Well.
Music first, regarding cola. I was listening to a live recording of the excellent Lake Shore Drive, and they covered the Kinks' Lola. Having not ever really listened to the lyrics of that song, i thought it was pretty forward for being written in 1970 (given that time period, i shouldn't have been surprised). Further research indicates that the song was a riff on an actual experience of the band members. From a nicely cited wiki article,
"It was a real experience in a club. I was asked to dance by somebody
who was a fabulous looking woman. I said "no thank you." And she went in
a cab with my manager straight afterwards. It's based on a personal
experience. But not every word. – Ray Davies"though the article notes that alternate theories exist. Apparently the reference to cola caused some problems; the band originally wrote in Coca-cola, but had to change it to 'cherry cola' because it wouldn't air otherwise.
Another song referencing cola is Savage Garden's song I Want You, with the line 'chic-a-cherry cola'. The most plausible (though 404'd) reference is " During an interview
Darren said that in Australia they don't have Doctor Pepper or Cherry
Coke so the first time he came to America he was totally blown away by
it. Rather than using a product name like "Cherry Coke" he made the word
" chica-cherry cola " instead. ", from this online forum.
Speaking of 404 (and Coca Cola), it is the area code for greater Atlanta. i made the comment to my electrical engineer brother the other day that this area code always makes me smile, given that it is the HTTP standard response code for a dead/broken link. i don't know if i've covered this before on this blog, but area codes themselves were initially assigned based on city size. Cities with larger populations got smaller area codes, because when dialing on rotary phones/pulse dial phones (cutting edge then), it took less time for the rotary to come back around, so less people would be inconvenienced. The codes themselves were also non-sequential by location, to decrease mis-dialing of nearby cities.
I was in conversation with a friend the other day, and incorrectly stated that Target was not American-owned. Apologies, Alex, it is. Only tangentially related, one of the best things i read last week was this guy's documentation of moments from his first week of working at Target.
A colleague and i recently got into an argument over the number of known Dengue virus strains. There are 4 common ones, and a less-common fifth strain (as covered in this post). This is a problem, because while infection with a single strain of Dengue provides protection against that strain, infection with an addition, separate strain may trigger a severe immune response (Dengue Hemorrahgic fever/Dengue severe shock), probably because complement, and/or activation of a cytokine storm based on poor binding of antibodies against the other strains, and non-destruction by white blood cells after phagocytosis. Anyway, this situation makes development of a vaccine super difficult.
More on viruses and serotype; There are two types of Zika (African and Asian, with multiple strains), one of which is at the root of the recent epidemic. There was a recent, completely heartbreaking article in NPR's Goats and Soda on the damage done to fetal brains by Zika infections. Even for babies born without microencephaly, there is evidence of calcium deposits, which may indicate additional damage which will continue to have lifelong impact. A question is whether an infection/vaccine gives rise to protective antibodies (a tentative yes), and whether or not these antibodies would protect a fetus (as-of-yet-unknown but likely).
Finally, Kelly AT sent along, via twitter, this figure of the force generated by a brachiosarus projectile vomiting. i tracked it down, and turned out it's from a book by Anthony Martin, an Emory University ichnologist (someone who studies the traces of dinosaurs, like footprints, etc), and that looks like quite a read. This is somewhat non sequitur, though Kelly and i had a discussion regarding the speeds of T. Rex and velociraptors. A recent conversation with a colleague about the intelligence about velocirators revealed that pretty much my entire age cohort bases the majority of our knowledge on the classic movie Jurassic Park (regarding velociraptors, the relevant line is 'Clever girl'). A variety of sources (none of which are well cited) base velociraptor intelligence on brain case size; velociraptors are either about as smart as ostriches, or smarter than rabbits but not as smart as dogs/cats.
Another stellar link from Kelly AT this past week is this The Oatmeal post called 'How to be perfectly unhappy', as not being happy in precisely this manner is something we've discussed (though, as Brandon has mentioned, i'll leave the ultras to you, dear).
Texas is full of venomous animals and plants-covered-in-thorns (though, we call the cactus at focus of that article 'turkey pear'); i've made the statement that place trying to kill a body. However, Australia WILL kill a body. One of my favorite authors is Richard Preston, and his book Wild Trees has some of the best (practical) descriptions of tree climbing i've come across. My memory attributes to that book 'tree leeches', or leeches that fall onto prey from trees. Googling around about that, bush leeches are probably what i mean - these live on land, in moist areas, and grasp on to prey as it passes by, but don't seem to ever crawl up into trees (shudder).
And finally, 'i don't have a phone. Send a raven.'
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