Bubbles

As I am not even remotely Irish, I have no special privileges on March 17 and moreover, nothing about the world appears green today (fresh snow outside). However, I do have a nephew whose name is Patrick and I know that in Poland, where he lives, name-days are even more important than birthdays and so at least one member of my extended family is certain to be celebrating today, though most likely he will be doing so not by dancing jigs, but by chanting with his Krishna friends (yes, that appears to be his calling—no secret there, he has a website with all details made public).

Still, even in my non-Irish frame of mind, I appreciated a reader’s email with a link to a CNN article on Guinness. Not so much because I am a Guinness Stout fan (predictably, my Eastern European DNA would prefer a pilsner), but because the phenomenon described in the article is baffling and incomprehensible to me. Guinness bubbles go down, not up. Really. I am assured of the correctness of this since it has the seal of approval from a joint team of Stanford U and U of Edinburgh experts who studied the bubbles and came forth with a definitive statement on the matter.

Nothing is certain in life after all, even the trajectory of bubble movement.