Curiously, the word 'wow' has been around since the early 1500s, originating possibly in Scottish English (reference here). i honestly thought it was way more recent than that.
Really been enjoying the NewYorker's coverage of the 2015 World Track and Field Championships as a back-and-forth conversation between Malcolm Gladwell and Nicholas Thompson. They've been particularly sensitive to the current doping scandals plaguing the sport.
i've recently been cat-sitting a very fluffy Persian cat, whose nose does not protrude at all from his face. Turns out, that is a selected trait, "The Persian breed standard is, by its nature, somewhat open-ended and
focused on a rounded head, large, wide-spaced round eyes with the top of
the nose leather placed no lower than the bottom of the eyes ". This also means that he snores, poor baby. While i haven't tried this myself, it turns out that many people have asked if a person can eat pet food. Short answer, FDA regulations require that pet food be free of pathogens, but most pet foods are made from scraps, offal and filler (like ash), so maybe stick to the more expensive pet foods? Research also turned up this account of a woman who vowed to eat pet food for 30 days to promote her pet store.
Wisconsin has an official Cow Chip Throwing contest, occurring in Sauk City each year. Some friends and i were passing through in route from a state park when we saw a fully booked hotel sign, welcoming participants. This raised a few questions, including the origin/aging of the chips in question. Looking into it, there are official rules posted, "Contestants must select their chips from the wagon-load provided by the officialMeadow Muffin Committee. To alter, or shape in any way, chips selected from the wagon (except in rare instances where a loose fragment may be removed, provided the removal does not render the chip less than 6 inches in diameter) subjects the contestant to a 25-foot penalty. Decision of the Chip Judge will be final " That same website also provides lyrics to song parodies highlighting the chips in question. Fun fact, the record chip throw is 248 feet, by a gentleman from Sauk Prairie in 1991 (though, he has won the event 11 total years). Wow.
While on that same drive, we heard a song on the radio referencing 'burritos' in a manner that made it seem unrelated to the tortilla-wrapped food. The question at hand became, 'Does the food name mean 'little donkey', and the answer is yes. As for as the origin of the food itself, i've noted that while you can find them in the San Antonio-proximal area where i grew up, they're more of a gringo item there. Wikipedia agrees that the origins of this foodstuff have been lost in the mists of time, but most seem to involve California; "The precise origin of the modern burrito is not known. It may have originated with vaqueros in northern Mexico in the nineteenth century farmworkers in the fields of California's Central Valley, in Fresno and Stockton the Southwestern United States or with northern Sonoran miners of the 19th century". Alternately, "another creation story comes from 1940s Ciudad Juárez, where a street food vendor created the tortilla-wrapped food to sell to poor children at a state-run middle school. The vendor would call the children his burritos, as burro is a colloquial term for dunce or dullard. Eventually, the derogatory or endearing term for the children was transferred to the food they ate," along with other creation stories.
While looking around online the other day, i came across a mention of a game called "Poohsticks", which apparently was first mentioned in the childrens' classic book The House on Pooh Corner, and requires sticks and a bridge over a flowing stream. It's played by having a group of competitors line up along a stream, each dropping a stick into the water, then racing downstream via bridge to see whose stick comes out from under the bridge first.
Stone Mountain is a theme park in GA that semi-masquerades as a nature park. The place is named for quartz monzanite dome rising 1686 feet. Surprisingly, it also features the largest bas-relief carving (3 acres!) in the world, unfortunately of the Confederates Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, carved beginning in 1916 and finished at the surprisingly late date of 1972. When i was last in Atlanta, someone had mentioned that it had excellent hiking (and nothing else), and upon driving out to investigate, i was distressed to note both the theme park and the carving.
Kicked up a series of really interesting photography tricks via COOPH's youtube channel, including 'funky tips' and 'simple hacks'.
Given the upcoming start to fantasy football season (ach, Jordy Nelson), i really liked this fivethirtyeight post on how Madden scores are generated, by a single dude in a cubicle at a video game company, and how much goes into one of these scores, " Each player in the game is graded in 43 categories — many of which were added when Madden transitioned from the sixth generation of consoles to the seventh. There are also nearly 20 new player-tendency tags, known as “traits,” that control specific player behaviors ". It opens with this amusing anecdote, "Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, for instance, was upset. “I
want to talk about my speed,” Moore remembers Newton saying as he
clambered into Moore’s cubicle last April.
Despite leading all NFL quarterbacks in rushing yards
in 2013, Newton ranked as only the ninth-fastest QB in the league,
according to Moore — hence Newton’s unhappiness. But as Moore wheeled
around from his den of screens, he was confronted by not only Newton,
but also an enormous boot on Newton’s foot, the result of recent ankle surgery.
“Yeah,” Moore said as Newton hobbled toward him, “let’s talk about your speed.”
Eventually, Newton was pleading with Moore to not make him slower. "
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