= Such Stupid Things =

As an unexpected Christmas gift, Pat got Marie (and by association, me) a subscription to the New Yorker. I was a little worried. Indeed, its articles are solid, but I've long-enjoyed mocking Ross for starting 75% of his conversations with, "I was just reading in the New Yorker...", and I wasn't about to give that up by becoming a reader myself. (For completeness, Ross's other 25% start with, "So I was at the Bears Lair, when...".)

Well, we're three issues deep as of last week and I'm quite pleased. Maybe I should feel a little guilty, but I figure I bought into the yuppie lifestyle whole-hog the day I moved to north Berkeley and picked up a half-gallon of organic milk. So why not embrace it? And maybe it'll clue me into some hot-button issues to bring up at cocktail parties, rather than my standard, "what's your favorite dimensionless number?" (Mine's Biot.)

ANYhow, the reason I bring it up here, is that I was just reading in the New Yorker about the plight of a natural gas boomtown in Wyoming this afternoon, when I came across this line:

Six or seven years ago, various developments opened Sublette [County] up to a new explosion of mineral extraction. First, a technological advancement in hydraulic fracturing -- or "fracing," pronounced "frakking"--...

So... is this what they're talking about in BSG? "Hydraulic fracturing" could work as a vulgar euphemism for sex, right?