Swiss francs are denoted CHF, for Confoederatio Helvetica. Yes, that Helvetica. In greater detail: The origins of Switzerland have been memorably described to me as 'a bunch of cantons that basically agreed to not kill each other', (though i'm certain that description applies to pretty much every country). The 'Switzer' part of the name might be from "Suittes, ultimately perhaps related to suedan "to burn", referring to the area of forest that was burned and cleared to build " (reference here), but the current confederation calls itself after an early attempt to establish a central authority over this group of (formerly-self-ruling) cantons, the French-ruled Helvetic Republic. That name is historical, from the Helvetii tribe that covered that area during its first exploration by the Romans. My generation is familiar with the font Helvetica, created by Max Meidinger, a Swiss typeface designer.
American chocolate versus the rest of world (this is the phrase i've been using to remind myself to cover this topic, and i like it enough to keep it): American chocolate tastes are largely formed by Hershey's Chocolate, specifically the milk chocolate variety, which has a very specific, 'cheesy' soured note when compared to milk chocolate from other countries. It is speculated that this flavor is an artifact of conching (the process of refining chocolate via mixing/rolling, to incorporate cocoa butter and remove volatiles, discovered accidentally by Rodolphe Lindt when a mixer was left on overnight); in Hershey's milk chocolate, likely some butyric acid remains to impart this distinct flavor. My favorite part of that is a bit of a complementation assay: some companies specifically add butyric acid to their chocolate to increase marketability in the US (ugh). Something i didn't realize is that Hershey's chocolate is kosher.
Another distinction between American candy and its European counterparts is the difference in praline. In essence, praline is a mix of nuts, sugar and lipids/dairy; for European chocolate (prah-leen), this is an extremely fine paste, frequently used as a filling. For American pralines (pray-leen), this is more of a brittle, with chunky nuts (almost always pecans) bound in sugar and cream, probably due to French influences on local pecans in New Orleans.
Something else of note is Gianduja (the chocolate/hazelnut confection, not the archetypal Italian arts figure, whose hat the confection is shaped for). In order to stretch very expensive chocolate, folks in the Peidmont region of Italy began adding local hazelnuts to the mix. This was turned into a spread by chocolatier Michele Prochet. It is unclear (at least, fron the wikipedia page) as to how close the remarkably popular Nutella is to this regional product, but Pietro Ferrero, a baker from that region, whipped up a spread he called 'paste gianduja' in 1946, also to further stretch the chocolate supply limited at that time by WWII. This was later made into the current incarnation of a paste by the addition of palm oil, and renamed Nutella. Traditional gianduja has a 31% hazelnut ratio, while Nutella is 13%.
A recent visitor at work came to us from Sweden, and was kind enough to bring an huge bowl of Swedish candies to share. These were the Ahlgrens' Bilars (or, Ahlgrens' cars), a sort of foam/marshmallow candy with a vaguely minty, tangy flavor. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, these are marketed as "Today, Ahlgrens bilar is the worlds’ top-selling car by far. And despite
their somewhat low resale value, new generations are continuously
discovering their beautifully timeless design, their tasteful profile
and their position as the number one classic in the world of automotive
sports " from the candy company's website. Ah ha, 'low resale value'...
Speaking of cola musical references, Kishi Bashi has a new album out, and the last song on it mentions drinking Coca Cola on a Sunday. The album is called Sonderlust; researching this word, it appears to be a recent invention, to mean " the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and
complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends,
routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues
invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with
elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know
existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping
coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway,
as a lighted window at dusk ", from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (itself a rather interesting tumblr account of embroidered word meanings). The word exists in French, meaning to probe (specifically, something's depths).
There was a time when the TattooLit website was no longer being updated, but it would appear that time is. Lovely stuff.
My coworker Rachel kept giggling while checking her phone the other day, and finally i asked her what the deal was. Apparently, she had been exchanging pick-up lines with her boyfriend, specifically, pick-up lines used by/based on the Big Bang Theory character Howard Wolowitz. These are terrible though funny; a lot of them have been floating around associated with science for years ("Girl, your name must be phylum, because you are above class."). That same site offers Game Of Thrones-themed pick up lines, and those are even MORE terrible. So. "Did it hurt... when you fell from the Moon Door? " Oh Noes!
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Friday, September 2, 2016
cola in music, 404, Target, Dengue, Zika antibodies, brachiosarus vomit, bush leeches
Well.
Music first, regarding cola. I was listening to a live recording of the excellent Lake Shore Drive, and they covered the Kinks' Lola. Having not ever really listened to the lyrics of that song, i thought it was pretty forward for being written in 1970 (given that time period, i shouldn't have been surprised). Further research indicates that the song was a riff on an actual experience of the band members. From a nicely cited wiki article,
"It was a real experience in a club. I was asked to dance by somebody who was a fabulous looking woman. I said "no thank you." And she went in a cab with my manager straight afterwards. It's based on a personal experience. But not every word. – Ray Davies"though the article notes that alternate theories exist. Apparently the reference to cola caused some problems; the band originally wrote in Coca-cola, but had to change it to 'cherry cola' because it wouldn't air otherwise.
Another song referencing cola is Savage Garden's song I Want You, with the line 'chic-a-cherry cola'. The most plausible (though 404'd) reference is " During an interview Darren said that in Australia they don't have Doctor Pepper or Cherry Coke so the first time he came to America he was totally blown away by it. Rather than using a product name like "Cherry Coke" he made the word " chica-cherry cola " instead. ", from this online forum.
Speaking of 404 (and Coca Cola), it is the area code for greater Atlanta. i made the comment to my electrical engineer brother the other day that this area code always makes me smile, given that it is the HTTP standard response code for a dead/broken link. i don't know if i've covered this before on this blog, but area codes themselves were initially assigned based on city size. Cities with larger populations got smaller area codes, because when dialing on rotary phones/pulse dial phones (cutting edge then), it took less time for the rotary to come back around, so less people would be inconvenienced. The codes themselves were also non-sequential by location, to decrease mis-dialing of nearby cities.
I was in conversation with a friend the other day, and incorrectly stated that Target was not American-owned. Apologies, Alex, it is. Only tangentially related, one of the best things i read last week was this guy's documentation of moments from his first week of working at Target.
A colleague and i recently got into an argument over the number of known Dengue virus strains. There are 4 common ones, and a less-common fifth strain (as covered in this post). This is a problem, because while infection with a single strain of Dengue provides protection against that strain, infection with an addition, separate strain may trigger a severe immune response (Dengue Hemorrahgic fever/Dengue severe shock), probably because complement, and/or activation of a cytokine storm based on poor binding of antibodies against the other strains, and non-destruction by white blood cells after phagocytosis. Anyway, this situation makes development of a vaccine super difficult.
More on viruses and serotype; There are two types of Zika (African and Asian, with multiple strains), one of which is at the root of the recent epidemic. There was a recent, completely heartbreaking article in NPR's Goats and Soda on the damage done to fetal brains by Zika infections. Even for babies born without microencephaly, there is evidence of calcium deposits, which may indicate additional damage which will continue to have lifelong impact. A question is whether an infection/vaccine gives rise to protective antibodies (a tentative yes), and whether or not these antibodies would protect a fetus (as-of-yet-unknown but likely).
Finally, Kelly AT sent along, via twitter, this figure of the force generated by a brachiosarus projectile vomiting. i tracked it down, and turned out it's from a book by Anthony Martin, an Emory University ichnologist (someone who studies the traces of dinosaurs, like footprints, etc), and that looks like quite a read. This is somewhat non sequitur, though Kelly and i had a discussion regarding the speeds of T. Rex and velociraptors. A recent conversation with a colleague about the intelligence about velocirators revealed that pretty much my entire age cohort bases the majority of our knowledge on the classic movie Jurassic Park (regarding velociraptors, the relevant line is 'Clever girl'). A variety of sources (none of which are well cited) base velociraptor intelligence on brain case size; velociraptors are either about as smart as ostriches, or smarter than rabbits but not as smart as dogs/cats.
Another stellar link from Kelly AT this past week is this The Oatmeal post called 'How to be perfectly unhappy', as not being happy in precisely this manner is something we've discussed (though, as Brandon has mentioned, i'll leave the ultras to you, dear).
Texas is full of venomous animals and plants-covered-in-thorns (though, we call the cactus at focus of that article 'turkey pear'); i've made the statement that place trying to kill a body. However, Australia WILL kill a body. One of my favorite authors is Richard Preston, and his book Wild Trees has some of the best (practical) descriptions of tree climbing i've come across. My memory attributes to that book 'tree leeches', or leeches that fall onto prey from trees. Googling around about that, bush leeches are probably what i mean - these live on land, in moist areas, and grasp on to prey as it passes by, but don't seem to ever crawl up into trees (shudder).
And finally, 'i don't have a phone. Send a raven.'
Music first, regarding cola. I was listening to a live recording of the excellent Lake Shore Drive, and they covered the Kinks' Lola. Having not ever really listened to the lyrics of that song, i thought it was pretty forward for being written in 1970 (given that time period, i shouldn't have been surprised). Further research indicates that the song was a riff on an actual experience of the band members. From a nicely cited wiki article,
"It was a real experience in a club. I was asked to dance by somebody who was a fabulous looking woman. I said "no thank you." And she went in a cab with my manager straight afterwards. It's based on a personal experience. But not every word. – Ray Davies"though the article notes that alternate theories exist. Apparently the reference to cola caused some problems; the band originally wrote in Coca-cola, but had to change it to 'cherry cola' because it wouldn't air otherwise.
Another song referencing cola is Savage Garden's song I Want You, with the line 'chic-a-cherry cola'. The most plausible (though 404'd) reference is " During an interview Darren said that in Australia they don't have Doctor Pepper or Cherry Coke so the first time he came to America he was totally blown away by it. Rather than using a product name like "Cherry Coke" he made the word " chica-cherry cola " instead. ", from this online forum.
Speaking of 404 (and Coca Cola), it is the area code for greater Atlanta. i made the comment to my electrical engineer brother the other day that this area code always makes me smile, given that it is the HTTP standard response code for a dead/broken link. i don't know if i've covered this before on this blog, but area codes themselves were initially assigned based on city size. Cities with larger populations got smaller area codes, because when dialing on rotary phones/pulse dial phones (cutting edge then), it took less time for the rotary to come back around, so less people would be inconvenienced. The codes themselves were also non-sequential by location, to decrease mis-dialing of nearby cities.
I was in conversation with a friend the other day, and incorrectly stated that Target was not American-owned. Apologies, Alex, it is. Only tangentially related, one of the best things i read last week was this guy's documentation of moments from his first week of working at Target.
A colleague and i recently got into an argument over the number of known Dengue virus strains. There are 4 common ones, and a less-common fifth strain (as covered in this post). This is a problem, because while infection with a single strain of Dengue provides protection against that strain, infection with an addition, separate strain may trigger a severe immune response (Dengue Hemorrahgic fever/Dengue severe shock), probably because complement, and/or activation of a cytokine storm based on poor binding of antibodies against the other strains, and non-destruction by white blood cells after phagocytosis. Anyway, this situation makes development of a vaccine super difficult.
More on viruses and serotype; There are two types of Zika (African and Asian, with multiple strains), one of which is at the root of the recent epidemic. There was a recent, completely heartbreaking article in NPR's Goats and Soda on the damage done to fetal brains by Zika infections. Even for babies born without microencephaly, there is evidence of calcium deposits, which may indicate additional damage which will continue to have lifelong impact. A question is whether an infection/vaccine gives rise to protective antibodies (a tentative yes), and whether or not these antibodies would protect a fetus (as-of-yet-unknown but likely).
Finally, Kelly AT sent along, via twitter, this figure of the force generated by a brachiosarus projectile vomiting. i tracked it down, and turned out it's from a book by Anthony Martin, an Emory University ichnologist (someone who studies the traces of dinosaurs, like footprints, etc), and that looks like quite a read. This is somewhat non sequitur, though Kelly and i had a discussion regarding the speeds of T. Rex and velociraptors. A recent conversation with a colleague about the intelligence about velocirators revealed that pretty much my entire age cohort bases the majority of our knowledge on the classic movie Jurassic Park (regarding velociraptors, the relevant line is 'Clever girl'). A variety of sources (none of which are well cited) base velociraptor intelligence on brain case size; velociraptors are either about as smart as ostriches, or smarter than rabbits but not as smart as dogs/cats.
Another stellar link from Kelly AT this past week is this The Oatmeal post called 'How to be perfectly unhappy', as not being happy in precisely this manner is something we've discussed (though, as Brandon has mentioned, i'll leave the ultras to you, dear).
Texas is full of venomous animals and plants-covered-in-thorns (though, we call the cactus at focus of that article 'turkey pear'); i've made the statement that place trying to kill a body. However, Australia WILL kill a body. One of my favorite authors is Richard Preston, and his book Wild Trees has some of the best (practical) descriptions of tree climbing i've come across. My memory attributes to that book 'tree leeches', or leeches that fall onto prey from trees. Googling around about that, bush leeches are probably what i mean - these live on land, in moist areas, and grasp on to prey as it passes by, but don't seem to ever crawl up into trees (shudder).
And finally, 'i don't have a phone. Send a raven.'
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