Ploafmaster General

Imagine you had a Starburst candy. You unwrap it and are greeted by the faint aroma of strawberry, so you toss the chewy morsel 'twixt your choppers and start gnawing.

Then you remember that it's not Starburst, but Zicam, masquerading as strawberry candy until the fifth stroke of your jaw, whereupon you realize that the "candy" is a starchy, chalky paste which threatens to coat the entirety of your mouth's interior with it's unholy textured homeopathy.

Ack! I need to wash this foulness out of my mouth. But WAIT! I can't drink anything for fifteen minutes - thirty if it's citrus! No matter, I'll just eat somthi -- nope. Can't eat anything for fifteen minutes either. Drat.

I'll just have to stick it out for a little bit.

And repeat every three hours.

I think it's time for my annual malady, and it appears to be striking me around the same time as last year - in that precious home stretch before my 10 day Christmas break.

Thankfully, I've started hitting the Zicam much earlier this time, so my hope is the illness will depart soon. Last year was a self-inflicted hell - dragging myself to work so I wouldn't have to give up any of my days off between Christmas and the New Year. I'm hoping I don't "have" to do that again this year.

I just have to report that one of my best friends, and indeed one of the two best men in my wedding, Dave - proposed to his girlfriend last night atop Libbie Hill Park. Naturally, she said yes :-)

I'm not sure exactly when they'll be getting married, but I believe it will be sometime in the summer.

This is the kind of news that makes me happiest - hearing about the joyous events in the lives of my friends and family.

Go Dave!

Just a quick note before I head out to a party...

Val and I got our Christmas tree today, and it's all decorated now! It really feels like home!

Now we have to decorate the rest of the house!

Q: How does a Thermos work?

A: You know, everybody asked relatively mundane questions this week - even Jake, though asked in a goofy tone. Unless I were to make up patently ridiculous answers, it's pretty difficult to make any response humorous. So I chose the question that I recklessly assumed my half-dozen readers know the least about. The Thermos.

The Thermos, of course, is a colloquialism of "Vacuum Flask" much in the same way the we Americans use Kleenex to describe a tissue. For simplicity, and the sake of efficiency in my otherwise bombastic typing style, I'll refer to our subject as a Thermos.

Continuing down the road of reckless assumption, I'm going to postulate that we all know the main purpose of a Thermos: to keep hot things hot, and cold things cold. A rather rustic description, but adequate no less. So, to paraphrase the question posed by my brother Mugs: How does it work?

The theory behind a Thermos is to remove as much of the transfer of heat between an object and its surroundings as possible. This works because of a vacuum surrounding the flask (go figure). "Why does this work?" you ask. Why, I'm glad you inquired! Let's talk about the riveting world of heat transfer!

There are three ways to transfer heat: conduction, convection, and radiation.

Conduction is the direct transfer of heat from one body of matter to another: the heating coil on your stove gets hot, and it's in direct contact with the bottom of your sauce pan. It conducts heat from the coil to the pan, bringing your red sauce to a slow boil that spits flecks of staining marinara all over your stove top and surrounding counter. Next time put a lid on it, buddy.

Convection is transfer of heat through flowing matter, most typically gas or liquid. This is how a convection oven works - hot air blows over the food. Because the air is moving, the turkey in the oven that you forgot to thaw doesn't get a chance to cool off the surrounding air. That surrounding air is constantly replaced. Convection is the biggest culprit in home heating and cooling problems, and that's what 99% of home insulation is designed to block.

Radiation is transfer of heat through electromagnetic waves or particles, such as microwaves or light. There need not be any contact between matter for radiation to work because radiation heats by exciting the particles with which it comes in contact; in the same way you warm up by jumping around in place while waiting at a cold bus stop, the particles heat up when the radiation causes them to vibrate in place.

The vacuum in a Thermos prevents two of the three forms of heat transfer - conduction, and convection. The inner wall of a Thermos is surrounded by a vacuum which cannot transfer through conduction because there's no matter inside the vacuum. The only places to conduct heat are where the inner wall is bonded to the outer wall near the cap, and the cap itself.

There is almost no way to transfer heat by convection when there's an air-tight seal on the Thermos. No air or moisture flow can effect the contents. There are minimal effects of what are called, "convection currents," but the impact is so negligible as to be nearly ignorable (unless you kept something in the Thermos for weeks).

Even though radiation can heat through a vacuum, we rarely have to worry about radiation affecting the contents of a Thermos. The outer wall of the Thermos blocks light, and you wouldn't be microwaving a Thermos unless you intended to heat it. Certainly we don't worry about radiation cooling the contents of the Thermos.

There you have it! My thermodynamics course in college found a use after all - the bloated pedantry of a blogger!

Start thinking of your questions for next week's installment!

Man, I've been hooked on Heroes since the first episode. But now I have to wait until the vaguely-defined period of "until the new year" before another new episode.

I still feel like it's a total rip-off of the X-Men concept. I still think half of the acting is cheesy.

I still think the show is totally freaking awesome.

Heroes is like the Pop Music of TV shows. Not a lot of substance, but full of hooks, and just good enough to get stuck in your head. The next new episode (whenever that is) can't get here soon enough.

I have to link to this hilarious post on my friend Alexis' site...SO funny.

Here's a ripe ol' commercial from 80s land:
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lO4j3wbpZM&w=425&h=350])

Just read a fine piece of humor at a fine site called the nonist.

Chicky-check it.

Hey there, hi there, ho there!

Time for Ask Dan #4. Post them thar questions in the comments section, and I'll pick on by Wednesday evening, answering by the end of the day on Friday.

Howdy howdy!

My parents are truly lucky. Nestled in the middle-of-nowhere town of Keysville, VA, they have access to pizza and Italian food that's hard to beat until you travel north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Pino's Pizza serves up some of the finest pie outside of New Jersey, and certainly better than most anything I can find in Richmond. I have to drive at least 15 minutes to find passable fare while my country-dwelling parents are about a mile from a treat.

I gathered new appreciation for the joint today, however, when Val and I took my mom and step-dad to Pino's for lunch in celebration of Mom's birthday. See, we used to get pizza there almost every Friday evening when I lived at home, and Mom and Paulie continued that tradition even after all the kids were out of the house. I found out when entering the restaurant, however, that my parents had stopped going regularly in the interest of preserving their collective health. Mimo, the proprietor, chided Paulie in a thick Sicilian accent for his absence, but was clearly happy to see us show up. Discussion, as between friends, followed for a few moments about zeppoli (an off-the-menu treat), life, and work before we were told to sit wherever we liked.

Paulie and my mom are each half Italian which is rare in a small Southern town, so perhaps that enables such camaraderie, but it was pleasant to see a business owner treat a regular (or former regular) with such genuine friendliness. In honor of my mom's birthday, ALL OF US were offered a serving of tiramisu. While I paid for the meal at the front counter Paulie, Mimo, and I discussed off-the-menu ideas that would bring my parents back to regular status.

I left with a feeling of connectedness to that establishment - a mutual feeling of provision, in that we provided a portion of the success of Mimo's business, and he our gastronomic pleasure. I felt a real desire to foster that feeling of neighborliness - an Old World interconnected sense of community, whereupon each citizen contributes to each other's well being. A sense of community that's fading even from the small towns here in the American South, where you know the tailor, the butcher, the restaurateur, the mail man, the sheriff, etc.

This is what draws me so to small businesses. I want to operate one. I want to work with them. I want to help them succeed. I want them to help me succeed. I'm not talking about a veiled form of nepotism here - I'm talking about community.

Not to implicitly create a Dan Asks post, but am I a bad person for going to my company's "holiday" party exclusively for the free food and alcohol?

I feel less and less connected to Corporate America with each passing week and with the exception of a few coworkers on my team, I stared blankly around the reception hall this evening, wondering what the heck I was doing there.

Of course, by fabulous chance, the John Wynntet was the band, and they definitely rocked "Take the A Train" and "So What."

And my oh my...the roast beef was awesome.

Holy crap...It's McSweeney's time again, folks.

Read this collection of food reviews, but take particular note of the description of "oven baked brownie squares."

Q: Pleasure potential aside, why the JFK do men have nipples?

A: To get to the other side.

Wait...no. Seriously, this is a question pondered by sundry and wiser men than I, yet still unanswered with any certainty. From Aristotle to Darwin, thinkers and scientists have proffered such theories as left-over vestiges from a "father feeds the babies" evolutionary history. This may be possible - after all, we have the whole (albeit underdeveloped) setup: nipple, mammary gland, nerve endings, blood vessels. It's also still possible to cause male lactation with either enough estrogen or enough physical stimulation (in rare cases). But we generally don't see men lining up for estrogen treatments so they can feed their young'ns.

I tend to stick with the whole "pleasure potential" explanation myself.

That's it! Ask Dan #3 fades into the vague memories of the 6 (or dare I be so haughty as to assume 7?) occasional readers of my verbal drivel. Keep a sharp eye for the next Ask Dan installment!

Alright...Thanksgiving is over, I have heat, and I have to settle into a groove, because I have four full weeks of work ahead before a much needed Christmas break - 10 full days in a row with no work.

Time to set my teeth and press on...

Thankfully I have plenty of distractions, because I have a front door to hang, a house to decorate, Ruby on Rails to learn, a novel to read, two birthdays in between, and a steady stream of tasks at work.

Hey hey hey, it's time for Ask Dan #3.

Chris got a head start this week with a comment on my answer to Ask Dan #2. Here 'tis:

Question - is it better to rake the leaves in your yard often (weekly) or just wait until all the leaves are off the trees and have a leaf-clearing blowout party (involving friends, pizza, and beer).[sic]

Go ahead and post your questions in the comments section, and I'll pick one by Wednesday evening, answering by Friday evening.

Ciao,
Daniel

Q: How can refried beans still be so tasty even though EVERY SINGLE time I open a can, I violently recoil due to the preciseness with which they resemble canned dog or cat food?

A: I believe this is a simple answer, really, as there are many other foods that tempt ye olde buds-de-taste while sharing the visual qualities of canine victuals.

We are gluttons for punishment.

Gastrointestinal punishment, that is. Consider the nutritional value of foods in the "eat it for the taste and not the looks" department. I'll start with the refried beans, and all I have to say to get my point across is GAS. Crampy intestines followed by noxious blowouts.

Another fine example is corned beef hash. If ever a food for people resembled dog food, it was hash. Chopped meat and potatoes, bound together in a can by a mysterious mixture of seasoning and goo. Not only does this look wrong in every sense of the word as it issues forth from a cracked Dinty Moore can, it smells unholy as well. Until you cook it. Then you have a crispy, savory, hearty pile of acid reflux stew.

Though I feel my point's made clear, I'll share one more example: sausage. This culinary compost heap is a "link" to our past, fighting for survival by preserving and eating every last part of an animal. Composed of pieces of fat and meat (and in the industrially-produced meat packing industry, "meat" is used loosely), encased in sheep intestine, then cooked up by any available heat application, eating sausage is the nutritional equivalent of a cholesterol injection.

All these foods, however, share the common denominator of tastiness. We probably first experienced these foods as children before learning of their unappetizing initial states, leaving a lingering desire to consume them that overwhelms our revulsion at the site of slop-in-a-tin.

So that does it for Ask Dan #2. Stay tuned for Ask Dan #3, and start thinking of those questions!

Now pardon me as I go eat some gravy made out of turkey entrails...

These past few days I've been listening to Sufjan Stevens' Songs for Christmas album. While it officially released today, I got it Thursday afternoon because I supported the artist by pre-ordering the set from his label's site. It's a collection of five EPs he's recorded at home every year since 2001 (missing only 2004) comprised of his take on traditional carols as well as originals.

In short: BUY THIS ALBUM.

Why? Here are a couple reasons, in no particular order:
1. The music. Sufjan's covers are wonderful treatments of classic hymnal carols such as "Once in David's Royal City" and "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." He also thoughtfully includes non-carol hymns with content befitting the Christmas subject, such as "Holy, holy, holy." Especially excellent, however, are his original pieces. Sufjan manages to capture a "Christmas Song" feel in songs which still sound very much like his creations. Thoughtful lyrics and intricate orchestration - his hallmarks - are present as expected. The subject is simply Christmas rather than a state's popular historical figure. Highlights here include "Sister Winter" and "Star of Wonder."

2. The box set itself. The album comes in a fold-open box containing the five EPs in their own sleeves with details about each on the back. There's also a humorous Christmas comic strip, stickers, and a nice thick booklet containing essays, stories, and the lyrics - with chord names! This last bit is fantastic for musicians who want an idea of the song structure should they ever desire to learn/play the tunes. The essays and stories are also excellent, including the final, "Christmas Tube Socks," by Sufjan - a personal description of his experience with Christmas, from his initial disdain to his present awe and reverence.

Sure, the subject matter on these discs is fairly holiday-centric, but I think I'll keep these tunes in my regular iTunes/iPod rotation, even after December 25th.

Woot! Val and I finally have heat in...well, most of our house.

The install finished up last week, and we turned on the system while we were away in Williamsburg over the weekend. We returned, however, to find that the downstairs zone wasn't actually heating at all...

Long story short, there's a bad part in the downstairs unit, and it'll be replaced for free (obviously), so we should have a properly functioning system by tomorrow morning. Oi! I'm ready for it!

Alright loyal half-dozen! Time for Ask Dan #2!

You'll have to come up with some excellent questions, as Alexis got a strong start right out of the gate:

Here’s a question for Ask Dan:

Is there anyone hotter than Sufjan Stevens? If there isn’t, is such a thing theoretically possible (or plausible)?

And another:

How can refried beans still be so tasty even though EVERY SINGLE time I open a can, I violently recoil due to the preciseness with which they resemble canned dog or cat food?

Alright! Post your questions in the comments section - I'll answer on Friday!

Q: Who is pretentious?

A: To answer such a question, we have to start with the definition of the word. As usual, I turn to Webster:

Main Entry: pre•ten•tious
Pronunciation: pri-'ten(t)-sh&s
Function: adjective
Etymology: French prétentieux, from prétention pretension, from Medieval Latin pretention-, pretentio, from Latin praetendere
1 : characterized by pretension : as a : making usually unjustified or excessive claims (as of value or standing) b : expressive of affected, unwarranted, or exaggerated importance, worth, or stature
2 : making demands on one's skill, ability, or means : AMBITIOUS
synonym see SHOWY
- pre•ten•tious•ly adverb
- pre•ten•tious•ness noun

That seems pretty simple. Who is pretentious? Somebody displaying pretension. So what the heck is that?!? Well, here’s the definition for pretension:

Main Entry: 1pre•ten•sion
Pronunciation: pri-'ten(t)-sh&n
Function: noun
1 : an allegation of doubtful value : PRETEXT
2 : a claim or an effort to establish a claim
3 : a claim or right to attention or honor because of merit
4 : an aspiration or intention that may or may not reach fulfillment
5 : VANITY, PRETENTIOUSNESS
synonym see AMBITION
- pre•ten•sion•less /-l&s/ adjective

That seems pretty cut and dry. But I’m sure that Patrick didn’t want simply to know what pretentious meant, and the loose categorization of those who make “doubtfully valuable allegations” as pretentious. No, I suspect Patrick wants to know who I think is pretentious, and moreover, why.

Those of you 5 or 6 readers out there likely know my hatred for the overuse of the word “pretentious” in descriptions of art – be it music or film. It’s not so much that I hate simply the word, or even it’s frequency of utterance. It’s more a misuse. Abuse, really.

I feel that most folks use that synonym that Webster listed up above: showy. Furthermore, I believe they use such a word to describe what they believe is showy without evidence of whether or not such a piece of art really fits such a categorization. Such oversimplification of “pretentious” is detectable when the offender explains his or her reasons for using the word. In countless articles, forum posts, and conversations, people describe their impression of the artists intent. Sure, they believe the artist is being showy, whether it’s the dialogue in an “indie” film, or Sufjan Stevens’ song titles on his Illinois album. But does their aversion to these artistic products stem from unjustified or excessive claims by the artist? Are these artists overstating their own value? Such claims, if they exist, rarely find their way into the vitriolic verbiage of critics who cry “pretentious!”

So who do I think is pretentious? Those critics, whether professional, forum-posting, or casual arm-chair remarking, who call out “pretentious” without a thorough understanding of its meaning, against art they simply find too ornamental. Such people are themselves making unjustified value judgments.

Thus concludes Ask Dan #1. Thanks, Patrick, for the question!

I know I've really been bitin' off McSweeney's lately, but dang it if that site isn't one of the funniest things I've ever read since Sweet Fancy Moses.

So today I just discovered the "verbal cartoons" of Dan Liebert. He seems to be a more sophisticated Jack Handey (not that there's ANYthing wrong with Jack Handey, Alexis :-)).

Read! Enjoy! Wet yourself with laughter!

How do you react in the face of tragedy?

Yes, it's puerile. Yes, it's gross. Yes, I probably shouldn't link to such a base web page on my site, but here I've gone and done it.

Why? Because my wife has been to a bachelorette party, and so have countless other women out there, and if they'll suffer no worse than some blushing faces at the reading of the article, then everyone else can certainly handle it. Fellas, if you're not familiar with the sort of things that happen at bachelorette parties, then crawl out of your hole, read this article, and laugh your fanny off.

Seriously the most amazing thing I've seen in weeks. The below video was created by a Norwegian bloke using expertly edited video samples of himself playing several individual hits on a drum kit, and notes on a piano. He otherwise doesn't know how to play drums or piano, but clearly has an ear for music. And some hella tight video editing skillz.
[youtube [www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzqumbhfxRo&w=425&h=350])