Barbie(tm)

For all of the flack that Mattel gets from the progressives and feminists, much of it admittedly well deserved, it's interesting to remember that when Barbie was first introduced, it was created and designed by women (primarily Ruth Handler, wife of one of the Mattel founders), and was one of a very few dolls on the market with an adult body-- in other words, that did not automatically cast the doll's owner in the role of a mother.  It was intended to be a doll that a girl could imagine herself as, that opened up a great deal of opportunity for unchecked imagination.  It's just too bad they've had so much trouble keeping the momentum of those initial ideas of empowerment.

Word for the Day-- God's Penny

According to the Big Book, God's Penny is ": a penny or small sum paid as earnest money esp. on concluding a purchase or hiring a servant."  It's like saying, "I promise I'll pay you, but in the meantime here's a little something from God to tide you over."

On the one hand, it's kind of nice, since you're getting a little extra.  On the other, the more I think about it the odder it gets.  "Hey, God, what, you can't spare more than a penny?"  Or alternatively, "Um, why does God need a starship servant?"  Also, "You're paying on behalf of God?  Shouldn't that be the Pope's job or something?"  Seriously, the more I think about it the stranger it seems.

Hmm.  A little more research shows that it's not actually supposed to be money from God, but rather money given in the sight of God-- sort of equivalent to "As God is my witness, I will pay you the agreed upon money."  Which is still odd, but I guess not quite as odd.  Because you're still suggesting that the money has some sort of significance to God, which, what?  I mean, that works if you still worship Mammon or something, but the Judeo-Christian God is sort of supposed to be beyond all that.

Mm.  Black's Law Dictionary (or at least what appears to be a poorly edited OCR scan of it) suggests that the small sum was customarily then given to charity or as alms.  Which does more or less finally make sense of the name, actually.  I'm actually sort of disappointed.  This was much more fun when it didn't make any sense at all.  Alas.

What is bubblegum flavor?

Everyone knows what bubblegum tastes like.  Or at least a lot of people.  Ok, a lot of Americans.  Anyway, we've all* tasted the ice cream, or the cotton candy, or chewed the gum itself.  But what, exactly, is it?

Turns out, nobody really seems to know.  All right, that's not quite true.  I mean, the people at Hubba Bubba presumably know, right?  And Wrigley.  And a bunch of others.  But each of these has their own proprietary combination of flavorings, and no one's talking.  It's a little bit like the formula for Coke-- we can make a few guesses as to some of the obvious components, but the exact proportions and some of the minor additives we can only guess at.

So here's what we do know.  Ethyl methylphenylglycidate is one of the flavors.  That's a common artificial "strawberry" flavoring.  It does not appear to be in actual strawberries, but it is fruity and berry-y and the government has classified it as Generally Regarded As Safe.

Another compound is isoamyl acetate, also known as isopentyl acetate.  This is another common flavoring, generally used as an artificial banana flavoring, although it reportedly also tastes a bit like pear.  It's dead simple and cheap to make-- I'm pretty sure it's the stuff we cooked up in high school in AP Chemistry.  Unlike the strawberry flavoring, it is an actual component of real bananas, although in the actual fruit it's only one part of a much larger collection of naturally occurring chemicals.

There are some other likely components-- most versions probably contain vanilla (or more likely vanillin), as well as methyl salicylate (wintergreen-ish), and of course some sort of sweetener (sugar, HFCS, stevia, whatever).  But the exact formulas remain a mystery.

*as previously disclaimed

Late att night

We (my significant wife and I) have just discovered that AT&T cellular does a thing of which we were previously unaware.  That's a little redundant, isn't it.  Oh, well, never mind.  Moving on.

You see, late at night, a little after midnight, AT&T will access your phone and download a summary of your phone's data activity.  I had vaguely assumed that they kept a running total, but no, apparently the phone itself keeps the record, and then AT&T just grabs it in one go at a time when most phones are not in use.

Unfortunately, if you've accidentally left a few applications open for a long time, and also coincidentally forgotten to turn on WiFi, this download can end up quite substantial.  Of the, "Hey, where'd all my data go and why am I getting overage charges" variety of substantial.

So let this be a warning-- close out your apps every once in a while.  And don't turn off WiFi and then forget to turn it back on.

Papal update

Yesterday, whilst discussing the length of the papal reigns, it occurred to me to wonder if Benedict XVI would keep the name after he retired or not.

It turns out that there may actually be some official uncertainty about that very subject.  According to the Daily Mail (not always the most reliable source, but there you go):

"The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales said firmly on Monday that the Papal name of Benedict will be dropped and the Pope will resume his old name of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.  However, yesterday a Vatican spokesman said that he would actually keep the name Benedict and added that his title might be ‘Emeritus Bishop of Rome’ – in other words, a second Pope.  Padre Federico Lombardi [Vatican spokesman] said of Benedict’s new title: ‘His name will remain Benedict XVI. This remains for life, until he dies. It will be interesting to see how we address him, how he will be called.’"

There is precedent-- the last Pope to resign was Gregory XII, and he apparently kept the name Gregory until his death.  So if Ratzinger decides to stay Benedict, there will be some justification.

Meanwhile, he'll be living in an apartment block/monastery inside the Vatican grounds (as soon as it's finished being renovated).  Hopefully, he'll keep the partying to a minimum.

And that is a pope fact

It's been a week now, so I assume that everyone knows that the Pope is stepping down.  He is, in the words of the wise old Facebook icon, an ex-Benedict.  Actually, that's an interesting question-- will he keep the Pope name or does he have to go back to being Ol' Joey Ratzinger?  I don't know the answer to that one-- yet.

Anyway, all issues of religion and etc aside, my first reaction (and presumably a lot of other people's as well) was, "So soon?  He's only been in office, what?  A few years?"  And then I looked it up and found out that it was/will be a bit shy of eight.  But that still doesn't seem like very long.

So-- to the researchmobile!  Atomic Googles to power... Factoids to speed!

As it happens, our perceptions of the length of papal occupancy have been somewhat colored by Benny's predecessor, Pope John Paul George Ringo, who was in office for about 27 years; the second longest reign in recorded history (which doesn't count Peter, the First Pope).  According to a lovely pair of charts at the Popes and Papacy blog, we can see that the average (mean) length of a papal reign is just over 7 years, making Benedict's reign actually slightly longer than average.  However, this is an excellent case study in why averages can be tricky-- after all, there were nine Popes who lasted less than a month!  This can skew results.  So let's forgo the mean and look instead at the mode, more or less.  This technically would be the length of office that corresponds to the most Popes.  However, since very few popes had exactly the same terms, the "true" mode would be something like 33 days (Popes Benedict V and John Paul I).  So we'll break up the range into sections, which can be misleading depending on how the groups are created, but can still be interesting.  According to the Popes and Papacy blog referenced above, we can see that out of the 260ish Popes (depending on how you count), the largest grouping held office for between 1 and 5 years--again letting Pope Benedict XVI beat the average.  So this idea that he wasn't Pope for very long is actually almost entirely a misperception.

[Edited because I screwed up the terminology-- see the comments]

Stoker

Bram Stoker (famous author of the famous book Dracula)'s first name is a shortened version of "Abraham", which is a piece of knowledge with very little value except for the fact that it's a good way to remember that it rhymes with graham, not with Brahms.

On the other hand, I would totally eat Brahms Crackers.  I imagine that they'd be like animal crackers, only you'd be biting the heads off of little composers instead of little animals.

Lombard Effect

When we're in a noisy environment, and we're trying to communicate, it's only natural that we raise our voices.  However, this is apparently not just a voluntary thing-- there's also an involuntary reflex, called the Lombard Effect (or Lombard Reflex), named after Dr. Étienne Lombard, where your voice will automatically rise in volume even without a conscious decision.

This effect is not restricted to humans.  It has also been observed in birds, cats, and monkeys, just to name a few.  For example, see http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-9568.2006.04835.x/abstract;jsessionid=2C1EDED208F8B221BC66EEEFD8F6CBFB.d02t04-- if you dare.

Negative Temperature

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this one.  You see, in a recent issue of Science magazine, a group of physicists have claimed to have achieved negative temperatures.  That is to say, a temperature of below absolute zero.

I'll back up a step and review, so you can understand why I can't help but approach this idea with some trepidation.  You see, temperature is basically a measurement of the amount of energy in a system.  At the level of particles, that basically translates to movement-- both positional and vibrational.  The lower the temperature, the less energy in the system, and the less movement.  At absolute zero-- about 273 degrees below zero centigrade-- there is no more movement.  That's why it's absolute-- you can't have less than no movement.  So how could these scientists have achieved such a feat?

As far as I can tell, by redefining "temperature."  Although what I gave is the simple, basic definition of temperature, at some point physicists decided that it would be more useful to refine this definition in a variety of ways.  In particular, in terms of the average energy of the system rather than the specific energy at any given instance.  For the most part, this doesn't make any difference-- the average energy still can't go below zero.

However, with enough control over the particles, you can create a situation where instead of having a normal distribution of particles (that is, a bunch of particles moving at close to the average and a few zipping around as outliers), you can flip that, creating a situation where almost all of the particles become "outliers", being held artificially in extreme states.  This allows you to create a pattern of behavior for the particles that is opposite to how they behave at "positive" temperature.  And if it's opposite to the positive temperature, why, then it must be negative temperature, right?  Right?

I'm not denying that it's an impressive achievement, but I really feel like there's an aspect of... semantics?  Philosophy, perhaps?  Lurking in the shadows.  On the one hand, if you can look at a system and say, "Potassium atoms in a particular arrangement at positive temperature behave in a certain way.  At zero temperature, they have these other characteristics.  In this new third situation, they have a set of characteristics that are not described by either previous category, and that in fact look completely backwards from the atoms at positive temperature, so it makes sense to call it negative temperature."  Classic "If it looks like a duck" territory.  On the other hand, the fact that your highly technical definition makes it possible to achieve a situation that was previously considered a theoretical impossibility makes me wonder if, just perhaps... you need to rethink your definition instead.

Southern Death Cult

Long, long ago (about 8 years) in a cave system far, far away (unless you live near Clarksville, Tennessee), some interesting petroglyphs were discovered.  These cave markings, drawings, and etchings depict (among other things) a mystical warrior in the Mississippian tradition, helping to identify these markings as belonging to a culture that flourished roughly a thousand years ago, stretching along the Mississippi Valley (and possibly the Tennessee River Valley, which Clarksville* is somewhat adjacent to).  This aspect of the Mississippian culture was sometimes called the Southern Death Cult, although that was probably misleading-- the Cult, now mostly referred to as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex, was built around martial and cosmological symbology, and when you get war and gods together, you tend to end up with a certain amount of death.  But it wasn't really a "death cult" per se-- they didn't worship death itself or anything.

*Supposedly, the Last Train to Clarksville wasn't specifically headed to Clarksville, TN; it was just a random name that Bobby Hart thought sounded good.

Very special effects

Industrial Light and Magic has always been associated in my mind with Lucasfilm projects, for obvious reasons-- it was founded in the 70's by Lucas himself, after all.

But in addition to the obvious Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, IL&M has also done work on other Spielberg productions such as E.T., Henson productions (Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal), competing sci-fi franchises (most of the Star Treks), the Back to the Future trilogy, and frankly almost every other major effects film up through the Hunger Games and the Avengers.  I knew they were a major player, but that's just ridiculous.

In other news, this is my 200th post since the move to Blogger.

Yay.

Sweet Dreams are actually made of this instead

In the early 20th century, one Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, a Swiss musician, decided that the available schools of musical instruction were insufficient.  Students, no matter how young they started, were still focused only on the act of generating music-- moving their fingers, blowing into a horn of some sort, or whatever.  There was a huge percentage of the human body that was just being completely ignored!

So in Dalcroze's school, young children were exposed to music at an extremely young age (three or four years old), but were not specifically taught how to make music.  Instead, they were encouraged to move around, to first physically internalize the rhythms and patterns.  Only later were they taught the actual music-making process.  The results are hard to quantify, and there haven't been a lot of really rigorous studies done, but there are certainly indications that it helped the children's sense of rhythm if nothing else.

And now to bring this post back around to the title-- Dalcroze was inspired by eurhythmy, a sort of dance-like performance art (Wikipedia calls it an "expressive movement art") that had been developed a few years earlier in Europe.  Dalcroze called his new school Eurhythmics.  One of his most famous students was Annie Lennox, who would go on to form the band Eurythmics (dropping the h) in homage to her teacher.