***Diana and Helen's Barnes and Noble Fiesta***

“what?”--Diana
“I was just thinking about how this music sucks”--Helen
“really? I like it. Wanna tango, Helen?”--Diana

“what do you think they would do? I think they would form a circle around us and embrace it”—Diana
“Yeah, that or ignore it and pretend it wasn’t happening”--Helen

*book club sits down*
“these people are funny”--Helen
“I like them”--Diana
“I want to be part of the smart group”--Helen



“they’re talking about physics! I think I love them”—Diana

“it’s like all the smart people in the valley meet here”--Helen
“of our own kind”--Diana

Topics discussed by the group:

Gibran, Kepler, how bronze is more expensive than brass and it’s buoyancy

drachma, klingons, harems, Versailles,

Einstein 1905, npr, synchronizing clocks, patent offices,

perpetual motion machines, three inch cube of gold 19lbs,

600-lbs is how much a backpack full of gold bars weighs,

uranium (23lbs), ratios, what is the density difference between lead and gold, lead bricks,

limbs, mary shelley, Copernicus, arbitrariness, the 19th century,

getting to the point, technically refined, how the universe is empty,

bessel functions, parallel axis theorem, x to the n, armchairs, corpuscles,

cognated scientists, nature of science, Aristotle sitting in his armchair, perseverance,

binaries, 6,000 stars in the night sky, inventing photography earlier, Schroeder,


collaborative efforts, Fred Flinstone’s house, kepler being the first to use the word satellite

and writing a letter to Galileo, he said that stars should be referred to as satellites from the greek word satilleos,


hookes law, Shakespeare being 12, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,


would Shakespeare be influenced by gibran, astronomy classes. silver noses,

“how did he attach it?”
“it must have been wedged up underneath the skin into the bone. They found metallic remnants in his skull”
“like you would get from a cheap ring”

“they’re thinking: it’s raining; I want a house”
“we need to preserve this… as we stand here and get wet”

the word museum, came from the word muses, a general around 305

invented roads for which he was given the title savior. titans, x-ray vision,

“we’ve heard this story before; he’s like my grandpa”

“this is a mutiny”

what percentage of modern people would believe ridiculous things like x ray vision, solar cells,

Aristotle, pi r squared, surface of the moon, colossal, 40 foot telescope that was a “piece of crap”,


the best things that work are smaller, wind power, serendipity, measuring to the millionth degree,

using a microscope to read a crazy tiny scale, vessels, magnitude, leopards,

dedication, loving their professions, an obscure island in the middle of the Atlantic,

what would possess you to do something like that, formal educations,


astronomers knowing the speed of light before physicists ever did,

gods, terrestrial, Jupiter’s satellites, the distance from Jupiter is changing because of it’s orbit,


the eclipse of the moon, orbital periods, frequency cycles, Velocity, middle English,

the chemistry of cooking

“that’s something I would want to read; it’s something that amazes me: the chemistry of cooking”

the idiots guide to theories of the universe, Athens, conceptual stumbling blocks,

nails in the coffin, continuum, atoms, flying pigs, geology, fresh meat, picking out books,

quantum, spectroscopic, protract, Apollo project, Newton, calculus,

“we should invent calculus” heat resistance

“they have nothing better to do”
"and it all hadn’t been done before",

skyscrapers, asides, quadrant


“how much would a harem cost today?”
“depends on who’s in the harem”
“I know how much a wife costs; I’ve got one of those”