Random 2
When Hannah finished speaking yesterday morning, I imagine that the expression on my face was “quizzical”. When she saw my expression, she said, “Aaaah! I’m talking like Myles Kitagawa.”
“Do you think that people in humid climates have to push back their cuticles?” Hannah had asked me. I think it reminded her of these kinds of situations:
http://mylesk.livejournal.com/129913.html
http://mylesk.livejournal.com/153017.html
Like Hawkeye Pierce on the old M*A*S*H television series, I sometimes stare at and smell my food. Last weekend, I was staring at the cut side of a grilled cheese sandwich.
“The veins of gold in the old Yukon deposits ran through quartz,” I told Hannah as we ate our lunch. “Quartz is a white rock, so it was this white rock with thick layers of gold running through it. In 1896, one of the three miners who are credited with making the discovery that started the Klondike Gold Rush, either George Carmack, Dawson Charlie, or Skookum Jim, remarked that ‘there were layers of gold as thick as cheese in a sandwich.’”
“Remember what I was saying the other day about gravity?” I then asked Hannah. I had explained that all matter has gravity, not just planets. A can of ravioli exerts its own gravitational pull on other things, but it is so weak compared to force of gravity that the Earth exerts on everything that you don’t notice it. “The Sun has enormous gravitational pull. It’s so great that it’s pulling hydrogen in and fusing the hydrogen atoms together so that they are changing from single nuclei hydrogen atoms into double nuclei helium atoms. That fusion releases energy that we get from the sun.”
“Deeper in the heart of a star, the helium is fusing into heavier and heavier elements. The forces within a burning star are strong enough to fuse metals as dense as nickel and iron. But to get a metal with the nuclear density of gold a star has to explode in a supernova, scattering matter into the universe into a huge debris field.”
“Each piece of debris has its own gravity, like a can of ravioli, and the debris starts to agglomerate, eventually forming planets. And because pieces of the exploded stars have gold in them, then parts of these newly formed planets will also have gold in them. So, the gold and silver in our rings and jewelry was created in the heart of an ancient, exploding star.”
That’s what I think about when I eat a grilled cheese sandwich.
It’s that mnemonic triptych: grilled cheese sandwiches, the Klondike Gold Rush, and supernovas that makes them all easy for me to remember. Memory Triangulation.
But I can see how talking about these connections might seem random to a casual listener.
“Do you think that people in humid climates have to push back their cuticles?” Hannah had asked me. I think it reminded her of these kinds of situations:
http://mylesk.livejournal.com/129913.html
http://mylesk.livejournal.com/153017.html
Like Hawkeye Pierce on the old M*A*S*H television series, I sometimes stare at and smell my food. Last weekend, I was staring at the cut side of a grilled cheese sandwich.
“The veins of gold in the old Yukon deposits ran through quartz,” I told Hannah as we ate our lunch. “Quartz is a white rock, so it was this white rock with thick layers of gold running through it. In 1896, one of the three miners who are credited with making the discovery that started the Klondike Gold Rush, either George Carmack, Dawson Charlie, or Skookum Jim, remarked that ‘there were layers of gold as thick as cheese in a sandwich.’”
“Remember what I was saying the other day about gravity?” I then asked Hannah. I had explained that all matter has gravity, not just planets. A can of ravioli exerts its own gravitational pull on other things, but it is so weak compared to force of gravity that the Earth exerts on everything that you don’t notice it. “The Sun has enormous gravitational pull. It’s so great that it’s pulling hydrogen in and fusing the hydrogen atoms together so that they are changing from single nuclei hydrogen atoms into double nuclei helium atoms. That fusion releases energy that we get from the sun.”
“Deeper in the heart of a star, the helium is fusing into heavier and heavier elements. The forces within a burning star are strong enough to fuse metals as dense as nickel and iron. But to get a metal with the nuclear density of gold a star has to explode in a supernova, scattering matter into the universe into a huge debris field.”
“Each piece of debris has its own gravity, like a can of ravioli, and the debris starts to agglomerate, eventually forming planets. And because pieces of the exploded stars have gold in them, then parts of these newly formed planets will also have gold in them. So, the gold and silver in our rings and jewelry was created in the heart of an ancient, exploding star.”
That’s what I think about when I eat a grilled cheese sandwich.
It’s that mnemonic triptych: grilled cheese sandwiches, the Klondike Gold Rush, and supernovas that makes them all easy for me to remember. Memory Triangulation.
But I can see how talking about these connections might seem random to a casual listener.