It’s been a while since I posted anything on this dear dark qualm, so yesterday I sat down in the Espresso Royale on campus, and wrote up some reflections on the early writings of a certain seventeenth century philosopher.  I’m writing about him now, as I try and finish up my final chapter, and it turns out that there are some rather interesting somewhat fun things that just won’t fit into the diss.  So I took what ended up to be more than an hour, to carefully write up a lovely post on the subject. 

Then I hit “Post,” and was of course taken to the “You’ve Been Inactive for Awhile” Espresso Royale homepage, and all the lovely meditations I had produced for you were forever lost, tossed into a deep cave, as it were.

Now it’s dusk, and I’m sitting outside cafe Kopi, surrounded by smokers, and the air is as usual unbreathable, and I have just enough time to share with you a consolation revelation which I had yesterday afternoon, concerning pipe cleaners:

They’re used to clean pipes!  Like, the kind you smoke.  Remarkably, I somehow didn’t realize this until yesterday.  (Side note: one of the smokers just spent about a minute clearing his throat before standing up and spitting in the street right across from me. . .).

I suppose that prior to this, I’d somehow assumed that these were made mostly for children’s projects involving gumdrops or marshmallows.  Who knows what revelations will dawn upon me tomorrow?

Another side-note: Have you all been watching Everyday Edisons on PBS?  Of course you have!  But did you know that my brother’s one of the featured product designers on it?  He’s had quite a lot of camera time during the past several episodes, actually.  We here at tdq are quite proud.  I think the final episode will be airing this coming weekend, so be sure to watch and see if you can spot the tdq relation. 

Try and guess whether this is from: The Onion, or the New York Times:

Obesity can spread from person to person, much like a virus, researchers are reporting today. . . The effects, Dr. Christakis said, “highlight the importance of a spreading process, a kind of social contagion, that spreads through the network.” …

It also may mean that the way to avoid becoming fat is to avoid having fat friends.

That is not the message they meant to convey, say the study investigators, Dr. Christakis and his colleague, James Fowler, an associate professor of political science at the University of California in San Diego.

You don’t want to lose a friend who becomes obese, Dr. Christakis said. Friends are good for your overall health, he explains. So why not make friends with a thin person, he suggests.

Sheesh.

At 109 years old, he is England’s last surviving veteran of World War I.