Dog's warning to cosmologists

No, that's not a typo. God probably quite appreciates cosmologists. Who doesn't want to have others around them in awe of their work? When a surgeon pulls off a particularly brilliant bit of cranial surgery, does he tell the guy driving an ice cream truck or use it to go hit on nurses? I'm guessing the latter.

Most cosmologists are currently of the opinion that the Universe has eleven dimensions rather than the three we are able to perceive in day-to-day life.

At the other end of the spectrum, my dog normally lives in a two-dimensional world in which she can eat, pee, chase squirrels, smell things and beg for more food - in that order.

Last night, she suddenly experienced what many theorists dream of: a higher dimension. For whatever reason, she chose to turn her head in a new direction and look up at the perfectly clear sky. Sadly, she did not like this new world and ended up whingeing and howling at planes passing over us at tens of thousands of feet. She tracked three of them as they trailed across the sky toward the eastern horizon, sometimes barking at and sometimes cowering from them. Perhaps they were some new trick of the evil squirrels? Who can tell?

What's the lesson for cosmologists? Finding whole new dimensions may not be as fun as you thought. Moving from a limited world (in her case, that of grounded squirrels and interesting smells) to a much bigger and new one can reveal horrible things that will destroy your world.

Or maybe you'll just end up barking at higher-dimensional beings flying to Europe.

Never blog while seriously sleep-deprived

Just don't. It's stupid, it's silly, it can only end in tears.

So here I go...

I've stumbled onto an idea - no doubt already discovered but insufficiently shared elsewhere - that could save people a great deal of time and money. Sleep deprivation is the way of the future. You gain all that time by not sleeping and save all the money you'd be spending to get really stupid on drugs or alcohol. To save even more time, you have a sort of hang-over WHILE still under the influence! No more wasted time afterwards!

Between six hours of jet lag, non-drowsy allergy medications (ie: caffeine pills) and the Sun being up nearly all of the time in Berlin at this time of year, I've not had a good night's sleep in a week. This morning, I slept in: 5:30am. That's 11:30am in Berlin, so it aint bad. However, I did not get to sleep until midnight (Boston time) last night. I aint catching up.

Now, I am going home early. I will walk my dog after rescuing her from the kennel and try to keep going until we drop. I should NOT drive us anywhere!

Tomorrow is a new day. Somewhere. With luck and the expected TV line-up, I should be in bed by 9:00pm. I'd go for earlier, but I know I'll just wake up at 2:00am or something and start all over! They were thrilled to have me in two hours early today, but that is just a bad habit to get into.