On Pluto Spit Matters

January 28, 2005 7:30 AM

Dark matter drifts through Earth so I'll spit to avoid the needle...
posted by mcgraw (27 comments total)

Po-mo?
posted by cortex at 7:39 AM on January 28, 2005

Cortex: Yes, please.
posted by dougunderscorenelso at 7:40 AM on January 28, 2005

wait, what am i missing? what do those links have to do with each other?
posted by Igor XA at 8:07 AM on January 28, 2005

Both of these articles are mildly interesting. Anyone who remembers (or is rereading, as I am) A Wrinkle in Time may get a shudder at the first one, and as someone who absolutely hates having blood drawn, the second is very welcome news.

But I'm as baffled as anyone else as to why mcgraw keeps making FPPs like this. Is it Dadaism? Chaos theory? Indeterminacy? Some kind of chemical imbalance? What?
posted by soyjoy at 8:10 AM on January 28, 2005

Mcgraw likes science. But the chimps were _never_ fair to mcgraw.
posted by pracowity at 8:16 AM on January 28, 2005

And wherefore the 'charon' tag?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:27 AM on January 28, 2005

Eh, who cares why he keeps doing it? Both links were interesting...and I'm mollified to know that even the most "periodontally perfect" mouths bleed. Makes me feel better about me ogre teeth! Yarrrrh! ptooie.
posted by bwilliams at 8:29 AM on January 28, 2005

McGraw, I have a request: Next time can you wait until mid-morning (i.e., post-coffee)? Your posts make my brain hurt in the morning, but they make my afternoons interesting (in a DSM-IV kind of way).

Thanks.
posted by mudpuppie at 8:30 AM on January 28, 2005

Both links were interesting

Well, two of them were. Check out the last two links...
posted by grateful at 8:32 AM on January 28, 2005

But I'm as baffled as anyone else as to why mcgraw keeps making FPPs like this. Is it Dadaism? Chaos theory? Indeterminacy? Some kind of chemical imbalance? What?

I've been wondering that for about 6 posts now. Apparently something mind-altering happened between May and December of last year, judging by his posting history.
posted by chundo at 8:38 AM on January 28, 2005

Eh, who cares why he keeps doing it?

I do. The posts are completely unrelated except they both have to do with science. It's fucking annoying because they're interesting on their own but untenable together. The result is that you can't talk about either effectively, and you wind up with chatty-empty threads like this.

mcgraw- pick ONE topic, PLEASE. MeFi does not need mashups.
posted by mkultra at 8:39 AM on January 28, 2005

posted by gramschmidt at 8:44 AM on January 28, 2005

*medilevitates*
posted by sciurus at 8:52 AM on January 28, 2005

MeTa
posted by chundo at 8:56 AM on January 28, 2005

hmm
posted by Mark Doner at 9:08 AM on January 28, 2005

Eh, who cares why he keeps doing it? Both links were interesting...and I'm mollified to know that even the most "periodontally perfect" mouths bleed. Makes me feel better about me ogre teeth! Yarrrrh! ptooie.

i don't care particularly, but i'm inclined to ignore unrelated articles i'd otherwise find interesting given a little context.
posted by blendor at 9:11 AM on January 28, 2005

also, people are missing have of the links because they don't see that the periods at the end are links. that's aggravating as well.
posted by Igor XA at 9:26 AM on January 28, 2005

Perhaps we must awaken and seek context, or even abandon context altogether.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:35 AM on January 28, 2005

also, people are missing have of the links...

This makes my brain hurt.
posted by damnthesehumanhands at 10:26 AM on January 28, 2005

A have and a have make a hole.
posted by jefbla at 10:43 AM on January 28, 2005

And wherefore the 'charon' tag?

Both links were interesting

The periods are both links -- 4 total, the last an article discussing Pluto and it's proportionally large moon Charon.

Still seems like a bit of a dartboard post, though.
posted by cortex at 11:13 AM on January 28, 2005

Did Pluto "avoid the needle?"
posted by dfowler at 11:29 AM on January 28, 2005

Maybe it's needle in a haystack-like to detect dark matter?
posted by ParisParamus at 11:32 AM on January 28, 2005

The periods are both links

Ah, thanks. How profound.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:47 AM on January 28, 2005

I take classes from these professors at UCSC; my Physics prof is working on GLAST, with the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP)... It's really a cool satellite; Imaging gamma rays gets really difficult, what with the high energies involved.

I had a lecture last quarter from Prof Aguirre about cosmology and the big bang, which included rather a lot about the WIMPs: Weakly Interacting Massive Particles. The mentioned Neutralino is a WIMP. There are others, but that's the main suspect.

Cool theory, though. Hope for Atwood's sake GLAST comes out well.
posted by Calast at 12:25 PM on January 28, 2005

There are connections, at least in this one. The joy is in finding it, not in having it given to you.
posted by uni verse at 1:45 PM on January 28, 2005

The fact that scientists are hypothisizing about dark matter makes me wonder whether we are living in a Matrix-ish environment (brain in a vat is another name for this conjecture), because "dark matter" could easily just be a mistake in the programming. Seriously, six or seven times more of the stuff than the bit we can see?
posted by billsaysthis at 3:09 PM on January 28, 2005