Ivory Soap in Space and Other Oddities

I think I mentioned Making Light a couple times before in other contexts, but the recent Open Thread 59 is really something. Just in what I've read so far, there's been:

• Discussions of the effects of vacuum on unwrapped bars of soap (the original subject of the thread)
  
• Discussions of the effects of unwrapped bars of soap on vacuums
  
• Discussions of what sort of music a 12 to 14 year old kid at computer camp in 1980 would listen to (Kraftwerk seems to be among the likely candidates)
  
• Discussions of explosive decompression in general, ranging from the modern consensus on what would occur to popular depictions in sci-fi (esp. the famous sequence in 2001 that I've never seen), including the comment which triggered this post:
  

Charlie Stross ::: (view all by) ::: January 30, 2006, 06:30 AM:

Hmm. Question for Jordin and Graydon: do you suppose you could reduce or stop the O2 loss through your lungs, if you knew you were going to be spaced, by drowning yourself first? I'd expect a couple of lungs full of water would take quite a while to empty in vacuum, and while there's water in the way the diffusion rate is going to be a lot lower -- same pressure gradient, but the exposed surface area goes from something like a couple of tennis courts down to a couple of square centimetres.

Of course, recovery afterwards (when they hook you out of the airlock) is going to be a bitch ...

I gotta start reading these Open Threads more. Just ... whoa.

The "I am a Unique Consumer Snowflake" Meme

(via chanlemur)

1. Name a CD you own that you think no-one else on your friends list does.

Restricting it to CDs I like, I'm guessing (~75% confidence) no-one on my friends list owns Tracy Chapman's "Crossroads". Backup choice: The Strokes, "Room On Fire", but I don't like that one that much.

2. Name a book you own that you think no-one else on your friends list does.

Aha! My family's used-booksale-haunting habits come into play! I'd guess "Forms of Verse" by Sara deFord and Clarinda Harriss Lott is owned by no-one on my list.

3. Name a movie you own on DVD/VHS/whatever that you think no-one else on your friends list does.

I think they don't, but should: "Stark Raving Mad" (2002), starring Seann William Scott and a bunch of less famous people.

4. Name a place that you have visited that you think no-one else on your friends list has.

Erm. I don't go anywhere. Okay, how about the new National Air and Space Museum near Dulles?

5. Name a piece of technology or any sort of tool you own that you think no-one else on your friends list has.

Um ... I have part of a film splicer. At least, I think it's one – I don't have it with me. It's a device with pegs for the holes on the film, and two parts that move separately, that I assume cut the stuff. Like I said, I only have part of it.