Schnitzelbank, Aglets, burpee, ice fishing, rube origin

Apologies; it's been so long since i logged into my blog account that i semi-forgot the password.

This morning, the name Otto came up in conversation (it's the name of one of my great uncles who has particularly gorgeous handwriting due to a seminarian education), and Ryan remembered that the Animaniacs have a song featuring a character by that name. The tune is apparently to the popular German folk song Schnitzelbank, in which things are pointed at, named, and then a catchy chorus is sung. It's pretty badly stuck in my head.

Aglets are what the tips/ends of shoelaces, etc., are called, based on the diminutive for the old French word aguille, or needle. So, "an aglet is like a small needle at the end of a cord", from the wikipedia article.

i got sidetracked by burpees the other night. Along with being the name of one of my favorite mail-order seed companies, burpees are a exercise that are sort of a combined plank/jump. i was curious about the name. As it turns out, the exercise is named after Royal Huddleston Burpee (of course), an American physiologist who developed it in the 1930s/40s as a fitness benchmark for new joiners of the New York YMCA during that time period. Other accounts state that he developed it for the military, as they also used it to test the fitness of recruits. Anyhow, there's some controversy as to whether or not it's to be done in high volume.

On a kinda-related note, there have been several articles based on this science writer's paper concerning where fat goes as your body is utilizing it. Biochemistry FTW.

So i was watching this amazing video that some hikers took while walking across a lake covered in black ice somewhere in the mountains of Slovakia when i clicked over to this joyful video of a guy having a GREAT day ice fishing. Ice fishing is not something i grew up participating in, but it's pretty popular here in Wisconsin. (And a very warm thanks to Brian for patiently explaining various gear to me.)

i came across this remarkable downhill skiing video the other day, and link it here for James (and the rest of you, i suppose).

A close friend and i had an argument over whether or not i can/should call myself a writer, given this blog (and a few other blogs i've done). i argue that no, i can't, because it's neither my training nor something i get paid for, but Rup's position is that i do indeed write, ergo, i am a writer. This infographic supports his position.

A position that i do own (though only when confronted with it by jerks), is that of being a rube, defined as "an unsophisticated person from a rural area". i was explaining this to a friend, and because curious as to the origins. The first thing i turned up was the latin rubus, for blackberry bramble, which didn't make a whole lot of sense. Further research at Dictionary.com traced it to the proper name Reuben, "As a typical name of a farmer, rustic, or country bumpkin, from 1804.", and other places, for instance Snopes, list it as an American slang term, and cite it's use as a safety phrase for traveling carnival workers and actors who would yell "Hey, Rube" to warn of an angry/rowdy crowd situation, as very nicely documented via wikipedia.

Here is an article documenting the fact that Chris Hemsworth and Matt Damon are buddies. i think that's enough for today.

Dewitos, Thanksgiving regional dishes, some football nicknames, Chopin's heart, Interstellar

So the last post discussed Mt. Dew, and Bryan mentioned Dewitos. i'd heard something about Mt. Dew testing flavors of Doritos, but didn't put any thought into it. Turns out, they're taste-testing doritos-flavored soda, according to Snopes. (Oh, eww.)

In other articles mentioning Doritos, NPR's Monkey See blog writer Linda Holmes was sounding off on a recently NYTimes regional thanksgiving recipes piece in a recent post called "'Grape Salad Is Not Minnesotan, And Other Lessons In Cultural Mapmaking". Her response was hilarious and spot on. My own home state is represented by turkey tamales. Please, children, we don't even have turkey every Thanksgiving; some (awesome) years, my grandmother and mother take a break and my uncles barbeque ribs, or Dad'll fix a brisket. A dear friend and Kentucky native had a similar response to his home state's featured item:

 Bryan:  i've also never heard of pocket stuffing

which is apparently from ky

i think it's just from the one dude's grandma

Anyhow, something that i knew on an intellectual level but didn't consider in any depth was dressing. At home, it's always cornbread-based, which takes moisture well and ends up almost like a Thanksgiving polenta. Having mentioned that, too, to Bryan, he hadn't ever had cornbread dressing, and looked up an article about the regionalism of various recipes. " Turkey stuffing tells a story: It reveals a lot about who you are and where you're from. If you call it "stuffing," for example, you probably grew up north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Southerners tend to serve "dressing."   ". That sounds about right.

Here's a ridiculous info-gram about 'Habits of the World's Smartest People'.

Something else i had to google today was the backstory of the Buffalo Bills running back Anthony 'Boobie' Dixon. He's on my fantasy football team, and i find it odd that they don't use his given name on the roster. This article reports that the nickname stems from a Friday Night Lights character comparison, "

Dixon also explained his nickname, “Boobie,” which he got in college at Mississippi State.“It happened when I was a freshman in college,” he said. “The Friday Night Lights movie was coming out. I went out there my freshman year and I was balling and making plays and doing some of everything. All the players were calling me that. Coach Sylvester Croom at the time started calling me that and it just stuck.” James “Boobie” Miles was one of the lead characters in the movie. ". Also, since we're on the subject, Green Bay Packers Safety HaHa Clinton-Dix's given name is Ha'Sean, but his grandmother gave him the nickname, "

"My grandmother has been calling me that since I was a little kid, so just been a little kid thing," Clinton-Dix said. Does he like it? "I love it," he said. "Coach loves it. Everyone loves it, so HaHa, that’s what I go with."

Here is this story about the previously-secret recent exhumation of Frederic Chopin's heart (which lies in his native Poland, as the rest of him is in France, apparently smuggled back into Poland in what is probably a crystal jar of cognac, hidden under his sister's skirts). The line that drew my attention was, " "The spirit of this night was very sublime," said Tadeusz Dobosz, the forensic scientist on the team. ". He had what appeared to be a complicated love life according the wikipedia article, having broken an engagement from a Polish lady in his mid-20s, a complicated affair with French author George Sand, then a not-relationship relationship with a student, Jane Stirling, socialite and daughter of a Scottish Laird, who collected-by-purchase his entire estate upon his death, and " While there is no evidence they were lovers, she was often referred to, after Chopin's death, as "Chopin's widow" ". Wikipedia also reports that , " It has been claimed that the financial assistance said to have been provided by Jane Stirling and Katherine Erskine was actually from the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind, and that the Scottish sisters were simply a cover for Lind's anonymity. Their father's will left them only £300, which was by no means enough to fund the sort of generosity that was provided to Chopin  ". Golly.

So i saw Interstellar the other day with a friend. We both enjoyed the movie while watching it, but would have preferred the movie to just end with **SPOILER ALERT** Cooper to get sucked into the blackhole/wormhole thing (and not have the whole father-daughter deathbed scene). **/Spoiler alert** Anyway, the movie did what i thought was a great job at explaining the relativity of time to gravity and speed, and it seems like others had the same opinion; Neil DeGrasse Tyson did a Q&A session here, and astrophysicist Kip Thorne's response is here. That last article reports that, while attempting to generate a plausible black hole, "

Von Tunzelmann tried a tricky demo. She generated a flat, multicolored ring—a stand-in for the accretion disk—and positioned it around their spinning black hole. Something very, very weird happened. “We found that warping space around the black hole also warps the accretion disk,” Franklin says. “So rather than looking like Saturn's rings around a black sphere, the light creates this extraordinary halo.”

That's what led Thorne to his “why, of course” moment when he first saw the final effect. The Double Negative team thought it must be a bug in the renderer. But Thorne realized that they had correctly modeled a phenomenon inherent in the math he'd supplied." Pretty neat.

mach numbers, beauty noir, lobster trafficking, wine and the Packers, Mt. Dew and vitamin C

At the family T's the other night, the subject of Mach numbers arose, which are those corresponding to the ratio of speed of something relative to the 'local' speed of sound (in a fluid). Turns out, Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher who, among other things, photographed bullets breaking the sound barrier (and compressing the air in front of them).

I came across this facebook page with some amusing noir beauty tips (credited to H.P.Lovecraft). I like it a lot.

Speaking of strange artist mash-ups, here's one of Taylor Swift and Aphex Twin (via NPR). Don't listen to the first one (it sounded like the remnants of concussion feel). i think maybe To Cure A Weaking McGraw might be the most reasonable one, but honestly, they work surprisingly well. Kudos to the creator. Miss Swift has been in the media a lot lately given her recently released album and decision to pull her music from webstreaming player Spotify.

Last week, Woot.com was offering a deal via wine.woot there you would be shipped, among other things, 4 live lobsters. How does one ship lobsters? Carefully, apparently, in a cooler. There are a host of websites to answer this question in remarkable detailed fashion, " Keeping lobsters moist doesn't mean that they have to be submerged. In fact, lobsters are much better off being out of water during shipment. Therefore, do not pack them directly on ice because the melted ice can become a problem. A lobster in fresh water swell ups and can burst. Dry ice should not be used either because it produces large amounts of carbon dioxide that can asphyxiate the lobsters. " and " It is also best not to feed lobsters for two or three days before shipping. Full stomachs result in lobsters using more oxygen and increase the incidence of vomiting. No need for messy lobsters. " No need for messy lobsters, indeed.

Since we're on the subject of wine, i was in a car with some friends this weekend and we saw a sign for a wine to be enjoyed while tailgating. (This is a thing?!) We're in WI, that's probably not what folks are drinking at a tailgate, but i looked to see if the Green Bay Packers have an official wine. They don't seem to, but i did kick up an article stating " What wine would you pour for a Green Bay Packers fan, perhaps at a pre-game tailgate party? ". Hmm. They go on to recommend a vintage by former player Charles Woodson for the big spender ($250 for an autographed bottle), or vintages from local label Titletown wine, which "features a football and the motto "Sweet Taste of Victory."" ($15 for a bottle a white blend), and a few other local vineyard wares. Also, weird thing that i didn't know: "The Packers do not have official cheerleaders; they discontinued the cheerleading program in 1998 and use cheerleaders from nearby St. Norbert College and University of Wisconsin Green Bay " (and that can be confirmed on the wiki page).

My labmate and i recently discussed the benefits of imbibing Mountain Dew for medicinal purposes. It contains both orange juice and citric acid. That brought about the question of whether or not it provides vitamin C. Turns out (yahoo fail), citric acid differs from ascorbic acid by only one oxygen molecule, but it's ascorbic acid that provides vitamin C. Also, the orange juice amount is apparently negligible. And here is an article in which scientists are polled for their opinions as to whether Mountain Dew can dissolve a mouse carcass.

A friend who is recently left the state FOREVER (cue melodramatic music) had a cold, but we still wanted to hang out, i was tracking down the length of time someone with a rhinovirus is actively shedding virus (ie. infectious): "RV is shed in large amounts, with as many as 1 million infectious virions present per milliliter of nasal washings. Viral shedding can occur a few days before cold symptoms are recognized by the patient, peaks on days 2-7 of the illness, and may last as long as 3-4 weeks." It was surprisingly difficult to find, and i study picornas for a living.
*update, i was chatting with KellyAT, who mentioned 'shedding rhinos'; and that brought to mind a whole 'nother mental image. Awesome.

A friend tweets for an oncampus entity, and another mutual friend commented that there was a tweet  featuring a shirtless Jeff Goldblum.

Bryan: i just went to the page

and there's something about shirtless jeff goldblum

i'm so very confused

 me:  i don't need to even consider imaging that, so i'm going to pretend you didn't type it

So i googled around to determine why this might be in the news, and came across this lightbulb ad. Then, i tracked down the twitter feed and applicable tweet. Ah, makes slightly more sense.

flu moratoruim, extreme mountain biking/unicycling, uterine transplants, the Sweetest Day

So there's a lot happening in the virosphere these days, given Ebola and EV-68. For instance, a moratorium (no, another one) has been imposed on all influenza research that has 'gain-of-function' mutations. This is unfortunate, as it precludes a lot of important research that needs to be done, for instance, in designing flu vaccinations. i think a quote (via here) sums up the sentiments of many virologists: " "After the voluntary moratorium on H5N1 transmission studies, new regulations and policies were issued," flu researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison noted in an email. "I do not know what else is needed. We will never be able to satisfy critics who call for 'zero risk.' " ".

On a lighter note, here is a (humorous) article called "Some Fear Ebola Outbreak Could Make Nation Turn To Science" from the New Yorker.

i was looking around the other day and found this great account from a Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist who was trying to get through airport security in North Dakota after taking his Nobel medal to show his grandmother. Apparently, TSA had no idea what to make of the situation. Happily, i doubt this will ever be something i have to deal with - security just usually catches my fishing hooks and coffee grinder.

While hanging out at the family T's place last weekend, James the Formidable was streaming clips of extreme mountain biking (like this one of Danny MacAskill in the Isle of Skye); seriously impressive/scary stuff. And then i came across this video of a few folks unicycling in caves (in Bulgaria?! Where is this even close to being legal?). Worth watching; these guys are pretty talented if a bit foolish (which they address around 4:30 in the clip.)

A week or two ago, Kate and i were talking about the recent reports that Apple and Facebook were paying for female employees' egg storage/freezing campaigns, which has caused some controversy. (Human femal fertility drops off around age 37 pretty sharply; Kate, a review for fertility including that European study can be found here.) We'd discussed that even if the eggs are viable, the wombs are older, and that might also effect the child. However, it turns out that groups in the UK and Sweden have recently performed uterine transplants; a Swedish woman just gave birth to a baby following transplantation (and sorry, the paper shows surgical images of the womb) with a womb from a 61-year old woman. The (still living) donor had already undergone menopause (after having had 2 kids), but that was stimulated with exogenous hormones in the recipient, and the recipient then underwent in vitro fertilization. This is pretty cool; imagine the implications for transgendered folk? We live in the future.

At the market this morning, KellyAT asked why hot peppers crack (demonstrated here) upon maturity, but sweet/bell peppers don't. i didn't know the answer to that, but it's a super interesting question. After a little research, it turns out that that process is called 'corking'; it's basically when the peppers start growing too fast for the skin to keep up, so it forms stretch marks -tears in the skin that then heal over. This is a sign of a mature hot pepper, and usually directly correlates to how hot that pepper will be. i guess bell peppers don't tend to grow that quickly? A hot pepper forum did point out that sometimes tomatoes also do this, which i'd noticed but didn't link to peppers. Moreover, jalapenos will also turn black then red as a sign of maturity (not sun scald, that's as lesion), but i couldn't track down an exact/scientific reason why; though there is speculation that's is just part of the pepper color spectrum. So. Take home message - stretch marks correlate to hotness.

In honor of my halloween costume and the upcoming holiday, here is a video of a baby rescue bat being fed.

Today my friend Lauren introduced the term 'spargelziet'; or a German word for asparagus season. Combined with the Spargel Frau statue, i'm just going to interpret this as the German culture is incredibly serious about their asparagus.

 me:  did you know this is a thing? it showed up in my calendar : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetest_Day

 Bryan:  i did not know it was a thing

 me:  what a strange thing

 Bryan:  isn't valentines day enough?

 me:  right? not according to candymakers

and Hallmark

i'd've thought, were i to have started this, that they'd space it a little further from other candy-centric holidays

'cause people are already buying a ton of cards and candy this time of year, anyway - i feel like the market is pre-saturated.

 Bryan:  maybe so they only have to work part of the year?

who wants to work all summer?

 me:  or maybe it's starting to become pleasant to work in a hot candy kitchen this time of year?

And it does look to be a purely regional marketing construct. Huh.

infrared thermometers, red beard highlights, 'tie one on', old JM songs

As has been shown in pretty much every major (and minor) news outlet in the world, there are now cases of Ebola as diagnosed in Texas; one from a Liberian man who contracted it there but was in Dallas when he started manifesting symptoms, and one from a nurse who had treated him. This is an interesting NYTimes article regarding, among other things, health care workers who have contracted Ebola. However, and this is made very clear; there are many more diseases that are causing deaths for which we have vaccines and should be more concerned (influenza, pertussis, measles, etc). Reference this article and this article about NIH science funding and how budget cuts are negatively impacting our preparedness (hat tip to Kelly AT for linking that last one).

This is a very well-written article regarding the index of infectivity for several viruses, " a mathematical term that tells you how contagious an infectious disease is " based on average number of people who contract it (and i appreciate the clarification notes given).

A conversation the other day involved how airports are now starting to assay temperatures of travelers, and i mentioned that most seem to be using handheld thermometers. My apologies; i'm pretty sure i said 'laser', but these seem to in fact be infrared. According to wikipedia, the mechanism " consists of a lens to focus the infrared thermal radiation on to a detector, which converts the radiant power to an electrical signal that can be displayed in units of temperature after being compensated for ambient temperature ". Neat.

With the high temperature this week having been around the 50s, it's getting to be beard season. Several of the males i know seem to have definite red tones in their facial hair, despite being otherwise dark blond or brunet (also, side tangent, according to wikipedia, " Although brunet is the masculine version of the popular diminutive form used to describe a little boy or young man with brown hair, the use of brunet is uncommon in English. One is more likely to say of a man or boy, "He has brown hair" or "He is brown-haired", than to say, "He is a brunette" (or brunet). The term brunette is the feminine form of the French word brunet which is a diminutive form of brun meaning "brown/brown-haired", the feminine of which is brune. ") Anyhow, red beards (not Redbeard) are a common enough trait that i did a little research. Evidently, it's a genetics co-dominance issue tied to a specific gene (HCL2) on chromosome 4. If you (male) have one copy of this gene, your might have a red beard, and two copies would dictate all body hair to be red. (Other genes which are said to impact red hair are "  themelanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R), which is found on chromosome 16 ", as documented in this article among other references.)

After enjoying a bottle (or 3) of wine one night last week with Jack and Leslie (Congrats again on submitting your thesis, Jack!), the phrases 'to tie one one' and 'to tie one down' were bandied about. To tie one on usually means you're drinking, but why? Apparently, that's not well known, but might be related to the British phrase  'tie a bun on' (origins also unclear). There's a lot of speculation in the commentary found here,  including " "tie a bun on" came out of British theater. Getting drunk after performances, a drunk male might raid wardrobe and come back dressed in women's clothing. The "bun" was a wig with the hair tied in a bun. It was the theater equivalent of wearing a a drunk wearing a lampshade. ", and the necessity of needing to tie on one's night cap after a few too many drinks. Another semi-related-but-temporally-distinct idiom origin i was looking up this week is 'pop the question', which commonly, conventionally refers to a marriage proposal. Turns out, this one's not as well documented. i managed to find that the earliest mention of it dates to 1826, to English dramatisct and playwright Mary Russell Mitford. Given that date, i'd imagine the citation refers to Foscari: a tragedy. Interesting in whatever regard; probably it refers to what folks seem to hope is the surprising/startling nature of the question.

Something amusing is this pictorial representation entitled "Chart-Topping Songs".

Many of my friends are rather excellent writers. i was kicking around the other day and came across this list of Advice For Writers, by writers. Seems pretty solid, and i appreciate the Terry Pratchett one.

Kar and Roommate; Our recent rainy, chilly weather puts me in mind of the music of John Mayer, and while listening via youtube the other day, i tripped over a John Mayer/Brad Paisley dual concert (via CMT Crossroads, dated 2004) the other day online. i am fond of both musicians, and as noted, they both tend to write thoughtful music, though JM's is less witty than BP's; hearing one cover the other's songs is really weird (whoa, Why Georgia?!). Further looking into this, it appears as though they've collaborated more recently, at the 2013 AMAs . Huh. Moreover, and this is less weird, it appears that Mr. Mayer and Keith Urban have also had dual concerts - reference this and particularly this. Huh. Moreover, i found a playlist from a show he did in 1999, for which i have had various song tracks since probably 2003 (recognizable due to his on-stage patter), but had no idea their origin. You get credit for that one, Kar, given that i'm pretty sure they were originally on a mix cd from you. Anyway, nice to figure that out.

Trib building facade, bike electricity, star(data) songs, pizza cake, various conjugations, homecoming mums

The very patient and dapper Nate B., recently took a trip to Chicago with his wife, and they posted FB pictures on various rocks embedded in the Chicago Tribune building, but not a picture of the bit of the Alamo that is present there. Hometown and familial pride demanded that i jokingly hassle Nate about this grievous oversight, but it brought about the question; why ARE there building pieces present on the Trib facade? Looking into it, it seems that the Tribune owner/publisher Colonel Robert McCormick requested that reporters bring back bits of pieces of places where they were stationed. There are ~149 rocks embedded in the walls, ranging from everyplace from the Great Wall of China, the Great Pyramids, St. Peter's Cathedral, etc. It's not entirely clear, though, how some of the pretty substantial chunks were acquired, but it seems like most were bits taken from remodeling and ruins, etc.

While at the market this weekend, JamesET and i were kicking around the idea of using one's bicycle trainer to generate electricity.  Perhaps not super efficient. Hmm.
i came across a clip the other day of the noises made by stars - stars emit light, which sometimes flickers due to starquakes or things passing between them and us; this flickering light can be transformed into sounds, by math ("In the sonification process, those inaudible frequencies are analyzed by a mathematical technique called fourier analysis and then scaled to frequencies that the human ear can hear") as done by folks monitoring emissions captured by the Kepler satellite. (A NYTimes article from 2011 does a nice summation). Upon mentioning this to James, a rather talented and devoted amateur astronomer, he said that he'd heard of a blind astrophysicist who devised a method of star identification, and researching that lead to this article, " Wanda uses a graph marked with Braille tags on a pegboard to plot the intensity of light versus frequency for a spiral galaxy. She can figure out the mass of the galaxy by calculating the area under the curve ".

i usually check NPR's Sandwich Monday blog posts, wherein a group over at NPR tries one specialty sandwich (or something like that:

"we've used The Neuhaus Rule: a sandwich is defined as protein encased in bread product. This definition allows us to explore the widest possible wasteland of cuisine.

But for the few foods that don't fit under The Neuhaus Rule, we also observe The Sandwich Draft Principle. We feel that if a food doesn't belong to any other food category (spoons made of chicken, 7-11 Chicken Batons), we can draft it onto the Sandwich Team."     )

 On every Monday. This week featured Pizza Cake, which is basically deep, deep dish pizza made from stacked pizzas. i was scrolling through the responses, and found a link to a site called thisiswhyyouarefat.com. Pretty remarkable, it's a collection extreme junk food, some of which looks like a wonderful idea, but maybe not others. Since we're on the subject of food, there is a tumblr called "Women Laughing Alone With Salad", documenting instances of advertisements in which solo ladies are looking joyous with salads. <insert commentary on media portrayal of solo women here.>

Something else found while checking favored blogs is this tumblr thread outlining the conjugation of the latin verb boo in relation to ghosts. Yup.

Speaking of conjugations, i was listening to Stromae via the internet (most popular seem to be this one or this one?), and wondering if he calls himself after the biological supportive structures. Turns out, no. Wikipedia states that "In 2000 he appeared as a rapper called Opsmaestro, though he later changed his stage name to Stromae (a syllablic inversion of "Maestro", a practice called verlan).". Verlan is apparently a French version of pig latin, wherein the word is inverted (second syllable spoken before the first one), the name itself is l'inverse, inverted. Because this can be done in several different ways for words, it's group-specific (you've gotta be in the know to pick it up).

Finally, something that i've learned is pretty much only a Texas thing are Homecoming mums. These are glitter-encrusted corsages with a chrysanthemum centerpiece (usually artificial, but my own mother lovingly tracked down and bought me a real one, otherwise i probably would've revolted), festooned with ribbons, bells and other garland/decorative elements. They're worn by high school-aged females (dudes get a smaller version, worn as an arm band ("garter")) at homecoming. It's a big deal, and a status thing - the bigger/tackier and more of them you are wearing, the more you are 'loved'. Apparently, they used to be a thing you bought your date, but by the time i got to high school (well over a decade ago, *sigh*), they were given by family members, teammates and close friends, as well.

licorice, barn quilts, Whiskey Rivers, Sagrada Familia, pineapple and rutabagas

First, my labmate Ryan sent me this youtube vid of  (More) bad lipreading of Walking Dead. i may have been laughing hard enough to tear up (fav line, outside of the music video-style credits? "i have one thing that dolphins have, and that's a sense of discovery".) Also worth watching, and this is old, is the bad lipreading youtube clip of Game of Thrones called Medieval Land Fun-time World.

For whatever reason, licorice (black licorice, my countrymen) has been on my palette a lot lately. Jack and i also hit World Market this weekend, and i had to explain how i came about my taste for it (in brief, my former PI always had some in the lab break room, which i usually enjoyed as a midnight snack). Anyway, something i learned today was that apparently licorice used a a flavoring for tobacco - M&F Worldwide produces 70% of the licorice in the world, and apparently 63% of their 2011 sales were to tobacco companies. More from the wikipedia article, " Liquorice provides tobacco products with a natural sweetness and a distinctive flavour that blends readily with the natural and imitation flavouring components employed in the tobacco industry. It represses harshness and is not detectable as liquorice by the consumer.^[16] Tobacco flavourings such as liquorice also make it easier to inhale the smoke by creating bronchodilators, which open up the lungs.^[17] Chewing tobacco requires substantially higher levels of liquorice extract as emphasis on the sweet flavour appears highly desirable.^[16]  ". i'd've never guessed. Moreover, care should be taken for folks over 40 to not eat too much licorice; " FDA experts say black licorice contains the compound glycyrrhizin, which is the sweetening compound derived from licorice root. Glycyrrhizin can cause potassium levels in the body to fall. When that happens, some people experience abnormal heart rhythms, as well as high blood pressure, edema (swelling), lethargy, and congestive heart failure. ". Hmm.

This bold raccoon literally made me LOL this morning, and few things could be more accurate about seminar snacks.

These pictures of the police of Reykjavik doing their thing are endearing (hat tip here).

In honor of the upcoming Oktoberfest, here is this pretty pallet of beer colors.

Barn quilts are a thing. As one travels through the countryside in Wisconsin (and a lot of other places), you might notice a quilt square painted on the side of a barn. These are apparently part of a public, grassroots art movement, first documented in Ohio as part of a community celebration, and since spreading across the country. i'd been curious about them for a long while (i hadn't seen any before moving to Wisconsin), and there are a lot of them on my bike rides. At Cheese Days (a cheese festival held in Monroe, WI), a driving tour had been organized, and gave me a name to associate with the observation.

On Friday,had the good fortune to see The Head and the Heart play an outdoor concert downtown with some good friends. Jack mentioned that she was excited to hear them play the song that included the lyric 'whiskey river' ('Down In The Valley', btw), and i had to smile. That particular lyric is the name of a song written by Johnny Bush, later covered by Willie Nelson. Something that i didn't know was that Mr. Nelson apparently also covered Coldplay's song The Scientist in a commercial for Chipotle. The Willie Nelson song that frequently gets stuck in my head, however, is the lovely Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain. (And i was happy to hear Head and The Heart play Rivers And Roads, which is wholly appropriate for my stage of grad school.)

Another thing i didn't know but recently learned was that, for the amazing minor Catalan cathedral Sagrada Familia designed by Antoni Gaudi, he calculated the centers of gravity and other angles for the soaring ceiling using an inverted model of the cathedral consisting of strings weighed down with birdshot. It's a little astonishing.

Kate B. mentioned that videos of cake decorator machines are just fascinating, and she's right. Also, a recent conversation that i really enjoyed:

 me:  Kelly AT and i were joking about this last weekend; she's going as 'sexy pineapple' and i'm considering 'sexy rutabaga'

 Katherine:  LOVE IT!

Sexy unsexy things is very appealing to me.

They don't really sell sexy rutabaga, right?

 me:  no

we were picking the least sexy thing we could think of

 Katherine:  I bet you Yandy has pineapple.

And she was also correct about that. However, i googled 'sexy rutabaga', and didn't come up with any costumes, only this disconcerting tumblr message.

Roald Dahl and vaccination, calavera(s), salt,London Bridge, down indicator

As a recent photograph of a Columbian womens' cycling team demonstrates, gold lycra does not photograph well. However, as the article outlines, resultant commentary is a little harsh.

i was poking around the other day with the hashtag #provax and found this article featuring Roald Dahl's pro-vaccination stance, given that his daughter died from (now-preventable) measles. He's been in the news lately, too, owning to the 50th anniversary of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book publication, and the issuing of a 'missing chapter'.

Jack and i have noted that it's officially Halloween season, and prime shopping season for folks who appreciate black and have a minor affinity for skeletons. We were reviewing World Market's stock online when i chanced upon these teatowels, and declared that from henceforth, all of my linens should be embroidered with calaveras. Jack googles 'calavera' and comes across with this swimsuit company based in California (their designs are appropriately funky, and i'm linking them here for future reference). Sidenote; 'calavera' is Spanish for 'skull', and also the name of the lake/water reservoir and a creek closest to the high school i attended; we would run around it during cross country practice. My weird affinity is partially nostalgic and cultural? Sure.

Had a conversation with my labmate yesterday regarding the origin of common use table salt. Hitting the Morton's website, it looks like they source their salt both from saltwater as well as mining it. Because i was cruising around the website anyway, here's a link to the history of the Morton salt girl design. And, turns out, the addition of salt to water only raises it's boiling point by two degrees Celsius.
As we're on the topic of 'recent things we've googled in lab', Nate B. stopped by the lab office yesterday. We were discussing the site of next year's (inter)national virology conference as being in London... Ontario, Canada.  Ryan alluded to the London bridge being sold to a city in Arizona, and that required immediate research. Turns out, the city of London sold the 1831-1967 iteration of the London Bridge to Lake Havasu City, Arizona, as that version of the bridge couldn't support the increased London traffic. The bridge was dismantled, and " the original stonework was used to clad a concrete structure, so that the bridge is no longer the original after which it is modeled. ", spurring conversation as to the amount of original bridge necessary before it could be considered the bridge or a separate construction. We decided on separate construction.

Apparently we missed National Roasted Marshmallow day, on August 30th. i learned this after stumbling upon a National Forest service blog entry entitled, " US Forest Service Asks How Does Your Marshmallow Roast? ", and aimed at people to make healthier s'mores by replacing some of the components with grilled fruit.

While watching the Chicago Bears/ SF 49ers game this Sunday, a few of us noticed that the referees wear black bands looped around their hands. We couldn't tell if it was every ref or just one making a weird fashion statement, but the placement of the bands seemed to alter. Upon researching it, it looks like refs commonly use these bands to keep track of the downs, and is listed on the wikipedia page as a Down indicator, " A specially designed wristband that is used to remind officials of the current down. It has an elastic loop attached to it that is wrapped around the fingers. Usually, officials put the loop around their index finger when it is first down, the middle finger when it is second down, and so on. Instead of the custom-designed indicator, some officials use two thick rubber bands tied together as a down indicator: one rubber band is used as the wristband and the other is looped over the fingers. Some officials, especially umpires, may also use a second indicator to keep track of where the ball was placed between the hash marks before the play (i.e., the right hash marks, the left ones, or at the midpoint between the two) ". Interesting.

Lauren recently linked this scientific paper(?) entitled "The sound of mitosis (to the tune of “Do, Re, Mi” from the sound of music movie soundtrack) ". We've both agreed that while singing it to ourselves, we'd like to alter the words slightly, and acknowledge accents for changing pronunciation.

the SEC as muppets, Parabens, ZMapp production, viking ladies, etc.

With the return of college football season, i would like to remind everyone of this truly hilarious description of the SEC schools as Muppets. i and several of my friends are alumi of various of these schools, and we all laughingly accept the Muppet indicated (the Swedish Chef for my alma mater, Gonzo for Bryan's,  and Rowlf for Kelly AT's, which i think is a wide enough sample to generalize for all schools involved).

Many, many congratulations and wishes for happiness to the delightful couple Kate and Jeremy, who married this past weekend.

i am familiar with the word 'parabens' as the common name of parahydroxybenzoic acid, commonly used as preservatives in various make-ups and skin products, of dubious-but-USDA-approved safety. However, a Brazilian friend (Hi, Luisa!) recently celebrated a birthday, and her facebook wall filled up with posts of "Parabéns!" It does not appear to have a direct translation, but instead mean either 'Congratulations', 'Happy Birthday', or 'Way to Go!' (update, as Ryan points out, the literal translation is "For good things!")

My masters work was about half focused on optimization for expression of exogenous proteins in plants, so the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp was of particular interest to me. Tracking back various papers, it looks like they just used a transient Agrobacteria infiltration into N. benthamiana for which acouple native plant glycoslyation genes had been knocked down; the pooled 3 (highly purified) plant antibodies were based on optimized ones originally made in mice against Ebola. (In case you can't tell, i love being a scientist and looking stuff up.) Also, i appreciated the Mapp Bio's FAQ page opener question; " Does ZMappTM work?
We don’t know.  ". Honest, if not necessarily encouraging.

This article regarding Viking skeletons, initially identified as males due to being buried with swords but now properly ID'd as women, is making the rounds on the internet. i'd like to think that if i were a Viking (when i was a Viking?), i'd have a sword and my own fast ship.

Few things annoy me as much as the use of infantile language by adults to adults, including phrases like "Yummy!", or tummy/belly. (Seriously, please just say 'Delicious!' or stomach, or abdomen like the adults that we are.) However, these are interesting origins, too. 'Belly' apparently derives from the Old English for 'bag'. 'Tummy' comes from the childish pronunciation of 'stomach', or, possibly-but-maybe-not, the Amazonian Indian word 'tum', for 'stomach'. There also might be a localization link; 'tummy' is possibly British, and 'belly' is possibly American, but maybe not.

My labmate Ryan linked this tshirt to me this afternoon; i would have immediately purchased it if somehow velociraptors were involved (we bandied about the modified state slogan "Velociraptors is for lovers"? or  former slogan, "Almost heaven, West Velociraptors." Maybe not, and i seem to be on a John Denver reference kick?). i responded with this tshirt link.

i really enjoyed this article on being polite.

Words for people of Polish heritage, Polka, pollock, Pig-in-a-poke, dickens

i was recently in Montana, visiting the splendid Holly/Tyler/Arya group. Also present was Pirate Tom (so called due to the hat he was wearing when i first met him). Anyway, we were all having dinner out one evening when Tom looked at the menu and saw an order of pollock (the kind of whitefish) and chips on offer. He associated this with terminology for people of Polish heritage, of which my own is over 98%+. This sparked a bit of conversation - i prefer to be called 'Polish' or "jess", thank you, not a 'Polack' - the term has a negative connotation in the area where i grew up. Bits of this exchange continued, and i received an email the other day linking the wikipedia article for the cultural group 'Poles': " The Poles (Polish: Polacy, pronounced [pɔˈlat͡sɨ]; singular masculine: Polak, singular feminine: Polka) are a nation of predominantly West Slavic ethnic origin who are native to East-Central Europe, inhabiting mainly Poland. ". (shakes head.) Technically, i suppose that makes me a 'Polka'. This begs the question, like the dance? This seems to be a bit complicated, but yes. There is an origin story wherein a young Bohemian girl,  made up a dance (called the Madera? one that she called the Madera?) to a traditional song called " "Strýček Nimra koupil šimla", or "Uncle Nimra Bought a White Horse"". This dance caught the attention of a man names Joseph Neruba, who took it to Prague in 1835 where it became famous. While that story is romantic, the dance has been documented as existing since at least 1822, the steps set by a Czech poet named Celakovsky to a song called "The Polish Maiden". Because of it's lively steps (and the fact that it's FUN, imho), the dance style became a internation phenomenon in the mid-late 1800s, and continues to this day (super common at country dance halls all over south Texas, at least, and i have also learned a hoppier Wisconsin beer garden version; weirdly, it's officially the WI state dance).  Moreover, polka dots are just a pattern that became popular in the mid-1800s, attaching 'polka' to their name to capitalize on a popular dance of the time.

In looking at the wikipedia article for the fish Pollock, it turns out that most fish-and-chips fish is Pollock, as well as being " In the U.S. and worldwide, it is the primary fish used by the McDonald's chain in their Filet-O-Fish sandwich ". Continuing this strange fried-foods-wiki-arc is the chip butty, 'butty' being a conjunction of bread-and-butter, apparently, which lead to discovery of that french fry sandwich's mention in the official song for the Sheffield United football fans, sung the the tune of John Denver's  'Annie's Song'. That last part really struck me as odd - i don't associate soccer anthems with John Denver, but i suppose it IS a pretty and nostalgic tune. Finally, to complete the arc, the Australian dish Pie Floater, which is a meat pie upended into pea soup. And that's where i tap out.

Apparently, i was using all sorts of uncommon phrases while in Montana (according to Tom). One of these was 'pig in a poke'; this is usually used in reference to having purchased something without having seen exactly what it may be. i checked, and the phrase has been in use since the Middle Ages, and involves selling someone what they thought was a piglet in a closed bag. Upon opening the bag at a later time, the buyer would discover that the animal inside was in fact a cat, dog, etc. "Poke" is another word for bag, from the French poque. This phrase is related to "letting the cat out of the bag", or "buying a cat in a bag", and the wikipedia page has documented similar phrases in over 25 different languages.

Holly's family frequently says that a mischievous child is 'full of the Dickens'. (i adore Holly's family, and the use of that phrase completely suits them. Good old-fashioned intelligent trouble.) The origin of this phrase was called into question. Urban Dictionary, in true fashion, reports that it is to be " to have the spirit of a raging Charles Dickens through your blood stream ", which, while certainly capturing the spirit of the word, is probably incorrect. Weirdly, Dictionary.com reports it to date back to the mid-16th century, as a euphenism for the devil, as well as deriving from the name 'Dicken' (Richard). Holly herself concurred, offering up the devil -> devilkins -> dickens evolution of the phrase.

Linked from Ryan regarding literary descriptions of skin color is this slightly risque buzzfeed article.