Category Archives: Physics

vid: aurora borealis over BC

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Welcome to my world. Well, actually the mountains get in the way most of the time, but I’ve seen the Northern Lights two or three times here in Vancouver, and they can be seen throughout most of BC when the sunspots align just right and all the polar bears are facing north north-west, so the light reflects off their silvery backs.

This video is timelapse photography from Fugly.com, and it’s kind of a shame, as one of the things I adore about the Aurora Borealis is the magnificently unhurried way the curtains of light wave in the sky. Also, this is all-green, and the purples and reds and indigos I know and love are sadly missed. My parents used to wake me up when I was little (and lived in Winnipeg) to watch the Northern Lights, and the self-evident magic of it, the middle of the nightishness of it, and the fact that it was considered important enough to wake us up for always associated it in my mind with Christmas. I didn’t even read The Father Christmas Letters till much later, but they explain plenty.

headline o’ the day: Mortician risks life to save corpses

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Full version:

Mortician risks life to save corpses from burning funeral home.
Here’s to you, Mr. I Take My Job Too Seriously Guy

Seriously.

I suppose it coulda been worse: it could have been a crematorium! via Fark, of course. Who else would come up with a headline like that, eh?

INDIANAPOLIS — Saying they wanted to spare families even more pain, two Indianapolis morticians went back inside their burning funeral home to try to save bodies.

The pair rolled out caskets containing bodies as firefighters aimed their hoses at flames at the rear of the funeral home. They managed to retrieve three bodies before the flames became too intense for them to go inside.

After the fired died down they returned for the seven remaining bodies. None was damaged.

Yeah, but were there any survivors?

Newfie tragedy, I think...

photo o’ the day: shadowcamels

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from National Geographic, via Raj. Look closely, or you’ll miss the actual camels.

Shadowcamels

cooking salmon in your dishwasher

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Salmon, ready for duty!‘Round these parts I am the dishwasher, but I recall the glory days when I had one of these handy, if energy-spendthriftish, machines. It did indeed make a nice poached salmon, as the Surreal Gourmet claims and every BCer could tell you.

Actually, the best alternative use of a dishwasher was the one the techs at Starbucks came up with. When the dishwashers died (as they all must) they converted them into salmon smokers, and they worked beautifully, too. Wood chips in the engine compartment, salmon on the racks, the whole thing clad in airtight stainless steel; it was perfect.

In any case, here, via BoingBoing, is the immortal “How to Poach a Salmon in Your Dishwasher” recipe, from the Surreal Gourmet.

Poaching fish in the dishwasher is a virtually Now THAT is a salmon!foolproof way to shock your friends, prepare a succulent meal and do the dishes — all at the same time. I’ve poached salmon in more than 100 dishwashers on three continents. There’s never been a dull party.

It all started with the release of my last book, The Surreal Gourmet Entertains. To promote it, I traveled the globe throwing spontaneous dinner parties wherever I could rustle up a kitchen and a willing audience. The hazard of having a good publicist, however, is that guests tend to arrive with impossibly high expectations. Instead of trying to compete with their fantasies, I countered by turning an urban legend into a practical cooking method. My kitchen resembled a mad laboratory as I pushed my dishwasher well beyond the uses covered by its limited warranty. With a minimum of collateral damage, the process of testing and tweaking the following technique was good fun and yielded results that even surprised me.

As it happens, salmon’s very forgiving. Although temperature and cycle durations vary with each machine, a little more or less “washing” doesn’t greatly affect the results. To heighten the drama — and prove that you have nothing up your sleeve — let your dinner guests crowd around the dishwasher when you load the fish. Then, when the cycle’s complete, invite them back to witness the unloading.

Here’s all you need to know to set your doubts aside, put dinner in the dishwasher and watch your multitasking kitchen appliance steal the show.

Poached Salmon

and they call them stealth because???

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Stealthy, eh?

A Gothamist reader sent these in. I know the whole idea is that they’re invisible to radar, but they fly so slowly that they’re visible to the naked eye and vulnerable to the naked eye whose owner is also in possession of a cellphone.

Spy magazine did a brilliant article wherein they looked at other bomb delivery systems that could be had for the same money as one Stealth bomber; the most efficient was, if memory serves, 7,500 Cessna 172s. No airforce or artillery in the world could shoot down all 7,500 in time to prevent the bomb from dropping. And finally, a use for all those seized drug dealers’ planes.

Don't look! We're very expensively invisible!