Snowing Thick, Quirky Sciencing, Pay To Dispose Your 'Private' Waste Publicly

(ahem)

A post mingled with a few just-barely-not-crude topics...

The eminent infinite complexity (the EIC, or "ike" forthwith), that is Earth's Nature, deigned to bestow a bit 'o home on me today, in the form of an all-day (so far) snowstorm. Ths is the first white, wet, coldness that hasn't evaporated by 10am; in fact it's still patching over each footprint, wheel rut, and drain cover as I type. Looks a bit like Colorado out there today...beautiful.

Without the courtesy of a segway, I'd like to mention a detail of the labwork I've been doing recently. In quick summary I'm taking very fine ceramic powders and pressing them uniaxially (like one of those can crushers mounted on walls) into pill-size pellets, about the width of my middle finger. They must be as dense as possible, and for that we have a more powerful machine called an isostatic press. Covering my bases, all this means is an equal force exerted on the pellet from all sides, tops, and bottoms, simultaneously. Any air jammed inside the structure is evicted this way. Evacuated, actually, and to ease this trapped this trace atmosphere's exit, the pellets must be vacuumed sealed before going in the isostatic press. Naturally. A vacuum pump's easy to come by here at the lab, but what to seal the pellets in before transport to yon machine?

Hmmm...

How 'bout a condom, says brilliant scientist?* Of course! Why didn't I think of that? A 'rubber' is a great way to keep _____ sealed inside!**

So, Dear Reader, at this multi-million kroner, government funded, PhD-filled research facility, a critical step in fabricating high tech ceramic test samples comes down to a 15 cent condom. Awesome! Does this whole situation crack you up like it does me? Maybe I'm just very strange, but hardly anyone I talk to about this fact finds it even mildly amusing. A shame. I think it's hilarious.

Again, without segway, the last item on my writeabout list is the state of Danish public restrooms. When I left for Denmark, I had already heard of there being a general lack of these pit stops available in European countries (this is also the case for drinking fountains, but see Jan. 16 post for why that is so, at least in DK). Out of all the farewells I received from friends and family, the most humorous was to compile a tally of all the coin-operated toilets I ran into during my travels (you know who you are that suggested this). I've neglected that light-hearted duty, but the obervation stands in my mind after repeated scenarios where I need to go and there's no decent going to be gotten for miles around. Not in grocery stores, malls, or train stations anyhow. Occasionally a restaurant will have them, with varying shades of vandalism. At Roskilde train station you have to put in a 2 kroner coin to get in the door. This measure prevents all the honest bums from getting in and sleeping the cold nights away, or the rambunctious youths with sharpies, spray paint, and bottomless dictionaries of bad puns and sick jokes. I found a McDonald's right next to Nørreport station (deep downtown Kbh) with the same fixup. There I was fortunate enough to see the 'changing of the change,' in which an employee empties the handle-mounted box of coins and resets the lock.

The water closets (so they're labeled) actually on the trains are free, so that's a bonus.

The takehome lesson on this final topic is that planning your bathroom stops (as well as you can) along with your trip agenda is the best strategy.


Peace to you.



*I haven't asked yet who came up with this idea. It's the first time I've seen it.
**This sentence should be a 'Mad-Libs' staple.