Once again, America saves the world

Gosh, I'm proud to be an American. It isn't just that we're clearly better than everyone else. It's the incredible number of useful contributions we've made to society in the past 234 years. Without our homespun American ingenuity, there would be no all-you-can-eat buffets. No loaded potato skins. No cheese that sprays out of an aluminum can, much like another iconic American invention, Silly String.

But in the past few years, there have been murmurs around the globe that maybe, just maybe, we are losing our competitive edge. Well, people of the doubting persuasion, I have two words for you:

Cheese tessallation.

In geometric parlance, tessellation is a collection of plane figures that fill a space so there are no gaps, much like the correct placement of jigsaw puzzle pieces. So when Subway announced this week it would start tessallating the cheese slices on its sandwiches, I was more than just excited. Now, rather than overlapping, the slices will be placed point up, point down, point up, point down (see photo above - an unfortunate example since there are big gaping holes between the slices. But you get the idea).

I am particularly proud of the R & D people who turned this pie-in-the-sky notion into something real we can all experience every time we order a $5 footlong (are they still $5?). I'm so glad we're using our best and brightest for life's important endeavors. I know there are other matters that need tending, but continuously perfecting the Subway sandwich will keep this country a step ahead of the India's and China's of the world who are noisily knocking on progress' door.

So for all of you doubters, we'd like you to meet the tessallated cheese sandwich. It's big, it's bad, it's red, white, and blue, and it's proof that we, the United States of America, aren't going anywhere.