Monday, October 03, 2005

Obligatory Dream Blog

Sooner or later every blog describes the author's recent dreams, as if anyone really gets them ...or cares.

Okay, this weekend I had one of those vivid dreams that makes total sense when you are dreaming it, but are bizarre in the morning light. Basically, the dream was about completing random scientific experiments that people somehow skipped. Some government agency came up with thousands of things that were never studied, but probably should have been. Maybe science was moving too fast when it should have been done, and no one went back and did some of the basics.

These things were so basic that they had 5th graders working on some of it. They found university professors to team up with children on a number of experiments. The two that I was responsible with were simple enough. Apparently, no one has ever studied the mating habits of goldfish. Someone did a search and realized that no one has observed this and wrote about it. Sure, you are 99.999% sure that goldfish do the same things that guppies do, but you can't be sure unless you find out for yourself.

So, the government sent me an aquarium and some goldfish. Of course, I had my doubts because I have had goldfish before, and never had baby goldfish. Maybe they should have given this task to some biologist or something. I was also nervous about selecting a fifth grader, hoping they were up to the task. My kids are too old to choose one of them, unfortunately.

The other study that I was responsibile for was a little more up my alley. For some unkown reason, every time someone has studied lightning, they did it at night. (Think about Nichola Tesla in Colorado Springs...) Well, no one ever studied if lighting adds light to the daytime sky. So, I had to find a good storm during the day and use photo-sensitive equipment and make several measurements.

I was a lot more excited about lightning than the goldfish. I was afraid I would fail.

--gh

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