Old fashioned ka-boom

According to 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, the explorers Lewis and Clark were often entertained in the evenings by their native guides.  The guides would set fire to sap-rich pine trees, and the party would sit back and watch them burn, sporadically exploding like a giant Roman candle.

I don't know what that says about either Lewis and Clark or the guides.

Interestingly, no one seems to be completely sure why Roman candles are named as such.  The OED ducks the issue slightly, claiming that it might be "probably after a parallel compound in another European language," but not making a definitive ruling.  They do offer two additional comments, however; first, that it was perhaps a "reference to the transmission of the firework technique from China to Europe via the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire," and secondly that "it is possible that Roman candle originated in English and was semantically motivated by anti-Catholic feeling."

ETA: typo fixing.  Alas.

Thomas Nast

Some heretofore unknown (by me) facts about Thomas Nast, famous post-Civil War political cartoonist.

He was not American-born.  He was instead born in Landau, Germany to a Bavarian trombonist and his wife, and moved (with his mother) to the USA when he was 6 years old.  His father joined them a few years later when a tour of naval duty ended.

He was credited not only with creating the iconic figures representative of our current political parties (the elephant and the donkey) but with the "modern" image of Santa Claus as well.  It's NOT COKE'S FAULT.  I am actually a bit dubious about that claim, since A Visit from St. Nicholas predated Nast by several decades, and even though its depiction of Santa isn't quite how we usually portray him, it certainly lay a lot of groundwork ("chubby and plump" especially).  And of course, there are apparently pieces of evidence predating that with a lot of the same imagery.

Theodore Roosevelt appointed him the United States' Consul General to Ecuador in 1902, where he died a few years later during an outbreak of yellow fever.

That Face

Man, the stomach flu sucks.  But I already knew that, so I guess I'll have to post about something else.  Fortunately, I have a few gems set aside for such an occasion...

The original manikin upon which most people learn CPR was not just a randomly sculpted generic face.  It was modelled in 1960 by toymaker Asmund Laerdal, based on L'Inconnue de la Seine, a young unidentified Parisienne who drowned in the late 1880s.  The air of romantic mystery surrounding her body inspired quite a few artists, and for a time death masks made from her visage were quite the rage in Bohemian society.  It was one of these masks, seen hanging on a wall, that inspired Laerdal in his creation of Resusci Anne-- a doll inspired by a drowned woman that helps train people in saving (among other things) drowning victims.  Beautiful, no?

Except of course that it's not quite true.  According to a recent episode of Radiolab, there probably wasn't actually any drowned woman.  An interview with a gendarme who worked the riverbanks revealed that women who were pulled from the Seine simply did not look that good.  Other reports agree-- these plaster masks were based on a living girl, probably just some model doing a day's work.  So much for romanticism.

Polar Orientation

This is one for the "duh" file-- those things that are more or less obvious in retrospect, but unknown because you never have any reason to stop and think about them.

To start with, let's have a quick refresher on magnets.  All magnets have two poles, conventionally called "north" and "south."  Opposite poles attract, and like poles repel, so the north pole of one magnet will push away the north pole of another, or be instead pulled toward its south pole.

Now we shift gears, and refresh our geology a bit.  The earth has a magnetic field, generated [oversimplification] by its spinning molten iron core.  The North Magnetic Pole is in the north, although NOT at the geographic north pole.  It's actually in Canada, up north of Baffin Bay, and currently wandering in a vaguely Russian direction.  See above re: molten core; fluctuations and eddies and whatnot cause movement etc etc and that's beside the point.

Now put them together.  Look at a compass.  The needle is a magnet, with a north and south pole.  The north end points north-- that's the whole point of the compass.  But wait-- the north end of a magnet is attracted to south poles of other magnets.  Which means, logically, that the magnetic pole in the north is actually a south pole.  The North Magnetic Pole is a south magnetic pole.

I thought that was rather cool, actually.

Chamber Music

Tonight, instead of orchestra rehearsal (we just had a concert so we got a week off), I got together with a couple of new friends and played some piano trios for a change.  A little Haydn, a little Schubert.  It was really nice!  And since I've been playing almost exclusively in orchestra-type groups for the last {mumble} years I was glad to learn that I hadn't completely lost the knack.  We're nowhere near performance level at this point, but we stayed together well, and started getting a feel for reading each other's styles and mannerisms.  We're definitely going to keep getting together, although we have yet to work out a plausible schedule.

Bacon scripting

Two small things today.

First-- today I learned that the line "s%%%g;"* in a Perlscript, which should do nothing, will actually cause otherwise inexplicable problems.  Learning this took me about an hour, which is sad, but at least the script works now, which is a good thing.

Second, I verified that Bacon numbers are calculated using film roles only, which is sad, because I also learned that if they included stage performances as well, I would have a Bacon number of 4.

*Basically, the line means s(earch) for the character string between the first two percent signs, replace it with the character string between the second and third percent sign, and do it g(lobally) throughout the document.  So it should have replaced nothing with nothing, and therefore done nothing (it had been left in by accident anyway).  Instead, it caused random bits of file to disappear.

Cookies!

This one's a little trick I just learned while making a batch of snickerdoodles.  If you are making shaped cookies, and you need to roll the dough into balls, but the dough is very wet and sticky?  Spray just a little cooking oil on your hands first.  It makes rolling the dough significantly easier, and doesn't adversely affect the cookies.  Until you run out of Pam, of course.  D'oh.  Dough.  Whatever.

According to the Joy of Cooking, the name "snickerdoodle" is a corruption of German Schneckennudeln, the name for a traditional pastry (lit. "snail noodles").  Although modern snickerdoodles aren't spiral or otherwise escargotesque, they are cinnamon flavored, like the traditional pastries.  

Alternatively, the name might just be made up.  These things happen sometimes.

Daisy Roll

This is one I ran into in the meat section of our friendly neighborhood megasuperepicmarket.

Its label proclaimed it to the world to be a Smoked Daisy Roll (Pork Shoulder Butt) ((water added)).  Its ingredients featured: water, sugar, salt, sodium phosphate, sodium acetate, flavorings (spice extractives [extractives? -Ed], lemon extract and grapefruit extract), sodium erythorbate, and sodium nitrite.

A little Googling, and I learn that the Daisy Ham or Daisy Roll is a New England thing.  Apparently, an employee at the ham manufactury at Boston's Famous Faneuil Hall decided that the cross section of their boneless picnic ham roll "looked like a daisy."  Presumably the ham in question had suffered minimal processing, simply being deboned and rolled up, and possible compressed.  Very popular in the 70s, it has faded somewhat from the culinary scene, but, like many similar items, still lurks in the depths of the local supermarket, ready to spring upon the unwary, and... um, be eaten, I guess.

It appears to have many names, including "boneless picnic ham," "cottage roll," "shoulder ham," and "New England Boiled Dinner."

Stamp Bombing

In 1968, Liechtenstein was worried about its economy.  It was pretty fragile, and largely dependent on the sales of stamps.  If a rival country (any of the other tiny philatelic nations) took it into their heads to interfere with Liechtenstein's stamp, the principality could be thrown into complete ruin.

So they struck first.  Using the purpose-built twin-engine DV "Flying Stamp Dispenser" airplane, they flew a daring overnight mission to dump millions of rolls of counterfeit stamps on San Marino, Monaco, and Luxembourg, who were, naturally, awfully confused the next morning.

To this day, the airplane is still classified as a military secret by the Liechtensteiners.

The cost of entertainment

Back from vacation!  Did you miss me?

While I wait for the crickets to stop chirping, here's what I learned on vacation-- hopefully it may be of some use to somebody.  Eventually.

A "half-hour" television program (actually 23 minutes plus commercials), watched on my iPhone via Hulu.com consumed approximately 65 MB of my plan's allotment cellular data.  34 minutes of music downloaded from Pandora consumed 15 MB of data.

If this is indicative (for proper results, I should have measured several shows of varying lengths and averaged the results out), I should be able to watch at least 15 hours of television on my phone per month and still allow a decent amount for browsing, etc.  And I basically don't have to worry about Pandora at all-- I'd have to listen to close to 2 hours a day (assuming I wasn't also watching TV) before nearing my limit.  Even if I gave up on podcasts and listened exclusively to Pandora on my work commute, I'd still be nowhere near that.

Blood Limes

I've heard of blood oranges, of course-- they're still kind of hip amongst the foodies.  But I'd never heard of a blood lime before.  It's grown from a cross between a mandarin and a kind of small lime with a red skin (called the red finger lime).  The taste is pretty acidic, like a regular lime, but a little sweeter.  The flesh is roughly the color of a dark grapefruit.  They're only grown in Australia at this point as far as I can tell, which may be why they haven't shown up much at Whole Foods.  I predict we're going to see some domestic varieties in a year or so, though.  This could be the next hot thing!

Stetson

The original hat designed by John B. Stetson was called "The Boss of the Plains," and it didn't actually look much like the iconic hat that we all think of.  But it was very popular, and the cowboys all bought it and took it out on the trail with them.

And as they wore it, and slept on it, and whacked cattle on the rump with it, the round domed brim tended to acquire a typical dent in the middle, from where the cowpokes grabbed it.  And the flat brim tended to curl up a bit, from being folded and stuck in saddlebags.  Newer cowboys wanted hats that looked like those that their older role models were wearing, so the design slowly shifted.  And so the iconic Stetson shape evolved-- not according to a milliner's design, but organically from the demands of the market.  Or something.  I could probably make some sort of really sappy metaphor about the democratic nature of the frontier and the will of the people and how it means Ron Paul should be president or something, but even I have my limits.

Hat Additional-- supposedly, the "Ten Gallon hat" (also a Stetson model) got its name not from its mythical capacity, but rather from the Spanish word galón, for the ten braids in the hatband.  This may be apocryphal, however.

Bicarbonate of cola

I always kind of wondered why some sodas had noticeable amounts of sodium listed on their nutrition information labels.  After all, they're not especially salty.  But Coca-cola has 45 mg of sodium per can.  Canada Dry Ginger Ale has about 55 mg, and Sprite has 65 mg.

It turns out that it has to do with the industrial carbonation process.  In natural carbonation (such as found in expensive fizzy alcoholic drinks), yeast will consume sugar and produce carbon dioxide, which slowly saturates the liquid, forming a soft, gentle bubble.  This process has some downsides for mass production, however-- it's slow, slightly imprecise, and tends to leave dead yeast at the bottom of the container.  It also doesn't work on drinks with sugar substitutes.

So instead, they simply take big vats of water and quickly force carbon dioxide into it under extreme pressure.  This creates a "sharper," "harsher" bubble, and has the benefits of consistency and speed.  However, it also produces a certain amount of carbonic acid, which, in sufficient quantities, can add a sour taste to the carbonated water.  So, to counteract this, many companies add a basic substance, to wit: baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate.  This naturally ups the sodium content in the soda, but that's not a big concern to the soda companies.  Or to most of the consumers, frankly-- it's not really a huge amount, just a couple percent of the US RDA per can.  But I did always wonder.

Al(OH)3

Alumina trihydrate (or ATH) is one of the most common commercial flame-retardant compounds on the market.  When heated to about 350 degrees F, Al(OH)₃ decomposes into Al₂OH₃·3H₂O, absorbing a lot of heat energy and releasing water vapor.  Both of these processes naturally tend to slow the generation and spread of flames.

I have to admit, I don't really find this very interesting, but I spent 2-3 hours today wrestling with the distinctions between alumina trihydrate, aluminum hydrate, and aluminum hydroxide (all of which are basically different names for the same thing in different contexts), and by the time I was done I had definitely learned something.

Country Internet Codes

Ok, .ch is NOT China, it is Switzerland.  I'm not sure why, there's doesn't seem to be a .sw in use, but the IANA database doesn't seem to come with explanations.

(EDIT: Thanks to eBryan, I now know that CH stands for "Confoederatio Helvetica" (Swiss Confederation), the name of the alliance of cantons formed in 1291 in opposition to Hapsburg rule.  That actually makes a lot more sense-- thanks, eBryan.)

China is actually .cn, which looks like it should be Canada, but Canada is .ca.  Which should be easy to remember, except for all of the other freaking countries that start with C-A-.

There's also .cat, which is apparently "Reserved for the Catalan linguistic and cultural community."  That's kind of cool, although I don't have any idea how much use it actually gets.  And there doesn't appear to be a domain reserved for the Basque, which seems kind of unfair.  There is one for Gibraltar (.gi), which I don't think I even knew was a territory (Spain keeps trying to claim their land, but it technically belongs to the UK).  And of course, there's always .இலங்கை, reserved for Sri Lanka (they have .lk too).  I don't even know what script that is.  Tamil?  Maybe?

Bifur, Bombur, and Herschel

Following on the heels of yesterday's post, it seems that J.R.R. Tolkien drew some of his inspiration for the Dwarves of Middle Earth from a rather unlikely place-- the Jews.

The Dwarves, especially in The Hobbit, are depicted as having been scattered from their homeland, much as the Jews were.  The more martial aspects of their culture stem from Old Testament depictions of the fighting Israelites, and their skill with metallurgy comes both from the traditional Norse image of a dwarf and from a Medieval stereotype of Jews as "makers of beautiful and well-crafted things."  There are even supposedly parallels between Tolkien's descriptions of Dwarf music and that of medieval Jewry.

I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of this.

The source of this information, according to Wikipedia, is The History of the Hobbit, John Rateliff, Harper Collins, 2011; a combination of Tolkein's notes and drafts and Rateliff's commentary.  Google Books doesn't have the complete text, so I can't verify it, although everyone participating on the Wikipedia discussion page seems to accept it as truth.

To Live in Middle Earth

I discovered today that there's a subdivision in Middle Of Nowhere, PA (Tamiment, Lehman Township, PA) whose street names are pulled almost entirely from the Hobbit.  Hmm, there's a lovely house for sale on Oakenshield, too, about half way between Withywindle Way and Elrond Drive...

Chris Barrie

It turns out that Amazon Instant Video has basically all of Red Dwarf, including seasons and specials that I didn't even know existed.  So I've been happily devouring it all over again, and I noticed something that I was unaware of the first time around, when it came out in the late 1980s.

At the time, it was very clear that the audience was intended to identify with the character of Dave Lister, the "sole surviving human being," and the other characters were just foils for him to react to.  And that was fine.  I sympathized right along with the slacker slob, and hated his dead holographic bunk mate Arnold "Smeg-head" Rimmer (played by Chris Barrie), just as I was supposed to.  And now, from my changed perspective, that's still true, although it's clearer that the character of Lister is occasionally even more of a rat bastard than Rimmer, if perhaps not quite so superficially dislikable.

However-- I also can't help noting, on a more meta level, that Chris Barrie was/is a vastly superior actor.  For example, in several episodes, for a variety of reasons, Barrie was called upon to imitate or in some way play one of the other characters (mind swapping, memory alteration, damage to his holographic circuits, etc.).  And it was frequently brilliant.  He captured their physical mannerisms, their vocal inflections, often uncannily.  And in the episode where Rimmer and Lister swapped bodies, this was made rather starkly evident-- Craig Charles, the actor who played Lister, was just basically himself with Barrie's voice overdubbed, but Barrie really became Lister, in a manner becoming an actor on a (frankly) much better show.  Honestly, Red Dwarf is fun, but wow, was it also bad.

So here's to you, Chris Barrie, the unsung hero (at least as of season 4, I've still got a ways to go) of Red Dwarf.  He's done other things, including some supporting roles in big-ticket movies, and one long run as the star of a show I've never heard of (probably because it was only on BBC) called The Brittas Empire.

Amp!

Tried a can of Amp energy drink (it was on sale).

It tasted rather like Mountain Dew mixed with cough medicine.  I can't vouch for any energizing benefits, since I only managed a few sips before giving the whole thing up as a bad job.  Maybe the other flavors are better, but the basic can is pretty awful.

A quick Thanksgiving post

Turkeys, when you buy them in the store, tend to be about 5 months old and 15 to 20 pounds.  This will feed a family of 6 or so, depending on how much you like leftovers.  It is not, however, the natural adult age and weight of a turkey.

If you continue to feed and care for a bred turkey, it will continue to put on weight and size.  And if you keep going, a turkey will live for about 10 years, and eventually top 80 pounds-- the largest tom on record, according to the Guinness Book of Irrelevant World Records, was auctioned off for charity in 1989 at 86 pounds.  Actually, double-checking the link, I can't find anything about it on Guinness's actual website, but their interface is a little dubious, so it may be buried in there somewhere.

Strut Your Stuff

A friend mentioned the other day that her boyfriend's car was suffering from a broken strut (and another on the way out), and I said, "Oh, no, that's awful.  That's a pretty major repair."  And it is-- I mean, I've heard the Car Talk guys mention it in hushed tones a few times.  But then I thought (to myself, so I wouldn't look like a moron), well, I know that a strut is a structural component. It's a support, right?  It resists stress of some sort.  That's what a strut in general is, anyway.  But what exactly is an automotive strut?

To the Internet!  FOR JUSTICE!  Ahem.

One of the most common automotive struts is the MacPherson strut, which really does sound like a dance move of some sort, but oh well.  The MacPherson strut is indeed a supporting structure, but more specifically it's part of the suspension, to wit: those elements of the car that keep it more or less level as it bounces in and out of the inevitable potholes.  I don't want to even think about what the neighborhood around the office is going to look like at the end of the winter, especially since the recent storm probably bankrupted the city.  But I digress.  Again.

The Wikipedia article suffers from a lot of technical language, and seems to be written so that only people who already know the material can follow the text, but I'll try to give some of the high points.

The "main" part of the strut is attached to the center of the wheel and extends upward into a spring, which is connected in turn to the main body of the automobile.  It looks a little bit like the shocks on a mountain bike, for  fairly obvious reasons.  This element evens out the vertical motion of the wheel, making the ride smoother.  But that's only the vertical.  So the strut also has two horizontal components that link the wheel to the steering mechanism and provide additional stability.  This design offers a combination of ease of manufacture and low cost, at the expense of some ride quality and sophistication.

All of which means that my friend's boyfriend's car is probably wallowing around like a whale with a prosthetic leg.

Bugle Call

Bugles (the crispy corn snack of yesteryear) are fried in coconut oil, instead of the more common corn oil (as found in the more ubiquitous Fritos Brand The Original Corn Chip(TM).

No wonder they're so freakin delicious.  Mmm, Bugles.

OTOH, I've never actually seen "Sweet and Salty Bugles Chocolate Peanut Butter (patent pending)" in the stores.  They kind of frighten me.

How today helped me understand religion

[Warning-- after reading through this, I felt the tone came out a little weird.  Just to be clear, this was not meant to be entirely serious.  Take with salt.]

As a science-y person, I look at my watch, and I see that it is mid-afternoon.  By the strict rules of logic, I can infer that time has passed since I arrived at work this morning.  This is evidence.  This is data.  I have to give it credence.  And yet, if I consult my own anecdotal memories and experiences of the day, I am at a loss.  I mean, I remember eating lunch.  And I think I answered some e-mails.  And I finished up that one batch I was working on most of yesterday.  But that couldn't have taken that long, surely?  Not 5 or 6 hours?

This discrepancy between what the evidence tells me and what my conscious awareness tells me to be true can be awfully disturbing, and it's tempting to chuck the data and go with my gut.  I've been trained to understand that human awareness is flaky and imprecise, where logic is not, and so I can make the deliberate effort to ignore what I deep down know is true (that nothing's happened since I got to work and therefore it must somehow still be 10 AM) in favor of what must be true in light of the evidence (Hey, look at the clock.  Almost the weekend already.).

But on the other hand, I can absolutely understand the natural tendency to place the evidence of your personal experience first.  The clocks must be wrong.  Or I fell asleep over my morning cocoa and I'm dreaming.  Maybe I'm still in bed and I haven't even gotten to work yet!  But according to the inexorable ticking of science, I've done just about as much work as I'm going to do this week, and soon it will be time to rest.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying it can be all too easy sometimes to go with what feels right instead of what can be proven. 

I am a proud card-carrying member of an evidence-based reality. But today, I gained a little insight into why some people belong to religions.  Some things science tells us are difficult to accept, because they don't seem to make sense.  But some of the things that are easy to accept don't always fare so well under scrutiny.

Penguins

Apparently, handling penguins (the flightless waterfowl, specifically the Adélie penguin (Pygoscelis adeliae), not the caffeinated peppermints) can give you salmonella.

So go wash those penguin-y hands!

NB: do you have any idea how hard it is to spell caffeine without having any first?  Sigh.

Kindle

A quick one today. If your Kindle device is displaying the incorrect time (if you've been travelling, for example), and you wish to correct it, you simply ("simply." Hah.) have to restart the device while connected to the proprietary Whispernet wireless service. This will pull the correct time from their server, or possibly the cell towers-- it's a little unclear, like everything else connected with Whispernet.

Computery stuff

Today at work, I learned that if you want to run a SNOBOL program in a DOS shell on a Windows 7 machine, you can't just preface your command with "snobol;" instead, you have to provide it with the whole path, to wit: C:\SNOBOL\snobol.exe etc etc.

Yes, I realize that nobody actually cares, but I spent the better part of an hour wrestling with this stupid issue, and by Deity I learned this.

Proton Pump Inhibitors

One of the most widely sold (according to Wikipedia) medications in the world is the proton pump inhibitor, commonly sold under trade names such as Prilosec or Prevacid.  Its basic effect is to reduce the amount of acid produced by the stomach, to alleviate chronic heartburn caused by stress, diet, or in my case, random unexplained Act of Deity.  Seriously, my doc couldn't figure it out at all.

Anyway, that's what it does, but how does it work?  What is a proton pump, and why should it be inhibited?

Proton pumps are not exactly mechanical pumps, the way your heart is a mechanical (although also biological) pump.  Instead, they are a specific class of proteins found in cell membranes that move protons chemically from one side of the membrane to the other.  Since protons carry a positive electric charge, this creates an electric potential that typically can be used as a reservoir of energy-- sort of like a biochemical capacitor.  This stored energy can be used by the body's cells for a variety of functions.

When you take a PPI, it specifically targets a class of cells in your gastric system, the ones responsible for producing gastric acid.  In this particular case, the protons moved by the pumps are not being used to store energy-- instead, they are being used to provide the extra H⁺ ions that are used to create acids (those of you with some high-school physics no doubt already realize that an H⁺ ion is in fact just a proton, and those of you with freshman chemistry may recall that acids are sometimes defined as proton donors, i.e. substances with extra protons).  So with these proton pumps "inhibited," not nearly as much acid is formed, taking production back down to more or less normal levels (since heartburn is typically caused by overproduction in the first place).

And voila!  Life goes back to more or less normal.  Side effects are pretty minimal (occasional headache or fatigue are common), although there are some minor risks with long-term use-- hypomagnesemia (an easily treatable deficiency of magnesium), or minor risk of vitamin B₁₂ deficiency (not really an issue for anyone on a typical American diet).

Good Vibrations

That iconic wail in the background of the Beach Boys's's's seminal hit, Good Vibrations, is NOT a theremin.
I just always assumed it was-- I mean, what else could it have been?

It turns out it was a similar instrument, called the Tannerin.  Created by trombonist Paul Tanner to mimic the theremin but give greater ease of control to the player, it consists of a sine wave generator in a box with a slider to adjust frequency (clearly inspired by the trombone's slide) and a volume knob.  No dramatic waving of arms for this one.

Even more interestingly, this instrument was a complete one-off.  Only the prototype was ever made, and while it was used for several well-known songs, Tanner scrapped the idea and sold the prototype a few years later, deciding that new developments in synthesizer technology was making it obsolete (the Moog hadn't quite arrived yet, but the musical writing was clearly on the wall).

Oh, and the theme from the Original Star Trek also didn't use a theremin, even though it should have-- it was mostly heavily re-mixed vocals.

We're going to need guns.

Lots of them.  Which means, at least statistically speaking, that some of them will be AK-47s.

The AK-47 was developed by Mikhail Kalashnikov (and his team) in the USSR in the mid-40s, as WWII was winding down.  The final version wasn't quite finished in time for the fighting, and it first saw service in 1949, officially adopted at that time by the Soviet Armed forces and many members of the Warsaw Pact.

Its combination of durability and ease of use have made it a perennial favorite, and it has been frequently copied.  So much so, that by some estimates, there have been 100 million AK-47s (including its many variants, copies, or knockoffs) made worldwide, which, again according to some fancy guesswork, means that out of every 10 firearms in the world, at least one is some form of Kalashnikov assault rifle.

Oh, and "AK" stands for the Russian abbreviation for, basically, "Kalashnikov Automatic."  The "47" does not mean that it was the 47th model made, instead it reflects the fact that it was the version developed and submitted to the Soviet Army in 1947 (he had been working on the concept for a few years at that point).

True confessions

In every "reality show" competition-type television program, there will be little interstitial bits where one of the participants will be telling "the camera" something-- going over what they were thinking when something happened, or describing how they feel about the other participants, or whatever.

I've always assumed that they just filmed about 15-20 minutes worth of material and then showed the best 10 seconds worth, but apparently, at least for some of the seedier, more desperate-for-ratings shows, they actually indulge in quite a bit of fakery.  Clips are taken way out of context, or even overdubbed.  Contestants are asked extremely leading questions, or coached, or in some cases outright lied to in order to provoke a particular reaction that fits with the producers' vision of a good dramatic story.

It's not like I didn't take it with a bit of fleur de sel when one Top Cheftestant was snarky about another.  After all, they're isolated, in the heat of a long contest, and of course the producers want to be able to field a cast of heroes and villains for the fans to argue about.  But I have to admit, I was kind of surprised at the lengths some shows will go to.

Zooty zoot-zoot

I thought it was just the name of a song, but no-- there actually were zoot suit riots in LA, back in the summer of 1943.

At the time, deep in the early involvement of the US in World War II, fabric was one of the many things being rationed.  And the zoot suits, with their large lapels, bit tails, and heavily padded shoulders, were seen as a flagrant symbol of rebellion and anti-patriotism.  And, shortly after some Latinos were railroaded during the investigation of a local murder, some Marines in town got hassled by a bunch of Latino teenagers in zoot suits, and...  well, things went south pretty quickly.  The servicemen turned out in force over the next few days, running pretty wild in the Latino section of town, beating up pretty much anyone who got in their way, while police looked the other way.  The Latinos fought back.  Eventually, the Armed forces intervened, confining and relocating the servicemen, while the Latinos were... well, mostly just arrested.  Not pretty, but at least it shut the fighting down.  Subsequently, zoot suits were declared illegal to wear in LA, a law that is apparently still on the books.

Goats

Short one today, slightly linky.

Goats are inveterate climbers.  They're curious, and like to explore, which leads them to try to achieve vantage points.  They like to stand on the highest point, staring out over the goat-y horizon.  Often, this means that you'll find them on top of sheds, or small trees, or various other vaguely startling perches.

Like cows.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/monomomono/489114635/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/monomomono/489085960/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL6B_gKEiOI

Fortunately, they do not use these perches for launching sites, as they do not (as the wise man once said) so much fly, as plummet.

'Quotes'

Traditionally, when one wishes in print to indicate that something is a quote, one will put double quote marks around it, "like so."  If there is a quote within the quote, it will be indicated by single quotes, 'thusly.'  At least if you are an American.  If you are British, the tradition is reversed: to wit, the single quotes go on the outside, and the double quotes on the inside-- 'I asked her what she wanted for breakfast,' I said, 'and she replied, "Why, smoked kippers, of course!" '  This is not a complete hard and fast rule these days-- the double quote is gaining international prominence.  But generally, and historically, there is a definite tendency.

I knew this, of course.  I read a lot of fiction by British authors, and much of it is not re-edited for Americanized punctuation.  But there is a logical result that I hadn't expected.  When an American speaker wishes to indicate that he or she is relating a quote, he (or she) will use the ISL sign for bunny ears, or "air quotes."  A British speaker, on the other hand(s), will follow the appropriate tradition, and just use a single finger from each hand to indicate the quote marks.

It makes perfect sense, but I completely failed to predict it in any way, shape, or form.  I saw some old British guy do it on a TV show, and thought to myself (in British), 'Hah!  Of course!'

Glowy Jello

Slightly too late for Halloween, but something to maybe keep in mind for next year's party--

Quinine, the active ingredient in tonic water (as in gin and; the stuff that wards off malaria), fluoresces under ultraviolet light.  That means that if you use tonic water instead of regular water to make Jello, the result will glow under a black light source.  Spoooky.

Extra science-y note-- apparently the level of fluorescence may change according to the pH level of the final solution, so if you try this you may wish to experiment with different additives and flavorings to find the glowiest results.  Relatively neutral balance appears to be ideal.

Hi-Yo Black Beauty, Away!

The Lone Ranger is (canonically!) the grand-uncle of the Green Hornet.  That is to say, John (or possibly Dan; the Lone Ranger's first name was not well specified in the original materials) Reid's nephew's son was Britt Reid, who fought crime as the anti-hero The Green Hornet, using the resources of the family publishing empire which was built on the proceeds of the family silver mine (the source of the Lone Ranger's silver bullets).

It's just a jump to the left

Today I learned, completely inadvertently, that if you are using Windows 7 and have one of those landscape monitors, pressing the Windows button and an arrow key together will narrow the active window and make it line up against the indicated side of the screen.

This is not the most earthshakingly important thing in the world, but there are actually circumstances at work for me where this would be a useful shortcut.  So I'm... well, "excited" would be rather an overstatement, but I am at least moderately pleased.

I Dream of Cheesy

The Cheese Dream is an old fashioned dish.  Not something you'll see on a restaurant menu most of the time.  But then, it's not a terribly haute cuisine sort of thing, either.

Basically, it's a grilled cheese sandwich, sometimes (although not always) done open face.  It sits comfortably halfway between the grilled cheese sandwich and Welsh Rarebit.  According to an article In the San Jose News, "Make sandwiches of buttered bread and a spread cheese, sprinkling the cheese very sparingly with a bit of mustard, cayenne and a little minced sweet red pepper.  Brown the sandwiches on both sides in butter in a frying pan or chafing dish, and, just before serving, surround each one with two or three spoonfuls of very hot, rich, tomato sauce."

Man, blogging is making me hungry.

National Guard-- or is it?

Actually, it sort of isn't.

Disclaimer up front-- I've never served in any sort of armed forces, and I only know a few people who have, so I may get something wrong in here.  If so, it's entirely my fault.

But, as I understand it, after perusing several Wikipedia articles and the official National Guard website, the Guard serves two purposes-- firstly, and most simply, they act as a reserve force for the US Armed Forces, and can be called upon by the federal government to serve in a variety of ways on behalf of the U.S.

Secondly, and (to me at least more confusingly), they are based on state militias.  You don't enroll in the National Guard of the United States-- you enroll in the (for example) Massachusetts National Guard.  Which is what confuses me most, I guess-- it's the state National guard.  Oxymoronically named government agencies always leave me scratching my head.  So you serve the state, providing a variety of security functions at the state level-- again for example, the Massachusetts National Guard provided security for the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004.  You help out in emergencies at the behest of (I believe) the Governor.  But you are always also available should the President need a hand (for a war, or national emergency, or whatever).

For a country that historically (and still sporadically) struggles with state rights issues, that must occasionally put a soldier in a hell of an awkward position.  I seem to recall hearing something at one point where a state law conflicted with a federal law, and the US Marshals and the National Guard were actually sort of working against each other.  Something civil rights related?  I forget.  If you know, please chime in.

Geological classification

History, at least from a geological standpoint, is very heavily categorized and classified.

At the top level (more or less-- right from the get-go it's a little confused), you have the eon.  There are four of them, going back essentially to the beginning of the Earth.  The first three are also grouped into one supereon (see, I told you it's confused) called the Precambrian, which isn't very interesting to most people since it covers the really early years when there wasn't much life on Earth and only three television channels.

The eons are divided in turn into eras, of which there are twelve in total. Or fourteen, depending on who you ask.  Some of the earliest ones were apparently borrowed from the moon, as if it had any to spare, since there isn't much evidence left around on the much more geologically active Earth.

The eras are divided into periods.  There are at least twenty of these-- much longer than a typical hockey game, although not nearly as long as a baseball game.  Those things go on forever.  You may have heard of the Jurassic Period, for example, notable for its remarkable fossilized animatronics.

The periods are divided into epochs, the epochs into ages, and then the ages (unofficially) into chrons.  After that point, I get the impression that geologists just give up and start cataloging events as happening "that Thursday, you know, after the thing, when all that stuff happened."

It's worth noting that all of these terms are used to refer to time periods in geology.  If you want to talk about the actual rocks, each one has an equivalent-- to wit, (super)eonothem, erathem, system, series, stage, and chronozone.

The Love Song of the Cuddly Koala

...sounds remarkably like a hippo with hiccups.  A hicco, if you will (but only if you will-- I'm not pushy).

I have to admit, I've never met a koala in real life, and if I had ever thought about how they sounded, which I didn't, I would have assumed that they made some sort of typical medium sized fuzzy animal sound.  Like a growl, or a slightly deeper raccoon-like chitter.

But no.  Their mating call, at least, is a surprisingly deep raspy staccato sort of bellow.  Here's a short video clip.

I tell you, if I heard that coming from the trees, "koala" would not be my first thought.

Puts The Hobbit in a new light, really

I promise these won't all be about words-- that's just what I ended up with a couple of days in a row.  Blame the job.  Anyway.

It turns out that "Bilbo" acutally has a meaning, to wit:

: a long bar of iron with sliding shackles and a lock at the end that is used to confine the feet of prisoners especially on shipboard

To be completely fair, that's not the only meaning-- it's also used to refer to "a finely tempered sword."  It is odd however to think of poor old Bilbo Baggins placed in irons in the hold of a ship after a poorly thought-out mutiny attempt.  Both senses of "Bilbo" trace their etymology ultimately from Bilbao, Spain, historically an important source of iron ore and ironworks in Europe.

Pilcrow

"Pilcrow" is the official name for what I've always just knows as a paragraph mark; that symbol that you find in proofreading and occasionally in some of the more pretentious magazines to indicate that a block of text ought to be broken up into paragraphs.  It looks like this: ¶.  Originally, it was written as a capital "C" with a slash, an abbreviated form of the Latin word for "chapter" (according to Wikipedia).  The single (and double) slash often indicated an instruction from a primary scribe (editor) to a later stage in manuscript production, so a C with two slashes would mean, as it does now, "insert a new paragraph here."  You can still see traces of that in the current mark.  This symbol is also sometimes called a "paraph."  According to Wikipedia, it is also sometimes called an "alinea" or "blind P," although even the OED doesn't seem to register those names, so I'm somewhat dubious.

The pilcrow is not to be confused with the pillcrow, a modern mythological bird that flies in your bathroom window at night and steals your medication, which is why you always seem to be short a couple of pills.

Welcome!

Thank you, and welcome to my new blog.  Today I am a fountain pen.

Anyway.  A couple of years ago, I started a blog over on LiveJournal under the pseudonym Sidebernie (it's still there if you want to check it out).  It wasn't terribly original in concept-- basically, it was just a journal that I was sharing with everyone else.  There was one overarching theme-- that I would try to learn something new every day, and post about it, with explanations, citations, and diagrams if needed.  I tried to keep it to actual things, not just "here's a neat cat pic or tech post I saw."  The sort of thing you always wondered about, but never bothered to look up?  I looked it up, and posted about it.  That's why I know what hamstone is, and how to tell which quail laid a particular egg, and why you should be very careful making friends with a platypus.

But Livejournal was bought by the Russians, and the culture changed, and I became tired of the ads and the DDOS attacks by hackers who were Absolutely Not The Russian Government(TM).  So I stopped posting for a while.

And now I'm starting it up again, with a new name, and a new location.  The content will be mostly the same, though.  Sorry.