As mentioned in my previous post, we spent this weekend in Dublin. Upon landing and boarding the bus for the city centre, Marga and I both had a strange feeling come over us. What was so strange was how so incredibly not strange Ireland felt. Nothing felt foreign. The cars driving on the left seemed perfectly normal. The style of the houses, buses, billboards, shops, etc. was all so completely familiar. It was just weird. Three years ago, we moved to Spain after spending four years in England, and the architecture and culture of Ireland is so incredibly similar to that of England that it was like going back home. Of course that statement will incense some Irish people, but I think they’ll have to agree that no other culture is closest to that of Ireland than that of the UK.

We didn’t really have much of a plan other than to walk around and enjoy the city for what it is. So we embarked on a cycle of building up thirst and quenching it with stout Irish nectar.
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This morning my wife and I are going to Dublin for two days. Santander–Dublin is one of the cheap routes provided by one of the leading “budget” airlines in Europe, Ryanair. Their web designer should be shot. What is it about selling things at a discount price that requires having a wacky waving inflatible arm flailing tube man on the roof? Gross.

Our flights cost 0.00€. Really. When we started the checkout process we owed nothing.
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I’ve been living in Spain for almost three years now, and I have seen variations on this story play out quite a few times. It amazes me every time.
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I’ve trained my eye to spot photos that can be easily tilt-shifted. A few of them I found by searching for tags like “birdseye” on Flickr. To see the original photos, click on a photo and then follow the link to the original. Behold…
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Before sending off my absentee ballot in March, I took photos of each side of the filled-in ballot so that I could remember who I voted for and compare my votes with the final results.
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Without a doubt, one of the strangest dishes in Spanish cuisine has got to be chiperones en su tinta (squid in its ink). That’s the dish they’re referring to when they say that Spaniards are the only people that will eat completely pitch black food. The sauce is actually tomato sauce, but with just a little bit of ink, it turns jet black. Last weekend, my mother-in-law made some chiperones en su tinta for us to bring back with us, and today we had it for lunch. It’s really very delicious if you can get past the superficial psychological color barrier. Normally the squid are about fist-sized and filled with ground beef, but occasionally a little baby one will get into the mix and remind you just what you’re eating. Today, as I was soaking up the excess sauce with my bread, I noticed a little straggler was left behind and I took his picture. I’ve decided to name him Inky.
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We went to the in-laws for the weekend. Not much happened, but I did spend some time on Saturday watching a dominos tournament at my father-in-law’s social club. It was pretty interesting. The dominos have this little nub in the middle, presumably to make them easier to pick up when they’re face down. The men playing insist on slamming each domino they play hard on the table and then sliding it into place.
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Last Saturday, the weather was great. Sunny and warm. So we decided that, on Sunday, we’d get up early, like 10:00 AM (this is Spain), and drive to some nearby village to take a walk and investigate the town and surrounding area. But by the time Sunday morning rolled around, we hadn’t picked a destination, or even a direction. Marga went about solving the problem with a low tech solution, getting our map from the car and looking for some place that was printed in a slightly bolder font than the rest, thus indicating being larger or more interesting. But we quickly realized that some tiny, tiny boring towns that we did know about were printed in huge bold font, so that idea had to be scrapped. Meanwhile, I went high tech…opening Google Earth.
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A few Christmases ago, my parents gave me a Crookes radiometer. Although I did not know the official name of the device, I had first learned about them watching Mr. Wizard, and had later seen some in science classrooms during my jaunt through the public school system. The explanation I was always given of how it worked was Crookes’ original “light pressure” theory that was disproved back in 1876. Go public schools!

From what I can tell from the Wikipedia article, it sounds like the best explanation we have for why a Crookes radiometer spins is a combination of two theories put forth by Osborne Reynolds and some unknown guy named Einstein. They are both sound theories given what we know about radiation and fluid dynamics, but they, due to the nature of the object they describe, haven’t been (and can’t be) tested experimentally.
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My wife works in an anchovy processing plant. They do the entire process: freshly caught fish go in and cans come out. Last Friday, she came home very stressed.
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