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From The Consumerist:

If you object to George Costanza's habit of double dipping—now you have a scientific study to back it up.

The study was conducted by Prof. Paul L. Dawson, a food microbiologist, who decided to experiment with "double dipping" after watching a Seinfeld re-run in which a character named "Timmy" objects to George's dubious dipping habits.

Professor Dawson told the New York Times that he expected "little or no microbial transfer" as a result of double dipping.

He was wrong.

Double dippers are just as gross as you've always suspected:

The team of nine students instructed volunteers to take a bite of a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into about a tablespoon of a test dip. They then repeated the process with new crackers, for a total of either three or six double dips per dip sample. The team then analyzed the remaining dip and counted the number of aerobic bacteria in it. They didn't determine whether any of the bacteria were harmful, and didn't count anaerobic bacteria, which are harder to culture, or viruses.

There were six test dips: sterile water with three different degrees of acidity, a commercial salsa, a cheese dip and chocolate syrup.

On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater's mouth to the remaining dip.

Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.

Yuck. So, what now? "The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don't know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you," says Professor Dawson.

Germs. You can't trust 'em.

Labels: food, Seinfeld, things I've learned

11 comments

Somewhere in the past couple of months I've picked up a new quirk. When you hold a drink from Starbucks or McDonald's, your hand forms a letter C, right? I have developed this notion that I'm going to drop things because I can't hold them tightly enough, so to combat this surety, I curl my pinkie finger in underneath the cup, forming a little ledge for the cup to sit on.

It struck me recently that this might be a little strange. I've been holding glasses and cups for most of my life, so why am I just now figuring I'm going to start dropping them?

One thing some of you might not understand is that this sort of thing seems completely normal and logical to me when I institute it:

• Problem: cup might fall out of my hand because I can't grip it tightly enough.
• Solution: form ledge with pinkie for cup to sit on.

It isn't until much later that it hits me that this might not be the most sane thing, coming up with solutions to imagined problems.

This new oddity seems to go right along with my belief that the hanging lights and ceiling fans in the auditorium at church are going to fall on my head - no where else, mind you, do I have that thought. It's only the ones at church.

I'm reading a book right now where the author has just talked about how he had conversations with Emily Dickinson when he was spending a lot of time not around other people. I kind of shook my head at that one, thinking it was silly for him to talk to imaginary or long-dead people, and it was right in the middle of me telling the cats that I thought it was silly that I realized I didn't have much place to think it was silly.

His point ended up being - and I think he's on to something - that we need to be around people so we don't lose sight of "normal" behavior and how it is we're supposed to be around people. Of course, it's still pretty easy for me to think that forming a pinkie ledge for my drink is a good idea, because I'm pretty sure even Emily Dickinson would say that it's not good to drop your drinks around other people.

Labels: quirks

15 comments

I got a call the other day from a number I didn't recognize (so, of course, I didn't answer it), and after the voicemail notification sounded off, I checked the message. It was the lady who has cut my hair for about two years, if I'm counting correctly. She was calling to let me know that she was going to be working at a different haircutting place ("salon" sounds so hoity-toity) once January 29th rolled around. She didn't actually say "so you should start going to that place," but it was pretty clear that's what she meant. She even mentioned that it was going to be $4 cheaper.

My initial response was panic. I'm not such a fan of change, as many of you know, and I'd gone through this changing haircuttists before. So, panic.

But then I thought it was nice that she called me to let me know that she was going elsewhere. I realize her motivation wasn't necessarily motivated by altruism, but it was still nice for me since my last regular person sorta just up and left with no advance warning.

Then, after that, I started thinking about how I'd been going to the same place for 4+ years - it seemed weird to think about abandoning the place. This put me back in a quandary: do I stick with the place, or stick with the person?

What would you do?

Labels: poll, quirks

10 comments

Good enough is never good enough.

-A.B. Guthrie

That's supposed to be an inspirational phrase - do better if you can! - but I've always found it to be kind of depressing. I know I'm taking it wrong when I read it as "no matter how good you do something, it could always be done better," but that's how it always strikes me. It comes from the same place that knowing there is always someone better at doing the thing you do best. In a world of 6 billion people, that seems like the only logical solution, so I like to think of myself as a "realist." To most folks, realism sounds like pessimism, and is often even confused with fatalism, and there isn't much you can do to change their mind about how you come across to them.

I think maybe it breaks down something like this:

• Optimism: "I could get really awesome at this!"
• Pessimism: "I'll never be able to do any better."
• Realism: "I'll never be the best at this in the world, but with work I could at least be better than I am right now."

I'm shooting for realist, but maybe there's some truth to other's assessments about where I fall. Guthrie was specifically talking about writing, and it's often been said that good editing makes great writing, so the idea is that you keep working on it and reworking it until you get it right.

I think maybe I need a good editor.

Labels: it's been said

4 comments

Labels: comic

1 comments

Are you familiar with lolcats? I'm guessing the majority of you are, but for the rest of you, it's basically a picture of a cat with a caption on it, meant to be humorous. The nomenclature is rooted in the "LOL" ("laughing out loud") of instant messaging and texting speaking patterns.

If you follow my Flickr page at all, you've already seen the following picture and you might even have read Marshall's comment on it. Since ICHC has a builder that lets you submit lolcats, I thought I'd go ahead and submit Nutmeg's picture with Marshall's caption.

moar funny pictures

Clicking on the picture will take you to a page where, if you are so inclined, you can rate Nutmeg and her caption. I won't tell you what to rate it, but if you're not amused, don't feel you need to rate it :)

Now, those of you who know Nutmeg know that "Rated G Kitteh" is probably the biggest misnaming of her ever - we all know she cusses like a sailor - but think of it as her acting a part and maybe that will help.


Oh, and for those of you who like dogs more than cats, there's now a loldogs site, too.

Labels: cats

3 comments

Despite what it looks like, I am not following up Beatles Week with Vanilla Ice Week (regardless of Brent's suggestion).

On Saturday, a bunch of Careerians went to an Indiana Ice hockey game (weirdly, their webpage has an ad before you get to any content.) It was only the second hockey game I've ever been to, and while it certainly was fun, nothing occurred during the game that would elicit a reaction anywhere near this:

From L. to R: Jen, some of Melissa's hair (I think maybe she's glad she didn't show up in a picture where I look like a raving loonie), me, Jodi, and Melissa (a different Melissa!)

That picture actually shows up on on the Indiana Ice website, in the photo gallery for this game, along with a few other pictures of our group (thanks, Jonell, for finding them!). I think we can all be glad there is no video of me trying to get a free T-shirt by whooping and hollering. What's a little loss of dignity in the face of getting a free T-shirt? Sadly, it didn't pan out, so lost some dignity for nothing. That probably would have happened without the prospect of a free T-shirt anyway, so I'm okay with it.

As I've mentioned, the game was fun. Hockey's kind of like a fast moving, more violent soccer. While no actual fights broke out (much to Lee's disappointment), there were plenty of solid hits. It was relatively high-scoring for a hockey game (4-3) and even went into overtime and ended in a shootout, so it's hard to complain about the lack of a fight.

What was more interesting to me was the immediate sense of community bestowed by the game. I'd never been to an Ice game before and was only barely aware there even was a hockey team in the state, but there I was rooting for the Ice like I'd gone to school with each of them. Collective pronouns were par for the course - "We need a goal!" "Our guy just smacked into that other guy!" and that kind of thing. It wasn't just me, either. We were all rooting for "our" team, made "ours" because it says "Indiana" right on their jerseys and we, being Hoosiers, had to root for them. If it had been two Indiana teams, we would have had to choose between them using a complex algorithm using geographic proximity, experiences in the respective towns, and location of family and friends.

I was again reminded of the Jerry Seinfeld bit where he talks about sports (paraphrased): "You got a guy on your team and you love him. He's the greatest guy there is. During the offseason, he gets traded to a different team, and when that team plays against your team, you hate the guy. He's the worst guy ever. What's different? The guy hasn't changed. All that's changed are the clothes he's wearing. We're rooting for laundry, basically."

I'm not a full-on Sports Guy by any stretch of the imagination. I don't memorize stats, I barely know the players on my favorite teams, and I don't plan my day around watching games. Even so, I find it's easy to get excited in the sports atmosphere. There's a sense of camaraderie with the other fans, even if you're rooting for different teams - rivalry is its own specific sort of camaraderie - and it's a good feeling to have that connection with other members of the human race, even if it's for something as unimportant as a minor league hockey game.

It was a good time, and I really only have two quibbles:

1. Our team lost.
2. They never once played "Ice Ice Baby" in the arena, a song that you would just assume would be their theme song, wouldn't you?

Labels: career class, Seinfeld, sports

10 comments

It took me a little over a month to finish up a week's worth of posts. My very first post on the subject figured something like that might happen, so it's nice to see I'm right about some things. The holidays played havoc on my writing "schedule," and I appreciate your patience.

I enjoyed Beatles Week and I hope you did, too. In fact, I enjoyed it enough that I Imagine (ha! fooled you - that's a John Lennon song, not a Beatles one) I'll do posts under that banner in the future and stick them under the Beatles Week tag, even though they won't be a week's worth in a row necessarily. I like to think that I'll make the first week in December Beatles Week every year, but we'll just see how that goes.

For posterity's sake, all of the Beatles Week posts are collected here.

Labels: Beatles Week

4 comments

Song Info (from Beatlesongs): This song is from the Let It Be album and was 100% written by Lennon, who also sang lead. He said that it was one of his favorite songs lyrically, but not one of the best recordings. He said that he was irritated with his [first] wife and her going on about something "drove me out of bed. I didn't want to write [the song], I was just slightly irritable and I went downstairs and I couldn't get to sleep until I put it on paper."

I've been a science-fiction fan for as far back as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories of watching TV with my dad (before we became a "no TV for kids" family) were of Dr. Who and Star Trek. After the "no TV" rule, I became a voracious reader (which was, I think, part of the intended effect) and I discovered sci-fi books. I don't know what my official starting sci-fi books were, but I remember reading books based on Dr. Who pretty early on - stick with what you know, right? - and Star Trek novelizations were a staple for a long time, even into adulthood. There isn't much to them, but familiar characters make for enjoyable reading, and they were a quick read.

Of course, I eventually discovered Asimov and Bradbury and Gibson and a hundred other authors who no one's ever heard of. There was a Science Fiction subsection of the Fiction section in our local library, and it amounted to around three shelving sections, not much in the grand scheme of things. Our school library tended to focus more on biographies and the like (though they did have Lewis), so I tended to read and re-read a lot of the same titles from the local library. I distinctly remember they had a total of three Star Wars novels, and I read them a couple of times each.

Sci-fi sort of gets lumped into the same category as romance novels most of the time. "Worthless" and "stupid" get thrown around a lot in discussions, and depictions of laser guns and robots don't do much to dispel those notions. When sci-fi is done well, though, it can be a fantastic tool for observation of the human condition. The addition of the fantastic can allow for a clearer view of the normal. Even the original Star Trek series was able to address issues that would never have made it past the censors in a "regular" show. It might seem strange to us these days, but having a multi-ethnic crew in the latter half of the 1960s was huge. America was gearing up for a Cold War, and here was a Russian on the bridge. And did you know that Star Trek featured the first interracial kiss shown on television? Pretty groundbreaking for a "stupid sci-fi show with lousy sets." Hidden under the trappings of sci-fi, the writers were able to bring topics like racism and genocide to the table, with an eye towards generating discussion.

Of course, along with all of that, sci-fi sets the imaginative mind on its way. In sci-fi, space travel is as common as getting on an airplane. Robots do all the menial work (until they get too big for their britches and turn us all into batteries, of course). Communication is instant. Computers run everything. Any of that sound familiar? If vacuuming is a bothersome chore to you, you can get yourself a Roomba. Do you have a cellphone that flips open? Why not just call it a communicator? And, really, it's a pretty short hop from "Don't tase me, bro!" to "Don't phase me, bro!" if you think about it. Sci-fi has not only imagined the future, it has in many cases shaped the future.

Is it so hard to imagine space travel, then? Space Tourism is a commonly used phrase already, and the assumption is that it will happen, it's just a matter of time. Once more people are doing it, it'll get cheaper and better. The question, as I see it, is where are these space tourists going to go? Is it enough to escape Earth's atmosphere, orbit a few times, and come back? Initially it will be, though $200k for the privilege seems steep. People have been talking about Mars a lot in the last few years, so there might eventually be a base there. I've said it before, but I think we should start with a base on the Moon. It's closer, and I think still being able to see Earth might help people there still feel a connection to it.

With all of my talk of love for sci-fi, though, I won't be catching any flights to the Moon any time soon (assuming they start happening soon, that is). While I love the idea of space travel and I love the thought of being able to see Saturn's rings up close and I'm curious about what it feels like to be free of gravity, I can't get past the idea of being in a little tin box in the vastness of space. It's the same reason I never want to be in a submarine, really. A man-made environment surrounded by an environment that will kill you with the only thing keeping it at bay being the man-made environment? No thanks. How many times have you had to get your car repaired in the last 5 years? There are no tow trucks for submarines, and even fewer, I suspect, for spaceships.

It's strange, this dissonance - I love the thought of "future," of a shiny and bright place replete with robots, of an address in the Sea of Tranquility, but I can't bring myself to imagine getting there.

Labels: Beatles Week

3 comments