My siblings (and others) really enjoy the terrible game Cards Against Humanity (previously mentioned here). It looks like the manufacturers are releasing a Science pack (benefiting women's STEM education), and some of the cards are pretty entertaining.
KATE AND JAMES! This is a really cool documentation of how the Hubble telescope images are colored (and please note that the guy's name is Zolt, which apparently means 'life' in Hungarian). (Also, hat-tip/still shots here.)
My labmate Ryan linked this ESPN notice that Miller Park (home of the Milwaukee Brewers) are going to be featuring 'Nachos-on-a-stick' ("a stick of beef, loaded with refried beans, rolled in Doritos, and then deep fried and drizzled with sour cream and cheese") this upcoming season. It is noted that people might want to split it, but there are some who probably will eat the entire thing. Also mentioned are the Lambeau Field Brat'chos; " Sliced bratwurst, potato chips, sauerkraut, jalapenos, sour cream with beer cheese sauce are served up in a bucket". Hopefully, one would share those as well.
i seem to take a lot of headshots/portraits for friends to use on things like seminar announcements and passport/greencard pictures. While looking at the specifications for this the other day, it turns out that on the US passport site is a widget that lets you crop pictures to their specifications (go here, widget link on the lower right). That's pretty nifty.
Bryan linked this penny farthing bike race/festival the other day. Penny-farthings are those bicycles with a much larger front wheels, so called because " from the British penny and farthing coins, one much larger than the other, so that the side view resembles a penny leading a farthing" as based on the wikipedia article, and the front wheel is directly connected to the pedals. From the looks of things, there is a small step to help mount it. Moreover, it looks like some of the modern ones have a brake, and here is a youtube clip of a (modern) race. While that all looks like fun, i'll stick to my modern "safety" bike.
A few of us were watching westerns on television a few weeks ago, and an infomercial aired several times about coloring books for adults. There was a definite discussion about the purported 'stress alleviation' one might attain, as claimed, and about the popularity of such an item. Last week and much to our surprise, a NYTimes article featured these same coloring books. From the article; " Since its release in spring 2013, “Secret Garden” has sold more than 1.4 million copies in 22 languages. It shot to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list this month, overtaking books by authors like Harper Lee, Anthony Doerr and Paula Hawkins. Her follow-up, “Enchanted Forest,” which came out in February, is briskly selling through its first print run of nearly 226,000 copies. ". Huh.
SXSW happened, and happily, NPR provides amazing coverage for those of us not in attendance. Austin always has a happening musical scene, and i've been to concerts at several of the venues, particularly Stubbs (which is a remarkable mash-up of barbecue joint and concert venue, not to be confused with an Alaskan mayoral cat), so seeing footage filmed there has a very familiar feel. The Belgium artist/rapper Stromae (covered in this blog post) had a set there, and i was super curious to see what those present would make of a very fashionable dude rapping in French; looks like the crowd was receptive if not outright thrilled.
March Madness is nearly through (spilling into April for the final four), and the mens' UW-Madison Badger basketball team is doing very well. They are a generally decent and entertaining bunch of guys, but i think my favorite 'oh, this crazy kids' story has been the arc where Nigel Hayes (and teammates) has been fascinated by and challenging the stenographers present; here is a compiled list of his recent terms, and a recent UW article has suggested a few more, should he run out. Go, Badgers!
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Thursday, March 19, 2015
auto-antonym, Bye Felicia, Alan Turing and running, Swedish Fish, hide-n-seek, cumin
Lots of stuff.
Directly after posting last, Kate B. was reading the post and kindly noted that 'factoid' is one of those words with two opposite meanings (a sort of auto-antonym); a common use of factoid is to mean a small bit of usually trivial information, and the other being an invented fact that has the illusion of truth. Another example of this as denoted by Kate is peruse; it can mean either to scan briefly, or to examine something very carefully. Look, the English language confuses everyone.
A few months ago, i was taking a shortcut through one of the undergrad areas in town, and someone had placed a mattress by the curb, spray painted in red the with the words "Bye Felicia". Because i was in a hurry and it was cold, i didn't take a picture, but i made up all sorts of stories in my head about why someone would spray paint that on a mattress to discard it (for instance, the mattress belonged to a ex-flatmate who moved on but left a mattress, or it was the name of someone with whom the painter had a particularly acrimonious breakup, or someone just named their old mattress... the list goes on for a while). Anyway, i was reading something online the other day that featured the same words in a dismissive fashion, which reminded me of the mattress, and googled it. It's a meme referencing a line from the movie Friday, turns out. i liked my elaborate stories WAY better.
Recently saw The Imitation Game, about the English mathematician and 'father of the computer' etc, Alan Turing. Something i didn't realize was that he was a highly competitive distance runner. As wikipedia notes, " While working at Bletchley, Turing, who was a talented long-distance runner, occasionally ran the 40 miles (64 km) to London when he was needed for high-level meetings,[54] and he was capable of world-class marathon standards.[55][56] Turing tried out for the 1948 British Olympic team, hampered by an injury. His tryout time for the marathon was only 11 minutes slower than British silver medalist Thomas Richards' Olympic race time of 2 hours 35 minutes. He was Walton Athletic Club's best runner, a fact discovered when he passed the group while running alone". The part about running to London for a meeting is my favorite.
It must be noted here, i've been really, really enjoying the excellent mock-horror podcast series Welcome To Night Vale, about the supernatural goings-on of a small desert town. Because there are only 60-something episodes at time of writing, i've been rationing them pretty carefully.
Speaking of rationing, i have very little discipline regarding the candy Swedish Fish, and usually can only stop eating them when the bag is empty.The original variety seem to be a completely artificial flavor that i can only describe by red; i googled around to see if anyone can historically pin a flavor to them with little success (and it should be noted that the assorted sort are listed on the website as "just like the red ones. only with more colors."). However, i did come across this Brief History of Swedish Fish article.
It was 'Pi Day' (3/14/2015, corresponding to 3.1415) last weekend, and here is an article about how many digits of pi one needs to memorize to be considered 'special' (more than 9, apparently - i've only got 5 memorized).
My brother and i used to play hide and go seek in the clothing departments of various chain stores (much to our mother's dismay); this article recently surfaced about IKEA banning games of hide and seek in stores after a group of 32000 signed up for a game on Facebook in the Netherlands and a woman arranged a game played by about 500 in Belgium. This is AMAZING.
This recent NPR article tracks the spice cumin (comino, as it appears in my spice cupboard:) ) through history, into various cultures. Something i don't know that i believe, but can offer no alternative is this, " In English, at least, cumin has a singular distinction – it is the only word that can be traced directly back to Sumerian, the first written language. So when we talk about cumin, we are harkening back to the Sumerian word gamun, first written in the cuneiform script more than 4,000 years ago.". Surely there's another word...?
What's remarkable to me is that this article about a person supposedly scanning their cat on the photocopy in Steenbock library made it to Time.com, despite being fake - the campus newspaper tracked down the picture on a 2008 website (and posted a correction that someone was just pranking the library). How is someone photocopying their cat worthy of national attention?
And in the spirit of faux personal statements/job descriptors (created using this bogus job description engine);
Directly after posting last, Kate B. was reading the post and kindly noted that 'factoid' is one of those words with two opposite meanings (a sort of auto-antonym); a common use of factoid is to mean a small bit of usually trivial information, and the other being an invented fact that has the illusion of truth. Another example of this as denoted by Kate is peruse; it can mean either to scan briefly, or to examine something very carefully. Look, the English language confuses everyone.
A few months ago, i was taking a shortcut through one of the undergrad areas in town, and someone had placed a mattress by the curb, spray painted in red the with the words "Bye Felicia". Because i was in a hurry and it was cold, i didn't take a picture, but i made up all sorts of stories in my head about why someone would spray paint that on a mattress to discard it (for instance, the mattress belonged to a ex-flatmate who moved on but left a mattress, or it was the name of someone with whom the painter had a particularly acrimonious breakup, or someone just named their old mattress... the list goes on for a while). Anyway, i was reading something online the other day that featured the same words in a dismissive fashion, which reminded me of the mattress, and googled it. It's a meme referencing a line from the movie Friday, turns out. i liked my elaborate stories WAY better.
Recently saw The Imitation Game, about the English mathematician and 'father of the computer' etc, Alan Turing. Something i didn't realize was that he was a highly competitive distance runner. As wikipedia notes, " While working at Bletchley, Turing, who was a talented long-distance runner, occasionally ran the 40 miles (64 km) to London when he was needed for high-level meetings,[54] and he was capable of world-class marathon standards.[55][56] Turing tried out for the 1948 British Olympic team, hampered by an injury. His tryout time for the marathon was only 11 minutes slower than British silver medalist Thomas Richards' Olympic race time of 2 hours 35 minutes. He was Walton Athletic Club's best runner, a fact discovered when he passed the group while running alone". The part about running to London for a meeting is my favorite.
It must be noted here, i've been really, really enjoying the excellent mock-horror podcast series Welcome To Night Vale, about the supernatural goings-on of a small desert town. Because there are only 60-something episodes at time of writing, i've been rationing them pretty carefully.
Speaking of rationing, i have very little discipline regarding the candy Swedish Fish, and usually can only stop eating them when the bag is empty.The original variety seem to be a completely artificial flavor that i can only describe by red; i googled around to see if anyone can historically pin a flavor to them with little success (and it should be noted that the assorted sort are listed on the website as "just like the red ones. only with more colors."). However, i did come across this Brief History of Swedish Fish article.
It was 'Pi Day' (3/14/2015, corresponding to 3.1415) last weekend, and here is an article about how many digits of pi one needs to memorize to be considered 'special' (more than 9, apparently - i've only got 5 memorized).
My brother and i used to play hide and go seek in the clothing departments of various chain stores (much to our mother's dismay); this article recently surfaced about IKEA banning games of hide and seek in stores after a group of 32000 signed up for a game on Facebook in the Netherlands and a woman arranged a game played by about 500 in Belgium. This is AMAZING.
This recent NPR article tracks the spice cumin (comino, as it appears in my spice cupboard:) ) through history, into various cultures. Something i don't know that i believe, but can offer no alternative is this, " In English, at least, cumin has a singular distinction – it is the only word that can be traced directly back to Sumerian, the first written language. So when we talk about cumin, we are harkening back to the Sumerian word gamun, first written in the cuneiform script more than 4,000 years ago.". Surely there's another word...?
What's remarkable to me is that this article about a person supposedly scanning their cat on the photocopy in Steenbock library made it to Time.com, despite being fake - the campus newspaper tracked down the picture on a 2008 website (and posted a correction that someone was just pranking the library). How is someone photocopying their cat worthy of national attention?
And in the spirit of faux personal statements/job descriptors (created using this bogus job description engine);
jess ardent is a resident pontificator who uses differential calculus to create unorthodox paradoxes of mansplaining in post-zombie invasion societies
Monday, March 9, 2015
viruses and music genre, Manx, moon temperatures, Hubble images, drinks, Mary Ward
A friend was walking through the lab and noticed some "legacy" (eg, belonging to previous generations of grad students) music cassette tapes, notably that of Black Sabbath, and somehow this evolved into a discussion of the tastes of present grad students (my own general preference for folk/americana) reconciled with the previous generations. This got spun into the similarities of Black Sabbath versus the Avett Brothers, and what viruses might be used to represent those. Would they share enough similarities that both might be positive sense RNA viruses? Is folk/americana positive sense RNA viruses and semi-metal negative sense RNA viruses? And would classical music be, like, DNA viruses? The discussion continues; feel free to weigh in.
People from the Isle of Man are referred to as 'Manx'. The 'Man' part probably refers to the fact that it's an island, rising up out of the sea, " The name is probably connected with the Welsh name of the island of Anglesey, Ynys Môn[14] and possibly with the Celtic root reflected in Welsh mynydd, Breton menez, and Scottish Gaelic monadh,[14] all of which mean "mountain" and probably derive from the Proto-Indo-European root *men-, "to tower" ", from wikipedia.
On a recent morning when the outside temperature was a single digit, we googled to determine if would be colder on the surface of the moon. The temperature of the moon surface when not facing the sun is minus 243 degrees F (though the poles can dip to minus 397 degrees F, and the coldest temperature ever recorded in the solar system was minus 413 degrees F in one of the norther craters), and 253 degrees F in full sun. We also learned that the Apollo moon landings occurred during the lunar 'dawn', so the surface wasn't super hot yet (and also, their suits were reflective and were not overly conducive to heat transfer). Okay, yeah, Wisconsin is not as cold as the moon can be.
Speaking of, it is the 25th anniversary of the Hubble telescope, and the Hubble folks are sponsoring a March Madness bracket type tournament whereby people can pick the best Hubble image by voting. This is pretty awesome.
NPR recently put up an article regarding the brewing of drinking tea ('Chemis-tea'), in which they account for all aspects of tea (selection, cup choice, brew time, additions, etc). Something i didn't consider was that, the thinner the porcelain, the less heat will leach away from your tea. They also link directions for the perfect cup by George Orwell (who gives 11 golden rules); also, " I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. ". Well stated.
Another thing i recently learned was that La Croix sparking water is a Wisconsin product, out of La Crosse (via this entertaining article); this is interesting, given that the most common local sparking beverage is Klarbrunn brand (out of Watertown, WI). Looking into the history of carbonated water, apparently English chemist and theologian Joseph Priestly (who is credited with discovering oxygen, due to his studies concerning air) came across carbonation; from wikipedia; "The air blanketing the fermenting beer—called 'fixed air'—was known to kill mice suspended in it. Priestley found water thus treated had a pleasant taste, and he offered it to friends as a cool, refreshing drink. In 1772, Priestley published a paper entitled Impregnating Water with Fixed Air in which he describes dripping "oil of vitriol" (sulfuric acid) onto chalk to produce carbon dioxide gas, and encouraging the gas to dissolve into an agitated bowl of water.[15] ". (i find it amusing how, despite killing mice, he went ahead and infused water with 'fixed' air, anyway, then drank it. i guess the beer was fine, so...) Another wikipedia mention: " In the United States, carbonated water was known as soda water until World War II, due to the sodium salts it contained. These were added as flavoring and acidity regulators with the intent of mimicking the taste of natural mineral water." Alright.
Enjoyed a beverage last weekend with the eye-catching name of "The Lion's Tail". Honestly, though, they had me at the listed ingredient of 'allspice dram'; which is combined with bourbon, lime, bitters and sugar. Interrogating the long-suffering bartender, he mentioned that it was probably just some single grain alcohol macerated with allspice berries, and that it was also called 'pimento dram'; apparently, allspice is more properly called pimento berries. For Bryan, here is an article called "DIY vs buy; should i make my own allspice dram". Also, apparently Google has launched a new cocktails platform that more easily describes what goes into each beverage (to a variety of responses).
The (documented) first person to die in an automobile accident was early scientist Mary Ward, who was expelled from a steam car and incurred a broken neck. She was well known for her microscopy drawings; her first publication garnered 8 reprints (!!), despite her initial limited self-publication.
This Onion article is something i occasionally worry about. Having clicked on that, i was linked over to this (serious) article titled "Why are creative women dismissed as 'quirky'?"
This is a rather striking/amusing take on body image. (i particularly like the advice about thighs.) Since we're on the topic of bodies, we'd discussed belly buttons a while back; in that they're basically scars; here's a somewhat graphic view of what one looks like once removed.
This is ridiculous. i don't even know what to say about that, other than a lot of things contain iron.
People from the Isle of Man are referred to as 'Manx'. The 'Man' part probably refers to the fact that it's an island, rising up out of the sea, " The name is probably connected with the Welsh name of the island of Anglesey, Ynys Môn[14] and possibly with the Celtic root reflected in Welsh mynydd, Breton menez, and Scottish Gaelic monadh,[14] all of which mean "mountain" and probably derive from the Proto-Indo-European root *men-, "to tower" ", from wikipedia.
On a recent morning when the outside temperature was a single digit, we googled to determine if would be colder on the surface of the moon. The temperature of the moon surface when not facing the sun is minus 243 degrees F (though the poles can dip to minus 397 degrees F, and the coldest temperature ever recorded in the solar system was minus 413 degrees F in one of the norther craters), and 253 degrees F in full sun. We also learned that the Apollo moon landings occurred during the lunar 'dawn', so the surface wasn't super hot yet (and also, their suits were reflective and were not overly conducive to heat transfer). Okay, yeah, Wisconsin is not as cold as the moon can be.
Speaking of, it is the 25th anniversary of the Hubble telescope, and the Hubble folks are sponsoring a March Madness bracket type tournament whereby people can pick the best Hubble image by voting. This is pretty awesome.
NPR recently put up an article regarding the brewing of drinking tea ('Chemis-tea'), in which they account for all aspects of tea (selection, cup choice, brew time, additions, etc). Something i didn't consider was that, the thinner the porcelain, the less heat will leach away from your tea. They also link directions for the perfect cup by George Orwell (who gives 11 golden rules); also, " I maintain that one strong cup of tea is better than twenty weak ones. ". Well stated.
Another thing i recently learned was that La Croix sparking water is a Wisconsin product, out of La Crosse (via this entertaining article); this is interesting, given that the most common local sparking beverage is Klarbrunn brand (out of Watertown, WI). Looking into the history of carbonated water, apparently English chemist and theologian Joseph Priestly (who is credited with discovering oxygen, due to his studies concerning air) came across carbonation; from wikipedia; "The air blanketing the fermenting beer—called 'fixed air'—was known to kill mice suspended in it. Priestley found water thus treated had a pleasant taste, and he offered it to friends as a cool, refreshing drink. In 1772, Priestley published a paper entitled Impregnating Water with Fixed Air in which he describes dripping "oil of vitriol" (sulfuric acid) onto chalk to produce carbon dioxide gas, and encouraging the gas to dissolve into an agitated bowl of water.[15] ". (i find it amusing how, despite killing mice, he went ahead and infused water with 'fixed' air, anyway, then drank it. i guess the beer was fine, so...) Another wikipedia mention: " In the United States, carbonated water was known as soda water until World War II, due to the sodium salts it contained. These were added as flavoring and acidity regulators with the intent of mimicking the taste of natural mineral water." Alright.
Enjoyed a beverage last weekend with the eye-catching name of "The Lion's Tail". Honestly, though, they had me at the listed ingredient of 'allspice dram'; which is combined with bourbon, lime, bitters and sugar. Interrogating the long-suffering bartender, he mentioned that it was probably just some single grain alcohol macerated with allspice berries, and that it was also called 'pimento dram'; apparently, allspice is more properly called pimento berries. For Bryan, here is an article called "DIY vs buy; should i make my own allspice dram". Also, apparently Google has launched a new cocktails platform that more easily describes what goes into each beverage (to a variety of responses).
The (documented) first person to die in an automobile accident was early scientist Mary Ward, who was expelled from a steam car and incurred a broken neck. She was well known for her microscopy drawings; her first publication garnered 8 reprints (!!), despite her initial limited self-publication.
This Onion article is something i occasionally worry about. Having clicked on that, i was linked over to this (serious) article titled "Why are creative women dismissed as 'quirky'?"
This is a rather striking/amusing take on body image. (i particularly like the advice about thighs.) Since we're on the topic of bodies, we'd discussed belly buttons a while back; in that they're basically scars; here's a somewhat graphic view of what one looks like once removed.
This is ridiculous. i don't even know what to say about that, other than a lot of things contain iron.
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