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.