Bubble World Written October 2017     It's the invasion of the shiny round aliens!  Why has all the furniture in the world become spherical? Whatever do you mean? Well, how about that off-white ball over in the corner?  What purpose is that meant to serve? It's meant to serve dinner. Huh? We already laid out the place settings last night, so now all we have to do is raise the lighted canopy and pull out the six seats and carry in the platters of food.  Clever, isn't it? I suppose.  And what about those other balls over by the window, the orange ones? Those are chairs, obviously. You're supposed to sit on them?  No way!  You'd slide right off! No, silly, you sit in them.  They're the famous “womb chairs” in the library at Oberlin College.  They first appeared shortly after I left campus.  The upholstered interior surrounds you and shuts out most of the outside world so you can study. Below is Ruby Turok-Squire from Cambridge, England.  As an Oberlin student, she blogged: “I love womb chairs.  I have mega admiration for anyone who can actually work while sitting in one of these comfort monsters.  When my head hits the marshmallowy-soft pillow, constructive time has no more meaning. Why should it, when I have all that I could want right there in the chair? “The womb chair is an analogy for the soft, supportive, wonderful, dreamy bubble of Oberlin.  In womb chair world, you may get knocked down, but you'll just bounce right back up.  Then, in a few years' time, you'll emerge from the Oberlin womb/cocoon a fully formed butterfly of a person, who knows where they're going and what they're doing with their life.  Well, that's the plan.” Ruby graduated in 2015 and went on to travel around the world as a Watson Fellow, studying the music of animals.