I suddenly find myself in a lull, during a day packed with meetings. I think I'll exploit this short pause to compose a frivolous thingo entry.

Nath and I were talking about muffins the other day. We all know that the cap of the muffin is the best part. But you can't just bake up the caps, because the muffin will know, and it won't taste the same. You really do need to bake a whole muffin so that you can enjoy its cap.

The goal, then, should be to bake a muffin that maximizes the amount of cap area. You're not allowed to cheat and suggest something like a space-filling muffin tin that's nearly all surface. That's no better than baking just the cap. No, if you want virtuous caps, you have to play fair. You have to bake something like a spherical (or maybe cubical) muffin, so that the entire outside turns into a cap.

Of course, we're left with the technological problem of baking spherical muffins with the entire outer surface exposed. Nath offered some suggestions using force fields and other sci-fi devices. But you don't need any new technology, you just need to bake muffins in space. You float a sphere of muffin batter in the middle of a cubical oven and bake it from all sides.

Now let me say -- this is a great idea for a research project. NASA is always looking for science experiments that can be conducted on the shuttle, and they're usually boring things like biology or materials science. You know, breeding worms or fabricating better transistors. What about building a better muffin? A truly space-age muffin? The astronauts would love it because the experiment allows them to enjoy a bite of homey, muffiny goodness in the cold black of space. This might even be a good way to get more grandmothers involved in the space program.

Next week: making better pasta using volcanic steam plumes on the ocean floor.