Science blazes new trails in the quest to improve the quality of life on planet Earth:
Scientists search for perfect pizza December 14, 2002
COMPUTERISED scanners and "fuzzy logic" software have been harnessed by food scientists to yield the mathematically perfect pizza.
The pizza of the future will have sauce spread evenly and lushly across its base and its mushrooms, ham, sweetcorn and other toppings will be positioned with millimetric accuracy, thanks to the culinary efforts of Sun Da-Wen and Tadhg Brosnan at Ireland's University College, Dublin.
The breakthrough was derived from digital snapshots of 25 pizzas which were then broken down and transformed into a mathematical formula to define the optimal pizza's base area, spatial ratio between toppings and circularity.
The findings should be useful for ensuring quality control in pizza factories, enabling cameras to instantly pick out a pie with sparse toppings or which is skimpy or patchy on sauce.
Agence France-Presse
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See that? Nice people in clean white coats are working day and night to bring us a wonderful existence. Life is good, isn't it?
Or is it? Dear God, what am I going on about? Maybe things aren't quite as bright and hopeful as I thought. After all, it's mid-December -- Christmas is galloping relentlessly in our direction. Everyone -- that's right, even you, buster -- is feeling the stress of all that holiday cheer. Peanut brittle, greeting cards, eggnog, office parties, people in red suits (who are NOWHERE NEAR FAT ENOUGH to be the genuine Christmas fat man) standing on city corners ringing little teeny bells for hours and hours on end trying to weasel your hard-earned pocket change out of your pockets into that goddam kettle/tripod thingie they've got. Stores so packed with crazed gift-shoppers that you have to elbow them out of your way so you can wrap your cold, chapped hands around that perfect gift for, er, Auntie Em. Heck, who am I kidding? Who even gets close enough to the display shelves that they can actually apply the elbow to an inviting nearby rib cage? Who even actually figures out what to buy the deadbeats who people our miserable lives? No one knows what to get anyone, so they wind up with far too many lameass gifts in a desperate attempt to compensate for crippling feelings of guilt and inadequacy.
Relax. Breathe. Take a look at Dave Barry's 2002 Gift Guide, where you'll find a farkin' plethora of brilliant gift ideas.
Then take a moment to put things in perspective. You think you have problems? Right now I've got channel 3 from Madrid playing in the background, and as I write this Lex Luther has hoodwinked Superman into opening up a lead-lined chest that contains a huge chunk of kryptonite (the only known substance that can weaken and kill the Man of Steel!) mounted on a huge gold chain, just like vintage '70s pimp apparel imported directly from the planet Krypton (before its untimely complete and utter destruction). And as if that weren't bad enough, Lex Luther is wearing a leisure suit with alarmingly wide lapels. And both he and Superman are talking in Spanish!
See what I mean? How bad can your life be? No evil genius is going to force you to wear cheap-looking extraterrestrial pimp gear.
What's that, Mr./Ms. Whiner? Still not convinced? Right, well, in that case get a load of the following news article. Then get down on your knees and give thanks for your boring, ordinary life with its boring, ordinary sources of holiday stress:
Out-Of-Control Holiday Revelers Deck Shit Out Of Area Halls
AMES, IA -- Holiday celebrations took an extreme turn Friday evening as an unruly mob of out-of-control holiday revelers observed the shit out of the Christmas season, violently decking 21 area halls.
According to police reports, at approximately 9 p.m., after consuming large quantities of 60-proof egg nog, the frenzied throng of 40 to 50 revelers broke into the home of resident Milton Krajcek, aggressively decking his halls with wreaths, garlands, ribbons, ceramic nativity scenes, tree ornaments, mistletoe, candy canes, and "shitloads" of boughs of holly.
Once their supplies were exhausted, the crazed merrymakers rode in pickup trucks to a local ShopKo outlet to restock, only to return and continue decking the already overburdened halls.
"I begged them to stop," Krajcek said, "but they wouldn't until every last inch of my halls was decked beyond all recognition."
Not satisfied with forcibly festooning Krajcek's halls, the slavering, nightmarishly cheerful horde then turned to those of other locals, posing as holiday carolers to lure residents to their doors.
"I heard an ancient yuletide carol coming from the front porch," said Millicent Slopes, 53, "and was pretty worried because they were really tolling the hell out of it. I decided to acknowledge them so that maybe they would leave, but as soon as I opened the door, they poured into the house and went batshit on the halls. I mean, look at my halls! I can barely squeeze through there, such was the force and vigor of their decking."
"It was horrible," said Francine Eppard, whose halls were also brutally decorated. "There was tinsel everywhere."
Local police officials are still searching for the binge revelers. If caught, they will be charged with breaking-and-entering, reckless and wanton decoration, second-degree festivity, and willful construction of toyland towns around eleven Christmas trees.
"The scum who did this will pay," police chief Carl Torvaldsen said. "No punishment could be too severe for perpetrators of this kind of shameful, senseless decking."
The wanted celebrants are described as inebriated suburbanites clad in gay apparel which they allegedly "donned the living fuck out of," according to Torvaldsen. Added the police chief: "We have reason to believe they may be armed and extremely joyous."
Until the revelers are captured, Torvaldsen warned homeowners not to open their doors for carolers, strongly advising that nuts and cocoa instead be lowered from an upstairs window or pushed through a mail slot.