Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Cucumber Season: Yet Another Reason to Love Scandinavia; Also, Quantum Entanglement



So I've never actually been to Scandinavia, but I'm sure I'd love it. I have long fostered a deep love of Scandinavian folk art, Icelandic knitwear, havarti, and Pipi Longstocking. . . I pretty much love all things Scandinavian. (and all things Eastern European as well, but I think I'm genetically biased there) There aren't as many books as you'd think about Scandinavian folk art, so I've bought every one I've come across, but anyway, I'm getting off topic, I wanted to talk about Cucumber Season...

Today I found out that in Norway they call this time of year 'Cucumber Season' because things slow down so much in Scandinavia, with everyone on holiday and out of the country or up in little mountain cabins or tooling around the seaside in little boats, that the newspapers have nothing to print, so the cover stories are usually about who has grown the largest cucumbers. . . Isn't that just so damn charming? Don't you want to grab Norway and pinch it's cheeks and coo about how cute it is? I hope that someday I get to spend a leisurely summer munching on cucumbers in a little red house in Sweden, but for now my porch is pretty good and today my friend Judith just happened to give me some cucumbers from her garden to eat, sort of serendipitous.

....

Later on in the day I was talking to a friend about how I want to write a romance novel that also somehow involves the theory of Quantum Entanglement... For a lengthy explanation of Quantum Entanglement check out the wikipedia entry here. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance". But a new age website defines it thusly:

Imagine you have two individual particles. You do something to somehow link the two together, or “entangle” them, so that a change in one automatically affects the other. Even when you separate the two objects, they somehow still remain correlated no matter what the distance.

This is the basis of quantum entanglement. The idea is that if you take two entangled particles and you “jiggle” this particle over here, you’ll automatically “jiggle” that particle over there simultaneously.
(www.youaretrulyloved.com/enlightenment/quantum-entanglement/)

I also found an NPR story about Quantum Entanglement and love:

After running 36 couples through this test, the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner, the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104351710)

So you see, I think this idea is ripe for a romance novel! Don't steal my idea! I have my pen name all picked out too. It's real cute.

Anyway, I hope you all are enjoying Cucumber Season and that your particles are jiggling along in good company...

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