Unintended Monocle

This past Tuesday morning, I picked up my glasses and prepared to clean the lenses before leaving for school. I noticed that the left lens, which has displayed a propensity for falling out of late, was missing. I looked around for a few moments to see if I could find it, without luck. Having no more time for the search if I were to arrive at school on time, I went to school without my glasses.

(I'm fairly fortunate that my eyesight isn't really that bad. I can even drive—legally—without my glasses if I need to. But if I spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen without them, I start to get headache. Did I mention that I spent most of last week entering grades into the computer before the end of the quarter on the 29th?)

I was unable to find my glasses on Tuesday night. Nancy helped me look, to no avail. I looked again briefly on Wednesday morning, again without any luck. So I went to school again on Wednesday sans spectacles.

Nancy went to her Mom's house on Wednesday night while I stayed home and graded papers. And an interesting thing happened while she was there: she found out that her Mom had discovered a lens from a pair of glasses and couldn't account for it. She brought it home with her. Sure enough, it was mine.

The really odd thing about this was that I hadn't been at her Mom's house since the previous Saturday night.

This means that I had to have gone to church on Sunday and to school all day on Monday with only one lens in my glasses. Without realizing that fact.

Good scientists are supposed to be observant, right?

Really Nerdy Math Joke

I heard this Wednesday in my AP Chemistry class.

Q: How many mathematicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: -e^πi

Hey, I told you it was nerdy.

What a Bunch of Garbage!

Last year, Frito-Lay announced that it would be selling SunChips in environmentally-friendly packaging. The new bags, they said, were biodegradable and could be composted rather than just thrown away. Personally, I found the idea pretty cool.

It was announced today, however, that the company is discontinuing the innovative packaging:

Frito-Lay sends noisy, 'green' SunChips bag to the dump

The reason for regressing to the old bags? The new bags are too loud.

I found this paragraph from the article particularly telling:

The noise of the bag — due to an unusual molecular structure that makes the bag more rigid — has been compared to everything from lawnmowers to jet engines. There's even an active Facebook group with more than 44,000 friends that goes by the name of "Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This SunChips Bag."^§

Lawnmowers? Jet engines? Seriously? Do people really find the bags that loud?

According to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s Noise and Hearing Loss web site, a lawnmower generates around 90 decibels (dB) of noise—louder than an alarm clock, comparable to truck traffic or a subway. A jet engine on takeoff is even louder: 120 dB, enough to be classified as painful.

Are SunChips bags really this loud? As REO Speedwagon (rock music, 110 dB) would say, “I don’t believe it. Not for a minute.”

SunChips bags are louder than other snack bags; there’s no denying that. And even if they’re really not as loud as a lawnmower, they are loud enough to be noticeable. That makes them loud enough to be an inconvenience to us. Consequently, the bags must go.

I guess the truth of the matter is that we believe it’s great to be environmentally sensitive—as long as it’s not too inconvenient (the movie notwithstanding).

One day our lazy, spoiled, convenience-driven society is going to figure out that sometimes, doing the right thing is necessarily inconvenient. I hope. We’ve done things the convenient way for decades in regard to energy, resource management, and pollution—and that’s why we are where we are now. And that’s where we’ll stay, until and unless we start doing things differently. We can’t expect different results than before if our behavior’s no different than before.

It’s hard for me to believe that noisy chip bags have become such a big problem. For Frito-Lay, however, the problem is about more than consumer complaints or stupid Facebook groups. It’s about money. Sales of SunChips have dropped more than 10% over the past year. In the face of such losses—especially in a down economy—what choice does the company really have? Money trumps environmental awareness every time.

Will compostable chip bags save the planet? No. But they’re a step in the right direction. If we’re smart, we may just realize that we can endure a little ‘noise pollution’ in order to cut down on the real kind.

Until then, I’m going to go buy some SunChips while the cool bags are still available.

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^§ To my mind, this proves only that there are more than 44,000 idiots on Facebook. But I already suspected this.

Repent!

Q: Why are Latter-day Saints encouraged to attend General Conference every six months?
A: Because we forget.

Last night reminded me of something I'd not thought about for a long time. The choir performing at last night's Priesthood session was composed of new missionaries from the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo. As I watched the closing hymn, I began thinking about my days in the MTC, short and very long ago though they were. I remember my MTC companion: an eager, light-hearted young man from Eden, Utah who had seen the movie Fletch fifty-seven times. When asked to share a favorite scripture on one occasion, he chose Isaiah 4:1 and said he was really looking forward to that day.^‡ He had an odd, quirky sense of humor, but I never doubted that he'd be a great missionary.

Two years later, as we were getting ready to return home from missionary service, I got to see him again. He had become a great missionary—still quirky, but wise and dedicated and faithful. He told me on that occasion that he'd watched me in the MTC and learned two things from me. First, he had learned to make a good salad. He'd never been much good at a salad bar, he said, but he'd learned how to combine ingredients to make a tasty salad by watching me.

Second, he had learned the importance of keeping a journal. He'd been impressed that I had taken time to write at least something every day that we were in the MTC. He'd decided to start doing the same. The end of his mission had come, and he had written something in his journal every day of it.

I . . . well, I hadn't.

Journal writing has been rather cyclical for me. There are times when I've done a great job and been very consistent. There have been other, more frequent times when my dedication has been lax or when I've forgotten about it altogether. Last night reminded me that I'm in the latter part of the cycle now.

I guess it's been about a year and a half since I was really writing regularly. I've been so busy that I just haven't made the time for it. The really ironic thing is that the last year and a half has been the most memorable of my life. Between getting my dream job and welcoming Sophia into our family, life has been hectic. And it's been memorable. There have been unforeseen challenges and moments of sweet relief, milestones and moments of quiet reflection, feelings of frustration and helplessness and anticipation and worry and joy, deadlines and celebrations of success. It's been quite a time these eighteen months or so.

Sadly, I've recorded almost none of it.

So it's time to start again. While I know that I won't write every day, I will make the effort to write more regularly. I will take a few moments to record the important events and the unique feelings and impressions when they come. I'll share what wisdom and insights I might obtain. I'll get back to leaving a legacy of my life.

After all, with Sophia here, I have an audience now.

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^‡AND in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach. (Isaiah 4:1)