Jue's Blog (tag:humor)

NASA's L-CHEESE spacecraft, a state-of-the-art space exploration vehicle made from unleavened dough.

On Friday morning, scientists will finally have an answer to a question that has plagued mankind for millenia: is the Moon made of cheese?

Many experts say that finding the fermented dairy delicacy is the first pre-requisite to future colonization of Earth’s natural satellite.

This is why NASA launched the LCHEESE mission, which will culminate tomorrow morning when a spacecraft propels a 2-ton saltine cracker into a frigid crater on the south pole of the moon. In the tremendous explosion that results, scientists hope to detect the spectroscopic signature of at least 10 kinds of semi-soft cheese.

“It’s too soon to tell what’ll come up, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed,” said a senior NASA official. “It might be a cloud of dust, or some pieces of pork paté. But what we’re really hoping for is a nice triple-cream brie, and maybe, just maybe, with a few slivers of manchego mixed in.”

After LCHEESE, NASA’s next step will be operation KMILK, a probe that will search for traces of milk ice hidden in lunar craters, according to the official. “Thirst will be a big problem for our astronauts. Cheese is well and good, but astronauts won’t be able to enjoy colonizing the Moon if there’s nothing to wash it down with.”

More info about LCHEESE can be found here

The Onion, Chinese Edition

Satirical online newspaper The Onion just rolled out this morning with an elaborate “Chinese edition.” They were apparently bought out by the Chinese Yu Wan Mei company, which before entering the newspaper business was a salvage fishery, whatever that means. (The title literally translates to “Fish are perfect.”)

Some choice headlines from this edition:

• “Police Still Searching For Missing Productive, Obedient Woman”
• “Ping-Pong Champion Credits Victory To Diet Of Nutritious Fish By-Products”
• “Clear American Sky A Constant Reminder Of Industrial Inferiority”

and my favorite: “China Strong,” complete with big picture of the People’s Liberation Army marching in formation.

Not everyone finds this so hilarious. The bloggers over at the Shanghaiist, jaded by years of laughing (and/or crying) at China’s state-run-media gaffs, have already “found enough unintentional black comedy to render this attempt perhaps unintentionally depressing.”

For example? They might be referring to the Homer Simpson X-ray incident at Xinhuanet two years ago. Funny, and yes, a little depressing. But this is why the satire on The Onion is so timely and appropriate.

Three years ago, after going on a run with a friend, I said to him, “we are going to run the Boston marathon.” It was a moment of triumphant and wildly inaccurate self-appraisal. What I should have said, of course, was “we are going to squander many months of our youth playing video games and imbibing mind-altering substances.” A certain jogging of the spirit, if you will, but not of the legs. We’re more the cerebral type.

Last week, after so much physical apathy, it was time to turn a new leaf. The metaphorical kind of leaf, the kind that is good for your lungs. The kind that starts with a six mile run along the banks of the Charles.

It was pleasant. Hot, a little humid, but I’m sure Pheidippides probably didn’t have it much better himself. Like him, I was in a race against time. Would Sparta respond to his pleas for help, and save the civilized world as he knew it from destruction? Will I make it back in time for dinner, and save my pocketbook from having to buy yet another mediocre burrito from Boloco?

I did not make it back in time. Instead, I got heatstroke. Well, technically, I got what is known as “uncomfortably hot.” But boy was it uncomfortable. And hot.

Being this dehydrated, there was a good chance I could finish the run looking like Otzi the Iceman. Fortunately, my taut, moisturized complexion was saved by a foolhardy willingness to eat unidentified plants, and what looked like a stretch of pebbly goat shit on the sidewalk. Of course, one man’s goat shit tree is another, less near-sighted man’s mulberry bush, and knowing this, I made like a giraffe and extended my neck toward the heavens, tongue out. Then a shooting pain went through my back and I decided instead to reach out with my hand and pick some berries.

It was delicious.

The moral of this story, like the other stories I tell on this summer research journal, has nothing to do with science, or really anything. It is simple: don’t go running after eating half-prosciutto, half-kielbasa pizza. Unless there are berry trees.

This is week 3’s installment of my journal as a systems biology research intern, a week late and chock full of factual inaccuracies. You’ll be happy to know that last week I actually wrote about science, but not really.

There was a time when life was simple, and the only cause for malnourishment was the annoyingly early closing time of Swiss grocery stores.

This year, without the excitement of a European summer to motivate me, I’m sliding down a slippery slope of apathy. Going to work, brushing my teeth, eating food — anything is fair game for procrastination. If I die from scurvy or liver failure, Mom, I want you to know that it wasn’t because you didn’t send enough dumplings. I really thought a screwdriver with every meal would be enough vitamin C.

Avoid my fate. Your worst enemy is yourself. Here are my ingredients for a nice summer as a research intern: sleep, procrastination, food, and heart.

Sleep. It’s important. Especially if you’re doing something as physically and intellectually demanding as the pursuit of truth. This is why, when you stumble into lab slightly drunk at 11am, your lab boss will understand your need to catch up on sleep. In fact, you should probably just go home early and take a nap, so you can be refreshed for your next super-productive 4-hour day. Some people say, you can sleep when you’re dead. Actually, you can’t–I’ve tried. So live life to the fullest — catch some shut-eye when you still can. After the jump: In the lab, showing that you have heart can help you make up for being lazy or not very smart.

#1) Take the name of his sweetheart, convert it to ASCII encoding, take the exclusive-or of each letter with the letters of a secret message, use each letter-wise result, modulo 13, as the note in a tone row to compose a string quartet. Then he would have it performed for her and ask her to decipher the secret message after hearing the performance. If she gets it in 72 hours, then it’s true love.