Happy Birthday, Senore Moriondo

BOING. Looks awake, doesn't he? He should.

Who is this severely caffeinated man, you ask? THIS... is your hero. Yup. This is the guy who Starbucks and Peet's and all the rest of you serious coffee drinkers owe big time, as he was the first to invent a machine to send steam through coffee. Yes, it's the original Italian Mr. Coffee, Senore Angelo Moriondo, the guy who invented espresso. Da-da is sacrificing many beans to Sr. Moriondo today -- well, every day, and then, only tangentially, as Da-da makes seriously deranged INSTANT DA-DA COFFEE, which could perhaps explain why Da-da looks like a golem half the time (though the wordS on Da-da's head read, "YOUR NAME HERE"), as well as why Da-da hasn't slept since the War of the Roses... but also, most importantly for you, it might indicate exactly WHY Da-da can't seem to stake this vampire sentence... DIE, SENTENCE, DIE! There. It also might explain why that pesky spoon won't fall over, but then again, physical laws don't always work around Da-da. What was the question, again?

Da-da coffee is always intense.

Gravity Has Been Drinking

You are POWERLESS against GRAVITY! AHHHAHHHAHAHAHAA!

Da-da rolls all his eyes (mutants have lots of eyes) whenever "experts" talk about the universe. How can you be an expert on something you only see a teeny part of, while dangling participles? Huh? It's like when Da-da was in physics classes and instructors waxed insouciant about physical "laws." There are no physical laws, Dracula. A physical law is merely someone saying, "Hey! It happened again!" It might not happen that way next time. This in mind, would it surprise you to know that gravity, typically 9.8 m/s^2 (or 32 feet per second per second) is different everywhere you go? Yup. It changes from place to place. It even changes IN those same places, fluxing up and down and sideways, changing every picosecond where you are right now. Why? We have no idea. But look at this gravitic satellite view of the earth:

Isn't that cool? Red is higher gravity, blue is lower gravity. Of course, we're talking about a very small change in what keeps you from flying off the earth, but it's a change nonetheless. (Note that this is just a snapshot of that moment; gravity changes all the time. Be fun to see this as a live view during extreme solar activity.) So, why is gravity lower over Hudson Bay versus the Aleutian Islands? Do Aleutians grow taller than Canadians, on average? Da-da doesn't know. No one else does, either. Sure, we're talking microgravities, but no one's ever put sensors in a high gravity locale and a low gravity locale and noted the differences. Is it easier to think in lower gravity? Grow plants? Move pianos? Win at bowling? Da-da will try to locate a UFOnaut and get back to you on that.

No one ever talk about this stuff. Why? Because we don't understand gravity or the inner workings of our own planet -- or how to get politicians to jump into that volcano. (Damn.) Speaking of that, would it surprise you to know that the universe is neither expanding nor contracting... that is, until you look at it? Weird, huh? One of the ancient's biggest secrets was, "The universe is mental." Quantum theory says the same thing. The presence of thought changes everything. Luckily, there's not much of that permeating the planet earth these days.