A GLOWING NEW HAMPSHIRE BREAKFAST

Somewhere in the following, there´s a paraphrase of an old joke: "If I told you that I loved your thousand billion tons of radiation, would you hold it against me?"

I´m in trouble again today, after reading the Science section of a news magazine and finding this: "Scientists Alarmed At Radiation Levels In Granite Countertops." My problem starts right there, because I believe everything scientific that I don´t understand, and I don´t understand just enough of it to come unglued.

Beginning with our New Hampshire kitchen, it seems we´re now just one picocurie short of a radioactive meltdown.

See what I mean? Before this sentence, were YOU worried about picocuries? A picocurie is a measure of radiation, and it takes one trillion picocuries to make a curie. But, remember the old adage: "One picocurie is too many, and a trillion aren´t enough."

This comes from the alarmed scientists, who today still cannot tell us what "a safe level of radiation" is. That´s why there may be nothing more dangerous than an alarmed scientist, except maybe one who isn´t. Can I safely walk around with 134 picocuries on my nose? If I put on a sweat sock bristling with 78 picocuries, would my foot have to worry? I could easily find two scientists who will disagree.

I´m old enough to remember having my feet x-rayed at the shoe store. Was that the real reason I could pedal my Schwinn Cruiser so fast around those New Hampshire hills in my new Keds hightoppers? Is that lifelong great toe bunion down there the result of the reckless rads I received at Buster Brown´s? I won´t be asking the scientists.

I fear for the day that one of them announces: "Yes, we´ve determined that 642 picocuries in a Caesar salad are less harmful than 541 picocuries in a Twinkie." What if he´s miscalculated by one measly picocurie, and that´s the day I cheated on my diet?

Let´s not forget: it was a scientist who first told us that "cytoplasm in meristematic plant cells contains differentiated chromoplasts," and we all know today how lame-brained that turned out to be.

But, I operate on a lower scientific level. A Slinky on a staircase still seems magical to me, and I´ve yet to decide if drinking liquid Jell-O will make my fingernails hard. Now you know why my career in science pretty much began and ended at age twelve, when I burned down our lilacs with a magnifying glass.

But, I do live in the "Granite State," and, thanks to science, I´ve now estimated that I´m sitting atop a trillion tons of radiation, or roughly the weight of New Hampshire.

I arrived at that figure scientifically, dividing the heft of the earth (approximately 6.77 sextillion tons) by Pi. Any armchair egghead knows that if you don´t use Pi in an equation, it isn´t science. Then, I subtracted the square root of the number of presidential candidates who breezed through here in our Primary, multiplied that by 50X, (it also ain´t science without an X-factor) and added enough picocuries to fry an egg, which it now appears I can do without using the stove.

One trillion tons sounds like the right weight for a state made of rock.

All types of granite emit radiation on some level, but the experts again can´t agree on which may send out how much. One scientist said this morning that not all granite countertops were dangerous, but that he´s seen some that "might heat up your Cheerios a little."

He didn´t seem too alarmed about that, but I´m still skipping breakfast.

* * * * *

Copyright 2008 B. Elwin Sherman. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Electronic or print reproduction, adaptation, or distribution without permission is prohibited. Ordinary internet links to this column at Humorist-On-Loan may be distributed without written permission.