Many mornings we have strawberries for breakfast.  I wash them for both of us and slice them.  One morning I came upon a moldy strawberry.  This, in and of itself, is not that uncommon.  Naturally, I try to minimize the instances of  this happening to our strawberries because I hate to be wasteful.  I blame myself; this should not have happened.  That is, I either picked ones that were moldy (or close to it) or waited too long to eat them.  I curse and toss it in the compostable bin.

Continue reading “What if there’s more to mold?”

I started watching The Walking Dead a number of years ago.  Without giving away too much of the plot, it is a television series about the zombie apocalypse; it’s certainly an interesting genre.  I got emotionally vested in the characters, so I continued to watch.  Being an engineer, I elect to selectively forget and give artistic license to how zombies continue to move even if they don’t necessarily fuel up, as in consume ‘food’, though I still have the ‘conservation of energy’ voice screaming in my head.

Apart from that, another element that tickles my fancy is the engineering logistics to surviving.  This part of it is not unique to the zombie apocalypse, but also applies to apocalypse in general.  You’ll often see elements of this if you were to watch doomsday prepper shows.  I have a friend who has aptly labeled TWD as ‘misery porn’.

Continue reading “Safety and the zombie apocalypse”

This is a puzzle that I first heard in high school; it was during a summer program in the mid 1980’s.  It goes like this:

A man drives in a car with his son; they tragically get into a car accident. The father dies at the scene; the son, badly injured, is taken into the local hospital by the ambulance.

At the hospital, the doctor examines the patient and says, “I can’t operate on this boy; he’s my son.”

Now, explain how this is possible.  I’ll allow you to ponder on that one for a few minutes. Continue reading “To be or not to be American”