Obviousness

Some things are obvious to nerds, but less obvious to the rest of us. From two recent coversations:

me:	Some guy did a 24-minute loop of Manhattan in a BMW Z4. But he got arrested because he made a dashboard camera recording of the ride and uploaded it to YouTube.
Anasua:	It is no longer necessary to say the words "to YouTube".
Surya:	Obviously I am acquainted with the Scandinavian genre of crime of fiction...
Saha:	Surya, there should be no "obviously" before that sentence.

The 1/27720 Sheppey Asparagus

It is said that Jiro Ono, perhaps the finest sushi chef in the world and a fanatical perfectionist, always uses his own palm to measure the quantity of rice for each piece of sushi, because an assistant's palm would introduce inconsistency.

My approach to cooking is far less exact. Onlookers are often alarmed to note that I don't bother to measure out spices and condiments, preferring instead to pour apparently arbitrary quantities from the containers directly into the cooking pot.

However, following the introduction of a new cutting board in our kitchen (a standard Sainsbury's cutting board, which Anasua engraved with a laser from her lab), guests can be sure that their food will have evenly-chopped ingredients.

This asparagus tip, for example, is 1/27720 of a Sheppey. As Douglas Adams fans may know, a Sheppey is a unit of length, defined as the closest distance at which sheep remain picturesque.

Below left is a photo of sheep grazing on snow on a Himalayan hillside, taken at ~1 Sheppey. Below right is a sheep seen on a day walk in Kent at a distance of much less than a Sheppey.

Not Bloody Margarine

Detractors of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!® say that the product is so obviously inferior to real butter that no one in their right mind would actually say, "I can't believe it's not butter." This is not strictly true. I personally know of at least two instances when this phrase was used, though perhaps not in the way the manufacturers intended.

First instance: A few months back, having gone to the supermarket to buy butter, I bought a tub of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!® by mistake. When I got home, I realised my folly and exclaimed, "I can't believe it's not butter!"

Second instance: Anasua looked in the fridge and said, "What is this crap you've got? I can't believe it's not butter!"

Anyhow, owing to our extreme reluctance to throw food away, we bit the bullet and finished it (mostly by consuming it as a substitute when we ran out of real butter). But as is my wont, I retained the tub for storing real butter.

The problem was that in the course of our epic struggle to finish I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!®, we had grown to loathe the sight of the tub itself. It seemed that anything stored in that tub, even real butter, would seem unappetising. So I have covered the repulsive packaging (see top left photo) with a home-drawn replacement that leaves the beholder in no doubt about the contents of the tub.