gummi bears, Jimmy gold, and Gangnam Style

The Adventures of the Gummi Bears was a cartoon of my childhood. The theme tends to resurface every once in a while from the depths of my memory, which leads to my yelling it at odd moments. Tripped over a clip tonight of Alicia Keys singing a version of it on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (previous posts here).  Also, youtubing around, this catchy little earworm featuring Jimmy, the Roots and Ms. Jephson with kids' instruments is yet more of what i think i shall refer to henceforth as Jimmy gold (2:40, awesome).

Psy's Gangnam Style music video is apparently the most watched youtube video ever now. Like ya do, i had to wikipedia it; the entry's decent. The most useful bit of information there might be, "The song's refrain "오빤 강남 스타일 (Oppan Gangnam style)" has been translated as "Big brother is Gangnam style", with Psy referring to himself;^[24][25] "Oppa" is a Korean expression used by females to refer to an older male friend or older brother."
The backstory is that Gangnam is a trendy, affluent area of Seoul, and thus^" 

People who are actually from Gangnam never proclaim that they are—it's only the posers and wannabes that put on these airs and say that they are "Gangnam Style"—so this song is actually poking fun at those kinds of people who are trying so hard to be something that they're not.

—Psy"

Unrelatedly, this article is titled Pope declares: no donkey at nativity, and angels did not sing.

calories, shoes, death cab?

An infograph of various Thanksgiving-associated foods and an equivalent amount of physical activity to compensate for the calories here. This is probably the opposite of mentally healthy, but it IS interesting. Pumpkin pie really isn't as terrible for you as one might think.

Despite the fact that apparently power flats are the new up-and-coming shoe trend (thanks, KellyAT!), i've been looking for heels to wear to my brother's wedding (this one has been getting the most support, but i like the chunkiness of  this other one. Special thanks to all who have put up with my shoe sampling thus far.).

If i had a (billion) dollars, i would buy this bracelet for Holly and Jack (and whomever else wants one, though others might prefer a less pokey style). Maybe one day? Also, if i have a (billion) dollars, or at least a real job, i would totally retrofit a wet/dry vac into a foam cannon (more for slip-and-slide and/or cleaning purposes than half-naked danceparty as depicted, but whatever).

Totally been on a Ben Gibbard-associated acts binge lately, stimulated in part by the weather as well as his recent, awesome NPR Tiny Desk Concert that i've had on repeat for the last week. (My favorite version of anything Death Cab? This.)

sugar, tats, Johnny Football, bats and viruses

i really enjoyed this NYTimes article regarding sugar cubes, particularly the quote, "The Rads might well be the Pierre and Marie Curie of beverage-sweetening". i knew that sugar cubes were used as a delivery vehicle for polio vaccines (which might have actually been bad for the vaccine), but had no idea they had LSD connotations (i'm not tossing that one through google).

Moreover, i really appreciated a NYTimes article about the NBA team, the Oklahoma City Thunder. It has a few decent one liners: "Meteorologists in Oklahoma are basically rock stars", "The mayor of Oklahoma City told me that he thinks Oklahomans are humble because of their proximity to Texans, who will never stop bragging about anything." (Raises an eyebrow.) It features Wayne Coyne, beloved frontman for the Flaming Lips and a fantastically colorful character (a pair of those hands may have been mine) . The article mentioned that Kevin Durant (formerly of the University of Texas), has hidden tattoos. There's a lot of speculation as to why these are hidden; i agree with the commentary that these are no one's business but his (despite curiosity for the tattoos themselves).

Speaking of college sports, my alma mater's fooball team is actually, semi-shockingly winning this year. Quite a bit of the credit is being granted to the redshirt freshman quarterback Johnny Manziel, christened "Johnny Football" by fans and of whom there's Heisman speculation. Huh. My true interest lies with basketball; we'll have to see how my boys fare in the SEC.

In brief, Holly's teaching a freshman bio-type class this semester, and designed a class activity wherein a group of about 5 students are given roles like epidemiologist, research scientist, science writer, medical doctor, or wildlife biologist, and must piece together bits of information from these jobs to stop an unknown epidemic. She needed to a group of people to run through this for her and so a few of us were drafted; i got to be the wildlife biologist. This somehow was twisted into whale biologist - possibly by Tyler based on a recent viewing of Futurama featuring a whale biologist. Kelly AT heard about my new role, and mentioned, 'Oh, like in Seinfeld?'; i had to look that one up, too.
As it turned out, my main sample set was bats (if you're looking for viruses, assay the bats. Seriously.).
(via gchat)
me: also, what the hell is a whale biologist doing catching bats?
Holly: YOU were the one who said you were a whale biologist
me: someone said whales
    it wasn't me
Holly: bats are like tiny flying land whales
me: i could've sworn it
  there's a Calvin and Hobbes towards that
Holly: there's a futurama whale biologist episode
  so it was probably Tyler

I do have a very large soft spot for bats, so not terribly out of character. It was actually a really fun activity though Jack and Bryan ended up having an entirely too intense conversation regarding the treatment of encephalitis with steroids and an involved conversation about pig wrangling and various resultant fluids. Also, this all went down in a Panera at 11am on a Saturday morning. We didn't get thrown out, i'd like the record to state.

vegetables, pencils and the characer of a happy warrior

Regarding vegetables, my apartment tomatoes and jalapeno have finally decided to produce. Three tomatoes thus far (still green) and one jalapeno (with buds for more). The tomatoes are taking over; i'm eventually going to need a machete to get them out of the window they've conquered. In other vegetable news, i received a text today from LZ asking if cauliflower, turnips and parsnip spark when you microwave them. i've only (inattentively) microwaved cauliflower, but tossed google. It turns out, this is not-infrequent thing, to which trace minerals in the vegetables have been credited.

Furthermore, i learned today that certain fruits/berries need to blet (ripen to the point of rot) before they're palatable. This was via a post for medlar jelly via David Lebovitz's fantastic cooking blog.

"If it drives you mad/ it'll probably pass." - Andrew Bird's Orpheo. He was on the Letterman show the other night, playing a lovely cover of a Townes Van Zandt song. i got Hands Of Glory today (the companion album to Break it Yourself), and it's a very odd, semi-dark album. It came with two pencils. i queried the dude at the music store counter, "Why pencils?", and neither of us had a satisfactory answer. Pencils may be undergoing a sort of Renaissance, with the release last year of a book dedicated specifically to their sharpening (the author is an artisan pencil sharpener, and will sharpen pencils just for you). (Have i blogged on this before?!)

In President Obama's speech following the announcement of the 2012 Presidential election, he referred to Biden as "America's Happy Warrior". Now, this is an interesting term, and required a little research. Apparently, it originates in a Wordsworth poem mostly about Lord Haratio Nelson, "The Character of a Happy Warrior", which, as you might imagine, describes a model warrior. Other resources go into slightly more background; "a jovial "generous Spirit" who fights for a cause or goes through the tasks of life while exhibiting a variety of admirable, often innocent qualities  ". 

dominosteine, antibodies and heels

There's always a million and one things to post until i actually sit down to post.

Recently discovered at Aldi (a German supermarket-type store to which i was taken last week by a very insistent friend), dominosteine (or domino cubes, as the package called them). As i'm a huge fan of both gingerbread and marzipan, i couldn't help but get them and they're awesome. The ones i had used persipan, which is like marzipan (i like that that link is specifically differentiated from Marzipan) only with ground apricot kernels used in place of almonds.

A NYTimes article regarding hashtags, interesting.

So, while watching the results of yesterday's presidential election, a (limited) general survey was done on a roomful of scientists regarding the differences between the antibody binding protein A and protein G. These seem to be that protein G binds to the fc/fab portions of antibodies much more tightly, but protein A was discovered first and  is cheaper, so gets some use.

i happen to be a fan of high heels, though i rarely wear them. However, it's curious that extremely high heels tend to be associated with ladies of the night. Asking urban dictionary (semi-nsfw) supports the theory that this is because they tend to strongly attract male attention. Hmm.