firework planar explosions, j-setting, 99 44/100, seedless watermelons

Here is a link to a craiglisting for a dinosaur-shaped bicycle.

Been watching a lot of fireworks lately, 'tis the season, and a discussion came up the other night regarding the plane of firework explosions, to wit, "how does it always look like they're coming toward you?" As was posited during the discussion, it's an optical illusion based on the fact that most fireworks are (sometimes directed) explosions expanding from a single point, but your brain interprets the bits going away from you as just smaller/more distant. This can be nicely visualized by flying a drone into a fireworks show. And bonus, here's a great website that explains how fireworks are constructed.

The NYTimes featured an article yesterday about a group in Mobile, Alabama (the Prancing Elites) who do something called j-setting. This is a sort of linedance originating in the 70s with the dance troupe, the Jaycettes (now, the J-settes),  at Jackson State University. Fascinatingly, Beyonce's Single Ladies music video (and Diva video) follow this dance style, as inspired by a Bob Fosse-choreography called 'Mexican Breakfast' as well as traditional j-setting.


Despite having not heard it for several years, i had the old Ronnie Milsap song 'Pure Love' stuck in my head this week, featuring the line "99 and 44/100ths percent pure love" in the chorus. Because that is a very specific and catchy number (literally), i looked into it. Turns out, Ivory soap was marketed with a slogan featuring that same number, " The product's other well-known slogan, "99 ⁴⁴⁄₁₀₀% Pure" (in use by 1895), was based on the results of an analysis by an independent laboratory the founder's son, Harley Procter, hired to demonstrate that Ivory was purer than the Castile soap then available. ".

Seedless watermelons are a thing. These can be produced two different ways, either by specifically breeding them to be seedless hybrids, akin to a mule (here, a diploid plant is crossed with a tetraploid plant, winding up with a plant that is triploid and unable to produce seeds), or by treatment of young plants with the chemical colchicine, which comes from crocuses, " Colchicine acts by disrupting cell plate formation during cellular division, so that as a plant cell divides into two cells it does not split. This produces a single cell with a doubled nucleus having twice the chromosome number. A plant with the chromosome number so increased by some multiple is known as a polyploid. Do not think of this as a corruption of nature. Polyploidy is a common natural occurrence, resulting from accidents in cell division. About half of all flowering plants have had origins in polyploidy ". i really like that the article makes that last point clear.