Saturday, November 10, 2007

Sticker Shock, Shopping Penguin(!!!), Food 2.0

Okay, first to unload these links:

Sticker Shock. My favorites:

Sticker in Earth Science: "You are free to exercise your First Amendment rights in this class and to identify all stratigraphic layers as being 6,000 years old. We are free to flunk you."

Sticker in Collegiate Chemistry: "Electrons. They're like little tiny ball bearings that fly around the atomic nucleus like planets orbit the sun. Except that they're actually waves. Only what they really are are probability waves. But they do make your MP3 player run, seriously."

Sticker in Creationism for Dummies: "Religious belief rests on a foundation of faith. Seeking empirical evidence for support of one's faith-based beliefs therefore could be considered pointless. Or even blasphemous."
Especially the last one. I love it (read: don't love it) when religious fundamentalists try to have it both ways. Sometimes, science and empirical evidence really does validate every claim made by their 4,000 year old book written by nomadic near-eastern shepherds. Except when it doesn't, in which case science is full of shit anyway, as well as probably evil, and all we need to know is the words in the 4,000 year old book written by nomadic near-eastern shepherds.

The next thing is the most ridiculously adorable thing ever, and apparently it's real. As the opening says, "Meet Lala, a fourteen-year-old king penguin, who likes nothing more than wearing his backpack [shaped like a fucking penguin!!!] and going food-shopping for his family in Japan!" Watch him wobble down the road and load up with fish from the fish store! He lives in a refrigerated room!

Finally, Food 2.0: Chefs as Chemists.

I don't know how/why one would cook with lasers and liquid nitrogen, but... well, let's just say if I had a ludicrous amount of disposable income, I would like to buy large quantities of liquid nitrogen and play with it.

Also, apparently xanthan gum is dried slime, which was fermented by bacteria. I never knew that.

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