 (not 1997) or so to have at least some rolls with 50% copper. Also, even not including the cost of operating a smelter, the price for committing a Class 5 Felony for melting down coins in bulk is $10,000 and/or five-years in a federal prison...

Is it worth it? Not for him. When you try to ask “the Google” what the current price of copper is you, again, don't get a straight answer. Instead you get the feeling like you were just dropped into a busy marketplace in Marrakesh: “Sir! Yes, you sir! Come here my friend! You look for copper, I give you best price, no problem! Come, come! My office is just down this narrow, badly-lit alleyway...”

Go to WolframAlpha, instead, if you want to find the price of metals. $3.28/pound as of today, FWIW.

I have graphs showing the number of non-wheat pennies per person in the USA peaked in 2001 at 848, but now we are down to 740 per person – roughly the same as what we had in 1990. Wait... don't go... I have more charts... Didn't you want to hear about the effect the 1943 copper shortage had on the copper distribution per capita in terms of pennies, or how recessions may be able to be predicted by the pattern of penny production in the USA... No?

'Kay, then... Bye...

A Few Milestones

I quit smoking one year ago today.  Go, me.  I occasionally still have cravings but so far so good.

Had first ever parent-teacher conference this morning.  We are told they are using less than a liter of Holy Water per day during their "The power of Christ compels you" one-on-one time and they haven't had to resort to employing "The Device" in a few weeks, so good news all around.

I kid.  He is doing just fine.

In addition to mowing the lawn for what is likely to be the last time this season, I finished sealing the deck this weekend (last weekend was called on account of rain).  Man, I am glad that is over.  It looks great.

Finally passed "In Bloom" in Rocksmith.  I am not sure if I actually deserved to go on to the next level or if I am on the receiving end of a pity-filled, government mandated "No Rocker Left Behind" program.  I must have rehearsed that song seventy or eighty times before I passed.  Well, give me an "E" for effort cuz God knows it sure as hell doesn't stand for a proper E chord most of the time.  But I passed...

You know who loses here, though?  The poor virtual people that paid to hear me play at my gig.  They enjoyed the first song of my set a lot but not my horrible rendition of In Bloom when it came time to play it.  Away went the cheering and the cell phone cameras and out came the dead-eyed uncomfortable silence.  They weren't hostile, but I definitely got the feeling that if someone suddenly shouted "Get him!" they would have rushed the stage...

They did not ask me to do an encore.  I have to be honest with you... that hurt my feelings just a little bit.  I can almost picture the club owner avoiding my eyes and softly saying “Go. Just... just go...”

More later.

Sweet Dufresne's Hammer!

This is a picture of about 1 cubic centimeter of play sand. My son (and I can only presume each member of his class), smuggles an average of this much pulverized rock home in their shoes after each school day. If this continues they will have, collectively, stolen nearly 10 pounds of of sand from the school by the end of the school year.

Well... At least I assume it's sand and not the detritus from a covert tunnel excavation...

Worst. Shawshank Redemption remake. Ever.

Cranky Old Man Restaurant Review II

My wife, son, and I were out and about one Saturday and we stumbled upon an Indian restaurant called Saffron. We decided to give it a go for lunch.

The only other Indian food I have ever had was from Nawab, a local chain.  I like the chicken Masala, the naan, and whatever the green tomato stuff you dip your bread in is.  Or maybe only I dip my bread in it and its actually supposed to be for something else.  You know, it might not be tomato-based after all. Hell, it might be a dessert for all I know... Look, I'm getting off topic and it's not important, anyway.

What can I say about the place?  Well, it's in a great corner location and it's very clean, beautiful, tastefully decorated, relaxing, and almost completely devoid of customers.

Uh oh.

Now, there were a couple of other folks there, but the visible wait staff outnumbered the customer-occupied tables about eight to one, easily.  You would think that they would have descended upon us like lightning, grateful for something... anything, to do.

But no.

How do I word this?  They weren't eager to seat us, but they didn't give off a vibe like we were bothering them, either.  They weren't rude... quite the opposite, in fact.

Picture a restaurant that is not a restaurant at all, but, in fact, a movie set.  The staff is not made up of waiters and waitresses and busboys, but actors all playing their parts.  You walk in, expecting food.  Now, they are not allowed, for whatever reason, to break character and just shoo you away so they are forced to do something.... Panicking and lacking options, they choose a representative to imitate a slightly chloroformed Arte-Johnson-based Renfield and eventually come to take your order.

As awkward and crummy this analogy is, it's apt.

The unblinking waiter-or-possibly-alien that glacially shuffled on over to exceedingly politely help us with our drinks selection paused for about one and a half seconds longer than is customary between our responses and his acknowledgment of them.  It gave the impression that he was uncontrollably drifting into elaborate daydream sequences every few seconds and the surprising noises coming from in front of him that sounded like "Pepsi" or "water with lemon" were snapping him back into reality. 

You might argue that the delay due to some kind of language barrier issue. No. I know what that is like and this wasn't it. This was more like we were talking to him live via satellite or something.

We finished making our selection and he resignedly allowed himself to be pushed toward the drinks station through the majestic mechanics of plate tectonics and several decades later he or possibly his grandson returned with our beverages.  He then deigned to take our food order then he shuffled back off at a velocity normally associated with someone repeatedly slurring “brains... brrraaaaiiinnnnss”.

I assume at that point at least one of the dozens of "movie extras" that were standing around silently staring into the middle distance was able to break off from the group, post an Indian Food Chef Wanted notice on Monster.com, interview several hopeful candidates, hire someone, then put our order in because, much to our delight and amazement, the food eventually came.

I got the tandoori wings and the wife got the chicken masala.  The flavor of both dishes was fine.  In a blindfolded taste test, though, I would only be able to tell the difference between the two dishes because mine had more bones in it. 

Maybe they delivered the wrong thing.  I don't have a lot of experience with Indian food but I am highly suspecting that it is non-exotic in the same way Mexican food is.  That is, do the same five or so ingredients go into everything so each slightly different combination is technically christened a new menu item? 

Don't bother rolling your eyes and saying in what I picture is a cartoon-y Jeeves the Butler accented admonishment "(scoff, scoff) Dear boy, you are talking about Americanized foreign food.  The reeeeaaaahhhhllll stuff is ever soooooo much better.  Nothing beats eating fresh curried chicken while punting on the Ganges, you know..." (polishes monocle, rides off on polo pony)"  Yeah, maybe but guess what? I'm here, not there.  This is what is realistic for me to do and is what I have as a baseline so leave me alone, imaginary snooty British guy.

We ate and after a spell grew tired of waiting for the server to return. After getting up, walking around the restaurant and discovering a gaggle of surprised and not a little nervous "waiters" holed up in a corner I asked for the check and one of them went to get it. Eventually we were allowed to pay. I didn't tip because, frankly, I am not sure they would have known what to do with Earth-money anyway – the gesture would have been lost on them and possibly even frightened them.

Later, I had time to look up reviews of the place and they all said basically the same thing: "nice atmosphere, ok food, really slow service, go to Nawab instead".

Yes, yes, yes, and will do.

Cost in Space

I was having a discussion with a colleague about the recent Chinese docking mission. To be honest, it was less of a discussion and more of me helplessly cornered in the breakroom trying to pour myself some coffee while being bombarded with his displeasure at… at…

You know something? I am not quite sure what he was upset about. Whatever it was, it had something to do with “the Red Chinese”, China’s space program, taking over the moon, and something about starving babies.

He might have had some derogatory things to gravelly slur about the Washington Redskins and Obama-care as well. He was kind of all over the map and I wasn’t really listening but Mr. “Hey You Kids Get Off My Lawn” did get me thinking about the cost of doing business in space.

If you go to Wikipedia you see that there are an awful lot of countries out there with at least some ability to send stuff into space. Let's just pick some: China, Europe (ESA), India, Russia, UK, and the USA.

Let’s see how much they spend per year:

Wow. That’s quite a spread. But, like most people, I can’t really wrap my head around really big numbers – after a point they become meaningless. Let’s divide by the number of people in each country and see what we get:

Hmm. This chart reminds me that, about 10 years ago, you couldn’t read a mainstream (whatever that means) news article on the Chinese space program without the author (or editor) inserting a paragraph like you see below [USA Today 10/01/2003]:

Skeptics say an expensive manned space program is a political vanity project that a developing nation can ill afford. Though China has enjoyed impressive economic growth for a decade, annual per capita income remains just $800. "I frankly think it's a waste of money. It's kind of a bread-and-circus routine," says James Mulvenon, a China-watcher at a Rand Corp.'s office in Arlington, Va.

For whatever reason, you see less of that talk nowadays.

But money is money. How much of an impact does this yearly cost have on the wallet of your average citizen? Let’s divide the above numbers by the yearly income per person and see what we get.

Well these are sure small numbers… You could think of it as a significantly less than one percent “Space Program Tax” across the board. That’s really not a lot of bread, is it, now?

Right?

Well, let’s change the graph above into something we can all put our hands on. Using my best guesses for current-ish local prices (based on averages I quickly gleaned from Google searches), let’s convert the numbers above into the true “coin of the realm”: food.

Even taking account my sloppy averaging on the cost of various types of bread in places around the world it seems like my colleague's “starving babies” argument against China having a space program is a little exaggerated.

Oh, I suppose you could argue that no country should have a space program unless every one of its citizen’s is well fed. Ok… fair enough. Should literacy also be 100%? What about health care? Social security? What is the cutoff for crime rate? Should there be a set minimum average income per person, too? Should it be dependent on what the goal of each space mission is? Is there a monetary value you can place on national pride? If so, how much gold per person is that?

I am not trying to imply a viewpoint one way or the other, FWIW. I am simply not smart enough to answer any of the questions above. Any way these questions are answered, though, there is one thing for certain: there is no such thing as a free launch.