Date: Sun, 17 Nov 1996 09:25:18 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Magnets, football and fibre.

I was going through an Edmund's Scientific catalogue the other day
(Edmund's Scientific sells optics equipment and general science education
stuff for those of you who don't know) and besides the lasers and night
vision goggles, they had a cool assortment of magnets (a big one with a
200lb liftting capacity for $35 or if you prefer your magnets small - 8cm
x 8cm x 5cm with a 100lb lift, but it's $249) and you can buy
superconducting rings for $20.  They also had a 16' balloon that when
filled with helium (2144 cubic feet worth) it has a lifting capacity of
140lbs.  Now what's to stop some wacko (like me) from tying a 140lb spear
like object to the balloon and letting it go, knowing full well that
eventually the balloon is going to pop?

Also the other day, I was flipping through a Scientific American in the
library and they had an article by a surgical photo-journalist.
Basically, it was a section of photos from operating rooms.  Really odd
stuff.  The weirdest one was not so much the picture, but the explanation.
The picture was taken during a spinal operation.  Basically, the patient
had over calcification of the vertebrae and this had caused pressure on
the spinal column causing paralysis.  So to perform the surgery (I love
this part) they "install" a clamp into the patients skull and hang him
from the celeing from this clamp throughout the entire operation to keep
the vetebrae as spaced apart as possible.  They then "openned" the
patient's back and then they removed the back portion of 7 vertebrae.  The
photo was of the exposed portion of the spinal column.  There was also a
photo of a knee surgery and a few other oddities.  Kinda weird.

I heard it was snowing in Vancouver.  How much?  Did it stay around at
all?  It is geting down to about freezing here during the nights and I
have heard rumor of the possibility of snow, but none yet.

Today, I went wandering.  I went uphill from my place.  Like Toronto,
Neuchatel resides on a monotonic surface, North is always up, South, down.
Anyway, I found the tennis courts the woman I live with had been talking
about - both outdoor and bubble enclosed.  Then, I found a bunch of
fields.  Have you ever heard a herd (there's a set of homonyms you don't
get to use together very often) of cows with bells grazing?  I'm suprised
it doesn' drive them all insane - maybe that's where mad cow's disease
started.  Then I wandered across a soccer (football :) match.  I think it
was local over 18's or something.  It was the french speaking guys in blue
shirts with a local bar name on the front versus the french speaking guys
in white shirts with a local sports store name on their shirts.  It was a
really good game - blue guys won 2 - 0.  A few neat things about the game.
First, beside the field is a little snack bar thingy.  Now this is not
that abnormal, but what's neat is that during the game people walk around
and ask for an enterance fee , seems to be by donation, which goes towards
junior football, and then after the game, the snack bar brings out this
huge pot of really hot soup and everybody gets free soup.  I thought it
was pretty cool, once I had figured it out :)  I also had a BBQ'ed German
sausage thing.  It's amazing how good hot food tastes when it's cold out. 

Anyway, back to the game.  It was nice to see not everybody plays like the
South Americans.  I'm not saying there was not a good number of penalties
or take downs, but usually when there was, the person responsible helped
the other guy up, or at least made sure he was okay.  The most
sportsmanlike thing I saw was really cool.  A guy in white got goosed (or
as far as I could tell) and went down, but as with most goosings, there is
no penalty involved, so play goes on for another 30 seconds until the
other white guys finally get enough control to put the ball out of bounds
- now, after the guy is taken off the field to catch his breath (no
substitute, this is soccer, not hockey and they wouldn't want to waste a
substitute on such a short term matter) the blue guy taking the throw-in
throws it directly to the white team's goalie.  Very sportsmanlike - the
whole crowd cheered.

I have been trying to find a high fibre cereal here, and having no luck.
Those of you who know my cereal tastes know I eat super high fibre stuff
and are probably not at all suprised that I cannot find it here in
non-fitness minded Europe.  I did however find, beside the cereal section,
fibre pills.  Unfortunately, the whole box of 30 pills (which it
recommends 4 a day of) only contains as much fibre as 3 servings of my
cereal.  Oh well, I'll just have to stick to eating the boxes the cereal
comes in :)

Aaron