Pythagorean cups

I am pleased to report major developments in the Geek Lab: we re-engineered the Pythagorean Cup! Also known as the Cup of Tantalus, the Pythagorean cup punishes gluttony. Fill the cup a modest amount, and the drinker may consume the beverage in peace; overfill it, and it siphons all of its contents into the drinker's lap.

My 2012 Session 1 Claymakers "Pottery for Geeks" class mostly eagerly took on the redesign of the Pythagorean cup. I made a simplified test model, based on images from Wikipedia:

Image by Nevit Dilmen

A hole at the base of the central cap allows the cap to fill as the cup fills. Once the liquid reaches the top edge of the inner pipe, it flows down through the center of the cup. Because of the cap, the outflowing liquid can only be replaced by more liquid, not by air, and the entire contents of the cup siphon out.

The test model worked extremely well, but several of us opined that the big round thang in the middle was unsightly and would arouse gluttons' suspicions.

After some geek conferencing, we decided to incorporate the siphon into the handle. I threw a few thin tori and kluged them into siphons. In the image below, the cup on the left siphons its contents from the cup into the inner torus, up into the outer torus, and out the bottom of the handle. The cup on the right siphons from the cup into the front torus, up into the back torus, and out the bottom.
Aside from the handles looking clunky, it took significant effort to align, seal, and disguise the holes between the torus segments, and neither handle siphoned particularly well: both lacked sufficient water pressure for a satisfying drainage rate, and the curved handles sent water dribbling onto the undersides of the cups rather than straight down--that's Newton's first law for you. While Acme Klein Bottle sells a cup that siphons efficiently through its handle, these torus-handle models are duds.

The next design merely shifted Pythagoras's unsightly siphon from the center of the cup to the edge. The siphon was significantly easier to build than the torus handles, but remained unsightly. I attempted to distract the glutton's eye by covering the outside of the cup with tessellating lizards and positioning a lizard over the siphon, taking inspiration from Escher's Reptiles (1943).
Wanting to further minimize the obtrusiveness of the siphon, I explored a final siphon experiment modeled on Acme Klein Bottle's Tantalus wine glass. The handbuilt, relatively small siphon was trivially easy to build, although the frog decoy perched upon it took a while to make.
The lizard cup beat the frog: excellent water pressure made for smooth and rapid decanting. I suppose the frog cup might function acceptably during a gluttony emergency, but insufficient water pressure makes for a halfhearted dribble. With further tinkering--for example, making the inflow side of the siphon wider than the outflow side--the simple siphon* might yet prove worthy of replication.

Always the rebel, Schroeder Cat managed to drink out of the bottom of the cup.


*Simple siphon met a python
Going to the fair;
Said simple siphon to the python,
"Will you drink my ware?"
Said the python to simple siphon,
"You've poured one drink too many";
Said simple siphon to the python,
"But look, I have not any!"

Learning the classics

Calculus fans that we are, we have learned how to maximize sleep while minimizing our weekday morning routine. S and I get up at 7:45; we wake E up at 7:50 and consent to "just one more minute" before forcing him out of bed at 7:55. He gets dressed ("hurry up dude, it's 8:00!"), brushes his teeth ("hurry up dude, it's five past eight!"), eats a leisurely breakfast ("dude, focus! focus!"), packs his backpack ("yo, dude!"), and slides on his already-tied shoes ("dude, we're going to be late!") in time for us to pull out of the driveway by 8:17. We turn into the school parking lot at 8:27, which gives him three full minutes to walk to his classroom and still be on time. Surely two of those minutes could have been spent sleeping.

The consequence of this carefully honed routine is that E spends the ten-minute drive to school staring vacantly out the car window, while I'm still pumped up on the adrenaline it took to get us out the door. Occasionally we'll exchange pleasantries about the weather or analyze another driver's crappy driving (a gift passed from my father to me and now from me to my son), but usually conversation is minimal. "I'm tired," E explains, when I nudge him to talk. I understand: it takes time to get the mental wheels moving after you've been asleep for 10.5 hours.

Then a school assignment injected some verve into the morning drive: E had to memorize the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, so we learned the Schoolhouse Rock version together, and spent two weeks singing it on the way to school. When we got to the point where we could both recite it without singing, and without pausing after "ensure domestic tranquility-ee-ee-ee [2 3 4]," it was time to move on.

"You need to learn some poetry," I declared. "If you can memorize the preamble, you can learn some poetry."

--"Do I have to?"

"Yes," I said. E still hasn't figured out that he doesn't have to do everything I tell him.

--"No."

"Yes. Do it. It'll be fun!"

--"Uhhh..."

"Here, repeat after me."

I chose a classic to start him off:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
At three o'clock he had his great fall.
The King set his time machine back to two;
Now Humpty's together and good as new.

After two attempts, he had it down. "There, OK, I'm done," he said, and went back to vacant staring.

The next day we moved on to another rhyme from The Space Child's Mother Goose:

Little Jack Horner
Sits in a corner
Extracting cube roots to infinity.
An assignment for boys
To minimize noise
And produce a more peaceful vicinity.

Done. Easy. The next day, it was time to pull out the big guns.

"OK dude," I said, "it's time to learn 'Jabberwocky.'"

--"But I already learned some poems."

"Yes--and they were fun, weren't they? You're doing great! Now you need to learn 'Jabberwocky.' Ready?"

--"No. Why do I need to learn it?"

"Because you know I'm going to recite it over and over again until you try."

By the time we pulled into the school parking lot, he had a good start on the first stanza, but he was still skeptical.

--"So why do I need to learn this?"

"It'll give you something to say at parties when you don't have anything else to say. Trust me, it's very useful."

It only took another two days before he got tired of the stanza-per-day method and zoomed ahead. At home, I showed him the page in my well-worn copy of Through the Looking Glass. Was it any coincidence that the spine had broken in half, years ago, right on that very page? We held it up to a mirror so he could read it, and there was no going back.

Last night, E dug out his cape, built himself a Tum-Tum tree, and hung a Jabberwock from the stairwell. Needless to say, I'm thrilled that he seems to enjoy this most excellent poem as much as I do. Perhaps in a few weeks, he'll be willing to move on to Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout (who would not take the garbage out).

Incidentally, if you listen carefully at the beginning, you might hear the Jabberwock meowing behind the camera.

Unbridled talent

Proof that if you practice long enough with a hand-knit green dinosaur finger puppet, you can achieve great things. Note that Schroeder displays an artistic eye and an appreciation of parallel lines. Good kitty.

Blog stats

A friend has started blogging about her family's sabbatical in Germany, and recently she mentioned that her blog gets a lot of hits from readers in Russia. How does she know? Blog stats!

I've contemplated writing about blog stats for a while, but have avoided the topic because it feels a little like I'm spying on my readers--which, frankly, is what blog stats are all about. Since there are only five or so of you out there who read this site regularly (how do I know? Blog stats!), I figure it's about time you know that the internets are tracking your every surfing move. Yes, Big Brother is watching you. Whether Big Brother actually cares what you do online is another question, but you might want to keep Big Brother in mind when you surf for drugs, grenades, fertilizer, and other illicit items.

Sometimes I spy on you too, dear readers--whoever you are. I know your ISP addresses and the countries wherein you surf.

Thanks to blog stats, I also know what Google search terms bring up my blog. I am pleased to report that in the past week or so, my blog was

* the #10 hit for "geeky cat toys"
* the #7 hit for "bsgrinder"
* the #3 hit for "mobius strip joke"
* the #2 hit for "trumpet spit valve condensation" and "nominalization justice kennedy"
* and the #1 hit (yay me!!!!) for "how to build a klein bottle out of clay," "top ass playing cards," and (naturally) "might oughta should."

Apparently I write about varied and far-reaching topics. The fact that my posts come up in Google searches doesn't mean anyone actually reads them though. How do I know? Blog stats.

Of course it comes as no surprise that my blog shows up in image searches for things like "diatoms," "radiolaria," and "klein bottles," but I find it interesting that my photos are pulled into the lineup by less obvious search phrases, which recently have included:

* "ceramic chicken of illinois"
* "chisel pottery with void"
* "glass worm lumber defect"
* "sneak peep"
* "twinkly candle holder"
* "trammel of archimedes what was its purpose"
* and "virginia bullshit grinder."

I am only slightly disappointed that my most popular posts have been on Radiolarians and Diatomaceous earth (these posts presumably disappoint science-minded colon-scrubbing surfers looking for useful information), followed by Bifocals (ditto; incidentally, I gave up wearing my bifocals shortly after I bought them, since I could achieve the same effect by just smearing Vaseline on my regular glasses). Next in line are Men in Lederhosen (gotta love 'em!), Kissed by the kiln, Correspondences with the Tooth Fairy, Chickens for the Cure, 2011 (note that Brunhilde, Desdemona, and Roxanne are still looking for a new cause), The Two Towers: a recitation on females therein (this one got a lot of hits because my famous filmmaker activist sister posted it on her Facebook page. I remain quite proud of my poetic prowess; I'm also a fan of the far less popular post, Grammar at Bag-End), Wheel thrown and altered in obscene heat (no, no, it's not what you think--people get there by searching for "wheel thrown and altered," not "obscene heat"), and Cone 6 wood firing.

Of course, if you click on any of those links, Big Brother and I will know.

The new bedtime routine

I thought curiosity was going to kill the cat, but instead it looks like curiosity is just going to break a lot of my pottery. Suffice it to say that I have never before heard a crash like the one young Schroeder produced in the kitchen yesterday. Farewell, nearly perfect green cereal bowl; alas, we hardly knew thee.

Fortunately, the finger puppet dinosaur is a good distraction for all of us. If we can't keep Schroeder out of trouble, maybe at least we can tucker him out playing fetch. We suspect he might have been a dog in a former life, but the jury is out on whether he was a very very good dog or a very very naughty dog, and on whether coming back as a cat is a step up or a step down.

Introducing Schroeder

After sweet Miss Maggie B died on December 2, Homer Wells became very needy. He started following us everywhere: into the bathroom to brush our teeth, into the bedroom to get dressed, downstairs for breakfast, upstairs to find a jacket, back downstairs to look for keys, into the kitchen to unload the dishwasher, to the front door to zip up a backpack, to the computer to check email, and on and on. Thus, after an appropriate period of mourning, we decided to alleviate Homer's neediness, and we brought home Schroeder, a 10-month-old pound cat who spent most of his formative kitten-brain-development months in a cage. It turns out that when you release a cooped up adolescent cat with ear mites into a 1850-square-foot house, he does a lot of frenetic, wild-eyed bouncing off the walls, 24/7. Needless to say, Homer is no longer needy; "resigned" is more like it (to his mature and patient credit).

Schroeder was so bouncy--and bitey--that for awhile, I thought we'd chosen the wrong cat. Two events this week helped him finally calm down: a second round of ear-mite pesticide at the vet's, and the discovery, high up on that dresser he finally managed to bounce onto, of a green and yellow hand-knit mama-and-baby-dinosaur finger puppet. Schroeder has spent the last three days killing that finger puppet over and over again, and when it comes back to life, day or night, he's ready to do whatever it takes to kill it once more. Half an hour after we go to bed, he leaps from the floor, lands half an inch from the only two precious eyeballs I possess, and proudly dumps the finger puppet on my cheek. Over and over again. "You've made the right choice," says his heroic and self-assured posture, as he impatiently awaits our praise.

Miss Maggie B was a dutiful cat. For the nine and a half years she lived with us, she guarded E every night as he fell asleep, after which she'd come back downstairs, relax with a glass of red wine, and get back to the hard work of looking ravishingly beautiful and begging for canned food. It turns out Schroeder has taken on some household responsibilities as well. In addition to boldly killing finger puppets, he routinely knocks the cover off the shower drain, snakes a paw down as far as he can reach, and ruffles around a bit, until he retrieves all the hair and accumulated gunk we hadn't known we were missing. Thankfully, he doesn't leap into bed with it and drop it on my face. Homer, now that I think about it, hasn't ever had a regular job, unless you count training us to carry him into the bathroom when he needs to poop (at which he has been quite successful--but then, we're pretty motivated students). Perhaps the right of Top Cat, which Maggie was and Schroeder now is, is the consequence of a solid work ethic.

Chickens for the Cure seek new cause

The runs were fun, but Desdemona, Roxanne, and Brunhilde are sorely disappointed that Komen for the Cure has cut off grant funding to Planned Parenthood. They're clucking about finding a new cause where they can set up egg production. Suggestions?