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.