CALL ME SNAKE

Here's a nifty website you're all dying to visit, or will be dying to visit now that you've heard about it. Called "Ned Wright's Javascript Cosmology Calculator" (http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html), you type in a redshift (z), and it automatically converts that to the age of the universe in gigayears, depending on the assumptions made re. the Hubble constant, omega-mass, and omega-vacuum. In other words, it's indispensable. Upon visiting the site and seeing for yourself what I'm talking about here, you'll wonder how you got through life without it. But now you don't have to. Consider this your "Helpful Hint" for the day.

The geniuses at Harvard have done it again. In a new study, researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate) have reached an astonishing conclusion: TV-watching lowers physical activity. What's more, these intrepid investigators have carried their trailblazing findings even further: The more TV people watch, the less active they are. Which is exactly why I don't watch TV; it would cut into the time I spend sitting at my computer, writing pithy homilies.

It was too good to last. My Danish friend flew the coop. If you can't take the heat, as the saying goes, get out of the sweatshop, and that's just what he did, hopping a commuter train to Providence. (Which to him, no doubt, seemed providential at the time.) He claimed he couldn't take the heat--couldn't take doing sudoku puzzles morning, noon, and night, from the second he opened his eyes in the morning to his last waking moment at bedtime. So he slipped out of town yesterday, and I'm on my own again. Doing sudoku by myself, as always, trying to work through that dreaded pile of clipped newspaper puzzles that I can't seem to make a dent in.

My only hope, I now realize, is to train my daughters. My wife insists that four years old is not old enough, but I believe, in my heart, the girl is up to it. She has to be. Failure, as the other saying goes, is not an option. And when the going gets tough, as yet another saying goes, the tough do sudoku.

For the better part of a year, I've tried as part of my mental calisthenics to complete two sudoku puzzles a day--one from the Boston Globe and another (generally easier) from the Metro. But in recent weeks, I've fallen hopelessly behind, with the stack of clipped puzzles steadily growing. For the last few days, the nephew of a friend of mine is staying with us from Denmark. As part of the deal we struck, he gets free room and board. In return, he has to do several sudoku puzzles a day to help with the backlog situation. So far the arrangement has worked out splendidly. We sit side-by-side at the dining room table, each taking on a separate puzzle. The atmosphere is charged; there's real synergy going on. And, as a result, our progress has been tremendous.

If you too are suffering from a sudoku deficit, a foreign aid worker may be the answer to your dreams. It certainly has paid dividends in my case. In fact, it's hard to imagine going back to my old life of toiling on sudoku alone and never keeping up.

Of the many features we run on Call Me Snake (too many to enumerate), "Celebrity Guest Comment" is surely one of the most popular for it gives a chance for everyone to dream that someday their insightful comment will be showcased in this high-profile manner, for all the world to see. Today's Guest Comment comes from a man who needs no introduction, the all-time bumper sticker competition winner (after me). Yes, that's right, Gatemouth. So take it away, Gatemouth. You have the "conch," as they say. [Editor's note: This comment is reprinted verbatim, in its entirety. All mistakes--errors of fact, syntax, grammar, and punctuation--are the responsibility of Gatemouth, not me.]

GATEMOUTH SPEAKS: Come on, Snake, you can't blame the Republicans for the Big Dig. After all, Romney wasn't even governor when the Big Dig was started. There was Swift before him, and Cellucci before Swift, and Weld before Cellucci...

Oh wait. They were all Republican governors, weren't they? But I'll bet the Democrats' projects were just as bad. Like the Bourne Bridge, the Sagamore, the Cape Cod Canal, the Sumner and Callahan tunnels . . . Oh, wait. None of those fell apart, did they?

All right, but the Democrats' national projects have been complete disasters, right? Didn't Hoover Dam collapse two days after it was finished? Didn't all those National Parks turn into desert wastelands as soon as the last cabins were built? Didn't the Apollo space program result in the total annihilation of most of Florida? And WWII, we lost that, right?

No? All of those things were successful? Hoover Dam is still standing? We landed on the Moon several times?! We won WWII?

But the Republicans have been better engineers overall, I'm sure. I mean, SDI--that's been a huge success, right? Keeping us safe night and day. And the B-1 Bomber, started by Nixon, cancelled by Carter (because of niggling problems like the planes crashing), then revived by Reagan. That's going to go down in history as one of the great technological innovations. And you can't tell me that the Bush administration didn't have every detail of reconstruction mapped out when they started the war in Iraq.

What? 20 years and billions of dollars later SDI still doesn't do anything? The B-1 bomber was outdated before it ever hit the assembly line? Iraq has less power, water, buildings, jobs, and schools than before the war started?

Jeez, maybe there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats after all. Who'd a thunk it?

[Editor's note: Well, that's our Celebrity Guest Comment for today. Until next time, the Celebrity Guest Comment box is closed.]

In the Y the other day, my trivia-spouting friend who has taken up residence in the locker room called out from the sink, where he was grooming, over to my "stall," where I was taking care of business. "Hey Steve," he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "How about a courtesy flush? A LITTLE COURTESY HERE..." The first time this happened, I was offended, as if my private space had somehow been violated. But now I accept it as the price of doing "business" there.

In other news, I tried out one of those new thick-handled toothbrushes that I've avoided all these years, mainly because they don't fit in ordinary toothbrush holders. I had no idea what I was missing. The engineering of these brushes is mind-boggling, as well as teeth-boggling (if that's a word, and if not it sure ought to be). When you put one of these babies in your hands, you feel a surge of power, despite the fact that it is a strictly manual affair. After this electrifying experience, it may be hard to go back to the thin, old fashioned-style toothbrush again. So, ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts and start your brushes now. And while you're at it, remember: "A LITTLE COURTESY HERE..."

Our man Mitt, the hero of the Big Dig fiasco (who has impressed everyone with his incomparable grasp of bolts and epoxy), ran afoul of the law by appointing too many Republicans to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board. This week Romney was forced to add a non-Republican to the board not out of any special regard for bi-partisanship, but because, as I mentioned before, IT'S THE LAW. Too bad there's not a similar law to limit the number of Republicans in the Executive Branch (i.e., the White House) and in the U.S. Congress. That might be the only chance we have for a modicum of sanity in this once-great (but now psychotic) nation.

I don't identify too strongly with Adam Sandler--not having been a waterboy on my high school football team, a pugilistic golfer, or a wedding singer--yet I thought of him briefly last night. I was watching the climax of an Alfred Hitchcock thriller when my wife came down to say good night. I asked her to wait a second, until I paused the movie. But just then, with remote control in hand, the thought crossed my mind: Couldn't I pause my wife for a second, see the end of the movie (just a few minutes left), and then "unpause" her and say good night?

What an idea, I thought to myself. It could even be the premise for a good movie. But, more likely than not, it would be the premise for a horrible movie--such as the one I've already vowed not to see.

The abuse of drugs like cocaine, oxycontin, steroids, and ecstasy is a scourge on society. I'm not the first to have said that, and sadly I won't be the last. But in Boston, at least, a few civic-minded policemen have finally found the way to make life miserable for drug dealers, who seem to have operated with impunity for years on end. Instead of going after the dealers directly, a tactic shown to be ineffectual over the decades, these enterprising law enforcement agents are buying and selling the drugs themselves. One cop, who goes by the nickname "Kiko," stands out in this regard, and his antics make the Denzel Washington character in "Training Day" look like a choirboy. If more police officers would step up to the plate and help wrest the drug trade from the "forces of evil," we could put those nasty drug dealers out of business, once and for all.

Last night, while we were stuck in a traffic jam on the way to a friend's art show, my wife let go of the steering wheel as we crept forward, momentarily driving hands free. "Mommie," our four-year-old called from the back seat, echoing advice she herself had heard many a time, "please keep your hands on the handlebars."