Tue Apr 05 12:22:49 PST how to slice a sandwich:

What's your preferred sandwich slicing angle? Vertical (shortest cut), Diagonal (longest cut), or Horizontal (medium cut)?

I have always been a diagonal cut man, myself. That's how mom did it. I don't like the way vertical cut sandwiches taste. But currently, I'm more interested in whether *anyone* does the horizontal cut... I don't think I've ever seen that outside of the laboratory.

Perhaps geometry is at work here. Diagonal ...cut sandwiches represent right triangles, which are pretty cool -- arguably more important than parallelograms, since parallelograms can be made from triangles. And of course, 3 is the magic number.

But also, notice that the golden ratio of 1:1.62 appears in vertical cut sandwiches, but does not appear in horizontal cut sandwiches. In our experiments here at Tastytronic Labs, our sample bread measures about 5.25 by 4.25 inches (the units of the United States of America!).

A vertical cut sandwich is roughly 2.63 x 4.25 inches, while a horizontal cut (known as "the devil's cut" in medieval times) results in a sandwich that is ~2.13 x 3.44. By applying the golden ratio (1:1.62) to 2.63 (vertical cut sandwich width), we get 4.26 -- almost exactly the vertical cut length. However, applying it to 2.13 (horizontal cut sandwich slice width) we only get 3.45 -- considerably less than the horizontal cut slice length.

And thus we find a possible explanation for why the "horizontal cut" is so rare. It's at least safe to say that Aristotle's mom did not cut sandwiches horizontally.

Sun Jul 26 08:43:17 PST "You wouldn't like me when I'm angry..." OR "Dr. Jekyll and Jiminy Cricket":

I'm a collector of odd facts. I remember hearing this one some time ago, about how grasshoppers morph into brutal locusts under certain conditions but I find that often the "facts" you hear word of mouth aren't always factual. (Unfortunately, a lot of facts in those 1001 Fascinating Fact books are often wrong too... I've thought of writing a 1001 Fascinating Falsehoods [you thought were facts!], but I'll just have to add that to my to do list.)

Anyway, it's true!. I guess grasshoppers are the poster-insect for serotonin induced mania.

Thu Oct 23 09:43:40 PST weird moments in the grocery store:

So, I was at Ralph's the other day, and what came over the PA but the love theme from Bladerunner! That reminds me of the time that Mel, my late night cashier at Jewel in Chicago, said that sometimes in the middle of the night they play weird stuff like classical music and whatever because they think nobody's listening.