Newsflash

Busy making the most of your life? Doing activities? Enjoying the sunshine? Well, pin a rose on your nose. While you've been gallivanting around town, I've been scouring the Internet for the week's top news stories.


→  If you have blue eyes, then you're probably an alcoholic. Sorry! Don't shoot the messenger. If you have a problem with this hypothesis, then take it up with those yahoos over at University of Vermont.

Image by 8thstar via Wikimedia Commons

→  Scott Disick, husband to Kourtney Kardashian, was spotted canoodling* with some 25-year-old stylist in France. Uh oh. Let's just say, I called it.  

*Note: canoodle doesn't mean chat.


→  The 'Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp' trailer came out today. Everybody's very excited and rightfully so.



→  Matt Damon has a ponytail now. Bless him.



And with that, I'm going to bed. Day two of babysitting starts bright and early tomorrow.


Cheerio,
Margaret

WARNING: Graphic images ahead

Andy "Ram" Williamson is tonight's guest blogger and, like all nerds must do from time to time, he's analysing whether or not he fits in with society. Luckily, he's created a fancy diagram to determine where his opinions stack up against the norm!

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The hardest part about writing these blogs is ambition. It’s essentially impossible to pick a topic with the whole world at your fingertips. Now I know why Stephen Hawking writes books about the whole universe, or the whole of time. Coward. 

Anyway, if you can’t discover something new, at least you can describe things well. To stick with the scientist theme: Newton and Einstein were famous for the ways that they classified the universe, not the things they invented. Ok, ok, excuses out the way. 

This blog is all about how we see things. Whether the world orbits you, or you orbit the world, it doesn’t matter; it’s all about where you’re standing. 

There was a guy at university who had this Venn diagram t-shirt: 

I absolutely love Venn diagrams (who doesn’t?). Although, looking back, this one actually isn’t correct (you can’t have ‘Music I used to like’ inside the circle ‘Music I like’). I was pretty impressed by it nevertheless. That t-shirt would definitely go on my list: ‘Things I used to like’. 

Although the logic was flawed, the approach was sound. When you think about it, it’s possible to plot everything on a scale of popularity: 

So far so boring. BUT, where it gets interesting is when you add in a second axis, based on your own personal tastes. 

This is where it gets spicy. Now you can plot where you go along with the herd, and where you go against the stream, salmon-style (or Salmond-style if you’re a Scotch politics aficionado). You can also nuance your own likes – there’s room for strong or moderate dislike, and degrees of (un)popularity. 

I had a crack at filling in my own diagram: 

So what do we learn? The main conclusion is that IHEL is by far the easiest bit to fill in. I guess that makes sense: stuff everyone likes is always in the media, and you notice it more if you hate it. ILEL is also pretty easy to do, but probably the most boring. No one cares that you like things that everyone else likes – you’re supposed to! 

On the hatred side of things (or at least less popular, if hate is too strong a word for it), IHEH is pretty hard to do, at least without being super obvious and putting in stuff like ‘prejudice’ or ‘racism’. 

But the real test of character is the ILEH quadrant. That’s what makes you you. All the great people of history are defined by the ILEH section. Martin Luther King Jr. would have had ‘Civil Rights’ in that section; Gandhi and George Washington would have had ‘independence’ (boo!). It’s rare people get famous for beliefs outside of that section. Similarly, if you think about your friends and family, they’re usually definable by what’s in that section too. So I guess that section is the most interesting. Which is pretty bleak when you think about what I put in there. Oh well. 

The only thing the diagram doesn’t show is apathy. I am (ironically) a MASSIVE fan of apathy. I did figure out a way to make apathy an axis, but it involves building a 3-D structure. If there’s enough of a clamour, I’ll put some IKEA-style instructions online. I’m not holding my breath. Any more axes than that and we’re going to need 4 dimensions. Which, I suppose, brings us back to Stephen Hawking. 

Apparently it’s good form to end these blogs with a ‘call to action’ (according to Ms. M. Space herself). So, in the comments, tell me one thing from one of the four segments on YOUR diagram. The more surprising, the better. There’ll be a prize for the best answer. It’ll be a turkey hat or something. I can promise anything I want – I’m only doing this once. Hahahahaha! 

So long suckers! 

Andy

Long in the tooth

Not my teeth.
Image by dozenist via Wikimedia Commons

Teeth are such a buzzkill. Always having to be brushed, flossed and doted upon. The dreaded dentist appointments. The sensitive toothpaste. The fillings. The root canals. ENOUGH ALREADY. Let's be honest, teeth are a problem. They're a bloody medieval annoyance. It's 2014—isn't it time we find a solution?

Well, you might be surprised to hear the answer already exists. Scientists at Kings College London and the University of Leeds have invented a way to reverse tooth decay. They've done it!

From the article:

Nigel Pitts from the Dental Institute at King's College London said, "The way we treat teeth today is not ideal - when we repair a tooth by putting in a filling, that tooth enters a cycle of drilling and re-filling as, ultimately, each "repair" fails. Not only is our device kinder to the patient and better for their teeth, but it's expected to be at least as cost-effective as current dental treatments. Along with fighting tooth decay, our device can also be used to whiten teeth."

WHAT!? Why isn't this being rolled out in dentist offices everywhere!? Maybe it's because fixing tooth decay permanently will mean a lot less business for dentists. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but if the dental crown fits...

BB and D

Every family has its colloquialisms, its own set of slang that you gradually learn nobody outside your extended family says. We have:

• Gunders (underwear)
• Toe-do (large green garbage can, or "rolly bin" if you're British)
• Hukilau (thingamajig)
• Sloboblian (extended form of "slob")
• Vivian butancles (your bottom)
• Po-to (poached eggs and toast)
• Pudin (term of endearment/vagina) 

Another one we have is 'BB and D', which stands for 'bad breath and dogs', which basically means really really really bad breath. Sometimes we sing it to the tune of "and many more" (what you sing after at the end of the 'Happy Birthday' song): bad breath and doggggggs!

The New Deal

Today my niece Keeley was brushing her teeth in the living room of the rental flat they're staying in.

Anna: "Keeley, do you brush your tongue?"

Keeley: "Yeah." She sticks out her tongue and brushes it. 

My mom: "You know, that's a new deal. You never used to hear about brushing the tongue. That's a new deal."


What are your tooth-related anecdotes? How often do you floss? Let me know in the comments!

Love,
Margaret