Science Has Been Eating Donuts (or, "Why Your Kids Will Grow Taller in Hudson Bay")

Despite this attractive graphic, gravity is NOT pretty.

Check out this pretty image, built from data collected by the GRACE satellite mapping the earth's magnetic fields in painfully low resolution... hey, don't go to sleep, now! This has direct bearing on you. Wait for it...

Scientists are still trying to figure out what this chart really means, as well as what gravity really is (hint: look up, "universons"). You may have noticed instances of higher and lower gravity graphed above, which could be indicative of magma convection beneath the mantle, or perhaps mantle depth, or number of toys per square inch in your family room. And speaking of magma, it will NOT make you taller, but it can induce some pretty fast lap times. The pretty colors above could also be mapping geomagnetic flux density, or perhaps how many high-energy donut shops there are in any given area, which is kinda the same thing in a not-kinda-the-same-thing kinda way. You getting all this?

Note that the Earth’s gravity changes day-to-day, microsecond-to-microsecond -- and some donut shops more than others -- but the above image shows how average variability in Earth’s gravity field in 2002 compared to the yearly average of 2001. Whoa. What this REALLY means is that your kid will perhaps grow taller and get a better basketball scholarship if he or she lives in Hudson Bay. Or the ocean floor. AND keeps away from donut shops, especially those in the Marianas Trench. Mmmm, Marianas Trench donut... a specialty of The Donut Den. (Ok, it is now.)

(high energy donut image courtesy brent in nashville. awesome.) 

Ok, the REAL run-on truth is, when you're talkin' earthy locale microgravities, you're looking at an increase in somatic growth of probably just a few microns, unless it's a whole bag of donuts, and then you might reap a whole freakin' millimeter if you stand right in the vortex, but then you might get sucked in and whacked in the face with flying clocks, hourglasses, the odd barn from 1938... so, you might wanna stay in the Oldsmo-buick, like that's gonna help, but how does this gravity thing affect you as a parent? That's right. These are the forces that contribute to those kid forces that are grinding your bones to dust. Feels better now that you know, right? Is there a remedy? Yes, there is. JUMP INTO THE VORTEX. It's really just a big donut if you only consider the first two dimensions. Whatever. Da-da needs a donut.

Seems like Da-da's seen this image before...

Da-da's OTHER Secret Burger Recipe of HORROR

A great cheeseburger would really help right about now.

Da-da's OTHER Secret Burger Recipe of HORROR (here's is the first one) isn't that secret or horrifying, but if you smear it all over your face and stumble down the street moaning, you might serve as a serviceable zombie... which won't keep you from getting sucked into that pesky vortex. What? That's right, Da-da's talkin' 'bout Labor Day. Speaking of barely tenable workaday segues, your best Labor Day zombie burger experience will have as ingredients some or all of the things you normally put on the exterior of your burger, like ketchup, mustard, wombats, adamantine steel, etc. Many places use this simple recipe, though adamantine steel is only available from select wolverines, and even then, it's a tough harvest.

Da-da was reminded of all this while trapped in a possessed evil dead cabin in the woods over the summer, though mostly because he planned poorly and found he had NONE of his regular Da-da Burger ingredients. (Not having shallots or Dijon was the real horror, seconded only by Da-da's electric scalp massager gaining consciousness.) Trumping that, the giant mosquitos, 90-degree heat and bleeding floor boards, this impromptu burger recipe really helped. It seems overly simple, but works well.

Da-da's OTHER Secret Burger Recipe of HORROR

4 lbs ground beef

1/2 onion, minced

2-3 T. yellow mustard

4 T. ketchup
dash of garlic powder

S&P

Mix with your hands and squish until homogenous. (Da-da loves that sentence.) Form into patties and dust with a little garlic powder, S&P and GRILL, grill like THE WIND. Even zombies will think twice about eating you if you've got a Da-da Cheeseburger in your gnarled paw.

So, what do werewolves, burgers and Labor Day have to do with one another? [spooky music UP] Da-da's pretty sure you're about to find out.

Labor Day and werewolves and cheeseburgers go together like ham and ster.