The Edgeless Brownie Tray 2

So this other idea came up of how to create edgeless brownies. The theory is; assuming you don't have access to an anti-gravity machine or a way to create gravitational singularities maybe you could force the brownie mix to the edge of the inside of the spherical tray by using a pan-within-a-pan, much like a bundt cake pan. By essentially gluing two of them together, you could inject the brownie mix into the resulting pan and end up with edgeless brownies!

The pan would look something like this:



To cook it, you'd need to put it in your oven like this:



(This is all patent pending, of course.)

One problem with this method is that the brownies cooked in this pan do not have a top, they just have two bottoms where the brownie was baked in contact with the outer or inner edge. One way to get around this would be to cook the brownies about half-way, then open the oven and take out the inner sphere. The hope would be that the brownie mix would stick to the outer sphere and the inner brownie edge would form the top. But then one has to wonder why the brownie mix would be sticking to the outer sphere the way we want but not sticking to the inner sphere when we tried to remove it.

A second, more compelling problem is that the brownie mix actually expands (slightly) as it cooks. If the brownie pan was filled up all the way and closed tightly, it might explode as it cooks. This minor kink may need to be worked out. I'll let you know how the trials go.

Stages of Zombification

By popular request, the stages of zombification apparently needed some clarification:

1. You die.
2. You come back to life as an undead zombie.
3. You eat brains.
4. You get your skull crushed by a shovel.
5. You're dead again.

Addictive Little Games

I can kill all your productivity with two little links:

Onslaught

When this game came out, it took my office by storm. Every day I came to work I would hear stories of how people stayed up late into the morning playing this thing trying to beat each other's high scores.

Zwingo

Now there's this one, which was just sent to me by the person who infected our office with Onslaught before. This one is fun, easy, and also just as addictive.

The Edgeless Brownie Tray

Recently somebody told me about a specialty brownie tray designed for people who like the edge and corner pieces in a tray of brownies. Although good for its intended purpose, it is the exact opposite of what I would want in a brownie tray. I would like a brownie tray that makes brownies with no edges. As far as I see it, there are 3 possible ways to make this happen (two of which I invented, and the 3rd one was invented by Robin Toop).

Solution #1: Using a spherical cookie tray, you first suspend it in an anti-graviation field (or take it up into space). From there, you create a gravitational singularity at the center of the sphere, such that the sphere has its own gravitational field. Once you've done that, you smear brownie mix around the sphere until it is completely covered. Then you can apply heat evenly around the sphere in order to cook the brownies. Presto! Edgeless brownies!

If you're having trouble securing anti-gravitational fields or controllable gravitational singularities, I have come up with another solution.

Solution #2: We'll be using the same spherical brownie pan, but this time we'll be cooking brownies on the inside of the sphere. To do this, the sphere must have a hole so that you can inject the brownie mix. Once the mix is injected, just plug up the hole and cook the whole sphere! When done, just split the sphere in half (this spherical pan must come apart in half) in order to get at the brownies. Whoopie! Edgeless brownies!

Oh, except I forgot to mention that you need to simultaneously spin the sphere along every one of its axes of rotation in order to make sure that the brownie mix is distributed evenly along the inside of the sphere. It might be possible instead to heat the sphere slowly and rotate the sphere around, cooking the brownie to the inside of the sphere layer-by-layer.

That's when Robin suggested the completely preposterous Solution #3: Change the molecular consistency of the brownie mix so that it's no longer a liquid, but a non-Newtonian fluid (like a putty or dough) that can be molded into any shape you want. From there, we can mold it into a sphere and cook the sphere, which of course will need to be suspended in mid air so that no part of it is touching any surface (or an edge-like crust will be created). Hooray! Edgeless brownies!

Take THAT you crust-eating, edge-loving brownie eaters! We can have our brownies without edges if we want, too! (Some details may need to be worked out first.)

We Need a Pyramid

I think we need a pyramid. And by "we" I mean "the people of Earth that form the global civilization we live in today". Here's why:

• It will be a bonding experience.
  
• We currently don't have a country/culture/language/religion independent sculpture we can all stand behind together (besides the image of the Earth itself).
  
• The whole of humanity has never done anything like it before as a unified group (they have as a nation though).
  
• Heck, people will remember us for it and that's good.
  
• Why not?

If we were to build a pyramid today, how would we do it? I propose the following requirements:

• It must be bigger than the existing ones -- by at least 2 times the height (which means we'd need 2.667 times the stone by volume).
  
• It must not sink into the ground.
  
• It must be nearly invincible.
  
• It must last 10,000 years before it shows significant signs of aging.
  
• It must be visible from space and not be mistaken for a natural phenomenon.
  
• It must be no more religion-, country- and culture-dependent than pyramids already are.
  
• It must clearly have no purpose other than to "be" what it is.
  
• It must be as simple as possible in its design (not ornately decorated).
  
• It must cost at least a billion dollars. If it doesn't, it means we're not thinking big enough.
  
• Its construction must include almost anybody who wants to participate.
  
• It must reflect the highest possible engineering standards of our time (it likely will already from the previous requirements).
  
• Once it is done, it must be as monetarily worthless as possible (other than the unquantifiable value of its very existence).

Since this won't be easy, I suggest we get started right away. Any takers?

Lethal Hard Quadrilogy

For those of you who get "Die Hard" and "Lethal Weapon" confused, let me clear it up for you: They're both the same movie. For years people have been referencing them differently and getting the titles confused around you, and that's what has led to your confusion. Basically there are four movies out now:

Lethal Hard
Lethal Hard 2: Lethaler
Lethal Hard 3: Hard, Harder, Lethalest
Lethal Hard 4: Live Hard or Die Lethally

They all star Mel Willis, and are basically about a moderately attractive male getting the girl in the end. Oh, and stuff blows up.

But most of all, remember; stay away from Lethal Hard 3, it's not up to par.

The Philosophy of Database Administration

Q. If a table is updated by a recurring job but never read, does it take up space on the hard disk?

A. Not anymore.