Miss Universe National Costume commentary, mascara, blood donations

The Miss Universe beauty pageant recently occurred, and it was brought to my attention via NPR that the National Costume portion of the contest is really something to see (all of the costumes found here, and a youtube 'highlights' clip format). Bryan and i were reviewing these, and he picked Sweden as the winner, mostly because with her sword, she might just resort to force. Neither of us understood Germany or Belgium, and i speculated that Denmark's was in homage to their mermaid statue. Quite a few of the ladies relied on large feather headdresses/props; man, weight training might be a good idea just wearing those things. America's is a little odd.

This article regarding advertising and the claims made by mascara ads popped up on the NYTimes. i recently bought a tube of mascara (my prior tube was used up in drawing a mustache on a female impersonating the lead character of Breaking Bad), and was a little overwhelmed with the choices (even just those present at Target), so it was interesting to read that some companies have been forced to change their claims, as eyelash inserts or photoshop had been used in some circumstances/models. Hmm.


Another NYTimes article recently featured selfies taken by Franz Ferdinand bassist Bob Hardy, of himself, face obscured by a book, in every hotel room he's visited. i find this fascinating, because despite all being hotel rooms, one can get pretty close to guessing the general location (city/country) by the furnishings.

Some friends and i had dinner this evening, and on the way back we saw ads for a campus blood drive. Someone made the comment that the blood just gets sold, and i took exception to that; the blood is not called a donation for nothing. According to the Red Cross FAQs for blood donations, "There is never a fee for the blood itself. The Red Cross charges for expenses incurred in recruiting and educating donors, keeping accurate donor records, collecting blood by trained staff, processing and testing blood in a state of the art laboratory, and storing and distributing blood ". Further investigation turned up a Slate article reporting that blood is sold, indeed, and can vary from region to region based on overhead costs as well as general supply. That article also included the anecdote that " Until the 1970s, a major portion of the nation's blood supply came from paid donors. But a government study found that volunteered blood was much less prone to hepatitis contamination. From then on, blood banks had to label their packages "paid" or "volunteer," which had the effect of eliminating paid-donor blood from the national supply. (Pharmaceutical companies still purchase blood plasma from for-profit firms that hire paid donors. The nonprofits also sell off surplus plasma to the drug companies at market rate.) ", which i had heard before. Interesting. Anyhow, we still do not artificially generate blood (no matter what the Southern Vampire Mysteries would have you think), and i'd rather there be blood available for those who need it than not. Also, i would probably not participate if they paid me.

Because i have been living under a rock, i did not realize John Mayer has a new album out. It's decent (and yeah, i'm a fan).

oven temperatures, space animals, Harrison Ford and earrings, organisms named for famous people

Oh, gosh; where to begin?

A dear friend has started a tumblr account featuring recipes prepared from a cookbook from 1903. i was recently accused of making a 'wild guess' regarding oven temperature equivalents: the recipe called for a 'slow oven', and i recommended 300 degrees Fahrenheit; this was not a wild guess. One of my favorite cookie recipes is for tea cakes (basically sugar cookies) from a 1910s cookbook that belonged to my great-grandmother (my dad's mom's mom), and i once looked up what a 'very hot oven' is (450-500 degrees F, which ranks up there with Dobos tortes as being the hottest oven requirement i've used). Anyhow, here is a listing of oven equivalencies, and, somewhat surprisingly, a poem.


My labmate linked this picture of a dog seemingly floating in space today; my immediate response was, 'Is that photoshopped?' Looking around, there were quite a number of Soviet space dogs, but the most recent space animals have not included canines. The picture at the very start of the wikipedia article features a small monkey ( known as Miss Baker, who, interestingly, became the longest lived squirrel monkey at 27) sitting on a small rocket. It seems possible but unlikely that the rocket was the size featured in the picture, as the monkey would be crammed in there ('screaming monkey tube in space!'), but it turns out, the actual rocket was big enough for multiple monkeys.

Jack delightfully linked this collection of photographs of women painted as skeletons. Yes!

Which brings us to ear piercings and Harrison Ford. The ever-excellent Jimmy Fallon recently had his ear pierced on set by Harrison Ford (who was probably there promoting Ender's Game? Then the ear thing just... happened?) Anyhow, within that clip, Jimmy states that Mr. Ford has had his ear pierced for a long time now, and i had to google that to confirm. Yup (and apparently he DOES have a stance on tattoos). As recounted in a few different places, supposedly Mr. Ford was out at a birthday lunch in 1997 with Jimmy Buffet and Ed Bradley, both of whom have their ear(s) pierced, and was so inspired to dash by the girls' accessory store Claire's after lunch to have his own done.

Also from Mr. Ford's wikipedia page, he has two organisms named for him (a spider and an ant, due to his work in conservation). Splashing over to the wikipedia page List of Organisms Named for Famous People is highly amusing due to the side-by-side pictures of famous humans and their namesakes. That page arced over to a very detailed compilation of organisms-named-for-humans page, which has some fascinating entries and is arranged by the occupation of the famous person, though the best entries might be found in the 'other' category.

Goodnight Dune, bats, etc; fried food centrifugation degreasing, flyting

Stumbled across this smashup called Goodnight Dune via facebook the other day. Awesome and creepy.

i've had a brain full of bats lately (things have been a little batty?); i came across these impossibly cute collections of bat gifs. Part one, and part two (mostly baby bats). Also awesome is this winged lizard.

Bryan was kind enough to prepare fried chicken for a large group of people on Halloween. It was delicious. In his honor, i present this insightful review of a paper (from The Annals of Improbable Research) wherein a centrifuge is used to remove grease from schnitzel. Best line? " Two freshly deep-fried schnitzels were purchased from the cafeteria at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. The schnitzels weighed 128.46 and 129.67 grams, suggesting that a highly precise manufacturing process produces these schnitzels. "

i'm certain you saw this on various other media platforms, but some folks synched up their Halloween-decorated house to Ylvis' tune, What Does The Fox Say. Apparently, most of the lights are LED-based and they estimate their electric bill for the Halloween season to be $25-35 for the display. No word on what the neighbors say.

(sigh.)

Turns out, mostly between the 5th and 16th centuries there were ritual poetic insult matches termed 'flyting' (not to be confused with 'flirting, 4th grade style'), with plenty of references in Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature. Additionally, wikipedia states that , "The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie records a contest between William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy in front of James IV, which includes the earliest recorded use of the word shit as a personal insult".

Moreover, a 'thing' can officially refer to a governing assembly in Germanic societies, both in per-Christianity as well as today. i'm pretty amused by the idea of a 'legislative thing' being it's proper title.

from Jack, regarding the helmet-cam mountain biking video i blogged about a week or two ago:

J:  I think I just crapped my pants watching that mt bike video

I am 99% sure that individuals up to the intense of experiences that often have that D4DR mutation thing

The mutation to which she refers is the Dopamine receptor D4, and mutations to this receptor can be insertions/repetitions, amino acid mutations, and other mutations of sections, though perhaps the "novelty-seeking behavior is probably mediated by several genes, and the variance attributable to DRD4 by itself is not particularly large". Interesting.