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.