Hi, all. Things got busy in life, and i'm no longer keeping up with blogging. Apologies.
Thanks for many years!
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Sunday, September 25, 2016
francs, many things confection-related, sonder
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!
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!
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.'
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Savory Tea, Jolly Roger/Rancher, keloids, menstrual products, RHCP, Vocab size tests
Margarita trucks are a thing in SoCal, but lack legality in other places.
Also a thing are Savory teas. i was in the grocery store the other night and came across Numi's savory tea. They are literally decaffeinated black or green teas with dehydrated veggies and herbs added, and not too terrible (but, i have kept broths on hand to drink, so i suppose that i am firmly in their targeted demographic). Huff Post (of all places) has a review article that nicely outlines each flavor profile, and another can be found here.
While in Florida over the Independence Day weekend, Jack asked why Jolly Roger (pirate) flags are so named; these have been around since the 1700s, and from wikipedia, as it gives the best documented explanation i can find, "Jolly Roger had been a generic term for a jovial, carefree man since at least the 17th century and the existing term seems to have been applied to the skeleton or grinning skull in these flags by the early 18th century. In 1703, a pirate named John Quelch was reported to have been flying the "Old Roger" off Brazil, "Old Roger" being a nickname for the devil.[7]It is sometimes claimed that the term derives from "Jolie Rouge" ("Pretty Red") in reference to a red flag used by French privateers. This hypothesis is considered a false etymology, as the phrase "Jolie Rouge" in reference to a pirate flag does not appear in any historical sources". These are not to be confused with Jolly Rancher candies, which were so named after the company that originally made them. This sweets shop in Golden, CO was called Jolly Rancher to evoke an "appealing and friendly Western company" (sourced here). Eventually, the shop came to focus on the hard candies which took on the name, and was eventually picked up by Hershey
Keloids are (basically) an overgrown scar. i was asked about vaccinations and keloids the other day, and the conversation evolved to whether there is a genetic component to them. Maybe?
This is an interesting, surprisingly in-depth article regarding menstrual cups and the history of feminine products. Recently, New York has started providing such products free of charge in schools, homeless shelters and prisons. This is really something (given both cost of those products as well as societal squeamishness), and it'll be interesting to see if other places adopt similar programs.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers have a new album out (produced by Danger Mouse!), and recently taped a half awesome, half absurd segment of James Corden's Carpool Karaoke. i will say it makes me super happy to hear their new single Dark Necessities on the radio, though an accurate description of the music video might be ''70s furniture, scraped up skater ladies, Flea in a sink?!'. Being a former female-on-a-skateboard, i wish the lady longboarders pictured were not quite so injured, but i guess the point was to show 'toughess'?
A vocabulary size test has been taking my fb feed by storm (not terribly surprising given that my friends are pretty literate and writers). Looking further into it, an adult native English speaker's vocab size is generally between 20,000-35,000 (reference here), ranging up toward 40,000 words. The vocabulary size test mentioned for that data is a different one, and seems somewhat more accurate to me.
An amazing scene from this year's Tour De France was last Friday, when yellow jersey-wearer Chris Froome was in a bike crash with a motorbike and two of the other top riders less than a kilometer from the stage finish. His bike was unridable, his spare on a car 5 minutes behind, and the competition getting away. So, he started running toward the finish, inspiring a host of memes. Race officials ended up giving all three riders involved in the crash the same time as the one who was able to finish, meaning Mr. Froome keeps his yellow jersey for that stage. Remarkable. (At time of posting, he remains about 2 and a half minutes ahead of the next cyclist.)
Also a thing are Savory teas. i was in the grocery store the other night and came across Numi's savory tea. They are literally decaffeinated black or green teas with dehydrated veggies and herbs added, and not too terrible (but, i have kept broths on hand to drink, so i suppose that i am firmly in their targeted demographic). Huff Post (of all places) has a review article that nicely outlines each flavor profile, and another can be found here.
While in Florida over the Independence Day weekend, Jack asked why Jolly Roger (pirate) flags are so named; these have been around since the 1700s, and from wikipedia, as it gives the best documented explanation i can find, "Jolly Roger had been a generic term for a jovial, carefree man since at least the 17th century and the existing term seems to have been applied to the skeleton or grinning skull in these flags by the early 18th century. In 1703, a pirate named John Quelch was reported to have been flying the "Old Roger" off Brazil, "Old Roger" being a nickname for the devil.[7]It is sometimes claimed that the term derives from "Jolie Rouge" ("Pretty Red") in reference to a red flag used by French privateers. This hypothesis is considered a false etymology, as the phrase "Jolie Rouge" in reference to a pirate flag does not appear in any historical sources". These are not to be confused with Jolly Rancher candies, which were so named after the company that originally made them. This sweets shop in Golden, CO was called Jolly Rancher to evoke an "appealing and friendly Western company" (sourced here). Eventually, the shop came to focus on the hard candies which took on the name, and was eventually picked up by Hershey
Keloids are (basically) an overgrown scar. i was asked about vaccinations and keloids the other day, and the conversation evolved to whether there is a genetic component to them. Maybe?
This is an interesting, surprisingly in-depth article regarding menstrual cups and the history of feminine products. Recently, New York has started providing such products free of charge in schools, homeless shelters and prisons. This is really something (given both cost of those products as well as societal squeamishness), and it'll be interesting to see if other places adopt similar programs.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers have a new album out (produced by Danger Mouse!), and recently taped a half awesome, half absurd segment of James Corden's Carpool Karaoke. i will say it makes me super happy to hear their new single Dark Necessities on the radio, though an accurate description of the music video might be ''70s furniture, scraped up skater ladies, Flea in a sink?!'. Being a former female-on-a-skateboard, i wish the lady longboarders pictured were not quite so injured, but i guess the point was to show 'toughess'?
A vocabulary size test has been taking my fb feed by storm (not terribly surprising given that my friends are pretty literate and writers). Looking further into it, an adult native English speaker's vocab size is generally between 20,000-35,000 (reference here), ranging up toward 40,000 words. The vocabulary size test mentioned for that data is a different one, and seems somewhat more accurate to me.
An amazing scene from this year's Tour De France was last Friday, when yellow jersey-wearer Chris Froome was in a bike crash with a motorbike and two of the other top riders less than a kilometer from the stage finish. His bike was unridable, his spare on a car 5 minutes behind, and the competition getting away. So, he started running toward the finish, inspiring a host of memes. Race officials ended up giving all three riders involved in the crash the same time as the one who was able to finish, meaning Mr. Froome keeps his yellow jersey for that stage. Remarkable. (At time of posting, he remains about 2 and a half minutes ahead of the next cyclist.)
Sunday, June 19, 2016
bacteriophage firsts, Sloopy Ohio, cold brewed coffee etc, cantaloupe, Southern Alligators and Crocodiles
My coworker does a WHOLE lot of deep (DNA) sequencing at work, and was tracking down a reference on Pubmed the other day when she came across the article "Is bacteriophage φX174 DNA a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence?". A TL:DR of the abstract indicates that no, it's not a message, "No significant patterns have been observed and other means of constructing pictorial arrays with other phage DNAs are planned". Bryan wisely inquired why the authors might have thought this about that phage. Well, apart from the '70s being a crazy time scientifically and otherwise, that particular phage was the first for a lot of things. It was the first DNA genome to be Sanger-sequenced, as well as the first thing/virus to the synthesized by purified enzymes in a test tube by Arthur Kornberg, and the first thing to be generated in vitro from completely synthesized materials by Craig Venter and company.
I was at a wedding a few weekends past (Congrats, Emily and Mike!) wherein a large number of guests hailed from Ohio. During the dancing portion of the evening, these guests requested the song 'Hang on Sloopy', and proceeded to yell O-H-I-O (with matching arm motions, a la the YMCA) during pauses in the chorus of this, all out there on the dance floor. Given this was in San Antonio, more than a few of us hadn't encountered this practice before, but apparently the song was adopted by Ohio State University, first being played in the football stadium in October of 1965, where it has now become a tradition to play between the 3rd and 4th quarters. Originally, the song was called 'My Girl Sloopy, and recorded by a group called the Vibrations, before going mainstream after being covered by the McCoys. Also, fun fact, until very recently, i thought it was 'Hang on, Snoopy', not Sloopy. It turns out, a snippet of the song with that substitution was used in the song parody 'Snoopy versus the Red Baron', but it was removed under threats related to copyright. Not the origin of my misheard lyric, but nice that someone else hears it, too.
The lovely Kate B. linked (via twitter) these 'virus trading cards' to me. They're really neat, but the whole trading card aspect invites a lot of 'gotta collect 'em all' puns that are a little concerning.
Cold brewed coffee (beans are steeped in cold water, versus iced coffee's hot-water-brewing-then-chill method) can be made in a number of ways. My former protocol (straining grounds which had soaked overnight though a coffee-filter lined mesh strainer) was a little messy/slow, so i went poking around for a new method, eventually settling on filling a nut bag (mesh bag used for making nut milk) with ground coffee, suspended in water in a glass lidded jar. This works okay, though i have to use a coarser grind or filter the whole thing again through a pour-over coffee set-up, which sort-of-defeats the purpose. Anyway, i bring this up because i came across some completely lovely and somewhat impractical/expensive methods of cold-brewing coffee, including this stand, which 'adds a touch of drama to your kitchen', and this crazy lovely Gothic version (all for slightly over $7000). (H/T here.) While we're on the subject, apparently Starbucks is taking up the Nitro tap train, by installing taps dispensing cold brewed coffee infused with nitrogen (kinda like carbonation). i've seen it in a bar or two, but this is an interesting development.
The term 'cultivar' refers to a strain of plant grown/selected/cultivated to have a specific characteristic, like heat tolerance or resistance to a specific pest. This general modification process is covered in a previous post (where i apparently also discussed bacteriophage).
Regarding classification of muskmelons: all cantaloupes are muskmelons, but not all muskmelons are cantaloupes - the 'European' version are green fleshed (including honeydew melons). Cantaloupes are named for the region, Cantalupo, where they are said to have originated, and the region name itself translated to 'singing wolf', for events said to occur as it was being established. Cantaloupes-the-melons are split in to two categories with mainly commercial distinction for the East and West coasts of the US, 'eastern' ( "Eastern cantaloupe varieties feature rounded 5- to 7-pound fruits with sutures, netting, and a large seed cavity" ) and 'western' ( "Western cantaloupe types are oval-shaped 3- to 5-pound fruits without sutures and have coarse netting" ), though each cultivar can be grown in both regions, as stated here. i picked up one specifically labeled at the market this past weekend, and was curious at the distinction, so did some research. The domestication of plants is a fascinating subject (with nod to Michael Pollan and company).
Made a bet with a friend this morning regarding alligators, with my position being that there ARE some in Atlanta. My reasoning was that there are alligators in Houston and San Antonio, albeit, ones that were probably released after growing too big to be cute little aquarium inhabitants (and full disclosure, i grew up running around the lake mentioned for San Antonio). Anyway, regarding the Atlanta alligators, some research indicates that one predicted to be about 8 years old was trapped on the Chattahoochie river in March 2016, and relocated south. The speculation about someone releasing a former-pet as a (pet) theory is applicable in this instance, too.
While we're on the subject of alligators... Here is a nice site regarding the phenotypic differences between American alligators and more southern American crocodiles. (Did you just picture a reptile wearing a flowered hat and speaking with a drawl, 'cause i sure did.) We can now add Nile crocodiles to the mix, which is an issue, because those are much larger, and not shy about eating anything.
Finally, for levity, did you know an easy way to tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? One will see you later, and the other will... see you in a while.
I was at a wedding a few weekends past (Congrats, Emily and Mike!) wherein a large number of guests hailed from Ohio. During the dancing portion of the evening, these guests requested the song 'Hang on Sloopy', and proceeded to yell O-H-I-O (with matching arm motions, a la the YMCA) during pauses in the chorus of this, all out there on the dance floor. Given this was in San Antonio, more than a few of us hadn't encountered this practice before, but apparently the song was adopted by Ohio State University, first being played in the football stadium in October of 1965, where it has now become a tradition to play between the 3rd and 4th quarters. Originally, the song was called 'My Girl Sloopy, and recorded by a group called the Vibrations, before going mainstream after being covered by the McCoys. Also, fun fact, until very recently, i thought it was 'Hang on, Snoopy', not Sloopy. It turns out, a snippet of the song with that substitution was used in the song parody 'Snoopy versus the Red Baron', but it was removed under threats related to copyright. Not the origin of my misheard lyric, but nice that someone else hears it, too.
The lovely Kate B. linked (via twitter) these 'virus trading cards' to me. They're really neat, but the whole trading card aspect invites a lot of 'gotta collect 'em all' puns that are a little concerning.
Cold brewed coffee (beans are steeped in cold water, versus iced coffee's hot-water-brewing-then-chill method) can be made in a number of ways. My former protocol (straining grounds which had soaked overnight though a coffee-filter lined mesh strainer) was a little messy/slow, so i went poking around for a new method, eventually settling on filling a nut bag (mesh bag used for making nut milk) with ground coffee, suspended in water in a glass lidded jar. This works okay, though i have to use a coarser grind or filter the whole thing again through a pour-over coffee set-up, which sort-of-defeats the purpose. Anyway, i bring this up because i came across some completely lovely and somewhat impractical/expensive methods of cold-brewing coffee, including this stand, which 'adds a touch of drama to your kitchen', and this crazy lovely Gothic version (all for slightly over $7000). (H/T here.) While we're on the subject, apparently Starbucks is taking up the Nitro tap train, by installing taps dispensing cold brewed coffee infused with nitrogen (kinda like carbonation). i've seen it in a bar or two, but this is an interesting development.
The term 'cultivar' refers to a strain of plant grown/selected/cultivated to have a specific characteristic, like heat tolerance or resistance to a specific pest. This general modification process is covered in a previous post (where i apparently also discussed bacteriophage).
Regarding classification of muskmelons: all cantaloupes are muskmelons, but not all muskmelons are cantaloupes - the 'European' version are green fleshed (including honeydew melons). Cantaloupes are named for the region, Cantalupo, where they are said to have originated, and the region name itself translated to 'singing wolf', for events said to occur as it was being established. Cantaloupes-the-melons are split in to two categories with mainly commercial distinction for the East and West coasts of the US, 'eastern' ( "Eastern cantaloupe varieties feature rounded 5- to 7-pound fruits with sutures, netting, and a large seed cavity" ) and 'western' ( "Western cantaloupe types are oval-shaped 3- to 5-pound fruits without sutures and have coarse netting" ), though each cultivar can be grown in both regions, as stated here. i picked up one specifically labeled at the market this past weekend, and was curious at the distinction, so did some research. The domestication of plants is a fascinating subject (with nod to Michael Pollan and company).
Made a bet with a friend this morning regarding alligators, with my position being that there ARE some in Atlanta. My reasoning was that there are alligators in Houston and San Antonio, albeit, ones that were probably released after growing too big to be cute little aquarium inhabitants (and full disclosure, i grew up running around the lake mentioned for San Antonio). Anyway, regarding the Atlanta alligators, some research indicates that one predicted to be about 8 years old was trapped on the Chattahoochie river in March 2016, and relocated south. The speculation about someone releasing a former-pet as a (pet) theory is applicable in this instance, too.
While we're on the subject of alligators... Here is a nice site regarding the phenotypic differences between American alligators and more southern American crocodiles. (Did you just picture a reptile wearing a flowered hat and speaking with a drawl, 'cause i sure did.) We can now add Nile crocodiles to the mix, which is an issue, because those are much larger, and not shy about eating anything.
Finally, for levity, did you know an easy way to tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? One will see you later, and the other will... see you in a while.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
musical organs, Lusitana, Nata de coco, quantum and teleportation, Yankee geological products, pergola.
A while back, Nate B. kindly sent along this fascinating clip of M.J.'s song Smooth Criminal played on a barrel (grinder) organ. Anyhow, this song gets a strange amount of play on ATL radio stations (in the normal, non-organ form) as i hear it at least once a week. Barrel organs are distinct from steam organs (calliopes), as the former is a bellows driven primarily by a crank, and the latter by, of course, steam going through whistles, though both instruments can be played by musical rolls. Conversely, a hurdy-gurdy is essentially a fiddle with a crank-driven wheel substituted for the bow, explained/played here. Okay?
Woke up the other day with Stromae's terrific Ave Cesarina in my head, which is a song about Cesarina Evora, a singer from Cape Verde (known also for performing barefoot). Cape Verde, because shamefully i had to look this up, is off the coast of Senegal, and was settled by the Portuguese, which makes a lusophone country. 'Luso-', in this case, is derived from Lusitania, "Hispania Lusitana was an ancient Iberian Roman province including approximately all of modern Portugal south of the Douro river and part of modern Spain", to reference wikipedia. Curiously, the Portuguese Empire is considered the first global empire, stimulated in large part by the efforts of the Portuguese duke aptly named Henry the Navigator and the control of ports in South America and Africa.
Nata de coco is a product made from the fermentation of coconut water with Acetobacter xylinum, resulting in a translucent, chewy/stringy mass that is actually tastier than it sounds (as is the case with most fermented products). It is frequently served sweetened as a dessert, and is apparently high in dietary fiber.
A recent discussion with a co-worker began innocently enough with the question, "Why isn't teleportation a thing yet?" This became philosophical fast, with the breakdown of teleportation basically consisting of being scanned down to the atomic level, then recreated elsewhere (from this, "Samuel Braunstein made this point quite clear when he noted that if teleportation were possible today, the transmission of information about an entire human being would take about 100 million centuries, about the age of the universe. ‘It would be faster to walk,’ he said"), leading to the question regarding the 'divine spark' of human consciousness - things evolved into a discussion of quantum entanglement ("An entangled system is defined to be one whose quantum state cannot be factored as a product of states of its local constituents, that is to say, they are not individual particles but are an inseparable whole. If entangled, one constituent cannot be fully described without considering the other(s). Note that the state of a composite system is always expressible as a sum, or superposition, of products of states of local constituents; it is entangled if this sum necessarily has more than one term", thanks wikipedia), and the idea that to be teleported, one has to essentially die to re-appear elsewhere, or potentially exist in a duplicated state, referencing this interesting discussion. This arced over to another discussion of the situation illustrated by the Ship the Theseus, essentially, how much of something can be replaced before it is another thing entirely? Personally, i've wished before that there was more than one of me (that would share a brain), so i could be in multiple places at once, but acknowledge that this would get pretty confusing after a while. Also, shout out to the Calvin and Hobbes duplicator.
Two things about the curious geological products of the US' upper Northeast. One, Herkimer diamonds are water-clear, faceted, doubly terminated (read, "pointy on both ends") pieces of quartz that are nearly as hard as diamonds, and first found near Herkimer County in New York (and later found in places like Arizona, Afganistan and Tibet). These formed in cavities in dolostones, which accounts for their nice shape. Two, Goshen stone is a varibly-colored mica schist (sheets of stone used for pavers) found primarily in New England. A notable story associated with this is the discovery of 24 million tons on land belonging to former Dodgers' pitcher Matt White. It's a heartwarming story; "in 2003, White purchased 50 acres (200,000 m2) of mountain real estate in Cummington, Massachusetts from his aunt for $50,000, giving her the money she needed to enter a nursing home. His original intention was to build his home, but he found the land to be too hard. When he called a surveyor out to inspect the land, the surveyor found that the land was solid Goshen stone, a type of mica schist estimated to be about 400 million years old. Estimates have placed the low estimate of the find at 24 million tons. At current prices (he has been selling the stone for over $100/ton), it is estimated to be worth around $2.5 billion, minus extraction costs". Way to help out your aunt there, Mr. White.
Finally, my brother and sister-in-law are building a pergola in their backyard. Growing up in South Texas, i was unfamiliar with the term 'pergola' (as is the rest of my family apart from my sibs), and various discussions about the nouns 'pergola' versus 'arbor' ensued. Finally, i took to google. The difference between these two is that an arbor is typically a smaller tunnel, while a pergola is a larger structure incorporating a porch with a roof (not to be confused with a trellis, which can form a wall/top to the other two, but mostly is just a structure on which to support growing plant vines).
Woke up the other day with Stromae's terrific Ave Cesarina in my head, which is a song about Cesarina Evora, a singer from Cape Verde (known also for performing barefoot). Cape Verde, because shamefully i had to look this up, is off the coast of Senegal, and was settled by the Portuguese, which makes a lusophone country. 'Luso-', in this case, is derived from Lusitania, "Hispania Lusitana was an ancient Iberian Roman province including approximately all of modern Portugal south of the Douro river and part of modern Spain", to reference wikipedia. Curiously, the Portuguese Empire is considered the first global empire, stimulated in large part by the efforts of the Portuguese duke aptly named Henry the Navigator and the control of ports in South America and Africa.
Nata de coco is a product made from the fermentation of coconut water with Acetobacter xylinum, resulting in a translucent, chewy/stringy mass that is actually tastier than it sounds (as is the case with most fermented products). It is frequently served sweetened as a dessert, and is apparently high in dietary fiber.
A recent discussion with a co-worker began innocently enough with the question, "Why isn't teleportation a thing yet?" This became philosophical fast, with the breakdown of teleportation basically consisting of being scanned down to the atomic level, then recreated elsewhere (from this, "Samuel Braunstein made this point quite clear when he noted that if teleportation were possible today, the transmission of information about an entire human being would take about 100 million centuries, about the age of the universe. ‘It would be faster to walk,’ he said"), leading to the question regarding the 'divine spark' of human consciousness - things evolved into a discussion of quantum entanglement ("An entangled system is defined to be one whose quantum state cannot be factored as a product of states of its local constituents, that is to say, they are not individual particles but are an inseparable whole. If entangled, one constituent cannot be fully described without considering the other(s). Note that the state of a composite system is always expressible as a sum, or superposition, of products of states of local constituents; it is entangled if this sum necessarily has more than one term", thanks wikipedia), and the idea that to be teleported, one has to essentially die to re-appear elsewhere, or potentially exist in a duplicated state, referencing this interesting discussion. This arced over to another discussion of the situation illustrated by the Ship the Theseus, essentially, how much of something can be replaced before it is another thing entirely? Personally, i've wished before that there was more than one of me (that would share a brain), so i could be in multiple places at once, but acknowledge that this would get pretty confusing after a while. Also, shout out to the Calvin and Hobbes duplicator.
Two things about the curious geological products of the US' upper Northeast. One, Herkimer diamonds are water-clear, faceted, doubly terminated (read, "pointy on both ends") pieces of quartz that are nearly as hard as diamonds, and first found near Herkimer County in New York (and later found in places like Arizona, Afganistan and Tibet). These formed in cavities in dolostones, which accounts for their nice shape. Two, Goshen stone is a varibly-colored mica schist (sheets of stone used for pavers) found primarily in New England. A notable story associated with this is the discovery of 24 million tons on land belonging to former Dodgers' pitcher Matt White. It's a heartwarming story; "in 2003, White purchased 50 acres (200,000 m2) of mountain real estate in Cummington, Massachusetts from his aunt for $50,000, giving her the money she needed to enter a nursing home. His original intention was to build his home, but he found the land to be too hard. When he called a surveyor out to inspect the land, the surveyor found that the land was solid Goshen stone, a type of mica schist estimated to be about 400 million years old. Estimates have placed the low estimate of the find at 24 million tons. At current prices (he has been selling the stone for over $100/ton), it is estimated to be worth around $2.5 billion, minus extraction costs". Way to help out your aunt there, Mr. White.
Finally, my brother and sister-in-law are building a pergola in their backyard. Growing up in South Texas, i was unfamiliar with the term 'pergola' (as is the rest of my family apart from my sibs), and various discussions about the nouns 'pergola' versus 'arbor' ensued. Finally, i took to google. The difference between these two is that an arbor is typically a smaller tunnel, while a pergola is a larger structure incorporating a porch with a roof (not to be confused with a trellis, which can form a wall/top to the other two, but mostly is just a structure on which to support growing plant vines).
Thursday, March 10, 2016
music machines, peanuts and cola, bleach, birthstones, Homestar Runner, Ship of Theseus
Because i am a sucker for complicated music-making systems [reference my favorite OkGo music video (side tangent, how awesome would it be to have to take a stunt driving course for a music video?!) or pretty much any OkGo music video], this awesome, marble-utilizing music machine is fascinating to me (hat tip to NPR for the link). The band behind this is Wintergatan (the 'Milky way'), listed in wikipedia as in the 'folktronica' genre, and a few of their songs have that 'plinky' music box sound. (KellyAT and James, here is track called 'Biking Is Better.')
The city that i currently inhabit does not do well with frozen precipitation (unlike my former residence), as was illustrated when recent snow storm prompted echos of this classic SNL sketch (my favorite part? Dixie champagne, which is totally going in my lexicon). Regarding Coca Cola, last week i realized that my evening snack consisted of the old-fashioned favorite coke and peanuts, though i have no idea how this got to be quite as popular as it did. Googling around, i came across the shortest recipe ever, Coke and Peanuts, with an expected-though-probably-overstated prep time of 2 minutes. And regarding the reasoning, it is apparently considered a nascent fast food - easy to consume when your hands are otherwise occupied.
i came across the term 'eau de javel' the other day while reading. It refers potassium hypochlorite, a precursor to good old "bleach" (the common name for sodium hypochlorite), the very strongly oxidizing reagent. Eau de javel was initially prepared with chlorine gas and potash lye in the French town of Javel (now a part of Paris). This was followed by the cheaper preparation of sodium hypochlorite from soda lye instead of potash lye, but the process wasn't really streamlined until the Hooker process in the late 1800s. (Clorox is a portmanteau of chlorine and Sodium Hydroxide, the starting materials.) From the wikipedia article, " Skin contact will produce caustic irritation or burns due to defatting and saponification of skin oils and destruction of tissue. The slippery feel of bleach on skin is due to this process. ".
It came to my attention that my coworkers hadn't heard of the early-to-mid 2000s' online cartoon Homestar Runner (nor the more popular Strongbad emails). i used the quote "No two people are not on fire" in conversation, was met with blank stares, and so had to link the corresponding SBE clip. i feel like it's a pretty good example of the cartoon type. Honorable mention goes to 'Dragon', better known as Trogdor. (And, that's how i spent undergrad. Reference early blog posts here and there. i forget that i've been doing this blog a really long time.)
Little known fact about birthstones that i came across last week include their origins in religion, as being 'the founding stones of the New Jerusalem', and as such, appropriate for Christians to have all 12 and wear one every month. The practice of wearing the stone associated with a particular month (that of one's birth) started in either Poland in the 1700s, or Germany in the 1860s. To standardize the stones associated with each month, efforts were made by various jewelers, including this poem published by Tiffany and Co. in 1870. Reading it, it's interesting the contrast in modern birthstones (bloodstone v/s aquamarine, sardonyx v/s peridot, agate v/s pearls).
A recent, sad-though-informative BBC article is titled "Japan's ninjas heading for extinction", noting that this is a very traditional family apprenticeship. But, that's what they WANT us to think.
The excellent @sunrisescience linked to a Brainpickings article featuring the Ship of Theseus, as mentioned by Plutarch; essentially, how much of something can be changed before it becomes something else? This gets philosophical fast when applied to human personalities. A modern update of this is handled in Daryl Gregory's Raising Stony Mayhall, a zombie novel that directly illustrates this point by having the zombies replace bits of themselves with, for instance wooden prosthetic. Sorry this got weird fast, but it's a fascinating concept to consider: human psyches have infinite capacity for (admittedly usually gradual) growth and adaptation. Particularly interesting to consider this in an election year...
That's probably enough for today.
The city that i currently inhabit does not do well with frozen precipitation (unlike my former residence), as was illustrated when recent snow storm prompted echos of this classic SNL sketch (my favorite part? Dixie champagne, which is totally going in my lexicon). Regarding Coca Cola, last week i realized that my evening snack consisted of the old-fashioned favorite coke and peanuts, though i have no idea how this got to be quite as popular as it did. Googling around, i came across the shortest recipe ever, Coke and Peanuts, with an expected-though-probably-overstated prep time of 2 minutes. And regarding the reasoning, it is apparently considered a nascent fast food - easy to consume when your hands are otherwise occupied.
i came across the term 'eau de javel' the other day while reading. It refers potassium hypochlorite, a precursor to good old "bleach" (the common name for sodium hypochlorite), the very strongly oxidizing reagent. Eau de javel was initially prepared with chlorine gas and potash lye in the French town of Javel (now a part of Paris). This was followed by the cheaper preparation of sodium hypochlorite from soda lye instead of potash lye, but the process wasn't really streamlined until the Hooker process in the late 1800s. (Clorox is a portmanteau of chlorine and Sodium Hydroxide, the starting materials.) From the wikipedia article, " Skin contact will produce caustic irritation or burns due to defatting and saponification of skin oils and destruction of tissue. The slippery feel of bleach on skin is due to this process. ".
It came to my attention that my coworkers hadn't heard of the early-to-mid 2000s' online cartoon Homestar Runner (nor the more popular Strongbad emails). i used the quote "No two people are not on fire" in conversation, was met with blank stares, and so had to link the corresponding SBE clip. i feel like it's a pretty good example of the cartoon type. Honorable mention goes to 'Dragon', better known as Trogdor. (And, that's how i spent undergrad. Reference early blog posts here and there. i forget that i've been doing this blog a really long time.)
Little known fact about birthstones that i came across last week include their origins in religion, as being 'the founding stones of the New Jerusalem', and as such, appropriate for Christians to have all 12 and wear one every month. The practice of wearing the stone associated with a particular month (that of one's birth) started in either Poland in the 1700s, or Germany in the 1860s. To standardize the stones associated with each month, efforts were made by various jewelers, including this poem published by Tiffany and Co. in 1870. Reading it, it's interesting the contrast in modern birthstones (bloodstone v/s aquamarine, sardonyx v/s peridot, agate v/s pearls).
A recent, sad-though-informative BBC article is titled "Japan's ninjas heading for extinction", noting that this is a very traditional family apprenticeship. But, that's what they WANT us to think.
The excellent @sunrisescience linked to a Brainpickings article featuring the Ship of Theseus, as mentioned by Plutarch; essentially, how much of something can be changed before it becomes something else? This gets philosophical fast when applied to human personalities. A modern update of this is handled in Daryl Gregory's Raising Stony Mayhall, a zombie novel that directly illustrates this point by having the zombies replace bits of themselves with, for instance wooden prosthetic. Sorry this got weird fast, but it's a fascinating concept to consider: human psyches have infinite capacity for (admittedly usually gradual) growth and adaptation. Particularly interesting to consider this in an election year...
That's probably enough for today.
Saturday, February 13, 2016
notes on music, coffees, Burtonized Disney, IKEA food, skijoring
Happy New Year (both Gregorian and lunar!), maybe (more than a few) days in to both.
Because my brain hinges on music, here's a lot on that subject. I happily spent (Gregorian) New Years Eve with Jack, Leslie, Jacob and his Hannah - we had a version of wine-and-painting night, the sort where everyone drinks (mostly vodka in our case) and each attempts to paint a version of the same scene. It was discovered that i haven't heard the Weeknd song 'Can't Feel My Face', and Jacob undertook a brilliant Shakespearean reading of the lyrics, followed by the same on youtube, repeat. We couldn't decide if the song describes allergies, drugs or other possibilities. i mentioned that my go-to background music in lab is Aphex Twin, particularly his ambient stuff - this mix is particularly good at distracting my brain enough for me to read papers, so linking it here for documentation.
Other things of note include this live recording of Stromae, especially the remarkably good a capella version of 'Tous Les Memes' starting around 25:40. Another that i was pleased to find is this live recording of the talented Shakey Graves (in a bowling alley?!), wherein he covers the song 'Kiss the Girl' from Disney's The Little Mermaid (around 17:05). i had to look up the original, but it turns out he does a pretty good job despite lacking the familiar 'sha-la-la-la' chorus. Things i'm looking forward to are a new Andrew Bird album coming early April, and a new Lumineers album later that month. (Side tangent: i'm curious to note that the title of the Lumineers album is 'Cleopatra'. i was dubbed 'Cleopatra' by my high school comp. sci teacher when he couldn't pronounce my lengthy surname, and now give Cleo as my name when ordering at cafes and restaurants, as my first name is overwhelmingly common. Bryan refers to this use of an alternate name as a 'coffee shop name', but it turns out, googling that will only yield websites with ideas for naming coffee shops. My own name choice backfires, as it is surprising how frequently baristas mistake 'Cleo' for 'Chloe'.)
Regarding coffee, i came across a slightly hair-splitting article entitled 'Is that Cappuccino You're Drinking Really A Cappuccino', which describes the naming of said beverage after the traditional color of a Capuchin friar's robe, and goes on to describe various related beverages (a latte, with steamed-and-not-foamed-milk, a flat white, with microfoam-and-greater-coffee-ratio), and how shop-specific versions of these blur the lines between distinction. As we're on the topic of preachy NYTimes articles, this article, 'Food and the Single Girl', reflects on dietary habits of people who live alone versus with others. Happy Singles Awareness Day (or Valentines).
Regarding Disney, just in case anyone missed it, here are terrific images of various (other) Disney films re-imagined in the style of Tim Burton by artist Andrew Tarusov. I really, really like Mr. Burton's somewhat creepy, etiolated, minimalist style, and so was thrilled to see those. Happily, Alice In Wonderland as directed by Mr. Burton is already a thing (as is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and his 'Alice2: Through The Looking Glass' is out May 27th.
Here is the music video that always comes to my mind when thinking of the late David Bowie, featuring himself in pajamas, frolicking in an urban setting ('dancing in the streets') with Mick Jagger. The 1980s were a strange time, sartorially and otherwise.
While recently at IKEA to purchase furniture, i ended up dining there. To occupy myself while eating, i googled about dining at IKEA, and it turns out that someone in Australia has blogged about eating only food from IKEA for an entire week. There is also a compilation/ranking of all the food available at IKEA.
The online publication formerly-known-as-British-Medical-Journal has a well done, tongue-in-cheek Christmas 2015 feature called Zombie Infections: epidemiology, treatment, and prevention (with a hat-tip here).
A wintersport that i learned about the other day is skijoring, applied to a skier being pulled by dog(s) or a horse. The attachment is a belt at the skier's waist. Related is bikejoring, where 2 dogs pull a person on a bicycle (eek!, "Bikejoring can be fun but has its dangers. The dogs may be distracted by wild-life"), and Bryan linked yak skiing, " a skier waiting at the bottom of a slope and a yak at the top of the hill; yak and skier are connected by means of a rope going around a pulley at the top of the hill. To engage the yak, the skier must shake (and swiftly put down) a bucket of pony nuts. This attracts the yak, which charges downhill and pulls the skier upward by means of the rope ".
And finally,
Because my brain hinges on music, here's a lot on that subject. I happily spent (Gregorian) New Years Eve with Jack, Leslie, Jacob and his Hannah - we had a version of wine-and-painting night, the sort where everyone drinks (mostly vodka in our case) and each attempts to paint a version of the same scene. It was discovered that i haven't heard the Weeknd song 'Can't Feel My Face', and Jacob undertook a brilliant Shakespearean reading of the lyrics, followed by the same on youtube, repeat. We couldn't decide if the song describes allergies, drugs or other possibilities. i mentioned that my go-to background music in lab is Aphex Twin, particularly his ambient stuff - this mix is particularly good at distracting my brain enough for me to read papers, so linking it here for documentation.
Other things of note include this live recording of Stromae, especially the remarkably good a capella version of 'Tous Les Memes' starting around 25:40. Another that i was pleased to find is this live recording of the talented Shakey Graves (in a bowling alley?!), wherein he covers the song 'Kiss the Girl' from Disney's The Little Mermaid (around 17:05). i had to look up the original, but it turns out he does a pretty good job despite lacking the familiar 'sha-la-la-la' chorus. Things i'm looking forward to are a new Andrew Bird album coming early April, and a new Lumineers album later that month. (Side tangent: i'm curious to note that the title of the Lumineers album is 'Cleopatra'. i was dubbed 'Cleopatra' by my high school comp. sci teacher when he couldn't pronounce my lengthy surname, and now give Cleo as my name when ordering at cafes and restaurants, as my first name is overwhelmingly common. Bryan refers to this use of an alternate name as a 'coffee shop name', but it turns out, googling that will only yield websites with ideas for naming coffee shops. My own name choice backfires, as it is surprising how frequently baristas mistake 'Cleo' for 'Chloe'.)
Regarding coffee, i came across a slightly hair-splitting article entitled 'Is that Cappuccino You're Drinking Really A Cappuccino', which describes the naming of said beverage after the traditional color of a Capuchin friar's robe, and goes on to describe various related beverages (a latte, with steamed-and-not-foamed-milk, a flat white, with microfoam-and-greater-coffee-ratio), and how shop-specific versions of these blur the lines between distinction. As we're on the topic of preachy NYTimes articles, this article, 'Food and the Single Girl', reflects on dietary habits of people who live alone versus with others. Happy Singles Awareness Day (or Valentines).
Regarding Disney, just in case anyone missed it, here are terrific images of various (other) Disney films re-imagined in the style of Tim Burton by artist Andrew Tarusov. I really, really like Mr. Burton's somewhat creepy, etiolated, minimalist style, and so was thrilled to see those. Happily, Alice In Wonderland as directed by Mr. Burton is already a thing (as is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and his 'Alice2: Through The Looking Glass' is out May 27th.
Here is the music video that always comes to my mind when thinking of the late David Bowie, featuring himself in pajamas, frolicking in an urban setting ('dancing in the streets') with Mick Jagger. The 1980s were a strange time, sartorially and otherwise.
While recently at IKEA to purchase furniture, i ended up dining there. To occupy myself while eating, i googled about dining at IKEA, and it turns out that someone in Australia has blogged about eating only food from IKEA for an entire week. There is also a compilation/ranking of all the food available at IKEA.
The online publication formerly-known-as-British-Medical-Journal has a well done, tongue-in-cheek Christmas 2015 feature called Zombie Infections: epidemiology, treatment, and prevention (with a hat-tip here).
A wintersport that i learned about the other day is skijoring, applied to a skier being pulled by dog(s) or a horse. The attachment is a belt at the skier's waist. Related is bikejoring, where 2 dogs pull a person on a bicycle (eek!, "Bikejoring can be fun but has its dangers. The dogs may be distracted by wild-life"), and Bryan linked yak skiing, " a skier waiting at the bottom of a slope and a yak at the top of the hill; yak and skier are connected by means of a rope going around a pulley at the top of the hill. To engage the yak, the skier must shake (and swiftly put down) a bucket of pony nuts. This attracts the yak, which charges downhill and pulls the skier upward by means of the rope ".
And finally,
me: how did you come across yak skiing?
'see also'?
Bryan: it was linked to skijoring
me: ah
Bryan: a tenuous connection to be sure
but that's what makes wiki golf possible
me: wiki golf
wiki golf?
Sunday, December 6, 2015
pikelets/pancakes, fairy lights, banana oil, horrifying song lyrics, multiplexing/high throughput, snake locomotion, sweet gum and ambergris
Well. i was reading the other day and references were made to 'pikelets' as a breakfast food. Researching this a little, it turns out that these are what they call a sort of fat pancake/crumpet dating to Victorian times, and still currently prepared in New Zealand and Australia. Also, wikipedia has a remarkably complex page for pancakes, possibly due to that be a food found in some form in pretty much every culture. Other bits of interest from that page are Pancake Syndrome (Simultaneous oral mite anaphylaxis), which occurs after people have eaten pancakes made from flour infested
with particular mites which have survived cooking at the lower temps
necessary for pancakes. Also, there is a Pancake day, frequently occurring on Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras, right before the Catholic season of Lent, to use up all of fat or lard in a household before Lenten fasting, though some places celebrate with a race; "in a "pancake race" each participant carries a pancake in a frying pan.
All runners must toss their pancakes as they run and catch them in the
frying pan. This event is said to have originated in Olney, England in 1445 when a housewife was still busy frying pancakes to eat before the Lenten fast when she heard the bells of St Peter and St Paul's Church calling her to the Shriving
Service. Eager to get to church, she ran out of her house still holding
the frying pan complete with pancake, tossing it to prevent it from
burning, and still wearing her apron and headscarf"(further referenced here). Huh.
As the Holiday season is upon us, i was skimming BBC News last week and came across and article with the intriguing title "Fairy lights could 'slow' wi-fi speeds warns Ofcom". Apparently, strings of twinkling lights (which we call 'Christmas lights' or 'Holiday lights' in the US) are referred to as 'Fairy lights' in the UK, and apparently, they might slow down wi-fi, though a reason was not specified outside of simply being a electrical device.
Something i was reading the other day referenced the 1920s slogan 'banana oil'. My training predicated me to think of isoamyl acetate, an ester that we made in undergrad o. chem lab, which is a source of the common artificial banana flavoring. That definition didn't make sense in the context. Urban dictionary to the (somewhat accurate) rescue, "insincere or ridiculous talk. Like “horse feathers,” there's no such substance as banana oil. Also like “horse feathers,” the phrase Described something utterly preposterous. It has been attributed to Milt Gross, a cartoonist who first used the expression in his comic strips during the 1920s". To correct that definition, isoamyl-acetate-as-banana-oil is used as a flavoring, as well as a solvent for paint varnishes and as a honey bee pheromone/attractant.
One of my favorite Andrew Bird songs (full disclose, i have quite a few favorites by him, but this one is very clever) is "Fake Palindromes". It ends with a reference to trepanation, specifically as a result of a date, and as noted in the Paste Magazine series "Secretly Horrifying Song Lyrics", might strike someone as somewhat creepy while listening to the lyrics. The song happens to be the result the evolution/culmination of two of Mr. Bird's earlier songs, one of which specifically written about dating, called 'Trepanation'. Unfortunately, i cannot find a copy of the song itself, but here are the lyrics, which include "If you're a clean living like-minded soul
Wanna meet nice people with cranial holes
And touch upon the truth that lies inside" Delightfully disturbing, and this is another illustration as to why i'm single - dating is scary.
Sidetanget, i seem to have an affinity for songs with secretly horrifying lyrics (reference DCFC here); a labmate noted a few years ago that it might be seen as a bit weird that i love howling Regina Spektor's brilliant Genius Next Door while late in lab at night by myself - it didn't seem weird until she pointed out, though.
i was looking up lab equipment the other day online and getting annoyed by the buzzwords "multiplex" and "high throughput", mentally assigning bonus annoyance points to products featuring both. These terms are only slightly redundant. Multiplex is one of those words for which one never sees the singular, and indicates that a machine can handle multiple analyses during a single assay/run. "High Throughput" seems to indicate that the processes are automated to facilitate handling a lot of samples at once. Bonus round, there is a DC comics Supervillian with the name Multiplex,"he gains the ability to split himself into identical duplicates, though those duplicates are smaller than the original, and get smaller the more he splits." This seems to be a reverse of the experimental process outlined above.
Jack linked this really interesting imgur video of snakes moving between boards with gaps of various widths, and, as noted in the comments, it seems like there are better widths than others for snake locomotion.
Finally, James ET was kind enough to mention the 'monkey balls' seedpods produced by Sweet Gum trees (liquidambar styraciflua) in response to the rambutans i mentioned last post. While similar looking, these do not contain soft fruits, and instead produce seeds that are enjoyed by birds and a variety of small mammals. The name refers to the sweet smelling sap, which produces a pleasant scent upon burning it. That turned into a research arc that turned up ambergris, also something that smells sweet upon aging and was formerly used as a fixative in perfume manufacture, but is actually the product of the bilious tract of Sperm whales; " scientists have theorised that the substance is produced by the whale's gastrointestinal tract to ease the passage of hard, sharp objects that the whale might have eaten. The sperm whale usually vomits these, but if one travels further down the gut, it will be covered in ambergris", according to the wiki article. That article also notes that ambergris was used as a flavoring in the past, "A serving of eggs and ambergris was reportedly King Charles II of England's favorite dish ". No offense, but eww.
As the Holiday season is upon us, i was skimming BBC News last week and came across and article with the intriguing title "Fairy lights could 'slow' wi-fi speeds warns Ofcom". Apparently, strings of twinkling lights (which we call 'Christmas lights' or 'Holiday lights' in the US) are referred to as 'Fairy lights' in the UK, and apparently, they might slow down wi-fi, though a reason was not specified outside of simply being a electrical device.
Something i was reading the other day referenced the 1920s slogan 'banana oil'. My training predicated me to think of isoamyl acetate, an ester that we made in undergrad o. chem lab, which is a source of the common artificial banana flavoring. That definition didn't make sense in the context. Urban dictionary to the (somewhat accurate) rescue, "insincere or ridiculous talk. Like “horse feathers,” there's no such substance as banana oil. Also like “horse feathers,” the phrase Described something utterly preposterous. It has been attributed to Milt Gross, a cartoonist who first used the expression in his comic strips during the 1920s". To correct that definition, isoamyl-acetate-as-banana-oil is used as a flavoring, as well as a solvent for paint varnishes and as a honey bee pheromone/attractant.
One of my favorite Andrew Bird songs (full disclose, i have quite a few favorites by him, but this one is very clever) is "Fake Palindromes". It ends with a reference to trepanation, specifically as a result of a date, and as noted in the Paste Magazine series "Secretly Horrifying Song Lyrics", might strike someone as somewhat creepy while listening to the lyrics. The song happens to be the result the evolution/culmination of two of Mr. Bird's earlier songs, one of which specifically written about dating, called 'Trepanation'. Unfortunately, i cannot find a copy of the song itself, but here are the lyrics, which include "If you're a clean living like-minded soul
Wanna meet nice people with cranial holes
And touch upon the truth that lies inside" Delightfully disturbing, and this is another illustration as to why i'm single - dating is scary.
Sidetanget, i seem to have an affinity for songs with secretly horrifying lyrics (reference DCFC here); a labmate noted a few years ago that it might be seen as a bit weird that i love howling Regina Spektor's brilliant Genius Next Door while late in lab at night by myself - it didn't seem weird until she pointed out, though.
i was looking up lab equipment the other day online and getting annoyed by the buzzwords "multiplex" and "high throughput", mentally assigning bonus annoyance points to products featuring both. These terms are only slightly redundant. Multiplex is one of those words for which one never sees the singular, and indicates that a machine can handle multiple analyses during a single assay/run. "High Throughput" seems to indicate that the processes are automated to facilitate handling a lot of samples at once. Bonus round, there is a DC comics Supervillian with the name Multiplex,"he gains the ability to split himself into identical duplicates, though those duplicates are smaller than the original, and get smaller the more he splits." This seems to be a reverse of the experimental process outlined above.
Jack linked this really interesting imgur video of snakes moving between boards with gaps of various widths, and, as noted in the comments, it seems like there are better widths than others for snake locomotion.
Finally, James ET was kind enough to mention the 'monkey balls' seedpods produced by Sweet Gum trees (liquidambar styraciflua) in response to the rambutans i mentioned last post. While similar looking, these do not contain soft fruits, and instead produce seeds that are enjoyed by birds and a variety of small mammals. The name refers to the sweet smelling sap, which produces a pleasant scent upon burning it. That turned into a research arc that turned up ambergris, also something that smells sweet upon aging and was formerly used as a fixative in perfume manufacture, but is actually the product of the bilious tract of Sperm whales; " scientists have theorised that the substance is produced by the whale's gastrointestinal tract to ease the passage of hard, sharp objects that the whale might have eaten. The sperm whale usually vomits these, but if one travels further down the gut, it will be covered in ambergris", according to the wiki article. That article also notes that ambergris was used as a flavoring in the past, "A serving of eggs and ambergris was reportedly King Charles II of England's favorite dish ". No offense, but eww.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
soapfruits, jelly apples, Christmas antibodies, etc
Just a brief update...
Some dear friends have moved to Florida, and now have easy access to exotic fruits. The last time i was in town, they introduced me to rambutans, which look like small, particularly hairy alien eggs, and once peeled, remind a person very much of a grape that tastes like combination of cherry and peach (complete with tiny pit). Apparently, rambutans belong to the curiously-named family of soapfruits (sapindaceae), so called because sometimes the roots/foliage contain saponins and latex. (The threat 'to have ones mouth washed out with soap' would be much less terrible if the soap in question was actually rambutans.) Longans and lychees also belong to this family. Also, maples and buckeyes belong in this family, though those, of course, are known for other products.
Jack and Leslie, here is a clip to the 'I Like Bananas (Because They Have No Bones)' song that i kept singing on that shopping expedition.
Since we're on the subject of fruit, i came across an ad the other day for 'jelly apples' This did not reference apples used to make jelly, but rather a product similar to candy apples, only with a softer coating akin to caramel. Apparently, " Jelly apples became popular at Coney Island as a seaside treat many years ago and are well known in New York and on the East Coast of the United States ", as stated by a jelly apple manufacturer. Can any East Coast folks confirm this?
A common phrase 'the whole shebang' typically refers to the entirety of something, but what is a 'shebang'? Looking further into this, the exact origins are somewhat obscure, but the earliest reference is in a 1920s poem by Walt Whitman.
'Christmas factor' is a term i came across the other day while doing some (science) research. Apparently, it's a coagulation factor that was discovered as lacking in a man named Stephen Christmas, who was (thusly) a hemophiliac, with the specific form (B) called 'Christmas Disease'. Anyway, this caught my attention mostly because i read of an antibody made against it, for further research, meaning that somewhere there is a tube labeled 'anti-christmas'.
My brother texted me today to ask about some plush toys from our youth, Popples, which turned into a ball-shaped plush via folding into a pocket (his turned into a soccer ball, and mine ended up as a teal-and-white striped ball). He said he had just seen an infomercial for something called Pop Out Pets, a similar type plush that flips into three separate animals (reference this, but warning, there is a video clip that starts automatically). Anyway, i was minorly relived that they weren't billed as 'vintage' or 'retro', as i'm not yet ready to feel that old.
Here is a really interesting fact page regarding various facts about the Atlanta airport, including the fact that they average 230,000 passengers daily, and that there are 30,000 parking spaces (of which i'm pretty sure i got one of the last 10 free spaces available on Thanksgiving morning).
One of the webcomics i have read every morning (okay, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning) for the past decade is xkcd. i have been pleased to lately read that it's getting more popular as the STEM fields become "cooler", and there have been three different interviews with Randall Munro appearing recently to promote his new book, one at the NYTimes, another in the Wall Street Journal ( i was delighted by his mention of Calvin and Hobbes comics), and a different one with the awesome astronaut Chris Hadfield.
Something amusing that i tripped over the other day was this analysis of the hazards James Bond faces in his line of work, as set forth in a CDC blog post. (Another CDC awesome blog post is their zombies attack emergency prep sheet from a few years back, and a more recent 'teachable moments' update featuring Walking Dead shots, which includes the awesome line "Being true zombie fans, we love The Walking Dead on AMC, so much so that we’ve looked past the fact that they blew us up at the end of the first season and we assure you that our work here at the CDC continues").
Some dear friends have moved to Florida, and now have easy access to exotic fruits. The last time i was in town, they introduced me to rambutans, which look like small, particularly hairy alien eggs, and once peeled, remind a person very much of a grape that tastes like combination of cherry and peach (complete with tiny pit). Apparently, rambutans belong to the curiously-named family of soapfruits (sapindaceae), so called because sometimes the roots/foliage contain saponins and latex. (The threat 'to have ones mouth washed out with soap' would be much less terrible if the soap in question was actually rambutans.) Longans and lychees also belong to this family. Also, maples and buckeyes belong in this family, though those, of course, are known for other products.
Jack and Leslie, here is a clip to the 'I Like Bananas (Because They Have No Bones)' song that i kept singing on that shopping expedition.
Since we're on the subject of fruit, i came across an ad the other day for 'jelly apples' This did not reference apples used to make jelly, but rather a product similar to candy apples, only with a softer coating akin to caramel. Apparently, " Jelly apples became popular at Coney Island as a seaside treat many years ago and are well known in New York and on the East Coast of the United States ", as stated by a jelly apple manufacturer. Can any East Coast folks confirm this?
A common phrase 'the whole shebang' typically refers to the entirety of something, but what is a 'shebang'? Looking further into this, the exact origins are somewhat obscure, but the earliest reference is in a 1920s poem by Walt Whitman.
'Christmas factor' is a term i came across the other day while doing some (science) research. Apparently, it's a coagulation factor that was discovered as lacking in a man named Stephen Christmas, who was (thusly) a hemophiliac, with the specific form (B) called 'Christmas Disease'. Anyway, this caught my attention mostly because i read of an antibody made against it, for further research, meaning that somewhere there is a tube labeled 'anti-christmas'.
My brother texted me today to ask about some plush toys from our youth, Popples, which turned into a ball-shaped plush via folding into a pocket (his turned into a soccer ball, and mine ended up as a teal-and-white striped ball). He said he had just seen an infomercial for something called Pop Out Pets, a similar type plush that flips into three separate animals (reference this, but warning, there is a video clip that starts automatically). Anyway, i was minorly relived that they weren't billed as 'vintage' or 'retro', as i'm not yet ready to feel that old.
Here is a really interesting fact page regarding various facts about the Atlanta airport, including the fact that they average 230,000 passengers daily, and that there are 30,000 parking spaces (of which i'm pretty sure i got one of the last 10 free spaces available on Thanksgiving morning).
One of the webcomics i have read every morning (okay, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning) for the past decade is xkcd. i have been pleased to lately read that it's getting more popular as the STEM fields become "cooler", and there have been three different interviews with Randall Munro appearing recently to promote his new book, one at the NYTimes, another in the Wall Street Journal ( i was delighted by his mention of Calvin and Hobbes comics), and a different one with the awesome astronaut Chris Hadfield.
Something amusing that i tripped over the other day was this analysis of the hazards James Bond faces in his line of work, as set forth in a CDC blog post. (Another CDC awesome blog post is their zombies attack emergency prep sheet from a few years back, and a more recent 'teachable moments' update featuring Walking Dead shots, which includes the awesome line "Being true zombie fans, we love The Walking Dead on AMC, so much so that we’ve looked past the fact that they blew us up at the end of the first season and we assure you that our work here at the CDC continues").
Sunday, November 8, 2015
SATX treats, V/R, auroras, World Polio Day, space beer
In other news, a Dutch neuroscientist has determined the most upbeat playlist (featuring mostly '80s hits, due to their fast tempos).
While i was home, i made sure to enjoy local confections; my faves usually include either pecans or coconut. However, something local is chamoy, a topping consisting of fruit stewed with acid, salt and chilies, "Mexican chamoy is prepared by first packing the fruit in either dry salt or a brine. Occasionally, this brine is acidulated with vinegar. This draws out the natural moisture of the fruit by osmosis. When the fruit has been sufficiently dried, it is separated from the brine and is sold as a snack known as saladitos, literally 'little salty things.'
Meanwhile, the salted fruit brine created in this process is seasoned to taste with chile powder, becoming chamoy. This liquid may be further reduced, or thickened with pureed fruit, to achieve a variety of consistencies.", from the wikipedia article. It also comes as a powder, made with citric acid, and eaten either as a seasoning or straight up (licked from one's fingers or palm). Either version of chamoy are frequently served on a variety of things, including other fruit, on various frozen desserts, and in the street snack tostilocos, which consists of chips (tostitos, doritos, etc) covered with a variety of things (sort of like a even-more-terrible-for-you frito pie), including " cueritos, cucumber, jícama, lime juice, Valentina hot sauce, chamoy, tajín chile powder, salt, and "Japanese peanuts" " (reference here). All of those are snack foods in their own right. Cueritos are fried pork skins. Japanese peanuts are peanuts which have a crunchy, sweet and spicy covering made mainly of wheat or soy flour, and are pretty addicting.
The start of the school year reminded me how popular Lisa Frank items were in middle school, and it turns out, she is an actual person who runs her company out of Tuscon, Arizona.
Been doing a fair amount of corresponding with folks who are military lately, and noticed that their closing salutation is occasionally 'V/R,' followed by their name. Looking further into it, it seems that this stands for 'Very Respectfully', and apparently there is a whole chain of command thing built into this closing. The most comprehensive internet answer that i was able to track down reports that " the abbreviation V/r (and the "r" is generally lowercase although I've seen it both ways) is drawn from military usage. It is very common in Navy email communications. If the sender is junior to the receiver, the proper closing is V/r. If the sender is senior to the receiver, the proper closing is just /r. Also, military emails to civilians often use /r (but you might get a V/r if you're lucky!). "
In all my time in WI, i never did see the Northern Lights - usually the cloud cover was too bad on the nights where we were expected to have a strong chance of seeing them (side note, there is a site that will tell you the probability of seeing the aurora borealis in North America, forecast-style). Recently, the family T was taking in the stars, as they are wont to do, and caught the 'Lights. Kelly AT apparently found this Slate article describing a resort in Finland that features glass igloos wherein one can view the 'Lights while remaining unfrozen.
Recently (Oct. 24th), it was World Polio Day. The Gates Foundation is a strong supporter of the efforts to completely eradicate polio (so close!!), and as such, put up a marvelous post to his blog detailing efforts, etc. Even better, the xkcd webcomic artist Randall Munroe did a spot-on comic for the event, which i'm probably going to have to use for lab meeting in the near future.
Finally, because this is getting to be a really long post (i've been saving stuff up for, like, a month, but moving and lack-of-ample-home-internet have been hindrances), a recent conversation about the call for new US astronauts.
While i was home, i made sure to enjoy local confections; my faves usually include either pecans or coconut. However, something local is chamoy, a topping consisting of fruit stewed with acid, salt and chilies, "Mexican chamoy is prepared by first packing the fruit in either dry salt or a brine. Occasionally, this brine is acidulated with vinegar. This draws out the natural moisture of the fruit by osmosis. When the fruit has been sufficiently dried, it is separated from the brine and is sold as a snack known as saladitos, literally 'little salty things.'
Meanwhile, the salted fruit brine created in this process is seasoned to taste with chile powder, becoming chamoy. This liquid may be further reduced, or thickened with pureed fruit, to achieve a variety of consistencies.", from the wikipedia article. It also comes as a powder, made with citric acid, and eaten either as a seasoning or straight up (licked from one's fingers or palm). Either version of chamoy are frequently served on a variety of things, including other fruit, on various frozen desserts, and in the street snack tostilocos, which consists of chips (tostitos, doritos, etc) covered with a variety of things (sort of like a even-more-terrible-for-you frito pie), including " cueritos, cucumber, jícama, lime juice, Valentina hot sauce, chamoy, tajín chile powder, salt, and "Japanese peanuts" " (reference here). All of those are snack foods in their own right. Cueritos are fried pork skins. Japanese peanuts are peanuts which have a crunchy, sweet and spicy covering made mainly of wheat or soy flour, and are pretty addicting.
The start of the school year reminded me how popular Lisa Frank items were in middle school, and it turns out, she is an actual person who runs her company out of Tuscon, Arizona.
Been doing a fair amount of corresponding with folks who are military lately, and noticed that their closing salutation is occasionally 'V/R,' followed by their name. Looking further into it, it seems that this stands for 'Very Respectfully', and apparently there is a whole chain of command thing built into this closing. The most comprehensive internet answer that i was able to track down reports that " the abbreviation V/r (and the "r" is generally lowercase although I've seen it both ways) is drawn from military usage. It is very common in Navy email communications. If the sender is junior to the receiver, the proper closing is V/r. If the sender is senior to the receiver, the proper closing is just /r. Also, military emails to civilians often use /r (but you might get a V/r if you're lucky!). "
In all my time in WI, i never did see the Northern Lights - usually the cloud cover was too bad on the nights where we were expected to have a strong chance of seeing them (side note, there is a site that will tell you the probability of seeing the aurora borealis in North America, forecast-style). Recently, the family T was taking in the stars, as they are wont to do, and caught the 'Lights. Kelly AT apparently found this Slate article describing a resort in Finland that features glass igloos wherein one can view the 'Lights while remaining unfrozen.
Recently (Oct. 24th), it was World Polio Day. The Gates Foundation is a strong supporter of the efforts to completely eradicate polio (so close!!), and as such, put up a marvelous post to his blog detailing efforts, etc. Even better, the xkcd webcomic artist Randall Munroe did a spot-on comic for the event, which i'm probably going to have to use for lab meeting in the near future.
Finally, because this is getting to be a really long post (i've been saving stuff up for, like, a month, but moving and lack-of-ample-home-internet have been hindrances), a recent conversation about the call for new US astronauts.
Bryan: i saw
it's tempting
me: gosh
advanced degree in biology and all that
Bryan: i don't have 20/20 sight
it is correctable to 20/20 though
me: lasik
yup
you're a triple threat, too: plants, yeast AND virology
Bryan: gs-11 though gs-14
gs-11 is $51,298, not too shabby
me: but, if you lived in space, think of how much you could save in rent?
Bryan: tons
and on food
and on beer
pretty minimal space expenses
me: you could develop space beer!
Bryan: i don't see why it wouldn't work
me: (nods enthusiastically)
2013, will have to search for the follow-up
me: why did an 11yo develop a beer assay?
Bryan: i don't know
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