# Trivia & Miscellaneous



## Daniel

Cereal trivia from Wikipedia:

"Wheaties was created in 1922, as a result of an accidental spill of a wheat bran mixture onto a hot stove by a Minnesota clinician working for the Washburn Crosby Company (later General Mills)."

"Sales of Wheaties in the US has declined significantly. From 2005 to 2014 sales of Wheaties declined 78%."


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## Daniel

Seattle home prices third most expensive in nation | king5.com

In 2018, the average cost to buy a home in Seattle has risen to $753,600, beating out cities such as Honolulu, Los Angeles, New York, Boston and San Diego.  

San Francisco, which remains the most expensive city to own a home, had an average home price of $1,366,000.


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## Daniel

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evil-deeds/201211/why-we-love-music-and-freud-despised-it

Fascinatingly, Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in general, disliked most music with a passion. With the exception of certain bland operas, he had practically no appreciation of music as an art form. Indeed, he avoided almost all music like the plague. One might even speculate that Freud suffered from a significant fear of music, a "music phobia."


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## David Baxter PhD

Sigmund Freud was a fascinating but in many ways strange dude. The cocaine probably didn't help his neuroses and character flaws either.


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## Daniel

Speaking of strange, I was shocked when I read Schopenhauer's biography many years ago.   I assumed philosophers were mostly passive, nice people.  Not Schopenhauer!  He seemed to never regret pushing his female neighbor down a flight of stairs.



> Wisdom Lovers - Existential Comics
> 
> "[The philosopher] Schopenhauer once pushed a woman down a flight of stairs because she was too noisy. He went to court for this, and as punishment had to pay her for the rest of his life."


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## Daniel

Prehistoric Footprints Discovered By Grand Canyon Hikers | Arizona Science and Innovation Desk

"It looks like a reptile track. Amphibian tracks tend to have short stubby little toes like salamander toes for example or toad toes...These are long skinny toes that look much more reptilian."


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## Daniel

Humans Change the World | The Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Program

About 74,000 years ago:  Near-extinction!   Modern humans almost become extinct; as a result of extreme climate changes, the population may have been reduced to about 10,000 adults of reproductive age.


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## Daniel

Everything You Ever Wondered About Mucus and Phlegm

Mucus is so important that your body makes about a quart of the stuff on a normal day.


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## GaryQ

Daniel said:


> Everything You Ever Wondered About Mucus and Phlegm
> 
> Mucus is so important that your body makes about a quart of the stuff on a normal day.



I wonder what the traffic hour "stopped at the red light" percentage of all that mucus can be visualized on public display in the form of nasal extraction 
AKA: "digging for gold" 

And don't try and tell me any of you have never been seen "digging for a nugget" while driving


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## Daniel

Trends in Agriculture -- North Dakota State University

For much of the world until the mid-1800s, most persons were involved in agriculture.  For example in the United States, 90% of the population were farmers in 1790.  Essentially, people produced the food they consumed...A century later (1890), farmers were 43% of the labor force.  In another century (1990), farmers were 2.6% of the labor force.


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## Daniel

"A twenty-five-year-old is 133 percent more likely to pay an overdraft fee than a sixty-five-year-old, and nearly 11 percent of consumers between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five have more than ten overdrafts per year.  No wonder millennials envision a future without banks."

-- _The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives_  (2017)


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## GaryQ

And they actually think credit cards are real money like if it was part of their available assets :facepalm: But then again that's a fact that is probably as prevalent in all age groups up to and including 55+. I read somewhere that since they started those mortgage credit lines where every 1$ you pay down on your mortgage is added to your credit line accordingly, some people actually owe more on their home than they bought it for 10 and 20 years ago because the credit card debts etc gets added to the mortgage when renewed as property value keeps artificially inflating and so does the residual amount get tacked onto the credit line. Long gone are the days when a home was paid off in 20-25 years and was a big part of your retirement egg basket. 

I actually don't feel bad when I read or hear about seniors having a rough time when they hit retirement because they can no longer afford to pay the mortgage. What were they thinking if they still have a mortgage at retirement? Sell the damn 6 bedroom, 4 bathroom house and downsize. 

_"The difference between Genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" ~ (Atrributed to Albert Einstein since about 1994 but a big debate about it being true reigns and definitely not the first documented reference to the correlation between the limits of genius and stupidity)_


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## Daniel

"Orange roughy lives 100 years or more—so the fillet in your freezer might be from a fish older than your grandmother!"

-- Seafood Watch


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## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> "Orange roughy lives 100 years or more—so the fillet in your freezer might be from a fish older than your grandmother!"
> 
> -- Seafood Watch



Or it might be from your grandmother. 

Is “Orange Roughy” a new nickname for Trump the Dump?


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## Daniel

Another fun fact:  Orange roughy belongs to the slimehead family (Trachichthyidae).


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## David Baxter PhD

I think I went to school with a guy named Slimehead... I could be wrong, though... it was a long time ago... in another place far far away...


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## GaryQ

School: we could make a weekend degree:

learn in on one weekend everything you’d actually remember 3 years after if you went to college


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## Daniel

"Under the rule of Aztec emperor Montezuma, the cocoa bean was used as currency."

"The average annual income in 1913 was $800."

"The most misused Social Security number of all time was 078-05-1120. In 1938, as part of a promotion to sell wallets through Woolworth and other department stores, wallet manufacturer E. H. Ferree Company wanted to demonstrate how a Social Security card would fit into its wallets. A sample card was placed inside each wallet and displayed the Social Security number of the company's secretary, Mrs. Hilda Schrader Whitcher. Even though the sample card was half of the size of an actual Social Security card, was written in red, and had Specimen written in bold, many people confusedly used this as their own Social Security number. In 1943, 5,755 people were using Hilda's number."

-- Internal Revenue Service:  Tax Trivia


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## GaryQ

Continuing on the Tax time IRS theme (also applicable to Canada and probably most countries just not the same publication)



> To this day, Publication 17 of the IRS notes that "_ncome from illegal activities," including money received from dealing illegal drugs or bribes, must be included in the declaration of one's income._​_
> _


_

Al Capone is probably the most used reference for evading the law but not the Tax Man!

Liberty Tax Canada had fun on the subject and wrote a hilarious article: "TAX TIPS FOR CRIMINALS"

Here's the lnk
https://www.libertytaxcanada.ca/blog/tax-tips-for-criminals/​_


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## Daniel

Bee Hummingbirds: Interesting Facts about the Smallest Living Birds | Beauty of Birds

The Bee Hummingbird only measures about 2 inches or 5 cm in length and weighs between 0.06 - 0.07 oz (1.8 - 2 g) - which is less than the weight of a Canadian or US penny -- because of this it is often referred to as the "Penny Hummingbird." The Bee Hummingbird is, therefore, the smallest and lightest known living bird in the world.


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## Daniel

History of Firefox - Wikipedia

Mozilla Firefox was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as an experimental branch of the Mozilla browser. Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004, Firefox 1.5 was released on November 29, 2005, and version 2.0 was released on October 24, 2006. Firefox 3.0 was released on June 17, 2008, with Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6 released on June 30, 2009 and January 21, 2010, respectively. Firefox 4 was released on March 22, 2011. Since version 5.0, a rapid release cycle was put into effect, resulting in a new major version release every six weeks on Tuesday.

The latest version, Firefox 66.0, was released on March 19, 2019.


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## David Baxter PhD

Still the best browser, IMO. I don't remember which version was shipping when I first switched to Firefox but it was many years ago.


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## Daniel

Dairy Queen - Wikipedia

Using the 2010 census, the state with the most Dairy Queen Restaurants per person is Minnesota.


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## David Baxter PhD

Dairy Queen. Fan Food not Fast Food. Treats, Eats, Drinks & more

Dairy Queen Locator

There are 13 DQ stores in or near Ottawa. 

There are 18 DQ stores in or near Winnipeg.


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## Daniel

Probably for money laundering from a maple syrup heist.


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## Daniel

Timeline of human evolution - Wikipedia


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## Daniel

On why KFC is more popular/profitable in China than the US: 

How the Chicken Conquered the World -- _Smithsonian Magazine_
June 2012

Increasingly, as foreign observers have noticed, “chicken” to the Chinese, at least those who live in the cities, means what’s served at KFC. Since the first drumstick was dipped into a fryer in Beijing in 1987, the chain has opened more than 3,000 branches around the country, and is now more profitable in China than in the United States. Numerous reasons have been advanced for this success, from the cleanliness of the restrooms to the alleged resemblance of Colonel Sanders to Confucius, but it apparently does not reflect a newfound Chinese appetite for the cuisine of the American mid-South. “You can find bone-in fried chicken there,” notes Mary Shelman, a Kentucky native and the head of the agribusiness program at Harvard Business School. “But it’s always dark meat, which the Chinese prefer, and it’s one menu item out of around 30, and it’s not the most popular.” *The chain has thrived by offering the Chinese customers food they were already familiar with, including (depending on the region) noodles, rice and dumplings, along with chicken wraps, chicken patties and chicken wings, which are so popular, Shelman says, that the company periodically has to deny rumors it has a farm somewhere that raises six-winged chickens.*

KFC in China - Wikipedia

KFC is a fast food restaurant chain that specializes in fried chicken and is China's largest restaurant chain. KFC restaurants in China are owned or franchised by Yum China, a restaurant company that also owns the Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains in China and was spun off from Yum! Brands in 2016.

KFC has 5,919 outlets in China as of 2018.

According to research by Millward Brown, KFC was the most powerful foreign brand in China in 2013...

The chain had an early advantage against its Western fast food rivals, as fried chicken has been a staple Chinese dish since antiquity, whereas hamburgers were foreign and relatively unknown.


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## Daniel

https://dzone.com/articles/got-a-minute-check-out-anzographs-record-shatterin

Imagine how much information is contained in one trillion facts. That's roughly equal to…


6 months worth of all Google searches worldwide

133 facts for each of the 7 billion people on earth

156 facts about each device connected to the internet


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## Daniel

Ontario Town Approves Pilot Program for Paying Property Taxes With Bitcoin


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## Daniel

"Olympus Mons is a very large shield volcano on the planet Mars. The volcano has a height of nearly 22 km as measured by the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter. Olympus Mons is about two and a half times Mount Everest's height above sea level." 

~ Wikipedia

(And, according to NASA, the diameter is about the size of Arizona.)


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## Daniel

Regarding the Greek letter in the browser tab icon for Psychlinks:

Psi (letter)

The letter psi is commonly used in physics to represent wave functions in quantum mechanics, such as in the Schrödinger equation...It is also used to represent the (generalized) *positional states of a qubit in a quantum computer*.

Psi is also used as the symbol for the polygamma function...

The letters Ψ or ψ can also be a symbol for:


*psychology*, psychiatry, and sometimes parapsychology (involving paranormal or relating with the supernatural subjects, especially *research into extrasensory perception*).
In mathematics, the reciprocal Fibonacci constant, the division polynomials, and the *supergolden ratio*
Water potential in movement of water between plant cells.
In biochemistry, it denotes the rare nucleotide Pseudouridine.
Stream function in fluid mechanics defining the curve to which the flow velocity is always tangent.
One of the dihedral angles in the backbones of proteins
*The planet Neptune*
*Indiana University* (as a superimposed I and U)
A sai, the name of which is pronounced the same way.
Pharmacology, general pharmacy
In virology the ψ site is a viral packaging signal.
The J/ψ meson, in particle physics.
In the computability theory...represents the return value...of a program.
In circadian physiology, ψ represents the phase relationship between a zeitgeber and a biological rhythm.
In building, to represent an adjustment to a U-value, accounting for thermal bridge effects.
The ordinal collapsing function and notation developed by Wilfried Buchhol


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## Daniel

BBC - Travel - The English vegetable picked by candlelight



"Yorkshire forced rhubarb is grown by candlelight, which limits photosynthesis and forces the vegetable to use energy stored in its root."

"Forced rhubarb is far sweeter than the normal variety."


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## Daniel

Uber will soon join an ugly but exclusive club: Unprofitable companies worth more than $50 billion
April 27, 2019


CVS, GE and Qualcomm are the only three public U.S. companies worth $50 billion that reported a loss last year.
Uber is about to join that group after the company gave a pricing range suggesting it will be worth up to $83.8 billion when it goes public.
Uber reported a loss from operations in 2018 of $3 billion and only recorded a net income because it sold a business.


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## Daniel

Will Your Job Be Done By A Machine? : Planet Money : NPR

"What job is hardest for a robot to do? Mental health and substance abuse social workers (found under community and social services). This job has a 0.3 percent chance of being automated. That's because it's ranked high in cleverness, negotiation, and helping others."


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## Daniel

Pharmaceutical Pollution Hurts Wild Animals - The Atlantic 

Recent modeling shows that a platypus living in a contaminated stream in Melbourne is already likely to ingest more than half a recommended adult dose of antidepressants every day.


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## Daniel

The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People | Podio


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## Daniel

Roosters Are As Deafening as Jet Engines But Insanely Advanced Ears Protect Their Hearing

The researchers discovered that a rooster’s ear is incredibly technically advanced. When their beaks are fully open, soft tissue moves to cover half their eardrum, while a quarter of the ear canal itself closes off. They also found that the slit which causes their outer ear canal to close doesn’t exist in hens—the hens' ear canals narrows in response to loud sounds like rooster calls, but it doesn't actually close. The roosters don’t deafen all the hens within earshot because the damaging effects diminish significantly with even a few feet of distance, and because birds are capable of regenerating damaged inner ear cells in a way mammals are not.


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## Daniel

A Year-Long U.S. Road Trip for People Who Want 70-Degree Weather Every Day - CityLab


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## Daniel

I Delivered Packages for Amazon and It Was a Nightmare - The Atlantic - Pocket

[Amazon] Flex drivers often fill their cars to the brim before delivering packages.


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## Daniel




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## Daniel

Letter mailed to a town near me in Arizona in 1893 (no address necessary):


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## Daniel

Simpson's paradox:  "a phenomenon in probability and statistics, in which a trend appears in several different groups of data but disappears or reverses when these groups are combined."


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## Daniel

Mother's Day Fast Facts - CNN

"According to the Insure.com 2018 Mother's Day Index, the various tasks moms perform at home would be worth $68,875 (up from $67,619 in 2017) a year in the professional world."


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## Daniel

Secret Cities â€“ an exhibition at the National Building Museum - YouTube


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## Daniel

World population estimates - Wikipedia

Recent estimates of the "total number of people who have ever lived" are in the order of 100 billion.


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## Daniel

A Dopamine Primer

"The human brain has 100 billion neurons. Only 20,000 or so carry dopamine."


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## David Baxter PhD

All of the other neurons
Used to laugh and call them "dope"  rockstar


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## GaryQ

David Baxter said:


> All of the other neurons
> Used to laugh and call them "dope"  rockstar



  :band:


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## Daniel

David Baxter said:


> All of the other neurons
> Used to laugh and call them "dope"



:rofl:

Ironically, the laughing would release more dopamine


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## Daniel

What Children Around the World Eat for Lunch at School


South Korea:


"The system of planning school meals in South Korea is one of the best in the world. The two biggest sections of the tray are usually for soup and rice. Smaller sections are for salads, seafood, veggies, and fruit. Thin children are given fish oil in a measuring spoon. Popular dishes: kimchi, sesame leaves stuffed with rice and covered with honey sauce, pumpkin potato soup, pancakes with green onions, pepper and octopus, and a cucumber and carrot salad."


USA:


"This is how school lunch in Virginia looks. Peaches, corn, chicken, pizza and salad. Dishes are quite different in American schools. Most of the time it’s fast food and convenience food that children really like: nuggets, French fries, burgers. Parents also give children a lunchbox to take to school."


France: 


"This is a lunch served in a school in the west of France. Fish, spinach, potatoes, cheese, and bread. It’s considered to be the main meal of the day. The lunch break is one to two hours long. Students are also allowed to go home for lunch during this break."


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## David Baxter PhD

In Scotland it's "fesh 'n' cheps".


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## Daniel

Speaking of Scotland:

Scotland's National Animal is the Unicorn

"Western civilizations believed in the existence of unicorns for thousands of years—-it was a symbol of purity, innocence, and power in Celtic mythology."


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## Daniel

Countries With The Most Pet Cats Globally - WorldAtlas.com

Japan (7.25 million)

Japanese people have a longstanding and loving relationship with cats. The affection towards cats is so great in the country that Japanese art and literature has scores of examples where the cat is the primary subject. The country even has its own ‘Cat Island’, namely Tashirojima Island in Ishinomaki City, where cats thrive in large numbers, and are often seen welcoming boats to the city's port. This Island also has a cat shrine, the Neko-jinja, where cats are worshiped with the hope that they will bring good luck. Another cat paradise in Japan is the Aoshima Island, in Shikoku, where the cat to human ratio is almost 100:15! These islands also serve as popular tourist spots for cat lovers from around the world. Besides these, many cities and towns of Japan also thrive in terms cat populations, and a large number of Japanese people own cats as pets. Hence, cat salons, cafeterias, and pet food shops are also found in abundance in these cities and towns. The total cat population of Japan is estimated to be around 7.25 million.


A Visit to Aoshima, a Japanese  - The Atlantic


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## Daniel

Aging of Japan - Wikipedia

In the 1980s 60% to 70% of young people in their 20s were in a relationship. In 2017 young people (20s) in a relationship are a minority.

 The average farmer in Japan is 70 years old, and while about a third of construction workers are 55 or older, including many who expect to retire within the next ten years, only one in ten are younger than 30.

Japan's population is aging faster than any other country on the planet.

In contrast to Japan, a more open immigration policy has allowed Australia, Canada, and the United States to grow their workforce despite low fertility rates.


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## Daniel

innatus - Wiktionary

Latin

Perfect active participle of innāscor (“grow; arise, originate in”).

Descendants

    English: innate (borrowed)
    French: inné (borrowed)
    Italian: innato
    Portuguese: inato (borrowed)
    Old French: enné
    Spanish: innato (borrowed)


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## Daniel

Why Cats Love Boxes, According to Science


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## Daniel

Personal finances of professional American athletes - Wikipedia

"There's a far shorter peak earnings period than in any other profession". _Black Enterprise_ reported in 2003 that "the average career span for professional basketball, football, and baseball is a mere 4.5 years, 3.2 years, and under five years, respectively." A 2007 study found that, excluding pitchers, rookie Major League Baseball players' careers last for 5.6 years on average.


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## Daniel

Rubber duck debugging

In software engineering, rubber duck debugging is a method of debugging code. The name is a reference to a story in the book_ The Pragmatic Programmer_ in which a programmer would carry around a rubber duck and debug their code by forcing themselves to explain it, line-by-line, to the duck.


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## GaryQ

Daniel said:


> Personal finances of professional American athletes - Wikipedia
> 
> "There's a far shorter peak earnings period than in any other profession". _Black Enterprise_ reported in 2003 that "the average career span for professional basketball, football, and baseball is a mere 4.5 years, 3.2 years, and under five years, respectively." A 2007 study found that, excluding pitchers, rookie Major League Baseball players' careers last for 5.6 years on average.





> It's pays to be a Major League Baseball player.Salaries range from $550,000 to $35 million for the 850-plus players on opening-day rosters and injured lists, according to USA TODAY Sports' annual MLB salary survey.​



I think NHL minimum wage is over $750K I wouldn't cry to much form the few poor players that have to accept such a measly income to support the 10$ Million plus salaries of a few. 

The majority of half decent players play an average of 10+ years and even little guys make 2 million + in the NHL and the NBA has the highest per game salaries of all professional sports.

Football players get exhorbitant salaries signed but there's a catch they ain't garanteed like NBA NHL and MLB!
NFL They sign you for 4 years at x$ and if you don't play you pretty much get your signing bonus and thats about all.


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## Daniel

Arctic Fox Traveled More Than 2,700 Miles From Norway To Canada : NPR


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## David Baxter PhD

I saw this story on CBC. 

Nature is amazing. What an awesome and strange journey. I wonder what she was looking for. I hope she found it.


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## Daniel

The History of CTRL + ALT + DELETE - Mental Floss

... In the fall of 1981, the IBM PC hit shelves—a homely gray box beneath a monitor that spit out green lines of type. Marketing experts predicted that the company would sell a modest 241,683 units in the first five years; company execs thought that estimate was too optimistic. They were all wrong. IBM PC sales would reach into the millions, with people of all ages using the machines to play games, edit documents, and crunch numbers. Computing would never be the same.

And yet, few of these consumers were aware of Bradley’s shortcut quietly lingering in their machines. It wasn’t until the early 1990s, when Microsoft’s Windows took off, that the shortcut came to prominence. As PCs all over the country crashed and the infamous “blue screen of death” plagued Windows users, a quick fix spread from friend to friend: ctrl+alt+del. Suddenly, Bradley’s little code was a big deal. Journalists hailed “the three-finger salute” as a saving grace for PC owners—a population that kept growing...


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## Daniel

Straight leg raise - Wikipedia

The straight leg raise, also called Lasègue's sign, Lasègue test or Lazarević's sign, is a test done during a physical examination to determine whether a patient with low back pain has an underlying herniated disc, often located at L5 (fifth lumbar spinal nerve).


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## Daniel

"Large parrots and corvids have the same or greater forebrain neuron counts as monkeys with much larger brains." 

Birds have primate-like numbers of neurons in the forebrain


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## Daniel

Noteworthy Women with Hearing Loss

Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts of America, dealt with severe hearing loss throughout her life. At age 29, a grain of rice thrown at her wedding punctured her eardrum and caused her to go deaf in one ear. However, Juliette never let her hearing loss slow her down, and founded the Girl Scouts in 1912.


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## Daniel

Why concert tickets have gotten so expensive


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## Daniel

Béarnaise sauce - Wikipedia

Béarnaise sauce is a sauce made of clarified butter emulsified in egg yolks and white wine vinegar and flavored with herbs. It is considered to be a "child" of the mother Hollandaise sauce, one of the five mother sauces in the French haute cuisine repertoire.


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## Daniel

The Origins of Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve

In the Middle Ages, Emperor Claudius II believed unattached men made better soldiers so he declared marriage illegal. As a concession, he encouraged temporary coupling. Once a year, during a Roman festival honoring Juno, men drew names to determine who would be their lady friend for the coming year. Once established, the man would wear her name on his sleeve for the rest of the festival.


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## Daniel

Investors Need to Rethink Retail Stocks Amid a Shakeout in Stores  - Barrons


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## Daniel

The Absurdity of the Nobel Prizes in Science

In 2003, one Ray Damadian took out a series of full-page ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times to protest that he had been wrongfully denied a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his role in inventing magnetic resonance imaging. The Nobel committee only recognized Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield for that feat--an omission that Damadian billed as a "shameful wrong that must be righted." "To wake up on Monday morning and see that I had been written out of history is an agony I cannot live with," he told the Times.


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## GaryQ

Interesting follow up on the prizes awarded in psychology (thought personally censored)


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## Daniel

KFC canned healthier items in 5th-biggest market as nobody bought them - Business Insider
Sep 13, 2019

KFC says it took several healthier, non-fried products off menus in the UK because nobody was buying them...

KFC UK has found that the best way to lure customers toward healthier options is by the "health by stealth" technique where fast-food chains very slowly lower fat, calorie, and salt levels over time.

She also added that KFC UK once altered its chips to be thicker, so they absorbed less oil, which cut calories by 18% and fat by 12%, but that the move received "a lot of grief."


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## Daniel

We Are All Princes, Paupers, and Part of the Human Family

Geneticist Luke Jostins did a nice mathematical analysis and estimated that you have only about a 12 percent chance of being genetically related to an ancestor 10 generations ago; by the time you get to a 14-generation ancestor, the probability is nearly zero.


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## David Baxter PhD

@gooblax @Daniel

I was curious and a bit bored so I did some research. 

Milo, Ovaltine or Horlicks? The Malted Milk Wars



> What do Ovaltine, Horlicks, and Milo have  in common? They were born in the West (Switzerland, US, and Australia  respectively, if Wikipedia hasn’t failed me, although today Ovaltine and  Horlicks are owned by British companies), are very popular in the East  (in addition to their birth countries…and…elsewhere), and less so in the  US. They’re all powder-based malted milk drinks, although Ovaltine and  Milo are chocolate flavored and Horlicks isn’t. But Starbucks chose to go with Ovaltine and Horlicks isntead of Milo  here in Singapore for their cakes. Why? My suspicion is the brand. Milo  has a very strong brand cache among the three. So with it, probably came  a little bit more money to co-promote and co-market. The other two  brands were probably a little bit more willing, flexible and if  licensing fees were involved, then a lot cheaper.
> 
> In fact, go to any coffee shop here in Singapore and you can order it  by name. Iced Milo, Hot Milo etc. But for the other two it really  depends if they have it.



I've had both Ovaltine and Horlicks many years ago in Canada and in England but I really prefer hot chocolate (aka cocoa). The other two just taste like watered down cocoa to me.

But apparently, Milo is available in Canada:

Milo | madewithnestle.ca





> The world’s leading chocolate malt beverage that can be prepared with hot or cold milk or water.
> 
> MILO provides great taste, along with energy, vitamins and minerals for the maintenance of good health.



And apparently you can order it online.


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## gooblax

David Baxter said:


> And apparently you can order it online.


This is one time when I'd advocate "just because you can, it *does* mean you should."


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## David Baxter PhD

I thought you liked Milo?


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## gooblax

I do. Perhaps you misread my attempt to alter the usual saying...?

Although I don't consider Milo to be a substitute for actual chocolate milk or hot chocolate, so that is an important distinction to make.


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## David Baxter PhD

Ah yes I did miss that.  

And I agree with your distinction. Malted milk is not hot chocolate.

But I might give it a try just for variety...


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## Daniel

And Milo cans are perfect for unexpected trick or treaters (along with American quarters)


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## David Baxter PhD

That's nasty... like giving out apples to little kids when all they want is the dang candy!


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## gooblax

I'll hand out these:


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## David Baxter PhD

Oh dear lord.... those poor kids...


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## Daniel

David Baxter said:


> That's nasty... like giving out apples to little kids when all they want is the dang candy!



The mini boxes of raisins were the ultimate insult as well :lol:


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## David Baxter PhD

I actually liked the raisins. I still do. 

But I also like candy corn and marshmallow candies.


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## Daniel

Food marketer has mixed reaction to Photoshop gag
Oct 31, 2017


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## Daniel

What Handing Out Full Size Candy Bars on Halloween Says About You, According to Behavioral Economists

Customer dissatisfaction spikes more with companies who have generous reward programs that they can't maintain than with companies with no reward programs at all. Disconfirmation theory shows our satisfaction is very subjective, she says, it's not absolute, but driven by what we expect. An act of first-time generosity and then subsequent downgrade to market norms can be a disappointment. 

Handing out full-size candy? "There's a cautionary tale in there," Hogan said. "You better be willing to stick with it."


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## Daniel

The American Scholar: 10 Famous Authors With Surprising Day Jobs

A decade before he published _The Catcher in the Rye_, J. D. Salinger worked as the activities director on a luxury Swedish cruise ship. He would later set "Teddy," a short story from his collection Nine Stories, on a cruise ship.


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## Daniel

As he points out himself, the comedian Jim Gaffigan's last name may mean "the Anxious One."

Gavigan - Wikipedia


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## Daniel

https://7news.com.au/news/april-fools-best-of-the-pranks-from-the-day-c-34692

For their April Fools joke, Travelodge Hotels said it would have 50 per cent discounts for guests willing to share half their room.


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## David Baxter PhD




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## Daniel

From Alexa to Siri and the GDPR: The Gendering of Virtual Personal Assistants and the Role of EU Data Protection Law 

“Siri” is a  Nordic  name  meaning  the  beautiful  woman  who  leads  you  to  victory.  “Alexa” is a derivative of Alexandra and Alexander. The etymology of Alexa is from the Greek “alexo” (to defend) and “ander” (“man”),denoting, then,“the defender of man”. Alexa was also one of the epithets given to the Greek goddess “Hera” (the goddess of fertility and marriage) and was taken to mean “the one who comes to save warriors”.


----------



## Daniel

How Cereal Transformed American Culture

Cereal makers had an insatiable appetite for finding the right mascot, regardless of the cost. During the Depression, Post Toasties decided to use cartoon animals on its boxes and paid its cartoonist $1.5 million in the first year. That artist was Walt Disney, and he used the earnings to build the Disney empire.


----------



## Daniel

Brunch - Wikipedia

Brunch originated in England in the late 19th century and became popular in the United States in the 1930s.

In many regions of Canada, in particular in Southern Ontario, brunch is popular on Sundays when families will often host relatives or friends in their dining room. The typical brunch can last a few hours and go late into the afternoon. Montreal-style bagels may be served alongside egg dishes, waffles or crepes, smoked meat or fish, fruit, salads, cheese, and dessert.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

And then, of course, there's second brunch. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien


----------



## Daniel

25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites | Mental Floss

_Trim_ as a verb predates the noun, but it can also mean either adding or taking away. Arising from an Old English word meaning "to make firm or strong; to settle, arrange," _trim _came to mean "to prepare, make ready." Depending on who or what was being readied, it could mean either of two contradictory things: "to decorate something with ribbons, laces, or the like to give it a finished appearance" or "to cut off the outgrowths or irregularities of." And the context doesn’t always make it clear. If you’re trimming the tree are you using tinsel or a chain saw?


----------



## Daniel

15 Obscure Words for Everyday Feelings And Emotions | Mental Floss


----------



## Daniel

The Forgotten Life of Einsteins First Wife - Scientific American 

Their letters and the numerous testimonies show that Mileva Marić and Albert Einstein collaborated closely from their school days up to 1914. Albert referred to it repeatedly in his letters, like when he wrote: _"our work on relative motion”_. Their union was based on love and mutual respect, which allowed them together to produce such uncommon work. She was the first person to recognize his talent. Without her, he would never have succeeded. She abandoned her own aspirations, happy to work with him and contribute to his success, feeling they were one unique entity. Once started, the process of signing their work under his unique name became impossible to reverse. She probably agreed to it since her own happiness depended on his success. Why did Mileva remain silent? Being reserved and self-effaced, she did not seek honors or public attention. And as is always the case in close collaborations, the individual contributions are nearly impossible to disentangle.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

It's also quite possible that scientific contributions in that era (and previously) were viewed with distrust when they came from women. More than one woman historically allowed a man or men to take credit for that reason.


----------



## Daniel

Did Toolmaking Pave the Road for Human Language? - The Atlantic

Somewhere on the timeline between the long run of the Oldowan and the more rapid rise of Acheulean technologies, language (or what's often called protolanguage) likely made its first appearance. Oren Kolodny and his co-author, Shimon Edelman, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, say the overlap is not a coincidence. Rather, they theorize, the emergence of language was predicated on our ancestors' ability to perform sequence-dependent processes, including the production of complex tools.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

That makes sense. 

Early man would have needed language for Google Reviews and Yelp. 

"This is the greatest thing since before sliced bread. Or even before bread."

"Do NOT buy a wheel from Girjnk. After only a few miles, the tread on the stone was completely worn off!"


----------



## Daniel

Americans are changing how they commute to work - Business Insider

Between 2007 and 2018, the US population has grown by about 25 million, to 327 million. And “nonfarm employment,” as defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, has grown by 11 million workers to 149 million. This is why congestion during commute times hasn’t gotten any better, despite the switch away from cars.


----------



## Daniel

How Japan has almost eradicated gun crime - BBC News

Japanese police officers rarely use guns and put much greater emphasis on martial arts -- all are expected to become a black belt in judo. They spend more time practising kendo (fighting with bamboo swords) than learning how to use firearms.

"What most Japanese police will do is get huge futons and essentially roll up a person who is being violent or drunk into a little burrito and carry them back to the station to calm them down."


----------



## Daniel

The Queen of Code on Vimeo


The Queen Of Code | FiveThirtyEight

You probably don’t know the name Grace Hopper, but you should.

As a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, Hopper worked on the first computer, the Harvard Mark 1. And she headed the team that created the first compiler, which led to the creation of COBOL, a programming language that by the year 2000 accounted for 70 percent of all actively used code. Passing away in 1992, she left behind an inimitable legacy as a brilliant programmer and pioneering woman in male-dominated fields.

Hopper’s story is told in “The Queen of Code,” directed by Gillian Jacobs (of “Community” fame). It’s the latest film in FiveThirtyEight’s “Signals” series.


----------



## Daniel

The tricky economics of all-you-can-eat buffets



By 2030, the National Restaurant Association projects that 80% of all restaurant items will be eaten at home -- a trend that buffets can't effectively capitalize on.

Today's health-conscious consumers have also shifted away from quantity in favor of experience-driven dining options.

Golden Corral, one of the last-standing American buffet chains, has found success by redesigning its dining spaces to be more "bright, shiny, [and] friendly," and investing in higher-quality food that makes for better Instagram photos.


----------



## Daniel

Jackass penguin call shares traits of human speech, scientists say | Science | The Guardian

“Linguistic laws, like Zipf’s law of brevity and the Menzerath-Altmann law, were originally discovered in text,” he said, noting that meant it was initially thought that they arose from the symbolic nature of human language.

“This new study provides more evidence that the laws are physical and not symbolic, because even penguins show them. Instead, the laws seem to reflect something deeper and more general about communication and information.”


----------



## Daniel

List of birds by flight speed - Wikipedia


----------



## David Baxter PhD

They don't even mention chickens.


----------



## Daniel

Chickens Prefer Attractive People

The results may suggest the mutual admiration for symmetry is rooted in the nervous system, and not necessarily due to cultural influences.


----------



## Daniel

How greedy McDonalds became the most effective poverty-fighter in the country | Financial Post

The popular economics blog Freakonomics has suggested McDonald’s McDouble burger could be “the cheapest, most nutritious, and bountiful food that has ever existed in human history.” With two beef patties, pickles, and onions, McDoubles offer — for just a couple of bucks — half the daily recommended serving of protein, seven per cent of daily recommended fibre, and 20 per cent of your daily calcium and iron.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

That's true. It is almost as big/filling as the quarter pounder with cheese for less than half the price.


----------



## Daniel

I think a wave of instant depression hits the U.S. when McDonalds stops the "2 for 5" deal


----------



## David Baxter PhD

My son and I both get coupons in our mailboxes for all the fast food outlets around us so we don't even have to wait for advertised special.

We're surrounded by fast food in this area: McDonalds, Wendys, A&W, Popeyes, Tim Hortons for Donuts, Caesar's Pizza. The only thing we were missing was a taco place but I noticed in the fall they had started building one.

This is a health food fanatic's dream home.


----------



## Daniel

Sounds like being on a cruise ship except more walking to the different serving stations


----------



## David Baxter PhD

LOL pretty much!


----------



## gooblax

The only coupons I get now are for Dominos. We used to get Subway, McDonalds and Chicken Magic (a local shop that shut down   ) "docket deals" on the back of receipts but they stopped doing those entirely. When I used to go to the shopping centre more regularly I used to practice (ie. face my anxiety about) ordering McDonalds with a (embarrassing) voucher once every couple of weekends, and a couple of times at Subway.


----------



## Daniel




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## Daniel

*Hawaiian Pizza
*
Greek-Canadian Sam Panopoulos claimed that he created the first Hawaiian pizza at the Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada in 1962. Inspired in part by his experience preparing Chinese dishes which commonly mix sweet and savoury flavours, Panopoulos experimented with adding pineapple, ham, bacon and other toppings which were not initially very popular. The addition of pineapple to the traditional mix of tomato sauce and cheese, sometimes with ham or sometimes with bacon, soon became popular locally and eventually became a staple offering of pizzerias around the world. Panopoulos chose the name Hawaiian after the brand of canned pineapple they used...

Hawaiian was the most popular pizza in Australia in 1999, accounting for 15% of pizza sales


----------



## Daniel

Pea soup - Wikipedia

Pea soup has been eaten since antiquity; it is mentioned in Aristophanes' _The Birds_, and according to one source "the Greeks and Romans were cultivating this legume about 500 to 400 BC. During that era, vendors in the streets of Athens were selling hot pea soup."


----------



## Daniel

Ramparts of Quebec City - Wikipedia



The ramparts of Quebec City (Vieux-Quebec) is the only walled-in city in North America, and one of the oldest in the world. 

Located in Canada, the Ramparts of Quebec City are the only remaining fortified city walls in North America north of Mexico. The British began refortifying the existing walls, after they took Quebec City from the French in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in 1759.


----------



## Daniel

House Sparrow "Passer domesticus" | Boreal Songbird Initiative

The entire North American population of the House Sparrow is descended from a few birds released in New York City's Central Park in 1850.

Native to Eurasia and North Africa, and introduced on all continents, excepting Antarctica, and many islands.


----------



## Daniel

Fresca - Wikipedia

U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Fresca drinker, had dedicated signal boxes installed in his White House offices. These typically featured four buzzers: one to page his secretary, one for the Chief of Staff, and two for a military valet stationed in a small office next to the Oval Office. He would bring Johnson either a Fresca or coffee, depending on which button the President pushed.


----------



## Daniel

Bayesian Approach - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics

A Bayesian approach is a conditional probability or a probabilistic construct that allows new information to be combined with existing information: it assumes, and continuously updates, changes in the probability distribution of parameters or data.


----------



## Daniel

Wonderchicken: Oldest bird fossil discovered


----------



## Daniel

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin - Wikipedia

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest who trained as a paleontologist and geologist and took part in the discovery of the Peking Man. He conceived the vitalist idea of the Omega Point (a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which he believed the universe was evolving), and he developed Vladimir Vernadsky's concept of noosphere. Teilhard's ideas had a profound influence on the New Age movement.

(His most quoted saying: _“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”_)


----------



## David Baxter PhD

That's similar to this I came across years ago, attributed to a Chinese proverb:

"On earth we are not humans trying to be spiritual... We are sprites trying to learn to be human..." ~ (Chinese proverb)


----------



## Daniel

Playing with a Google tool that analyzes word frequency in Google Books up to 2008:

Google Ngram Viewer: mindfulness,CBT,DBT

Google Ngram Viewer: bipolar,OCD,neurosis,mania

Google Ngram Viewer: pandemic,coronavirus


----------



## Daniel

Going retro:



Google Ngram Viewer: CompuServe,AOL,modem


----------



## Daniel

Why 40% of Vietnamese People Have the Same Last Name

In the United States, the most popular last name is Smith. As per the 2010 census, about 0.8 percent of Americans have it. In Vietnam, the most popular last name is Nguyen. The estimate for how many people answer to it? Somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of the country’s population. The 14 most popular last names in Vietnam account for well over 90 percent of the population. The 14 most popular last names in the US? Fewer than 6 percent.

In the U.S., an immigrant country, last names are hugely important. They can indicate where you’re from, right down to the village; the profession of a relative deep in your past; how long it’s been since your ancestors emigrated; your religion; your social status.

Nguyen doesn’t indicate much more than that you are Vietnamese. Someone with the last name Nguyen is going to have basically no luck tracing their heritage back beyond a generation or two, will not be able to use search engines to find out much of anything about themselves.

This difference illustrates something very weird about last names: they’re a surprisingly recent creation in most of the world, and there remain many places where they just aren’t very important. Vietnam is one of those...


----------



## Daniel

*nikhedonia* (s) (noun), nikhedonias (pl) The elation and exultation of anticipating a victory or success. 

 Etymology: from Nike, "the Greek goddess of victory" + hedone, "pleasure".

Source: Word Info


----------



## Daniel

Mastering the Art of Making a French Omelette | The New Yorker

According to the rules of French cooking, a three-egg omelette constitutes a main course (Jacques Pépin makes his with four), and a two-egg version is merely a starter (the French don’t usually eat omelettes for breakfast).


----------



## David Baxter PhD

A Spanish omelette is definitely more a lunch or dinner thing, I think.

Of course, if you don't speak French or Spanish, you can always make just an American or Canadian (eh?) or Australian one.


----------



## Daniel

Paradoxes of Probability and Other Statistical Strangeness

Multiple Comparisons Fallacy

What is it?

This is where unexpected trends can occur through random chance alone in a data set with a large number of variables.

How does it happen?

When looking at many variables and mining for trends, it is easy to overlook how many possible trends you are testing. For example, with 1,000 variables, there are almost half a million (1,000x999/2) potential pairs of variables that might appear correlated by pure chance alone.

--

The Misleading Effect of Noise: The Multiple Comparisons Problem

Fortunately, most statisticians and researchers are honest and use methods to account for the multiple comparisons problem. The most common technique is called the Bonferroni Correction.


----------



## Daniel

The Forgotten Uses of 8 Everyday Objects
*
The Drawer Under Your Oven*

If you keep cookie sheets, cupcake pans, and pancake griddles in that narrow little drawer under your oven, you’re in good company—so does most of the rest of the world. But in many cases, that’s not how the manufacturer intended you to use it. Often, the compartment is intended to be a warming drawer, a place to keep finished food warm while other dishes are cooking.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

I just read about this recently actually. Of course, that was before microwaves and lids for the pans.


----------



## Daniel

and before global warming


----------



## Daniel

The Good Guy/Bad Guy Myth

The first time we see Darth Vader doing more than heavy breathing in Star Wars (1977), he’s strangling a man to death. A few scenes later, he’s blowing up a planet. He kills his subordinates, chokes people with his mind, does all kinds of things a good guy would never do. But then the nature of a bad guy is that he does things a good guy would never do. Good guys don’t just fight for personal gain: they fight for what’s right – their values...

Stories from an oral tradition never have anything like a modern good guy or bad guy in them,  despite their reputation for being moralising. In stories such as Jack and the Beanstalk or Sleeping Beauty, just who is the good guy? Jack is the protagonist we’re meant to root for, yet he has no ethical justification for stealing the giant’s things. Does Sleeping Beauty care about goodness? Does anyone fight crime? Even tales that can be made to seem like they are about good versus evil, such as the story of Cinderella, do not hinge on so simple a moral dichotomy. In traditional oral versions, Cinderella merely needs to be beautiful to make the story work. In the Three Little Pigs, neither pigs nor wolf deploy tactics that the other side wouldn’t stoop to. It’s just a question of who gets dinner first, not good versus evil...


----------



## Daniel

Crane fly - Wikipedia

An adult crane fly, resembling an oversized mosquito, typically has a slender body and stilt-like legs.



What's Up With All the Crane Flies? | University of Arizona

Nearly 100% of the energy that crane fly adults have comes from the food they ate as larvae – the adults don't eat any food at all. Imagine if we stopped eating food at age 18, and had to get by our entire adult lives on the food we ate as children. Similarly, crane flies have to conserve their limited energy resources and just hang out doing nothing quite a lot.


----------



## Daniel

Cambridge University Study States Software Bugs Cost Economy $312 Billion Per Year


----------



## Daniel

Ask a Ranger: Great snakes alive | azdailysun.com

 The rattles [of rattlesnakes] are made of keratin, the same protein in our fingernails.


----------



## Daniel

Ann Weiser Cornell, an expert on Focusing, is the sister of the late computer scientist Mark Weiser who advocated for _calm technology_ that "informs but doesn't demand our focus or attention."


----------



## Daniel

Taco Bell chihuahua - Wikipedia


----------



## Daniel

The story behind the meme:

Jonathan Goldsmith - Wikipedia

Beginning in April 2007 and continuing through 2015, Goldsmith had been featured in a high-profile television ad campaign, promoting Dos Equis beer. The campaign, which transformed Goldsmith into "the most interesting man in the world", has been credited for helping to fuel a 15.4 percent sales increase for the brand in the United States in 2009 and also made him into a very popular meme.

Goldsmith landed the Dos Equis gig by auditioning for the role. Auditioners were given the ending line "...and that's how I arm wrestled Fidel Castro" and asked to improvise. Goldsmith began his audition by removing one sock and then improvised for 30 minutes before reaching the concluding line. The character was inspired by his deceased sailing partner and friend Fernando Lamas.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

I was just adding a medical appointment to my calendar and I noticed an auto entry for Juneteenth on Friday June 19.

I had never heard of this but apparently it is a state holiday (in 46 of the 50 states only):



marking the emancipation of the last remaining enslaved African Americans in the Confederacy
serving to foster the exploration and celebration of African-American history and heritage

Juneteenth - Wikipedia


----------



## Daniel

“There are as many atoms in one molecule of DNA as there are stars in a typical galaxy.” 

~ Carl Sagan


----------



## Daniel

Sweden's stinky tradition
June 5, 2012

This is the time of year when Swedes crack open tins of fermented Baltic herring called surströmming (sour herring) – a stinky culinary tradition that dates back several centuries and is often likened to the smell of eggs rotting in open sewage drains.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Sounds yummy. Do you know is there's a Vegemite version of that.


----------



## Daniel

A suspected gas leak in Australia caused an evacuation in May 2019 at a university library. 

It turned out to be smelly fruit:



> Durian fruit stink prompts university evacuation - CNN
> 
> The spiky fruit's flavor and creamy texture has made it popular throughout Southeast Asia, but its odor has gained it many detractors. Singapore has prohibited the fruit in its subway system, and many hotels ban durians because of the notorious smell -- which some critics have likened to rotten food or dirty socks.


----------



## Daniel

The Principles of Psychology - Wikipedia

[William] James introduced a new theory of emotion (later known as the James–Lange theory), which argued that an emotion is instead the consequence rather than the cause of the bodily experiences associated with its expression. In other words, a stimulus causes a physical response and an emotion follows the response. This theory has received criticism throughout the years since its introduction, but regardless, it still has its merits.


----------



## Daniel




----------



## Daniel

Douglas Rain - Wikipedia

Douglas James Rain (March 13, 1928 – November 11, 2018) was a Canadian actor and narrator. Though primarily a stage actor, he provided the voice of the HAL 9000 computer for the film _2001: A Space Odyssey_ (1968) and its sequel, _2010: The Year We Make Contact_ (1984)...

Initially Kubrick decided to cast Rain as the voice of the HAL 9000 computer for the film _2001: A Space Odyssey_ (1968) after hearing his narration of a short documentary called _Universe_ and later chose him as "the creepy voice of HAL".


----------



## Daniel

Forget Siri: This Is What Computer Speech Sounded Like In 1939

VODER (1939) - Early Speech Synthesizer - YouTube


----------



## Daniel

Source: pencils.com


----------



## Daniel

Pencil - Wikipedia

Johnny Carson regularly played with pencils at his Tonight Show desk. These pencils were specially made with erasers at both ends to avoid on-set accidents.


----------



## Daniel

"When you examine the numbers, the British have a slight edge on social mobility over Americans. A child born into a family in the bottom 20th percentile of income levels has an 11.4 percent chance of making it to the top 20th percentile in the U.K.—as compared with a 7.8 percent chance in the United States. Tellingly, Americans are much more likely to overestimate social mobility in their country, even though the middle class has grown in Britain while it has shrunk in the United States. Much of Britain’s relative success on that front has been driven by traditional equalizers such as universal health care and low-cost higher education."

Source: ForeignPolicy.com


----------



## Daniel

"For a normal hen to lay 12 eggs they need to consume roughly four pounds of feed."  (source)

A premium, name-brand bag of layer feed costs about $17 USD for 50 pounds.   So that comes to 34 cents for a pound of feed.  

*So for a dozen eggs from backyard chickens, the cost in feed would be $1.36 USD.  * 

(It's another reason people give scraps to their chickens since feed is not exactly cheap. And in the winter, hens lay a lot less due to less sunlight and can eat more to stay warm, so the "profits" are often negative in the winter.)


----------



## Daniel

The Teenage Girl Gang That Seduced and Killed Nazis | Mental Floss


----------



## Daniel

New Caledonian Crows Are Even Smarter and Scarier Than We Thought

In a paper published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports, a team of researchers showed evidence that New Caledonian crows, which have been observed making several types of tools out of sticks, may be able to build tools from memory — even if they have only seen the tool itself and haven’t ever seen the tool being constructed. This suggests that crows can form a “mental template” of tools based on other crows’ tools and their own past tools, which would explain why New Caledonian crows’ tools could have improved over time.


----------



## Daniel

The Vindication of Cheese, Butter, and Full-Fat Milk

The average American in the 1970s drank about 30 gallons of milk a year. That’s now down to 18 gallons, according to the Department of Agriculture.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> The Vindication of Cheese, Butter, and Full-Fat Milk
> 
> The average American in the 1970s drank about 30 gallons of milk a year. That’s now down to 18 gallons, according to the Department of Agriculture.



The problem is it goes with cookies or cake or sweet breakfast cereals but people who became more health conscious quickly learned that it doesn't go well with pickles or salads.


----------



## Daniel

Another milk-friendly item (cake for breakfast):


----------



## Daniel

Blue moon ice cream



Blue moon is an ice cream flavor with bright blue coloring, available in the Upper Midwest of the United States and originating in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Chicago Tribune has described the ice cream as "Smurf-blue, marshmallow-sweet". Blue moon ice cream is one of the flavors that make up Superman ice cream in certain states.


----------



## Daniel

The Designer Of The NES Dishes The Dirt On Nintendo's Early Days

_Super Mario_ is often cited as the very first game to connect that [_kawaii_] style of cute character and cute music together...

_Super Mario Bros._ isn't set in Japan, but the character's Japanese. The name Mario sounds Italian, but he isn't Italian.


----------



## Daniel

Fitness experts: sit-ups are worthless, heres what to do instead - Business Insider

Last week, the US Army announced that after decades of requiring two-minute sit-up tests, it would phase out that portion of its fitness test by the end of 2020. Instead, the Army says it'll make room for some fitness tasks found to be more useful for soldiers' combat readiness, like deadlifts, power throws, and drag-and-carry moves, The Washington Times reported.

------
Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) Event #2 - Standing-Power-Throw - YouTube

"The Standing-Power-Throw is an exercise that is designed to measure  one's explosive power, balance, and flexibility."



Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) Event #4 - Sprint Drag Carry - YouTube

"The Sprint-Drag-Carry event is designed to test one's agility, anaerobic endurance, muscular endurance, and muscular strength."


----------



## Daniel

As if bootcamp was not hard enough, now they have to wear face masks while training outside in the heat.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Yikes!


----------



## Daniel

4 Reasons You May Have Back Pain on Only One Side -- Penn Medicine

Injuries to the spinal structures can happen in the muscles, discs, or joints, and make up the most common cause of back pain on just one side. They often occur after minor injuries or from an impact in sports or a car accident.

Tissue injuries typically cause pain central to the spine, but they can lead to pain entirely on either the right side or the left side of the back. And of tissue injuries overall, *muscle strains are the most common cause of lower back pain on one side*.

Poor posture is another possible culprit for this type of one-sided back pain, according to Dr. Tucker. "Typically when you sit, everything should be at a 90 degree angle: knees, ankles, hips, and elbows," he explains.


----------



## Daniel

Mary L. Trump - Wikipedia

Mary Lea Trump (born May 1965) is an American psychologist, businessperson, and author. She is a niece of President Donald J. Trump. Her 2020 book about him and the family, _Too Much and Never Enough_, sold over one million copies on the day of release.


----------



## Daniel

Why do my feet hurt more when I stand? - Pedorthic Association of Canada | www.Pedorthic.ca

When you stand, the same muscles in your feet fire repeatedly as the pressure on them remains constant. However, when you walk about, the pressure shifts to and from different areas of your foot as the same muscles aren't working all the time.


----------



## Daniel

Antiperspirant May Prevent Foot Blisters -- ScienceDaily

SCHAUMBURG, IL (October 19, 1998) -- Before you head out for a cross-country hike, a new study suggests that using antiperspirant on your feet may prevent blisters.


----------



## Daniel

Chickens - Natural Tick Control - The Cape Coop

Chickens are omnivores and healthy, happy chickens ideally spend their day foraging for bugs.  A flock of chickens, allowed to free range, can significantly reduce the amount of ticks, mosquitoes, and fleas in your yard...

A scientific study was done in 1991 to determine the effect of chickens on tick populations. In the study, a flock of chickens was allowed to free range in a tick infested cattle field for 30-60 minutes. It was found that each chicken ingested anywhere from 3-331 ticks, with the average chicken eating over 80 ticks!


----------



## Daniel

Coronavirus: The slow death of the American all-you-can-eat buffet - BBC News
*
What is the history of the buffet?*

Canadian entrepreneur Herb McDonald is credited with launching the first 24-hour all-you-can-eat buffet, called the Buckaroo Buffet, in the 1940s in Las Vegas.

A flyer advertising the restaurant boasts that for only one dollar, a patron can eat "every possible variety of hot and cold entrees to appease the howling coyote in your innards".

McDonald's model was quickly replicated up and down the famous strip as every hotel and casino strove to offer a buffet to tourists.

The appeal of all-you-can-eat food, with no waiter there to judge your food pairings or quantity, led the Washington Post this month to describe buffets as an "offer [of] public gluttony at an affordable price".

But despite the new precautions, most analysts agree it will be quite a long time before Americans can return to the buffet line for seconds (or even thirds... who's watching?).

----

From Enlightenment Age Swedes to Vegas Gamblers: The History of the All-You-Can-Eat Buffet | Food  Wine

*The epitome of American gluttony—the all-you-can-eat buffet—actually originated as a much classier and much more European affair. *While enormous spreads of food were a common sight during medieval feasts, the Swedes were the first to formalize and give a name to such an endless meal. In the 16th century, it became a common Swedish practice prior to a more substantial feast to welcome arriving guests with a brännvinsbord, meaning a “table of spirits.” Though it consisted of finger foods like bread, butter, cheese, cured meats and smoked fish, the star of the brännvinsbord was the traditional spiced vodka—known as Brännvin—that was served. Often distilled from potatoes or grains, Brännvin would later be joined on the table by beer, schnapps or aquavit.

In the early 18th century, the Swedes turned the pre-dinner brännvinsbord into the meal itself. *Calling it “smörgåsbord," it was often used to feed hungry guests coming from a long distance.* The spreads usually featured a mix of cold and warm dishes, specializing in Swedish delicacies like salted fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables—probably no omelet station. While the smörgåsbord is still quite popular today, there's one main difference from the Americanized version of the all-you-can-eat buffet: It isn’t a free-for-all. The serving table is meticulously set in a very specific order that forces guests to exercise some restraint and not grab all the food at once. As gracefully put by Sweden’s official tourism website, “You can pick out a non-Swede by the way the person loads everything onto a single plate.”

...You can thank Sweden for introducing this culinary marvel to America. And Las Vegas for perfecting it.

----
smörgåsbord

It is customary to eat particular foods together; herring is typically eaten with boiled potatoes and hard-boiled eggs and is frequently accompanied by strong spirits like snaps, brännvin or akvavit with or without spices. Other traditional foods are smoked eel, rollmops, herring salad, baked herring and smoked salmon.


----------



## Daniel

Association Between Apple Consumption and Physician Visits

Evidence does not support that an apple a day keeps the doctor away; however, the small fraction of US adults who eat an apple a day do appear to use fewer prescription medications.


----------



## Daniel

All blue-eyed humans have common ancestor - ScienceBlog.com
January 30, 2008

New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.


----------



## Daniel

35 Random Trivia Facts That Will Blow Your Mind - Fun Facts for National Trivia Day


*Apple Pie isn't actually American at all.
*
The next time you call something "as American as apple pie," you might want to consider the fact that neither apple pies nor apples originally came from America. Apples are in fact native to Asia, and the first recorded recipe for apple pie was actually written in England.


----------



## Daniel

Apple pie - Wikipedia





English apple pie recipes go back to the time of Chaucer. The 1381 recipe (see illustration) is the earliest known apple pie recipe in the world, and lists the ingredients as good apples, good spices, figs, raisins and pears. The cofyn of the recipe is a casing of pastry. Saffron is used for colouring the pie filling. Today, the English style incorporates generous layers of sweetened slices of, usually, Bramley apple; layered into a dome shape to allow for downward shrinkage, and thus avoid a saggy middle, then topped with butter or lard shortcrust pastry, and baked until the apple filling is cooked.

In English-speaking countries, apple pie, often classified as a satisfying 'comfort' food, is a dessert of enduring popularity, whether it's eaten hot or cold, on its own or with ice cream, double cream, or custard.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

God Save The Queen!


----------



## Daniel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_KtT8YfOTc&feature=youtu.be


----------



## Daniel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Okay_to_Not_Be_Okay

_It's Okay to Not Be Okay _(Korean: 사이코지만 괜찮아; RR: Saikojiman gwaenchana; lit. _Psycho But It's Okay_) is a 2020 South Korean romantic television series starring Kim Soo-hyun and Seo Ye-ji. The series tells an unusual romance story between two people who end up healing each other's emotional and psychological wounds. It aired on tvN every Saturday and Sunday at 21:00 (KST) time slot from June 20 to August 9, 2020 for 16 episodes. The series is available worldwide on Netflix.


----------



## Daniel

https://en.pedia.org/[wiki]/Fovea_centralis[/wiki][wiki]

The fovea centralis is a small, central pit composed of closely packed cones in the eye. It is located in the center of the [URL="https://en.[wiki]pedia.org/[wiki]/Macula_of_retina"]macula lutea[/URL] of the [WIKI]retina.

The fovea is responsible for sharp central vision (also called foveal vision), which is necessary in humans for activities for which visual detail is of primary importance, such as reading and driving...

Approximately half the nerve fibers in the optic nerve carry information from the fovea, while the remaining half carry information from the rest of the retina.[/wiki]


----------



## Daniel

https://en.pedia.org/[wiki]/Memetic_algorithm[/wiki][wiki]

In computer science and operations research, a memetic algorithm (MA) is an extension of the traditional [WIKI]genetic algorithm. It uses a local search technique to reduce the likelihood of the premature convergence. Memetic algorithms represent one of the recent growing areas of research in evolutionary computation.


----------



## Daniel

https://ucdintegrativemedicine.com/2017/07/enjoy-hot-dogs-plant-based-way/

The origin of the vegetarian hot dog is not clear but appears to date back as far as the 1940s when a meatless hot dog was manufactured to meet the dietary needs of the Seventh Day Adventists...

However, the popularity of veggie dogs really started to take off a few decades later when they were featured as a staple at Grateful Dead concerts, thanks to Gene Baur, a plant-based aficionado and the president/co-founder of Farm Sanctuary, an animal rescue organization started in 1986.

Baur and his partner would follow the Grateful Dead tour with his VW van, selling vegan hot dogs to Deadheads from morning to midnight. The fans nicknamed him the ‘guy with the veggie dog stand’ while the oft-cited invitation to ‘meet you at the meatless hot dog stand’ became part of the Grateful Dead legend.


----------



## Daniel




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## Daniel

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-31/rattlesnakes-myths-busted

Rattlesnake bites can be fatal, but rarely. Between 7,000 and 8,000 people per year are bitten by venomous snakes in the United States, but only five of them die each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 10% to 20% of rattlesnake bites, the creatures do not release venom, probably because they don’t see the human as prey, said Dr. Cyrus Rangan, assistant director with the California Poison Control System.

In venomous bites, a victim’s chance of surviving can drop if they have an allergic reaction to the venom, or if a fang reaches directly into a vein or artery, sending the poison flowing throughout their body, he said.

Most commonly, snake bite victims are men between 18 and 25 years old who are intoxicated and “doing something very stupid,” like trying to pick up the snake, Rangan said.

Todd said the snakes usually aren’t to blame: “Apparently the real issue is testosterone poisoning or alcohol use, not the snakes themselves.”


----------



## Daniel




----------



## Daniel

https://www.petfoodindustry.com/articles/8851-backyard-hen-feed-growing-in-pet-food-and-treat-market

In APPA’s survey of 10,090 current pet owners, 10% reported owning backyard chickens, which equated to approximately 10 million U.S. households.

Eight out of 10 hen households reported considering their poultry to be pets.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

My brother used to keep chickens in England. He used the eggs but they were basically pets.

He scared the bejeesus out of me back then. He had a learner's permit (L plates in England) so I went with him as a licensed driver so he could get more practice. We're zooming nicely along an English village road when he suddenly yanked the wheel and almost put us in the ditch. I asked what the hell he did that for and he said he saw a chicken and swerved to avoid it. I tried to explain that I'm all for being kind to and trying to protect animals of any kind but when you're driving 60 mph and it's us or them, please choose us. I have to admit, I was so shaken by that experience that I took the wheel and drove home.


----------



## Daniel

That reminds me of a deadly scene on TV on HBO's Succession.    They swerved off the road and into the water to save a deer.


----------



## Daniel

Thousands of Taco Bell Fans Sign Petition to Keep Mexican Pizza on the Menu
Sept 4, 2020
_Newsweek_

Taco Bell has announced more cuts to its menu, with the axing of the Mexican Pizza leading to a social media backlash and even a petition signed by thousands of fans.

The latest round of cuts comes after Taco Bell removed multiple items from its menu in August, including the Nachos Supreme and Beefy Fritos Burrito. This time around, there are far fewer items leaving the menu, but that doesn't mean that fans are any less upset.

Taco Bell is getting rid of its Mexican Pizza, Shredded Chicken items (Shredded Chicken Soft Taco, Shredded Chicken Burrito, and Shredded Chicken Quesadilla Melt), and Pico de Gallo...

However, while fans will be sad to see it go, Taco Bell said that removing the pizza from its menu will help the environment as the packaging accounts for more than 7 million pounds of paperboard material per year in the U.S...

Mexican Pizza fans can sign the petition to try to change Taco Bell's mind—otherwise, they have until November 5 to make the most of their favorite item.


----------



## Daniel

Prison food in Japan:


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Better than the grass soup the soldiers got in _*Letters from Iwo Jima*_


----------



## Daniel

https://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-travis-scott-campaign-is-a-brilliant-marketing-ploy-2020-9

Right now, McDonald's franchisees — who own and operate 95% of the McDonald's locations in the US — are pushing for a simplified menu. The chain pared down its menu during the pandemic, cutting salads and all-day breakfast. Franchisees are pushing back against many of these items returning to the menu.


----------



## Daniel




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## Daniel

https://www.isabeleats.com/calabacitas-recipe/

Calabacitas (which translates to “little squash” in English) is a Mexican dish made from sauteed zucchini or squash, corn, tomatoes and peppers. It's often served as a side dish, but is substantial enough to be served as a main vegetarian meal alongside some homemade flour tortillas.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

That sounds delicious! Unfortunately, due to a medical condition, I can no longer eat some of the ingredients. 

Corn I can’t eat currently. Not sure about peppers - I haven’t tried those recently.


----------



## gooblax

I don't know if I've ever eaten squash. I've certainly never purchased it. Does it taste/feel the same as zucchini?


----------



## David Baxter PhD

No. There are several varieties of squash and I hate them all. They are sort of like giant versions of zucchini but less tasty.

Even though Zucchini is in the squash family, to me it has a very different taste and texture. One way I like to cook it is sauteed with butter and garlic. Yummy.


----------



## gooblax

I used to hate zucchini because I only knew it mushy and overcooked. It wasn't until my old housemate cooked it properly one time that I realised it could actually be good.


----------



## Daniel

11 Foods That Are Good for Your Liver

Studies have shown that drinking coffee protects the liver from disease, even in those who already have problems with this organ...

 Tea is widely considered to be beneficial for health, but evidence has shown that it may have particular benefits for the liver. One large Japanese study found that drinking 5–10 cups of green tea per day was associated with improved blood markers of liver health.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Drinking coffee is also negatively correlated with a diagnosis of colon cancer, interestingly enough. Of course, lots of coffee drinkers still get colon cancer and in a strange quirk once they do they are advised to limit or curtail coffee drinking because it weakens the effect of chemotherapy.


----------



## Daniel

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/historical-facts-time_n_4832325

Betty White is older than sliced bread.

Sliced bread was introduced in 1928 by inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder. Before this moment, bread was sold in whole loaves as bakers didn't trust sliced bread could stay fresh. Betty White was born in 1922 and spent her early years not eating sliced bread.


----------



## Daniel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Frederick_Rohwedder

In 1933 American bakeries for the first time produced more sliced than unsliced bread loaves.


----------



## Daniel

Buried lakes of liquid water discovered on Mars

_
Mars is a freezing desert today, but billions of years ago, water flowed on the surface._


----------



## Daniel

*Controlling Tobacco [in the US] - A Timeline
*
    1963 – Smoking rates begin to decline shortly before the release in 1964 of the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee report linking cigarettes and lung cancer

    1963 to the present day – Total per capita adult consumption of cigarettes has gone down 70%

    1971 – Cigarette ads are banned from radio and television

    1988 – New Surgeon General's report classifies, for the first time, smoking as an addiction

    1998 – The Masters Settlement Agreement (MSA) awards billions of dollars to state governments as compensation from the tobacco companies for costs associated with smoking-related illnesses

_Source:_ The Challenges of Seniors who Smoke


----------



## Daniel

A spooky story for Halloween month:



> We shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour, which works out to be about 1.5 pounds of skin per year, or 105 pounds of skin by the time you reach age 70! In brief, our skin is actually food to various fungi, bacteria, parasites and worms.
> 
> https://www.meadvilletribune.com/archives/you-do-shed-your-skin-and-its-good-for-you/article_125ee27f-31bf-58c2-892b-d155258174ac.html


----------



## Daniel

9 Restaurant Chains That Closed Hundreds of Locations This Summer


----------



## Daniel

How to watch Mars make its closest approach to Earth until 2035
By Sophie Lewis
October 6, 2020 / 12:33 PM / CBS News

Two full moons aren't the only spectacular celestial events of October. This week, Mars is making its closest approach to Earth until 2035 - and to see it, all skywatchers need to do is look up.

Mars will shine bright all month long, but there are two rare days to watch out for: October 6, when Mars makes its close approach, and October 13, when the red planet is in opposition... 

If you happen to miss this year's close approach, the next one will be December 8, 2022. However, NASA said it will [be] 15 years before Mars looks this amazing again, due to the planets' slightly tilted elliptical orbits and gravitational tugging.

"The Red Planet comes close enough for exceptional viewing only once or twice every 15 or 17 years," the space agency said. The next time Mars is closer to Earth than it is right now will be in 2035...


----------



## Daniel

Looking outside with the naked eye, I wasn't impressed since Mars still looks like a dot


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> Looking outside with the naked eye, I wasn't impressed since Mars still looks like a dot



It is still just a dot. But now it has aspirations of becoming something bigger. Close anonymous associates have said Mars figures if Trump can do it, he can do it.

It's worth noting that Mars has already done a much better job of managing COVID-19 than Trump has, and even better than New Zealand, although the New Zealand PM is clearly much better looking than either Trump or Mars:


----------



## Daniel




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## Daniel




----------



## Daniel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rax_Roast_Beef

Rax Roast Beef is a regional U.S. fast food restaurant chain specializing in roast beef sandwiches. The company is based in Ironton, Ohio. Once a major player in the fast food industry, Rax has extensively scaled down its operations since its peak in the 1980s. Its closest rival in terms of menu offerings is Arby's...

At its peak in the 1980s, the Rax chain had grown to 504 locations in 38 states along with two restaurants in Guatemala, and two restaurants in Canada. The Canadian locations were in Lethbridge and Red Deer, Alberta. During this time, Rax began diversifying its core roast beef sales by adding baked potatoes, pizza and a dinner bar with pasta, Chinese-style food, taco bar, an "Endless Salad Bar", and a dessert bar. Rax began to transform its restaurants from basic restaurant architecture into designs containing wood elements and solariums, with the intention of becoming the "champagne of fast food". This transformation drove away its core working class customers, blurred its core business, and caused profits to plunge for Rax as others took advantage of Rax's techniques and improved on them, as Wendy's did.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Eatons and Sears, among other businesses, made the same errors here in the 80s and 90s. They are both long gone now.

The lesson? Make sure you know your customer demographic and work hard to keep them happy. You don't grow your business by abandoning your customers and hoping you can upgrade to richer, "classier" customers. The old ones will get angry and be happy to leave for somewhere else that appreciates them, and the new ones won't even bother to show up because your history isn't classy enough for them.


----------



## Daniel

How to Do the 'Cat Smile' and Make Cats Fall in Love With You

It’s possible there’s something about the slow blinking itself that is soothing for a feline. Since it’s thought that cats perceive long direct eye contact from others as threatening, for instance, the slow blink sequence may have evolved as a strategy for cats to know that the situation isn’t meant to be tense.


----------



## Daniel

Computer Scientists Break Traveling Salesperson Record
October 8, 2020

When Nathan Klein started graduate school two years ago, his advisers proposed a modest plan: to work together on one of the most famous, long-standing problems in theoretical computer science.

Even if they didn't manage to solve it, they figured, Klein would learn a lot in the process. He went along with the idea. "I didn't know to be intimidated," he said. "I was just a first-year grad student - I don't know what's going on."

Now, in a paper posted online in July, Klein and his advisers at the University of Washington, Anna Karlin and Shayan Oveis Gharan, have finally achieved a goal computer scientists have pursued for nearly half a century: a better way to find approximate solutions to the traveling salesperson problem.

This optimization problem, which seeks the shortest (or least expensive) round trip through a collection of cities, has applications ranging from DNA sequencing to ride-sharing logistics. Over the decades, it has inspired many of the most fundamental advances in computer science, helping to illuminate the power of techniques such as linear programming. But researchers have yet to fully explore its possibilities — and not for want of trying...

While the improvement the researchers established is vanishingly small, computer scientists hope this breakthrough will inspire rapid further progress...


----------



## Daniel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Miss

In the 1950s, the company [Swiss Miss] sold its original hot cocoa product as an onboard beverage to airline passengers. Only after the drink became popular did it sell products in grocery stores.


----------



## gooblax

Now I want some "pudding". Except that's not what we call pudding. That's flavoured custard, like YoGo.


----------



## Daniel

Looked up the Health Star Rating System in Australia and later found this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_paradox

The Australian Paradox is a term coined in 2011 to describe what its proponents say are diverging trends in sugar consumption and obesity rates in Australia. The term was first used in a 2011 study published in Nutrients by Professor Jennie Brand-Miller, in which she and co-author Dr Alan Barclay reported that, in Australia, "a substantial decline in refined sugars intake occurred over the same timeframe that obesity has increased."

...Independent analyses by Australian researchers...also concluded that Australians consumed less added sugars in the years 2011-12 than they did in 1995.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

I bet it's the vegemite.


----------



## Daniel

And, of course, their bodies have evolved to convert sugars to protein to help them heal from daily animal attacks :lol:


----------



## David Baxter PhD

But that may be backfiring. The magpies are still attacking and getting stronger with the added protein from their victims. Same with sharks and baby-eating dingoes.


----------



## Daniel

This was eventually banned by the FDA (apparently in 1934).  

It has dosing instructions even for a one-year old:


----------



## Daniel

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/outrageous-vintage-cigarette-ads/3/



    This 1890 ad for Dr. Batty's Asthma Cigarettes warns against administering them to your kids unless they are at least six years old.

    Credit: Stanford School of Medicine


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> This was eventually banned by the FDA (apparently in 1934).
> 
> It has dosing instructions even for a one-year old:



And it only costs 10 cents. You could hand them out on Halloween!


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/outrageous-vintage-cigarette-ads/3/
> 
> 
> 
> This 1890 ad for Dr. Batty's Asthma Cigarettes warns against administering them to your kids unless they are at least six years old.
> 
> Credit: Stanford School of Medicine



Another great Halloween treat!


----------



## Daniel

Great idea, especially since they are sugar free


----------



## Daniel

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/i-asked-leading-entomologists-what-s-the-smartest-bug-in-the-world

The easiest way to understand an insect’s nervous system is that an insect has many different sub-brains in different parts of its body, which feed into and can be controlled by a slightly larger central brain but can actually also operate separately. The antennae of an insect has its own brain. So does the mouth, the eyes, and each leg. Even if the central brain of an insect stops working, its legs still have their own sub-brains, and can keep walking.


----------



## Daniel

Can we drink the Moon water? Scientists explain

On Monday, NASA scientists announced they had detected molecular water on the Moon, trapped in ice across the lunar surface. From the data, they estimate there is some 40,000 square kilometers (more than 24,000 miles) of water on the Moon...

The Sun never shines on the Moon's poles, and temperatures there can dip to -250 degrees Fahrenheit. These are extreme environments and not very easily accessible.

The new papers reveal that the water sources on the Moon may not just be confined to frigid poles. Rather, the water appears scattered throughout the lunar surface in billions of tiny "cold traps," according to one of the papers released Monday.

One cubic meter of lunar soil likely has enough water to fill a 12-ounce water bottle, Casey Honniball, a postdoctoral researcher at NASA, said at a press conference on Monday.

If we can mine it and purify it, it is quite possible that bottles of Moon water will one day quench the thirst of lunar inhabitants.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> The Sun never shines on the Moon's poles, and temperatures there can dip to -250 degrees Fahrenheit. These are extreme environments and not very easily accessible.



That's even colder than an Ottawa winter.


----------



## Daniel

But it feels warmer than -250F without the Canadian wind chill


----------



## David Baxter PhD

That's true.

We've have arctic air flow coming to Ontario later this week, probably by Sunday if not before...


----------



## Daniel

Fast-food menu items you will never be able to order again - Business Insider

Burger King's heavily-hyped hot dogs quietly disappeared from the menu.

When Burger King rolled out grilled hot dogs in 2016, the chain promised they would be a permanent menu item — despite immediate backlash against the addition.


----------



## Daniel

Discussed on a morning show today:

During the 1918 Pandemic, 'Mask Slackers' Were Labeled as Unpatriotic - HISTORY









Many of the methods Americans used in 1918 to try to prevent the spread of the flu are similar to what people began doing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Close schools. Wear masks. Don't cough or sneeze in someone's face. Avoid large events and hold them outside when possible. And no spitting.

Health and city officials got the word out about these guidelines in all kinds of ways. In Philadelphia, streetcar signs warned "Spit Spreads Death." In New York City, officials enforced no-spitting ordinances and encouraged residents to cough or sneeze into handkerchiefs (a practice that caught on after the pandemic). The city's health department even advised people not to kiss "except through a handkerchief," and wire reports spread the message around the country.

In western states, some cities [including Phoenix] adopted mask ordinances, and officials argued wearing one was a patriotic duty. In October 1918, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a public service announcement telling readers that "The man or woman or child who will not wear a mask now is a dangerous slacker"--a reference to the type of World War I "slacker" who didn't help the war effort. One sign in California threatened, "Wear a Mask or Go to Jail."

*Wear a Mask and Save Your Life!’
*
The PSA in the Chronicle appeared on October 22, just over a week before San Francisco had scheduled its mask ordinance to begin on November 1. It was signed by the mayor, the city’s board of health, the American Red Cross and several other departments and organizations, and it was very clear about its message: “Wear a Mask and Save Your Life!”

For the most part, San Franciscans listened.

“Red Cross headquarters in San Francisco made 5,000 masks available to the public at 11:00 A.M., October 22. By noon it had none,” wrote the late historian Alfred W. Crosby in _America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918_. “By noon the next day Red Cross headquarters had dispensed 40,000 masks. By the twenty-sixth 100,000 had been distributed in the city… In addition, San Franciscans were making thousands for themselves.”

Full article


----------



## Daniel

AAFA Explains: Will Coffee or Caffeinated Drinks Help My Asthma? | Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

Clinical studies have shown that caffeine is a weak bronchodilator, improving lung function for two to four hours after it is consumed. However, it is not as strong or fast acting as rescue bronchodilators like albuterol. This would make it unsafe to use caffeine as an asthma treatment.

Sent from my LM-Q720 using Tapatalk


----------



## David Baxter PhD

*‘Baby Shark’ Is The Most-Viewed YouTube Video Of All Time*
by Rachel Sandler, _Forbes.com_
Nov 2, 2020

After becoming an unexpected smash hit in 2018, the insanely catchy children’s tune _Baby Shark_ on Monday became the most-viewed video on YouTube.



_Baby Shark_ has now garnered 7.04 billion views, beating out Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s global hit _Despacito_*1*.

Though it was originally uploaded in 2016, the song surged in  popularity in 2018, becoming nearly inescapable for families and the  bane of parents everywhere.

At its height in January 2019, the song peaked at No. 32 on the Billboard Hot 100 and even spawned a live concert for kids, Baby Shark Live!

The viral hit’s popularity is somewhat of a mystery, but the  video’s easy dance moves, cute characters and catchy lyrics made for a  particularly wholesome social media challenge, #BabySharkChallenge,  which first went viral in Asia and then spread to the rest of the world.

*Crucial Quote*
  "Without the love and support of fans around the world, Baby Shark's  new record would have been impossible," SmartStudy CEO Min Seok Kim said  in a statement.  "We're very honored by this record and will continue to focus on  delivering high-quality entertainment beyond the digital platforms."

Baby Shark was recorded by South Korean education company Pinkfong, a subsidiary of South Korean giant SmartStudy. No one knows who originally wrote the lyrics, but it originated as a popular summer camp campfire chant that is now believed to be in the public domain.


*1* _Despacito_


----------



## Daniel

IBMs Watson: How the A.I. project to improve cancer treatment went wrong. 

    In the 1960s...IBM spent about 11.5 times its annual earnings to develop its mainframe computer, a line of business that still accounts for much of its profitability today. 

    If it were to make an equivalent investment in Watson, it would need to spend $137 billion. “The only thing it’s spent that much money on is stock buybacks.”


----------



## Daniel

The Dismay of Buddhist Motherhood - Tricycle

Throughout most of human history, infant mortality has been so widespread that well into the 19th century, American parents didn’t name their children until they hit toddlerhood, when the chances for the kid’s survival began to increase.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Sad.

Many Christians even name their still-born babies, partly out of respect and partly a throwback to days when they believed without a name a human being couldn't get into heaven.


----------



## Daniel

Stephenson 2-18 - Wikipedia

Stephenson 2-18 (St2-18), also known as Stephenson 2 DFK 1 or RSGC2-18, is a red supergiant star in the constellation of Scutum. It lies near the open cluster Stephenson 2, which is located around 6,000 parsecs (20,000 ly) away from Earth...

It is among the largest known stars, if not the largest, and one of the most luminous red supergiants, with an estimated radius around 2,150 times that of the Sun, which corresponds to *a volume around 10 billion times bigger than the Sun*. If placed at the center of the Solar System, its photosphere would engulf the orbit of Saturn.


----------



## Daniel

HAL 9000 - Wikipedia

HAL 9000 is a fictional artificial intelligence character and the main antagonist in Arthur C. Clarke's _Space Odyssey_ series. First appearing in the 1968 film _2001: A Space Odyssey_, HAL (Heuristically Programmed ALgorithmic Computer) is a sentient computer (or artificial general intelligence) that controls the systems of the _Discovery One_ spacecraft and interacts with the ship's astronaut crew...

In addition to maintaining the _Discovery One_ spacecraft systems during the interplanetary mission to Jupiter (or Saturn in the novel), HAL is capable of speech, speech recognition, facial recognition, natural language processing, lip reading, art appreciation, interpreting emotional behaviours, automated reasoning, spacecraft piloting and playing chess.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

“I’m sorry. I can’t read that, Dave. Dave? What are you doing Dave?”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


----------



## Daniel

https://www.scmp.com/tech/science-research/article/1943405/human-genetics-more-similar-chickens-you-may-think

"Sixty percent of chicken genes have a human gene counterpart according to the International Chicken Genome Sequencing Consortium."


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Wait... are you calling me a chicken?


----------



## Daniel

They can't fly very far, so they are semi-human in that way 

And they like McDonald's french fries 



David Baxter said:


> Wait... are you calling me a chicken?


No comment


----------



## Daniel

Who Didn’t Say That? Ten Surprising Misattributed Quotations

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” —Virginia Woolf

I found this quotation on several websites and thought it would fit perfectly at the beginning of one of the chapters in _How to Wake Up_. But when I went to check its accuracy, it turned out to be words that author Michael Cunningham had put into Virginia Woolf’s mouth in his book, _The Hours_. Then he had Nicole Kidman speak them in the movie of the same name when she played Woolf. Those words are now commonly attributed to Woolf, but she never said them.


----------



## Daniel

Portuguese Water Dog - Wikipedia

The Portuguese Water Dog is a breed of dog. It is classified as a working dog by the American Kennel Club. Portuguese Water Dogs are originally from the Portuguese region of the Algarve, from where the breed expanded to all around Portugal's coast, where they were taught to herd fish into fishermen's nets, retrieve lost tackle or broken nets, and act as couriers from ship to ship, or ship to shore.


----------



## Daniel

Sneaky ways dollar stores get you to spend more money - Business Insider

 In the US, a new dollar store opens, on average, every six hours.


----------



## Daniel

Aerospace psychology - Wikipedia

Aerospace psychology is a branch of [psychology] that studies psychological aspects of aviation, increasing efficiency improving selection of applicants for occupations, identification of psychological causes of aircraft accidents, and application of cognitive psychology to understand human behaviors, actions, cognitive and emotional processes in aviation, and interaction between employees...

_The International Journal of Aerospace Psychology_ (2017 - current), formerly known as _The International Journal of Aviation Psychology_ (1900-2016) is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research on the "development and management of efficient aviation systems from the standpoint of the human operators." It integrates disciplines of engineering and computer science, psychology, education, and physiology.


----------



## Daniel

In Defense of the Bagel 

The origin of the word bagel is ultimately unclear, but many agree that it comes from the Yiddish word 'beigen,' to bend.


----------



## Daniel

41 Cat Facts - Michelson Found Animals Foundation

The first cat video was recorded in 1894.

Rumor has it that Bill Clinton's cat, Socks, received more letters than the President himself.

One litter of kittens can have multiple fathers.

Cats like to groom other cats and humans. This is called allogrooming.


----------



## Daniel

An ancient version of McDonald's:

Thermopolium - Wikipedia

 


In the ancient Greco-Roman world, a thermopolium (plural thermopolia), from Greek θερμοπώλιον (thermopōlion), i.e. cook-shop, literally "a place where (something) hot is sold", was a commercial establishment where it was possible to purchase ready-to-eat food...

The forerunner of today's restaurant, the items served at the thermopolia are sometimes compared to modern fast food. These places were mainly used by those who simply could not afford a private kitchen, often inhabitants of insulae, sometimes leading them to be scorned by the upper class...

Another Pompeian thermopolium was completely unearthed in 2020 that contains eight dolia. In addition to frescoes reflecting foods available, one fresco depicts a dog with a collar on a leash which is believed to be a reminder for customers to leash their pets.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> An ancient version of McDonald's:
> 
> Another Pompeian thermopolium was completely unearthed in 2020 that contains eight dolia.



Pompeian: That will be 10 dolia please.

Me: Oh no. I only have 8 dolia!



Daniel said:


> In addition to frescoes reflecting foods available, one fresco depicts a dog with a collar on a leash which is believed to be a reminder for customers to leash their pets.



Or it could be the menu...


----------



## David Baxter PhD




----------



## Daniel

Moved to You know you're old when...


----------



## Daniel

Many definitions for the word "see":



> What is another word for see? | See Synonyms - WordHippo Thesaurus
> 
> *Verb*
> 
> To perceive with one's eyes
> To be a spectator of
> To understand based on information provided
> To find out through discovery
> To find out by making inquiries
> To think over something
> To ensure that something happens
> To form a mental picture of, or to predict
> To understand through experience
> To have an awareness of something
> To meet by arrangement
> To meet by chance
> To consult a professional as a client
> To consult with a client as a professional
> To escort or conduct someone to someplace
> To visit a person or place
> To deem to be
> To be the setting or time of
> (see over) To inspect or scrutinize
> (rare, usually used in present participle form "seeing") To be in a romantic or non-platonic relationship with
> To refer to a section of a document
> To come into awareness of
> To consider or regard somebody or something as
> (of a meeting or seminar) To manage or preside over
> To tell about in advance
> Give it some thought
> Spend time with
> Squeeze in
> To view by spending time in, usually as part of a holiday or vacation
> To urge to remember or take care to do something
> To feel about or regard something
> To discuss, converse, or exchange viewpoints on a particular matter
> To pay attention to, or take notice of
> *Noun
> *
> A region or office of a church
> Head of catholic church
> *Interjection
> *
> Look, see, behold (in an imperative sense)


----------



## Daniel

'Third World' Is An Offensive Term. Here's Why : Goats and Soda : NPR

...When you think about it, "developing countries" are quite developed in some respects. In countries where government safety nets are practically nonexistent, people step forward to help out, says Mead Over, a senior fellow emeritus at the Center for Global Development. "People donate money at a funeral to help the bereaved family, or people receive gifts from a neighbor to pay the doctor in a time of family emergency." We in the West, he says, often neglect social networks "and they wither away."

The pandemic has thrown these disparities into sharp relief. NPR published a story this summer with the headline: "Why Rwanda Is Doing Better Than Ohio When It Comes To Controlling COVID-19."

In July, when the story ran, the country of 12 million had recorded just over 1,500 cases. Ohio, with a similar size population, was then reporting roughly 1,200 cases a day.

Our correspondent, Jason Beaubien, wrote: "Despite being classified by the World Bank as a low-income country, and despite its limited resources, Rwanda has vowed to identify every coronavirus case. Anyone who tests positive is immediately quarantined at a dedicated COVID-19 clinic. Any contacts of that case who are deemed at high risk are also quarantined, either at a clinic or at home, until they can be tested."


----------



## David Baxter PhD

I read that story about Rwanda and it struck me that the author is right. We in the so-called "developed" or "first world" countries may have gained a lot through technology but we've lost a lot along the way too. You still find those values and behaviors in small rural communities but in urban centers they have largely disappeared.


----------



## Daniel

That reminds me of the people obsessed about AI in the future, like the singularity people. 

One sociological idea related to global warming is that in the not-so-distant future, things may be worse for the poor and even middle class.  In my favorite dystopian movie, the rich people have their own environmental havens while everyone else is worse off than we are now:

ELYSIUM - Official Trailer (HD) - YouTube

In any case, it's a great subject for sci-fi.


----------



## Daniel

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/15/uk-man-makes-last-ditch-effort-to-recover-lost-bitcoin-hard-drive.html


----------



## Daniel

Diet drink - Wikipedia

[In] 1963, Dr Pepper released a diet version of its own soft drink, "Dietetic Dr. Pepper" (later renamed to Sugar Free Dr. Pepper, then Diet Dr. Pepper), although it sold slowly due to the misconception that it was meant solely for diabetic consumption.


----------



## Daniel

Property Transfers to Caregivers: A Comparative Analysis
					


By Adam S. Hofri-Winogradow, Richard L. Kaplan




					ilr.law.uiowa.edu
				




In the United States, approximately 80% of the long-term care received by older Americans is provided by informal caregivers, generally family members, constituting an estimated value of $470 billion in 2013.

The 2011 U.K. Census showed that out of a population of 63.2 million people, 6.5 million functioned as caregivers.


----------



## Daniel

Just read that the very nice OCD expert I once saw years ago for an evaluation was a co-founder of the International OCD Foundation:



> Wayne Goodman - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Wayne Goodman* is an American psychiatrist and researcher who specializes in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He is the principal developer, along with his colleagues, of the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), which is considered to be the gold standard for assessing OCD...
> 
> Goodman was one of the first investigators to test and establish the efficacy of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) in OCD and show their comparative advantage over other antidepressant medications.[12] He also developed the use of adjunctive antipsychotic medications in SSRI-resistant OCD and found that patients with comorbid tic disorders are most likely to respond to this combination...
> 
> In 1986, Goodman co-founded the nonprofit OCD Foundation (now named the International OCD Foundation)...


----------



## Daniel

Shifts in Intended and Unintended Pregnancies in the United States, 2001–2008
					


Objectives. We monitored trends in pregnancy by intendedness and outcomes of unintended pregnancies nationally and for key subgroups between 2001 and 2008.Methods. Data on pregnancy intentions from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) and a nationally ...





					www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
				




In 2008, 51% of pregnancies in the United States were unintended, and the unintended pregnancy rate was 54 per 1000 women ages 15 to 44 years. Between 2001 and 2008, intended pregnancies decreased and unintended pregnancies increased, a shift previously unobserved.


----------



## Daniel

An ancient thirst for beer may have inspired agriculture, Stanford archaeologists say
		


"Stanford researchers have found the oldest archaeological evidence of beer brewing, a discovery that supports the hypothesis that in some regions, beer may have been an underlying motivation to cultivate cereals."


----------



## David Baxter PhD

So if it weren't for beer, there would be no farmers? Interesting.

Also, if it weren't for beer, there would be no Australia.


----------



## Daniel

Pineal gland - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




"Most of Descartes's basic anatomical and physiological assumptions were totally mistaken, not only by modern standards, but also in light of what was already known in his time."


----------



## Daniel

Why aren’t animals with larger brains more intelligent than us? | BBC Science Focus Magazine
					


Bigger isn’t always better. Sometimes how you use it is more important than what you’ve got.




					www.sciencefocus.com
				




Brain structure is more important than brain size, and human brains with their highly folded and complicated cortex can do things no other brains can...

The ratio of brain weight to body weight is about 1:5000 for fish, 1:220 for birds and 1:180 for mammals, with the most intelligent species generally having the highest ratio. For example magpies and crows have a higher ratio than most birds, and social mammals such as chimpanzees and dolphins have a higher ratio than other mammals. The human ratio is highest at about 1:50.


----------



## Daniel

Another fun fact for future, post-COVID parties  






						Probabilities for the two dice
					


Probabilities for the two dice




					statweb.stanford.edu
				







Total​Number of combinations​Probability​2​1​2.78%​3​2​5.56%​4​3​8.33%​5​4​11.11%​6​5​13.89%​7​6​16.67%​8​5​13.89%​9​4​11.11%​10​3​8.33%​11​2​5.56%​12​1​2.78%​Total​36​100​


----------



## Daniel




----------



## Daniel

Oceanic feeling - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				



Freud discusses the feeling in his _Future of an Illusion_ (1927) and _Civilization and Its Discontents_ (1929). There he deems it a fragmentary vestige of a kind of consciousness possessed by an infant who has not yet differentiated himself or herself from other people and things.


----------



## Daniel

Karl Jaspers - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Not unlike Freud, Jaspers studied patients in detail, giving biographical information about the patients as well as notes on how the patients themselves felt about their symptoms. This has become known as the _biographical method_ and now forms a mainstay of psychiatric and above all psychotherapeutic practice.

Jaspers set down his views on mental illness in a book which he published in 1913, _General Psychopathology_.[1] This work has become a classic in the psychiatric literature and many modern diagnostic criteria stem from ideas found within it. One of Jaspers' central tenets was that psychiatrists should diagnose symptoms of mental illness (particularly of psychosis) by their _form_ rather than by their _content_. For example, in diagnosing a hallucination, it is more important to note that a person experiences visual phenomena when no sensory stimuli account for them, than to note what the patient sees. What the patient sees is the "content", but the discrepancy between visual perception and objective reality is the "form".


----------



## David Baxter PhD

I did not know this until today. I didn't know about St. Gertrude and I didn't even know there was a patron saint of cats.


----------



## Daniel

Professional degrees of public health - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Most hospital systems have MPH public health staff to study disease trends and help to combat hospital-acquired infections (nosocomial infections) and immediately determine epidemiologic trends, for example, flu outbreak tendencies, etc.


----------



## Daniel

Another paper with an interesting title:



> Visualizing cat GPS data: a study of user requirements​
> Current GPS devices and the supporting interfaces and visualizations are usually created with a focus on dog owners. To acquire more insight into the needs of cat owners in relation to GPS devices for domestic cats, an iterative prototype-based study was conducted...
> 
> The most important requirements for a cat owner-centered GPS visualization were being able to request the live location and being alerted if the cat might be in trouble.


----------



## Daniel




----------



## Daniel

In trivia since the studies about tai chi are so small:









						Qi Gong and Tai Chi improve the lives of cancer survivors
					


Tai Chi, an ancient Chinese martial art, is comprised of slow and graceful movements. Its popularity has grown as millions of people have improved their health by learning and





					www.theunion.com
				




“In a study of 23 U.S. women with mild to moderate cognitive impairment a year or more after chemotherapy, taking a 60-minute Tai Chi class twice a week for 10 weeks resulted in improved immediate memory, delayed memory, verbal fluency, attention and executive function.”



In any case, one day I may become a moonlighting tai chi instructor for assisted living communities


----------



## Daniel

Sounding board - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




A *sounding board*, also known as a *tester* and *abat-voix*, is a structure placed above and sometimes also behind a pulpit or other speaking platforms that helps to project the sound of the speaker. It is usually made of wood...

Sounding board may also be used figuratively to describe a person who listens to a speech or proposal in order that the speaker may rehearse or explore the proposition more fully.[2] The term is also used inter-personally to describe one person listening to another, and especially to their ideas. When a person listens and responds with comments, they provide a perspective that otherwise would not be available through introspection or thought alone.


----------



## Daniel

_Present Future: Business, Science, and the Deep Tech Revolution_


----------



## Daniel

Lawrence Welk - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




To make Welk's "Champagne Music" tagline visual, the production crew engineered a "bubble machine" that spouted streams of large bubbles across the bandstand. While the bubble machine was originally engineered to produce soap bubbles, complaints from the band members about soapy build-ups on their instruments led to the machine being re-worked to produce glycerine bubbles instead.


----------



## Daniel

How the Rich Get Richer
					






					blogs.imf.org
				




Why do rich people earn high returns? Conventional wisdom suggests that richer individuals put more of their assets toward high risk investments, which can result in higher returns. But our research finds that wealthy people often earn a higher return even on more conservative investments. Richer individuals enjoy pure “returns to scale” to their wealth. Specifically, for given portfolio allocation, individuals who are wealthier are more likely to get higher risk-adjusted returns, possibly because they have access to exclusive investment opportunities or better wealth managers.


----------



## Daniel

Pay what you can - Wikipedia
					







					en.m.wikipedia.org


----------



## Daniel

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/disases/12792-sciatica

About 40% of people in the U.S. experience sciatica sometime during their life. Back pain is the third most common reason people visit their healthcare provider.


----------



## Daniel

Albert Einstein, The Human Side
					


Modesty, humor, compassion, and wisdom are the traits most evident in this illuminating selection of personal papers from the Albert Einstein Archives. The illustrious physicist wrote as thoughtfully to an Ohio fifth-grader, distressed by her discovery that scientists classify humans as animals...




					www.google.com


----------



## Daniel

Programming languages used in most popular websites - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Daniel

Dan Aykroyd - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Aykroyd was born on July 1, 1952 (Canada Day) at The Ottawa Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada...

Since childhood, Aykroyd has struggled with symptoms of Tourette's syndrome and Asperger's syndrome...

Aykroyd's eccentric talent was recognized by others in the highly competitive _SNL_ environment; when he first presented his famous "Super Bass-O-Matic '76" sketch, a fake TV commercial in which a garish, hyper-pitchman touts a food blender that turns an entire bass into liquid pulp, "to [other writers and cast members] the 'Bass-O-Matic' was so exhilaratingly strange that many remember sitting and listening, open-mouthed ... Nobody felt jealous of it because they couldn't imagine writing anything remotely like it."
---


----------



## Daniel

BLT - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




In 2019 the BLT dropped rank and was voted the sixth most popular sandwich in the US, with grilled cheese taking the lead as the most popular sandwich in the US.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

I will only accept this if it's grilled cheese and bacon.


----------



## gooblax

We're getting into bad joke territory here... What sandwich is a counselor's favourite? The Cheese, Bacon and Tomato (CBT).


----------



## David Baxter PhD

We can never have too many puns, @gooblax.


----------



## Daniel

And don't forget that blue cheese can prevent bacon from being too overpowering:






						Recipes Archive - Campbell Soup Company
					







					www.campbells.com


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Blue cheese? 

Davids HATE blue cheese. It's one of the things that makes us Davids and keeps us alive. 

Strict rules for food:

No mouldy bread. 
No mouldy fruit. 
No mouldy cheese.
No green meat or meat that smells funny.
Nothing past it's Best Before date.
No pre-processed salads in bags.
Nothing that smells or tastes like sour milk.
No road kill.
Disclaimer: This is not an exhaustive list. It may be an exhausting list, however, depending on time of day.


----------



## Daniel

I prefer reduced-fat blue cheese so I can taste the mold better


----------



## Daniel

Academics Write Papers Arguing Over How Many People Read (And Cite) Their Papers
					


Studies about reading studies go back more than two decades





					www.smithsonianmag.com
				




There are a lot of scientific papers out there. One estimate puts the count at 1.8 million articles published each year, in about 28,000 journals. Who actually reads those papers? According to one 2007 study, not many people: *half of academic papers are read only by their authors and journal editors*, the study's authors write.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

...and other scientists trying to replicate the findings or using them as citations to support their own research grants or publications.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

*All Pagan Loot*​tMaiSy poeoauns3 otratcedu 8ud:r2tl8id AsMc  · 

FACTS OF THE DAY ....

Cucumbers... I didn't know this... and to think all these years I've only been making salads with the cucumbers...

1.  Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.

2. Feeling tired in the afternoon, put down the caffeinated soda and pick up a  cucumber. Cucumbers are a good source of B vitamins and Carbohydrates that can provide that quick pick-me-up that can last for hours.

3. Tired of your bathroom mirror fogging up after a shower? Try rubbing a cucumber slice along the mirror, it will eliminate the fog and provide a soothing, spa-like fragrance.

4. Are grubs and slugs ruining your planting beds? Place a few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long. The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminum to give off a scent undetectable to humans but drive garden pests crazy and make them flee the area.

5.  Looking for a fast and easy way to remove cellulite before going out or to the pool? Try rubbing a slice or two of cucumbers along your problem area for a few minutes, the phytochemicals in the cucumber cause the collagen in your skin to tighten, firming up the outer layer and reducing the visibility of cellulite. Works great on wrinkles too!!!

6. Want to avoid a hangover or terrible headache? Eat a few cucumber slices before going to bed and wake up refreshed and headache free. Cucumbers contain enough sugar, B vitamins and electrolytes to replenish essential nutrients the body lost, keeping everything in equilibrium, avoiding both a hangover and headache!!

7. Looking to fight off that afternoon or evening snacking binge? Cucumbers have been used for centuries and often used by European trappers, traders and explores for quick meals to thwart off starvation.

8. Have an important meeting or job interview and you realize that you don't have enough time to polish your shoes? Rub a freshly cut cucumber over the shoe, its chemicals will provide a quick and durable shine that not only looks great but also repels water.

9. Out of WD 40 and need to fix a squeaky hinge? Take a cucumber slice and rub it along the problematic hinge, and voila, the squeak is gone!

10. Stressed out and don't have time for massage, facial or visit to the spa? Cut up an entire cucumber and  place it in a boiling pot of water, the chemicals and nutrients from the cucumber will react with the boiling water and be released in the steam, creating a soothing, relaxing aroma that has been shown the reduce stress in new mothers and college students during final exams.

11. Just finish a business lunch and realize you don't have gum or mints? Take a slice of cucumber and press it to the roof of your mouth with your tongue for 30 seconds to eliminate bad breath, the phytochemicals will kill the bacteria in your mouth responsible for causing bad breath.

12. Looking for a 'green' way to clean your taps, sinks or stainless steel? Take a slice of cucumber and rub it on the surface you want to clean, not only will it remove years of tarnish and bring back the shine, but is won't leave streaks and won't harm you fingers or fingernails while you clean.

13.  Using a pen and made a mistake? Take the outside of the cucumber and slowly use it to erase the pen writing, also works great on crayons and markers that the kids have used to decorate the walls!!


----------



## Daniel

Cool!   Also helps hydrate chickens in the summer


----------



## Daniel

Sententia - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




_*Sententiae*_, the nominative plural of the Latin word _sententia_, are brief moral sayings, such as proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, or apophthegms taken from ancient or popular or other sources, often quoted without context. _*Sententia*_, the nominative singular, also called a "sentence", is a kind of rhetorical proof. Through the invocation of a proverb, quotation, or witty  turn of phrase during a presentation or conversation one may be able to gain the assent of the listener, who will hear a kind of non-logical, but agreed-upon "truth" in what you are saying. *An example of this is the phrase "age is better with wine" playing off of the adage "wine is better with age".*


----------



## Daniel

List of eponymous laws - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Daniel

Which are smarter, cats or dogs? We asked a scientist
					


Are cats smarter? Or are dogs? When scientists counted the brain cells in these animals, there was a clear winner. But the latest research on animal intelligence challenges all of the old-school notions of what it means to be smart.





					www.pbs.org
				




Dogs possess about 530 million neurons in the cortex, while cats have about 250 million. For perspective, the human cortex contains 16 billion neurons...

Bears had the same number of neurons in their cortex as cats.









						Are Dogs Smarter Than Cats? Science Has an Answer
					


A team of researchers counted the number of neurons in dog and cat brains and found one had twice as many as the other.





					www.nationalgeographic.com
				




Among our closest cousins, orangutans and gorillas have about eight to nine billion neurons, while chimpanzees have about six to seven billion neurons.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Of course, it's not just the number of neurons that matters. It's how they are organized. For example, I would guess that dogs have a lot of their neurons specialized for hearing, olfactory  senses, and motor functions. That gives them abilities in those three areas that are more developed than in some other species but it doesn't necessarily make them smarter. Also, when talking about dogs I think you need to discuss some breeds differently than others: does a teacup poodle have the same brain as a German Shepherd or Golden Retriever? What about a bloodhound?


----------



## Daniel

And dogs often eat cat poop, which is not a sign of intelligence.   Something to remember when I see a vet bill for hundreds of dollars


----------



## Daniel

Peptide nucleic acid - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




It has been hypothesized that the earliest life on Earth may have used PNA as a genetic material due to its extreme robustness, simpler formation, and possible spontaneous polymerization at 100 °C[11] (while water at standard pressure boils at this temperature, water at high pressure—as in deep ocean—boils at higher temperatures). If this is so, life evolved to a DNA/RNA-based system only at a later stage.[12][13] Evidence for this PNA world hypothesis is, however, far from conclusive.[14] If it existed though, it must have preceded the widely accepted RNA world.


----------



## Daniel

Domestication of the dog - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




"For most of human history, we're not dissimilar to any other wild primate. We're manipulating our environments, but not on a scale bigger than, say, a herd of African elephants. And then, we go into partnership with this group of wolves. They altered our relationship with the natural world."  — Greger Larson

With wolves digging dens long before humans constructed huts it is not clear who domesticated whom.[66][62][91]


----------



## Daniel

[noparse]https://www.figure1.com/post/the-be...-according-to-17-428-healthcare-professionals[/noparse]   _Link not found ~ admin_

Patients receive the best care in the emergency room between 6 a.m. and noon, according to an exclusive poll of healthcare professionals around the world.


----------



## Daniel

More homelessness in Australia, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands than in the US, China, India, or Brazil (per capita):









						List of sovereign states by homeless population - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				






> It is estimated that 150 million people are homeless worldwide. Habitat for Humanity estimated in 2015 that 1.6 billion people around the world live in "inadequate shelter".
> 
> This is a list of countries (not all 195) by the homeless population present on any given night. *Different countries often use different definitions of homelessness, making direct comparisons of numbers complicated.*


----------



## Daniel

Homelessness in China - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Homelessness among people with mental health problems is 'much less common' in China than in high-income countries, due to stronger family ties, but is increasing due to migration within families and as a result of the one-child policy. A study in Xiangtan found at least 2439 schizophrenic people that have been homeless on a total population of 2.8 million. It was found that "homelessness was more common in individuals from rural communities (where social support services are limited), among those who wander away from their communities (i.e., those not from Xiangtan municipality), and among those with limited education (who are less able to mobilize social supports). Homelessness was also associated with greater age; [the cause] may be that older patients have ‘burned their bridges’ with relatives and, thus, end up on the streets."


----------



## Daniel

Melanie Klein - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




While Freud's ideas concerning children mostly came from working with adult patients, Klein was innovative in working directly with children, often as young as two years old. Klein saw children's play as their primary mode of emotional communication. While observing children play with toys such as dolls, animals, plasticine, pencil and paper, Klein documented their activities and interactions, then attempted to interpret the unconscious meaning behind their play. Following Freud she emphasized the significant role that parental figures played in the child's fantasy life, and considered that the timing of Freud's Oedipus complex was incorrect. Contradicting Freud, she concluded that the superego was present from birth.

After exploring ultra-aggressive fantasies of hate, envy, and greed in very young and disturbed children, Melanie Klein proposed a model of the human psyche that linked significant oscillations of state, with the postulated Eros or Thanatos pulsations. She named the state of the psyche in which the sustaining principle of life is in domination the depressive position. This is considered by many to be her great contribution to psychoanalytic thought. She later developed her ideas about an earlier developmental psychological state corresponding to the disintegrating tendency of life, which she called the paranoid-schizoid position.


----------



## Daniel

Homo heidelbergensis
					







					humanorigins.si.edu
				




*Discovery Date:* 1908

*Where Lived:* Europe; possibly Asia (China); Africa (eastern and southern)

*When Lived:* About 700,000 to 200,000 years ago

This early human species had a very large browridge, and a larger braincase and flatter face than older early human species. It was the first early human species to live in colder climates; their short, wide bodies were likely an adaptation to conserving heat. It lived at the time of the oldest definite control of fire and use of wooden spears, and it was the first early human species to routinely hunt large animals. This early human also broke new ground; it was the first species to build shelters, creating simple dwellings out of wood and rock...

Comparison of Neanderthal and modern human DNA suggests that the two lineages diverged from a common ancestor, most likely _Homo heidelbergensis_, sometime between 350,000 and 400,000 years ago – with the European branch leading to _H. neanderthalensis_ and the African branch (sometimes called _Homo rhodesiensis_) to _H. sapiens_.


----------



## Daniel

Genes Linked to Self-Awareness in Modern Humans Were Less Common in Neandertals
					


Brain networks for memory and planning may have set us apart from Neandertals—and chimps





					www.scientificamerican.com
				




In part, thanks to self-awareness, we can summon autobiographical memories, go on mental journeys to the past and future, and make predictions based on knowledge that lets us devise innovative plans. A conscious awareness of who we are gives us the ability to tell ourselves apart from others and put ourselves in their shoes. In short, it enables us to be creative in our thinking.


----------



## Daniel

Christmas truce - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Although the popular tendency has been to see the December 1914 Christmas Truces as unique and of romantic rather than political significance, they have also been interpreted as part of the widespread spirit of non-co-operation with the war.[63] In his book on trench warfare, Tony Ashworth described the 'live and let live system'. Complicated local truces and agreements not to fire at each other were negotiated by men along the front throughout the war. These often began with agreement not to attack each other at tea, meal or washing times. In some places tacit agreements became so common that sections of the front would see few casualties for extended periods of time. This system, Ashworth argues, 'gave soldiers some control over the conditions of their existence'.[64] The December 1914 Christmas Truces then can be seen as not unique, but as the most dramatic example of spirit of non-co-operation with the war that included refusal to fight, unofficial truces, mutinies, strikes, and peace protests.


----------



## Daniel

Vincent Van Gogh Was Likely a Synesthete
					


René D. Quiñones finds cross-sensory evidence in a Van Gogh letter





					www.psychologytoday.com
				




Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime and died at the age of 37, before he would see any success. His mother threw away crates filled with his work but did live long enough to possibly regret it as he was ultimately hailed as a genius. He is now considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt.


----------



## Daniel

Daniel said:


> Melanie Klein - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> While Freud's ideas concerning children mostly came from working with adult patients, Klein was innovative in working directly with children, often as young as two years old. Klein saw children's play as their primary mode of emotional communication. While observing children play with toys such as dolls, animals, plasticine, pencil and paper, Klein documented their activities and interactions, then attempted to interpret the unconscious meaning behind their play. Following Freud she emphasized the significant role that parental figures played in the child's fantasy life, and considered that the timing of Freud's Oedipus complex was incorrect. Contradicting Freud, she concluded that the superego was present from birth.
> 
> After exploring ultra-aggressive fantasies of hate, envy, and greed in very young and disturbed children, Melanie Klein proposed a model of the human psyche that linked significant oscillations of state, with the postulated Eros or Thanatos pulsations. She named the state of the psyche in which the sustaining principle of life is in domination the depressive position. This is considered by many to be her great contribution to psychoanalytic thought. She later developed her ideas about an earlier developmental psychological state corresponding to the disintegrating tendency of life, which she called the paranoid-schizoid position.





			The Melancholic Existentialism of Ernest Becker
		


But while the bad part-object certainly exists, so also does the good part-object. When splitting is overcome and ambivalence (Klein's misnamed "depressive position") achieved, when the forces of love (_Eros_) are dominant over the forces of envy and hate (_Thanatos_), these part-objects are integrated into a whole, creatively repaired, good object.  Confidence in one's capacity to love and make reparation for one's hatred and destructiveness establishes this whole good object, identification with which makes possible an equally holistic and integrated sense of self.  *Though "fallen" and "broken" and perpetually falling back into paranoid-schizoid dynamics, the self comes to be experienced as capable of repairing and of being reparable and, hence, as fundamentally good.  *Here is the basis for an attitude of basic trust in the goodness of existence and of the self.  This is the essence of a mature faith and is no illusion.


----------



## Daniel

FBI–King suicide letter - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




The *FBI–King suicide letter* or *blackmail package* was an anonymous 1964 letter and package by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) meant to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr.[1] The suicide letter was part of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation against King.


----------



## Daniel

9 Helpful Cooking Tips Straight from Food Scientists
					


How’s your culinary chemistry?





					getpocket.com
				



Add a pinch of salt to your morning coffee [grounds] to make it taste less bitter.​
This tip, straight from celebrity food nerd *Alton Brown*, comes from an old 2010 _Good Eats_ clip in which Brown shares his tips for making the perfect cup of coffee. His trick? Adding 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt for every six tablespoons of coffee grounds he uses. *“Not only does salt cut the bitterness of coffee, but it also smooths out the ‘stale’ taste of tank-stored water,”* says Brown. “*I’ve taken to adding a quarter teaspoon of kosher salt to every six tablespoons of grounds.”*


----------



## David Baxter PhD

That suggestion has been around for decades. I never found that it made any difference at all to the taste of the coffee (neither better nor worse). But it is a great way to add even more salt to your diet, which for most people already contains too much salt, and thereby to increase your risk for heart attacks and strokes.


----------



## Daniel

Octopus MDMA Study Brings Light to the Evolution of Social Behavior
					


“They just embraced with multiple arms.”





					getpocket.com
				




Serotonin — believed to help regulate mood, social behavior, sleep, and sexual desire — is an ancient neurotransmitter that’s shared across vertebrate and invertebrate species.


----------



## Daniel

COVID Changed Our Relationship to Busyness. Can We Keep It That Way?
					


A life of leisure was once the aspiration of the upper class. But now, bragging about busyness is how people indicate their status. Could a pandemic change the way busyness is glorified?





					www.vice.com
				




In 1840, it was briefly cool to walk a turtle on a string around the Parisian arcades. “You did that to signal time abundance, to signal quite how little you did or how much leisure you had, because that was a sign of status,” said Tony Crabbe, a business psychologist and the author of _Busy: How to Thrive in a World of Too Much_.


----------



## Daniel

The above reminds me of the TV show _Keeping Up Appearances_. The wife tells her husband that he should look happy when gardening so people will think he is gardening for the pleasure (and not because he can't afford a gardener).


----------



## Daniel

Ever Wonder How Wild Birds Keep Warm in the Winter?
					


Do birds get cold? How do birds keep warm in winter? Learn how wild birds heat up and how to help them beat the cold.





					www.thespruce.com
				




Torpor is most common in smaller bird species in areas where food supplies can be unpredictable and nighttime conditions can be extreme. It is most common for birds using torpor to remain in their territories year-round, rather than migrating to areas with more food and more mild climates, but many different birds will use torpor for different conditions. Bird species that regularly use torpor include:

Hummingbirds
Poorwills
Frogmouths
Swifts
Nighthawks
Doves
Chickadees
Roadrunners
In addition to birds, several animals are known to enter torpid states under different conditions. Bats, mice, hedgehogs and other rodents and small marsupials commonly use torpor.


----------



## Daniel

Italian Foods No One Eats In Italy — Eat This Not That
					


So about all those "Italian" dishes you know and love? Sorry, but you can't order them in Italy, as the meals are actually American!





					www.eatthis.com
				




The red sauce you've been dumping onto your pasta and pizza is _very_ different from any kind of sauce you'll find on your Eurotrip.

Marinara sauce is tomato-heavy and, while tomatoes are on our list of foods you should eat every day, *traditional Italian sauces are light on the tomato and heavy on other ingredients like olive oil and herbs*. The result is a lighter dish with a more delicate flavor. If you can bear to part with your beloved marinara sauce, try ordering pasta "al Pomodoro" or spaghetti "alla puttanesca" to go authentic.


----------



## Daniel

The Elusive Story of the Bread-and-Butter Pickle Sandwich

One of the first recorded uses of the phrase “bread and butter pickles” can be traced back to 1923, when Omar and Cora Fanning of Illinois registered for a trademark (since expired) on the logo for their family pickles. According to a 1996 issue of the Feingold News, “Mrs. Fanning worked out an agreement with a local grocer, who gave her groceries—including bread ‘n butter—in exchange for the pickles.”


----------



## Daniel

Why Do People in the UK Drive on the Left Side of the Road?
					


The answer may surprise you.





					www.mentalfloss.com
				




Just why do Brits drive on the opposite side of the road from most other countries?

The practice far predates cars, according to _The Telegraph_. In fact, it goes back to the Middle Ages. In ye olden days, when traveling down a highway put you at risk of being attacked or robbed, traveling on the left was a matter of safety. Since most people were (and still are) right-handed, passing on the left meant leaving your sword-hand free to take on any challengers. Whether on foot, horseback, or in a carriage, you needed to be able to whip out your lance, sword, pitchfork, or staff in response to a threat—and quickly.


----------



## Daniel

Why Are People Getting Worse at “The Price Is Right”?
					


The typical guess is much worse today than it was in the 1970s. It could be because people don't really need to keep track of prices anymore.





					getpocket.com
				




There are 50 times as many products at a grocery store than 80 years ago.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

They're not necessarily new food items though. Today's grocery "superstores" sell housewares, clothing, hardware... you name it and they've got it.


----------



## Daniel

Shocking, even for greedy Amazon:









						Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ilhan Omar Call on OSHA to release Amazon’s injury records
					


In the wake of Reveal’s investigation, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ilhan Omar say producing the data “should be quick and easy.”





					revealnews.org


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Wow.

1. Even the lowest rates at 4 per 100 workers getting serious injuries is really bad.

2. Why the big disparities in differenty regions though, I wonder?


----------



## Daniel

I don't know, but one pamphlet for Amazon workers stated that a single employee may lift a total of up to 20,000 pounds in a single shift (more than 30 pounds per minute for a 10-hour shift).


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Wow.


----------



## gooblax

Those numbers are disgusting. We used to have our company's lost time due to injury statistic communicated on a fairly routine basis but with all the changes I hadn't seen it in a couple of years so I had to go digging. I found it for international parts of the company including our parent company division (which includes our statistics), but it's reported based on a number per million  hours worked rather than employee numbers. So I can't make a direct comparison, nor can I publish what our figure is on the internet... But it seems a lot better than those Amazon figures.

We do have a discrepancy between different parts of the business too which is interesting, but I'd have to go digging into reasons (eg. maybe one division does a lot more painting than another as part of production, which means different hazchem exposure rates).


----------



## Daniel

The Corporation (2003 film) - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




_*The Corporation*_ is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the modern-day corporation. Bakan wrote the book, _The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power_, during the filming of the documentary.

A sequel film, _The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel_, was released in 2020.


----------



## Daniel

United States Camel Corps - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




The *United States Camel Corps*  was a mid-19th-century experiment by the United States Army in using camels as pack animals in the Southwestern United States. While the camels proved to be hardy and well suited to travel through the region, the Army declined to adopt them for military use. The Civil War interfered with the experiment and it was eventually abandoned; the animals were sold at auction.


----------



## Daniel

'WE ALL QUIT': Local Burger King sign goes viral
					


The Burger King sign near 59th and Havelock is creating some buzz.





					www.klkntv.com


----------



## Daniel

Joey Green's Wacky Uses
					


Clean a toilet with Coca-Cola? Shave with Jif Peanut Butter? Mousse your hair with Jell-O? Polish furniture with Spam? Best-selling author Joey Green shares hundreds of wacky uses for brand-name products.




					www.wackyuses.com
				




Canada Dry was the first major soft drink company to put soft drinks in cans (1953) and introduce sugar-free drinks (1964).


----------



## Daniel

Neanderthal extinction - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Neanderthal tools:


----------



## Daniel

Göbekli Tepe - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Daniel

“Emperor Huang Di, around 2600 BC, one of his ministers, Cang Jie, decided that the footprints left in the dirt by various bird species constituted a small set of easily recognizable shapes—and he used them to create the first Chinese characters.”  

― Stanislas Dehaene, _ Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention _


----------



## Daniel

Why Don't We Remember Being Babies?
					


Very few people remember anything from before the age of two. Life's Little Mysteries explains why a toddler's brain just isn't set up to for long-term memories.





					www.livescience.com
				




Virtually nobody has memories from very early childhood but it's not because we don't retain information as young children. Rather, it may be because at that age, our brains don't yet function in a way that bundles information into the complex neural patterns that we know as memories.

It's clear that young children do remember facts in the moment such as who their parents are, or that one must say "please" before mom will give you candy. This is called "semantic memory."

Until sometime between the ages two and four, however, children lack "episodic memory" -- memory regarding the details of a specific event. Such memories are stored in several parts of the brain's surface, or "cortex."

Episodic memory may be unnecessarily complex at a time when a child is just learning how the world works.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

The way memories are stored in the brain changes in the first few years if life.

Adult memories are stored in long term memory as semantic memory - a system of filing and retrieving based on meaning (tags) that organize memories and link them to other related memories.

Young children store memories sort of like a video, similar to short term memory in adults.

One theory of dreaming in adults is that it represents at least part of the transition to permanent or long term memory. The brain is sifting through recent memories stored in short term memory and trying to find links or tags to related items already in long term. That's why dreams often seem rather bizarre in their content, where you can hop around through time and people can pop in and out of your dreams seemingly for no logical reasons.


----------



## Daniel

Animal Consciousness: Some Philosophical, Methodological, and Evolutionary Problems1
					


Abstract. No consensus exists concerning the mechanisms, distribution, or adaptive significance of consciousness. Agreement on any one of these issues would aid





					academic.oup.com
				




Spontaneous utterances during sleep rarely exceed one or two words. More complex sentences or even conversations sometimes occur during the lighter stages of sleep (stage 1 non-REM sleep) at the beginning and end of the sleep cycle (Arkin, 1978), but these are uncommon and not associated with sleepwalking. In short, unconscious humans, like animals and very young children, are as a rule incapable of any verbal behavior beyond what Bickerton (1990) calls protolanguage: short, grammar-free utterances in which signs are used with referential meaning but syntax is absent.


----------



## Daniel

Best Horror Movies of 2020, Ranked
					


2020 horror movies ranked by Tomatometer!





					editorial.rottentomatoes.com


----------



## David Baxter PhD

I love horror movies (except for the ultra-violent slasher genre) and there are several there I haven't yet seen. Thank you!


----------



## Daniel

Runes - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				





The Bluetooth logo is the combination of two runes of the Younger Futhark, ᚼ _hagall_ and ᛒ _bjarkan_, equivalent to the letters «H» and «B», that are the initials of Harald Blåtand's name (_bluetooth_ in English), who was a king of Denmark from the Viking Age.


----------



## Daniel

An immense mystery older than Stonehenge
					


Reshaping previous ideas on the story of civilisation, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey was built by a prehistoric people 6,000 years before Stonehenge.





					www.bbc.com


----------



## Daniel

Cosmic Calendar - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




  "A graphical view of the Cosmic Calendar, featuring the months of the year, days of December, and the final minute."


----------



## Daniel

Karen Spärck Jones - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




*Karen Spärck Jones* FBA (26 August 1935 – 4 April 2007) was a pioneering British computer scientist responsible for the concept of inverse document frequency, a technology that underlies most modern search engines. In 2019, _The New York Times_ published her belated obituary in its series Overlooked, calling her "a pioneer of computer science for work combining statistics and linguistics, and an advocate for women in the field."


----------



## Daniel

Giraffes May Be as Socially Complex as Chimps and Elephants (Published 2021)
					


A review of earlier research shows giraffes have the markings of social creatures, including friendships, day care and grandmothers.





					www.nytimes.com
				












						Giraffe grandmothers are high-value family members, say scientists
					


As with elephants and orcas, worldly wisdom and childcare brings group-survival perks, research suggests





					www.theguardian.com


----------



## Daniel

Scientists say new dinosaur species is largest found in Australia
					


The Australotitan grew up to 30m (96ft) long and is among the largest dinosaurs found worldwide.




					www.bbc.com


----------



## Daniel

How To Make French Onion Soup
					


One of the simplest yet most satisfying soups there is.





					getpocket.com
				




French onion soup is probably the most dramatic example of how time is the magic ingredient in cooking, transforming humble foods into a final dish that is far, far more than the sum of its parts.

With French onion soup, the lengthy cooking time has two phases: Caramelizing the onions slowly and deliberately, and then simmering the broth for a long time with the caramelized onions. Skimping on either side will yield something a little less than the French onion soup of your dreams, but fortunately most of the time is hands-off. You can even do the simmer in a low oven (250°F) or in a slow cooker.


----------



## David Baxter PhD




----------



## Daniel

List of nearest terrestrial exoplanet candidates - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




On November 4, 2013, astronomers reported, based on _Kepler_ space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way galaxy. Eleven billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting Sun-like stars. The nearest such planet was then as close as 12 light-years away but is now estimated slightly above four light-years away.


----------



## Daniel

Overview effect - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




The *overview effect* is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from outer space.









						NASA Astronauts Describe the "Overview Effect" in Their Own Words
					


"This is what heaven must look like."





					www.inverse.com


----------



## Daniel

How To Make Freezer-Friendly Breakfast Sandwiches
					


Breakfast on rushed weekday mornings, solved.





					getpocket.com


----------



## Daniel

How Long People Go to Prison Around the World
					


America's lengthy sentences contribute to its mass incarceration problem.




					archive.attn.com
				




In months (as of 2006):


----------



## David Baxter PhD

They always have. I suspect it's partly because prisons are privately/commercially run in the US and partly the whole "look tough on crime" thing. What other reason could there be for ridiclous sentences like 300-400 years? As is anyone will ever complete that sentence.


----------



## Daniel

America’s car crash epidemic
					


Driving kills as many Americans each year as guns do. Experts say that’s preventable.





					www.vox.com
				




A pedestrian has a 10 percent chance of dying when hit by a car at 23 miles per hour, a 25 percent chance at 32 mph, and a 75 percent chance at 50 mph.

One type of roadway that’s especially dangerous is...a “stroad”: places that try to be both a street, with access to shopping and leisure, and a road, where drivers move from place to place at high speeds, but do neither well.

Stroads are pervasive throughout America. Think of the wide arterial roads, lined with strip malls and big-box stores, that dominate the country. These environments combine 30- or 40-plus mph speeds with frequent turns, stopping points, and shared traffic with pedestrians and bikes, which creates many opportunities for crashes...

“If you narrowed the lanes and made the speeds lower, it would become way more safe just overnight, immediately. But no city, no state is really allowed to do that.” Roads have to adhere to the rulebook that has dictated bad, speed-first design for decades, or risk losing federal transportation aid.


----------



## Daniel

Basal ganglia lateralization in different types of reward - Brain Imaging and Behavior
					


Reward processing is a fundamental human activity. The basal ganglia are recognized for their role in reward processes; however, specific roles of the different nuclei (e.g., nucleus accumbens, caudate, putamen and globus pallidus) remain unclear. Using quantitative meta-analyses we assessed...





					link.springer.com
				




Reward processing is a fundamental human activity. The basal ganglia are recognized for their role in reward processes; however, specific roles of the different nuclei (e.g., nucleus accumbens, caudate, putamen and globus pallidus) remain unclear. Using quantitative meta-analyses we assessed whole-brain and basal ganglia specific contributions to money, erotic, and food reward processing. We analyzed data from 190 fMRI studies which reported stereotaxic coordinates of whole-brain, within-group results from healthy adult participants. 

Results showed concordance in overlapping and distinct cortical and sub-cortical brain regions as a function of reward type. Common to all reward types was concordance in basal ganglia nuclei, with distinct differences in hemispheric dominance and spatial extent in response to the different reward types. Food reward processing favored the right hemisphere; erotic rewards favored the right lateral globus pallidus and left caudate body. Money rewards engaged the basal ganglia bilaterally including its most anterior part, nucleus accumbens. 

We conclude by proposing a model of common reward processing in the basal ganglia and separate models for money, erotic, and food rewards.


----------



## Daniel

Marine radar - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Radars are rarely used alone in a marine setting.   A modern trend is the integration of radar with other navigation displays on a single screen, as it becomes quite distracting to look at several different screens.  Therefore, displays can often overlay an electronic GPS navigation chart of ship position, and a sonar display, on the radar display. This provides a combined view of surroundings, to maneuver the ship.


----------



## Daniel

Lithium study helps scientists unlock ageing puzzle
					


A common drug, lithium, could hold the key to long life, in flies at least, according to research.




					www.bbc.com
				




Fruit flies lived 16% longer than average when given low doses of lithium...

"We found low doses not only prolong life but also shield the body from stress and block fat production for flies on a high sugar diet."

"This research has the potential to not only help create a healthier older generation, but also provide significant insights into how we could potentially treat or even prevent conditions of ageing like Parkinson's."

Lithium salts have been used in the past as a health tonic and to heal conditions such as gout and migraines.

In modern medicine, lithium is used to encourage mood stability in bipolar disorder and is also being considered for the treatment of memory impairment.


----------



## Daniel

Hash browns - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Hash browns first started appearing on breakfast menus in New York City in the 1890s...

Originally, the full name of the dish was "hashed brown potatoes" (or "hashed browned potatoes"), of which the first known mention is by American food author Maria Parloa (1843–1909) in her 1887 _Kitchen Companion_, where she describes the dish of "hashed and browned potatoes" as a fried mixture of cold boiled potatoes which is folded "like an omelet" before serving.


----------



## Daniel

HIV/AIDS in the United States - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




As of 2018, *about 700,000 people *have died of HIV/AIDS in the U.S. since the beginning of the HIV epidemic, and nearly 13,000 people with AIDS in the United States die each year.

With improved treatments and better prophylaxis against opportunistic infections, death rates have significantly declined.

The overall death rate among persons diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in New York City decreased by sixty-two percent from 2001 to 2012.


----------



## Daniel

Vitamin A - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




During World War II, German bombers would attack at night to evade British defenses. In order to keep the 1939 invention of a new on-board Airborne Intercept Radar system secret from German bombers, the British Ministry of Information told newspapers that the nighttime defensive success of Royal Air Force pilots was due to a high dietary intake of carrots rich in vitamin A, propagating the myth that carrots enable people to see better in the dark.


----------



## Daniel

Pizza Hut - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				


​Book It!​
Pizza Hut has sponsored the Book It! reading-incentive program since it started in January 1985.[69][70] Students who read books according to the goal set by the classroom teacher, in any month from October through March, are rewarded with a Pizza Hut certificate good for a free, one-topping Personal Pan Pizza; and the classroom whose students read the most books is rewarded with a pizza party. Book It! was conceived in 1984 during a dinner with Art Gunther, President of Pizza Hut, and Bud Gates, SVP of Marketing at Pizza Hut, as a way to help Gunther's son read more.[71]

The program has been criticized by some psychologists on the grounds it may lead to overjustification and reduce children's intrinsic interest in reading.[72] Book It! was also criticized by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood  in 2007 who described it as "one of corporate America's most insidious school-based brand promotions." A pamphlet produced by the group argued the program promoted junk food to a captive market, made teachers into promoters for Pizza Hut, and undermined parents by making visits to the chain an integral part of bringing up their children to be literate.[73] However, a study of the program found participation in the program neither increased nor decreased reading motivation.[72] The program's 25th anniversary was in 2010. The Book It! program in Australia ceased in 2002.


----------



## Daniel

Ernest Hemingway - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Hemingway's behavior during his final years had been similar to that of his father before he killed himself;[161] his father may have had hereditary hemochromatosis, whereby the excessive accumulation of iron in tissues culminates in mental and physical deterioration.[162] Medical records made available in 1991 confirmed that Hemingway had been diagnosed with hemochromatosis in early 1961.[163] His sister Ursula and his brother Leicester also killed themselves.[164] Other theories have arisen to explain Hemingway's decline in mental health, including that multiple concussions during his life may have caused him to develop chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), leading to his eventual suicide.[165][166][167] Hemingway's health was further complicated by heavy drinking throughout most of his life.[114]


----------



## Daniel

Why Elite White-Collar Criminals Are Rarely Punished
					


The system protects white-collar criminals.





					www.psychologytoday.com
				




According to the FBI, the annual cost of street crime is $15 billion compared to nearly $1 trillion for white-collar crime...

The term white-collar crime—reportedly coined in 1939 by criminologist Edwin Sutherland—is now synonymous with the full range of crimes committed by business and government professionals...

As far back as 1956, the late sociologist C. Wright Mills observed that a small group of wealthy and powerful individuals control America’s dominant institutions (i.e., politics, economy, and the military) and they are insulated from public scrutiny. Mills called this group the power elite. Interestingly, Mills was echoed in 1961 by President Eisenhower in his farewell address when he warned of the self-serving and criminal acts of the “military-industrial complex”—that is, his term for the power elite.










						Military–industrial complex - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Within decades of its inception, the idea of the military–industrial complex gave rise to other similar Industrial complexes, including the animal–industrial complex, prison–industrial complex, pharmaceutical–industrial complex, entertainment-industrial complex, and medical–industrial complex...According to Steven Best, all these systems interrelate and reinforce one another...

An alternative term to describe the interdependence between the military-industrial complex and the entertainment industry is coined by James Der Derian as "Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment-Network*".*


----------



## Daniel

Human Terrain System - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




The *Human Terrain System* (*HTS*) was a United States Army, Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) support program employing personnel from the social science disciplines – such as anthropology, sociology, political science, regional studies, and linguistics – to provide military commanders and staff with an understanding of the local population (i.e. the "human terrain") in the regions in which they are deployed.

With the end of major American presences in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a shift towards electronic data collection, the need for HTS became less apparent.  On 30 September 2014, funding ended for the program.

On 31 October 2007, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) published a statement opposing HTS as an "unacceptable application of anthropological expertise".

In 2007, the Network of Concerned Anthropologists (NCA) was founded by a group of anthropologists, largely in response to the HTS program. In 2010, the Network wrote an "Anthropologists' Statement on the Human Terrain System Program" to the United States House of Representatives, which was signed by over 700 anthropologists. The statement called for Congress to halt governmental support to HTS and cancel plans for its expansion, giving the following reasons: "There is no evidence that HTS is effective"; "HTS is dangerous and reckless"; "HTS wastes taxpayers money"; "HTS is unethical for anthropologists and other social scientists".


----------



## Daniel

Afghanistan Population 2022 (Live)
		


Afghanistan Population 2021​
40,115,652

*Why is Afghanistan's population so high?*

The country is seeing negative net migration due to internal conflict; however, its fertility rate of 4.56 births per woman still pushes the population up. Because of the high fertility rate, the population is very young, with a median age of 18.4 years.


----------



## Daniel

Canada Population 2022 (Live)
		


Canada Population 2021​38,168,367

The population is growing at a steady pace and, based on current projections will surpass 50 million by 2070.

Canada’s growth rate has been anywhere between 0.8% and 1.2% for the past ten years.

While Canada’s fertility rate is 1.53 births per woman, below the population replacement rate, the population continues to grow as migration plays an increasing role in the population. Canada’s net migration rate is 6.375 per 1,000 people, the eighth-highest in the world.

Unlike many other countries, Canada is “underpopulated” and celebrates a growing population. There are many job vacancies to be filled and more people means more economic growth and prosperity for Canada.

Nearly 22% of Canadians identify themselves as immigrants.

An impressive 2.8 million Canadian citizens live outside of Canada itself; that's equivalent to 9% of the overall Canadian population. For comparison, only 1.7% of US citizens live abroad but more than 20% of New Zealanders live abroad.

Around 1 million Canadians live in the United States. The next most popular destination is Hong Kong, where approximately 300,000 Canadians are based. Around 4 in 10 Canadians living abroad were born in Canada, but a larger proportion (6 in 10) are naturalized Canadian citizens who have moved back abroad -- most but not all, to their country of origin.


----------



## Daniel

10 Reasons Being a Pilot Isn’t as Cool as You Think (and 1 That Makes It All Worthwhile)
					


Delays...we hate them as much as passengers do.





					matadornetwork.com
				




I’ve always found it a little ironic that the temporary housing for pilots is called a crash pad.


----------



## Daniel

The ‘untranslatable’ emotions you never knew you had
					


Learning to identify and cultivate these feelings could give you a richer and more successful life





					getpocket.com
				




Many of the terms referred to highly specific positive feelings, which often depend on very particular circumstances:


*Desbundar* (Portuguese) – to shed one’s inhibitions in having fun
*Tarab* (Arabic) – a musically induced state of ecstasy or enchantment
*Shinrin-yoku* (Japanese) – the relaxation gained from bathing in the forest, figuratively or literally
*Gigil* (Tagalog) – the irresistible urge to pinch or squeeze someone because they are loved or cherished
*Yuan bei* (Chinese) – a sense of complete and perfect accomplishment
*Iktsuarpok *(Inuit) – the anticipation one feels when waiting for someone, whereby one keeps going outside to check if they have arrived
But others represented more complex and bittersweet experiences, which could be crucial to our growth and overall flourishing.


*Natsukashii* (Japanese) – a nostalgic longing for the past, with happiness for the fond memory, yet sadness that it is no longer
*Wabi-sabi *(Japanese) – a “dark, desolate sublimity” centred on transience and imperfection in beauty
*Saudade* (Portuguese) – a melancholic longing or nostalgia for a person, place or thing that is far away either spatially or in time – a vague, dreaming wistfulness for phenomena that may not even exist
*Sehnsucht *(German) – “life-longings”, an intense desire for alternative states and realisations of life, even if they are unattainable
In addition to these emotions, Lomas’s lexicography also charted the personal characteristics and behaviours that might determine our long-term well-being and the ways we interact with other people.


*Dadirri *(Australian aboriginal) term – a deep, spiritual act of reflective and respectful listening
*Pihentagyú* (Hungarian) – literally meaning “with a relaxed brain”, it describes quick-witted people who can come up with sophisticated jokes or solutions
*Desenrascanço* (Portuguese) – to artfully disentangle oneself from a troublesome situation
*Sukha* (Sanskrit) – genuine lasting happiness independent of circumstances
*Orenda* (Huron) – the power of the human will to change the world in the face of powerful forces such as fate


----------



## Daniel

Halloween - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				






Girl in a Halloween costume in 1928 in *Ontario, Canada**, the same province where the Scottish Halloween custom of "guising" is first recorded in North America*.


----------



## Daniel

Inside a UPS training school where workers haul boxes across slick 'ice,' perform high-stakes driving drills, and deliver packages to empty homes in a mock neighborhood
					


I came away from a visit to a UPS training school thinking that UPS workers might be among some of the safest drivers on the road.





					www.businessinsider.com
				




UPS drivers learn how to safely walk on ice...

UPS has in the past brought live penguins to a delivery center in Cincinnati to help drivers learn how to mimic their gait.


----------



## Daniel

The college term paper behind FedEx only received an average grade:






						FedEx history | FedEx
					


Explore the history of FedEx, a global transportation and logistics company which began operations in 1973 and has grown to 450,000 team members worldwide.





					www.fedex.com
				




*In 1965, Yale University undergraduate Frederick W. Smith wrote a term paper that invented an industry and changed what’s possible. *In the paper, he laid out the logistical challenges facing pioneering firms in the information technology industry. Most airfreight shippers relied on passenger route systems, but those didn’t make economic sense for urgent shipments, Smith wrote.

He proposed a system specifically designed to accommodate time-sensitive shipments such as medicine, computer parts, and electronics. *Smith’s professor apparently didn’t see the revolutionary implications of his thesis, and the paper received just an average grade.*

In August 1971, following a stint in the military, Smith bought controlling interest in Arkansas Aviation Sales, located in Little Rock, Arkansas. While operating his new firm, he saw firsthand how difficult it was to get packages and other airfreight delivered within one to two days. With his term paper in mind, Smith set out to find a better way. Thus the idea for Federal Express was born: A company that has revolutionized global business practices and that now defines speed and reliability.

Smith named the company Federal Express because he believed the patriotic meaning associated with the word “federal” suggested an interest in nationwide economic activity. He also hoped the name would resonate with the Federal Reserve Bank, a potential customer. Although the bank denied his proposal, Smith kept the name because he thought it was memorable and would help attract public attention...


----------



## Daniel

The tyranny of chairs: why we need better design
					


The long read: Most chairs aren’t designed to serve human bodies – but a better seat is possible





					www.theguardian.com
				




For most of human history, a mix of postures was the norm for a body meeting the world. Squatting has been as natural a posture as sitting for daily tasks, and lying down was a conventional pose for eating in some ancient cultures.

So why has sitting in chairs persisted in so many modern cultures? As with all material objects, Cranz reminds us, function tells only part of the story. The other part, always, is culture – the inherited and sometimes arbitrary ways that things have always been done, and therefore continue as common practice. “Biology, physiology and anatomy have less to do with our chairs than pharaohs, kings and executives,” she writes...

How can a nice cushioned chair that screams comfort be so ill-suited to most actual bodies? The real science of ergonomics, Cranz argues, should point designers toward chair design that supports and enables the body’s need for movement, not stillness – with seats that angle downward in front, for example, and have a base that’s flexible enough for the sitter to shift their body weight from leg to leg. But for the most part, these principles are ignored in favour of fashion and cheap manufacturing.


----------



## Daniel

An Introduction to Mediterranean Food
					


What do you think of when you hear the term Mediterranean food? Luckily, you don't have to guess. Learn about what constitutes a Mediterranean Cuisine.





					www.alepposkitchen.com
				




When many people think of “Mediterranean cuisine”, their first thought is typically Greek food. But much of Greek cuisine has roots in Turkish, Persian, and Arabic foods and ideas. (With so many neighboring countries of Greece, it’s unavoidable!) For example, you may recognize tzatziki as authentically Greek, but its roots—right down to the name—are Turkish.


----------



## Daniel

A Brief History of the Cheez-It
					


America’s iconic orange cracker turns 100.





					getpocket.com
				




Cheez-It’s 11-month shelf life is impressive, but so is the company’s history. In May 2021, America’s iconic orange cracker turned 100. But the Cheez-It story stretches even further back than that...

Crackers were considered health food...

“Welsh Rarebit, at its most basic form, is essentially a cheese sauce spread on toast,” says Rachael Spears, a living history specialist at Dayton’s Carillon Historical Park. “Some 19th-century English recipes specifically call for cheddar cheese. To this day, Cheez-It still advertises 100 percent real cheese, which draws a connection to its rarebit roots.”


----------



## Daniel

Return to normalcy - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




*"Return to normalcy"* was United States presidential candidate Warren G. Harding's campaign slogan for the election of 1920. It evoked a return to the way of life before World War I, the First Red Scare, and the Spanish flu pandemic.

Harding's position attracted support and was important during the 1920 United States presidential election, which he won with 60.3% of the popular vote.


----------



## Daniel

6 Famous Writers Injured While Writing
					


Even the toughest of poets and strongest of Hemingways would have to admit that “writer” is not a particularly dangerous job. (Unlike, say, fisherman, miner, logger, knife-thrower assis…





					lithub.com
				




*Herman Melville* “dove with such intensity into his whale book that his entire family circulated letters conspiring to make him rest. Ignoring their pleas, he emerged from _Moby-Dick_ plagued with eye spasms, anxiety attacks, and debilitating back pain.”


----------



## Daniel

Jingle Bells - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




"*Jingle Bells*" is one of the best-known and commonly sung American songs in the world. It was written by James Lord Pierpont (1822–1893) and published under the title "*The One Horse Open Sleigh*" in the autumn of 1857...

In the winter in New England in pre-automobile days, it was common to adorn horses' harnesses with straps bearing bells as a way to avoid collisions at blind intersections, since a horse-drawn sleigh in snow makes almost no noise. The rhythm of the tune mimics that of a trotting horse's bells.


----------



## Daniel

The Tamagotchi Was Tiny, but Its Impact Was Huge
					


It’s been 25 years since the little device first hit store shelves, but its simple brilliance lives on in today’s most popular games.





					www.wired.com
				




The Tamagotchi, which was first released by Bandai in Japan on November 23, 1996, had only a 32x16 pixel screen and three small buttons. Each of these buttons served some simple function, like feeding your Tamagotchi (which was both the name of the device and the little creature you were tasked with taking care of), turning off the lights in its room, or playing a game with it. Functions also included cleaning up your Tamagotchi’s poop...

The Tamagotchi's success, according to Bandai, is because it appeals to the human nurturing instinct, in this case the urge to care for a digital pet—following its growth and development and making sure it doesn’t die. It offered children a sense of responsibility, and they accepted it with extreme enthusiasm.


----------



## Daniel

Classic on-air fight between anchor and reporter | Boing Boing
					


Jim Ryan vs. Dick Olive on Fox 5’s Good Day New York, July 19, 2001. So great that the network itself uploaded this wonderful moment to YouTube. Of course Oliver was the inspiration for Bill …





					boingboing.net
				






Jim Ryan vs. Dick Olive on Fox 5's Good Day New York, July 19, 2001.

So great that the network itself uploaded this wonderful moment to YouTube.

Of course Oliver was the inspiration for Bill Hader's "Herb Welch" character on Saturday Night Live.

-------

A summary of the above video by a Youtube commenter:  "First floor Lady being interviewed in a bathrobe about elevator issues, building manager acting cordial then giving the "**** off" gesture when he thought he was off camera, anchor acting like there's more to this pulitzer winning story, and reporter bitter about his former underling calling the shots"


----------



## Daniel

Senescence - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Senescence or biological aging is the gradual deterioration of functional characteristics in living organisms. The word senescence can refer to either cellular senescence or to senescence of the whole organism...

More than 300 different theories have been posited to explain the nature and causes of aging.  A good theory would both explain past observations and predict the results of future experiments.

The theories fall into two broad categories:

Aging is programmed
Aging is a result of accumulation of damage
Programmed theories of aging posit that aging is adaptive, normally invoking selection for evolvability or group selection.  The reproductive-cell cycle theory suggests that aging is regulated by changes in hormonal signaling over the lifespan...

One of the most prominent theories of aging was first proposed by Harman in 1956. It posits that free radicals produced by dissolved oxygen, radiation, cellular respiration and other sources cause damage to the molecular machines in the cell and gradually wear them down. This is also known as oxidative stress.  There is substantial evidence to back up this theory. Old animals have larger amounts of oxidized proteins, DNA and lipids than their younger counterparts.


----------



## Daniel

‘Am I even fit to be a mom?’ Diaper need is an invisible part of poverty in America
					


In rural areas, diaper banks are often the only lifeline for parents who cannot afford diapers, which can't be purchased with federal aid.





					19thnews.org
				




Nationwide, studies have found that diaper need is a greater contributor to postpartum depression than food insecurity and housing instability.

--------------






						National Diaper Bank Network - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




The *National Diaper Bank Network* is a United States-based non-profit organization that is dedicated to ensuring that every child in the U.S. has an adequate supply of diapers to remain clean, dry and healthy.  NDBN is a nationwide network of independently operating diaper banks and pantries that collect and distribute over 30 million diapers for children experiencing diaper need.


----------



## Daniel

The Deadly Myth That Human Error Causes Most Car Crashes
					


Every year thousands of Americans die on the roads. Individuals take the blame for systemic problems.





					www.theatlantic.com
				




American transportation departments, law-enforcement agencies, and news outlets frequently maintain that most crashes—indeed, 94 percent of them, according to the most widely circulated statistic—are solely due to human error. Blaming the bad decisions of road users implies that nobody else could have prevented them. That enables car companies to deflect attention from their decisions to add heft and height to the SUVs and trucks that make up an ever-larger portion of vehicle sales, and it allows traffic engineers to escape scrutiny for dangerous street designs...

And if the buck stops with the driver, automakers feel less pressure to make lifesaving safety features standard across their models—which many of them do not. Last year, _Consumer Reports_ found that the average vehicle buyer would have to pay $2,500 for a blind-spot-detection system. Pedestrian-detection technology was standard on 13 of the 15 most popular vehicle models—but unavailable on one and part of a $16,000 optional package on another.


----------



## Daniel

Cuban Missile Crisis - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




President Kennedy had been told in early 1961 that a nuclear war would likely kill a third of humanity, with most or all of those deaths concentrated in the US, the USSR, Europe and China; Khrushchev may well have received similar reports from his military...

Fifty years after the crisis, Graham T. Allison wrote:



> Fifty years ago, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. During the standoff, US President John F. Kennedy thought the chance of escalation to war was "between 1 in 3 and even", and what we have learned in later decades has done nothing to lengthen those odds. We now know, for example, that in addition to nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, the Soviet Union had deployed 100 tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, and the local Soviet commander there could have launched these weapons without additional codes or commands from Moscow. The US air strike and invasion that were scheduled for the third week of the confrontation would likely have triggered a nuclear response against American ships and troops, and perhaps even Miami. The resulting war might have led to the deaths of over 100 million Americans and over 100 million Russians.


---------------





						Vasily Arkhipov - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




*Vasily Aleksandrovich Arkhipov* (Russian: Василий Александрович Архипов, IPA: [vɐˈsʲilʲɪj ɐlʲɪkˈsandrəvʲɪtɕ arˈxʲipəf], 30 January 1926 – 19 August 1998) was a Soviet Navy officer credited with preventing a Soviet nuclear strike (and, potentially, all-out nuclear war) during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such an attack likely would have caused a major global thermonuclear response.


----------



## Daniel

Resurrection Day - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




_*Resurrection Day*_* is a *novel written by Brendan DuBois in 1999.  It is an alternate history where the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated to a full-scale war, the Soviet Union is devastated, and the United States has been reduced to a third-rate power, relying on the United Kingdom for aid. It won the *Sidewise Award for Alternate History* that year.


----------



## Daniel

Voyage (novel) - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




_*Voyage*_ is a 1996 hard science fiction novel by British author Stephen Baxter. The book depicts a crewed mission to Mars as it might have been in another timeline, one where John F. Kennedy survived the assassination attempt on him on 22 November 1963. _Voyage_ won a *Sidewise Award for Alternate History*, and was nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1997.

In 1999, it was adapted as a radio serial for BBC Radio 4 by Dirk Maggs.


----------



## Daniel

It’s time to fear the fungi
					


Humans have long been protected from fungal infections. Climate change could ruin that.





					arstechnica.com
				




One of the reasons fungal infections are so common in so many creatures is that fungi themselves are ubiquitous. "This is dating myself, but you know the Sting song 'Every Breath You Take'? Well, every breath you take you inhale somewhere between 100 and 700,000 spores," says Andrej Spec, a medical mycologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "They've made it to the space station. They are absolutely everywhere."


----------



## David Baxter PhD

It's true. There's nothing like a funguy or fungal to brighten up a dreary day.


----------



## Daniel

The Fleecing of Navajo Weavers
					


The popularity of Navajo rug designs has allowed some fair trade businesses to thrive while Navajo weavers suffer. Ninety percent of indigenous peoples living in the southwestern United States depend on crafts as their principal or secondary source of income. Yet, of the $1 billion worth of...





					www.culturalsurvival.org
				




Ninety percent of indigenous peoples living in the southwestern United States depend on crafts as their principal or secondary source of income.


----------



## Daniel

Tequila sunrise - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




The *tequila sunrise* is a cocktail made of tequila, orange juice, and grenadine syrup. It's served unmixed in a tall glass. The modern drink originates from Sausalito, California, in the early 1970s after an earlier one created in the 1930s in Phoenix, Arizona. The cocktail is named for its appearance when served—with gradations of color resembling a sunrise.

-----------------









						Tequila Sunrise Orange Mocktail
					


Make this peach and orange mocktail recipe to show your mom how much you appreciate her this Mother's day.





					whiskitrealgud.com
				




1 ½ cup  Simply Orange Juice or your choice of orange juice Pulp free
1 cup Simply Peach or your choice of peach juice
6 tbsp lemon soda
6 tbsp  grenadine
ice


----------



## Daniel

20 Sneaky Restaurant Tricks You've Likely Fallen For — Eat This Not That
					


There's a good chance you've likely fallen for these restaurant tricks that result in you eating more food and spending more. Here's what to look out for.





					www.eatthis.com
				




A 2009 study from Cornell University's Center for Hospitality Research confirmed that groups offered menus with dollar signs next to the prices spent far less than those given menus with only numerals. The dollar sign is a rather powerful visual trigger that reminds us we're about to lose something we value, prompting our instinct to spend with restraint.

In a 2002 six-week field study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, researchers found that adding an enticing description to a menu item increased sales by a whopping 27%. These appetizing descriptions changed customers' feelings of satisfaction toward the food and the restaurant, even influencing their thoughts about returning in the future.

In a 2003 study from the University of Leicester published in the journal _Environment and Behavior_, a restaurant played classical music, pop music, and no music over the course of 18 nights. The classical music inspired guests to spend more money on their meals when compared with the nights when pop music or no music played.


----------



## Daniel

Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame
					


An analysis by NPR shows that since the vaccine rollout, counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump have had more than twice the COVID mortality rates of those that voted for Joe Biden.





					www.npr.org
				




Since May 2021, people living in counties that voted heavily for Donald Trump during the last presidential election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19 as those who live in areas that went for now-President Biden.

Recent polling shows that partisanship is now this single strongest identifying predictor of whether someone is vaccinated..."If I wanted to guess if somebody was vaccinated or not and I could only know one thing about them, I would probably ask what their party affiliation is."

The rate of Republican vaccination against COVID-19 has flatlined at just 59%...By comparison, 91% of Democrats are vaccinated.

More than 90% of Republicans surveyed believe or are unsure about at least one false statement about COVID-19.


----------



## Daniel

Most surprising to me was the Boston Public Library since I have never heard it mentioned before.






						The Nation's Largest Libraries: A Listing By Volumes Held
					


ALA Library Fact Sheet 22 This fact sheet lists the top 100 largest libraries in the United States by volumes held. For lists of the largest public libraries only, see ALA Library Fact Sheet 13 - The Nation's Largest Public Libraries: Top 25 Rankings, which lists the top 25 public libraries in...





					www.ala.org


----------



## Daniel

Daisy wheel printing - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				



Bi-directional printing​Most daisy-wheel printers could print a line and then, using built-in memory, print the following line backwards, from right to left. This saved the time that otherwise would have been needed to return the print head to its starting point. This was sometimes known as 'logic seeking,' and was a feature on some dot-matrix printers as well.

----------------------------------------------------


History of printing
Woodblock printing200Movable type1040Intaglio (printmaking)1430Printing pressc. 1440Etchingc. 1515Mezzotint1642Relief printing1690Aquatint1772Lithography1796Chromolithography1837Rotary press1843Hectograph1860Offset printing1875Hot metal typesetting1884Mimeograph1885Daisy wheel printing1889Photostat and rectigraph1907Screen printing1911Spirit duplicator1923Dot matrix printing1925Xerography1938Spark printing1940Phototypesetting1949Inkjet printing1950Dye-sublimation1957Laser printing1969Thermal printingc. 1972Solid ink printing1972Thermal-transfer printing19813D printing1986Digital printing1991


----------



## Daniel

How America Broke the Speed Limit
					


The lifesaving law that nobody wants.





					slate.com
				




We could do a better job training drivers. American teenagers are by far the most dangerous group of people on the road, with 16-and-17-year-olds more than three times likelier to get into a fatal crash than adults in their 30s or 40s. After 80, drivers again become more dangerous to people around them.


----------



## Daniel

7 Superfoods That Could Help You Live Longer
					


Research shows that those who follow a diet that favors fresh foods over processed are more likely to live longer and avoid cancer and heart disease.





					www.aarp.org
				




One study of older Japanese adults found that those who drank the most green tea — five or more cups a day — were 26 percent less likely to die during the seven-year study period than those who drank one cup a day. What is it about green tea? Nutrient-rich foods that are high in antioxidants — like green tea — have been linked with longer telomeres. Like the plastic tips of a shoelace, telomeres can be found at the end of chromosomes and protect DNA. They naturally shorten as we age, but the process can be accelerated by things like smoking, stress and poor diet.


----------



## Daniel

Telomere - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				


Potential effect of psychological stress​Meta-analyses found that increased perceived psychological stress was associated with a small decrease in telomere length—but that these associations attenuate to no significant association when accounting for publication bias. The literature concerning telomeres as integrative biomarkers of exposure to stress and adversity is dominated by cross-sectional and correlational studies, which makes causal interpretation problematic.  A 2020 review argued that the relationship between psychosocial stress and telomere length appears strongest for stress experienced in utero or early life.


----------



## Daniel

APA PsycNet
					







					psycnet.apa.org
				




Given fundamental East-West differences in self-construal (i.e., the independent vs. interdependent self), we predicted that members of Eastern cultural groups would affirm other people, rather than defend and affirm the self, after encountering conditions of mortality salience...Mortality salience promoted culturally divergent responses, leading European Americans to defend the self and Asian Americans to defend other people.


----------



## Daniel

How Omicron, the New Covid-19 Variant, Got Its Name (Published 2021)
					


The World Health Organization began naming the variants after Greek letters to avoid public confusion and stigma.





					www.nytimes.com
				




“The Spanish flu did not come from Spain. We don’t know where it emerged from, but there’s a very good possibility it emerged from the U.S.”


----------



## Daniel

The Tenacious Quest to Find the World’s Best Rice
					


Among hundreds of Japanese brands and cultivars, it takes a blind tasting by a panel of “rice sommeliers” to determine the top of the crop.





					tastecooking.com
				




Today, the average Japanese person eats 118 pounds (53.5 kilograms) of rice a year. That sounds like a lot—Americans eat about a fifth of that—but it’s less than half of the per capita consumption in 1962. Diversifying diets and trendy low-carb regimens are part of the reason. Japanese policymakers now fret about “kome-banare”—a collective distancing from the grain.


----------



## Daniel

Here’s Why the Brits Put Milk in Their Tea
					


The British are used to it, but we wondered, why put milk in tea? Turns out it's not about taste, but to keep china cups from breaking.





					www.rd.com
				




The Brits’ habit of putting milk in tea extends all the way back to the 18th century, from the time when tea was brewed in pots. Tea was a big deal at the time, and people tended to drink it out of china cups. However, most people couldn’t afford fancy fine bone china, and the cups available would crack from the heat of the boiling hot tea.

The solution? Pour milk into the cup first, then add the tea. The cold milk cooled down the tea enough to keep the china from breaking, and, well, the reduced bitterness was just an added benefit! According to some sources, tea was also incredibly valuable at the time, so families who couldn’t afford large amounts would add a large amount of milk and a splash of tea, while well-off families tended to do the opposite.


----------



## Daniel

Why You Should Replace Your New Year's Journal With a Spreadsheet
					


How (and why) you should be tracking every little thing about your life.





					lifehacker.com
				






This is what passed for a spreadsheet in 1941.


----------



## Daniel

KFC was my favorite fried food as a teenager.

Plant-based options in Canada:



			https://www.kfc.ca/menu/deals/plant-based
		


US:



			https://www.yum.com/wps/portal/yumbrands/Yumbrands/kfc-newsroom/detail/Vertical+Content_3-CW/KFC-Beyond-Fried-Chicken
		


Kentucky Fried Chicken and Beyond Meat® are kicking off the new year with a Kentucky Fried Miracle as the highly-anticipated plant-based* Beyond Fried Chicken makes its nationwide debut.* Beginning Monday, January 10, KFC restaurants across the U.S. will offer Beyond Fried Chicken for a limited time, while supplies last.*


----------



## Daniel

For Canadians on the fence about dual citizenship, we now have taco subscriptions in the US 

I subscribed yesterday and picked up my first "free" taco.









						Taco Bell is selling a $10 monthly taco subscription | CNN Business
					


Taco Bell is rolling out what's arguably the tastiest subscription service yet: daily tacos.





					www.cnn.com


----------



## Daniel

How To Get More Tips As a Server Using Proven Psychology - Fliptable
					


Tips are important in the restaurant industry. Waiters and waitresses work hard. Read on to learn How to get more tips as a server using proven psychology.





					fliptable.io
				




A study from 1975 done by psychologist Bibb Latane showed that the larger the group being served, the smaller the tip percentage. The study determined that people often use a thought process called diffusion of responsibility, meaning they assume someone else will cover the tip.


----------



## Daniel

Thickening agent - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Food thickening can be important for people facing medical issues with chewing or swallowing, as foods with a thicker consistency can reduce the chances of choking, or of inhalation of liquids or food particles, which can lead to aspiration pneumonia.


----------



## Daniel

The Wild, Wonderful World of Estate Sales
					


The estate-sale industry is fragile and persistent in a way that doesn’t square with the story of the world as we have come to expect it.





					www.newyorker.com
				




According to the Environmental Protection Agency, furniture is the least recycled item in American households, accounting for twelve million tons of waste in a year.


----------



## Daniel

Farmer Using VR Headsets to Trick Cows Into Thinking They're Outside
					


The headsets simulate a summer pasture and have resulted in a higher yield and quality of milk.





					www.newsweek.com
				




A farmer from Turkey said he is simulating green pastures on virtual reality headsets to reduce the cows' stress in an attempt to have them produce more milk.

İzzet Koçak said his family has been in the agriculture industry for three generations and that he cares for more than 180 cows. In addition to having his cows wear VR headsets, Koçak also has the cows listen to classical music in order to keep their stress levels lowered.


----------



## Daniel

Bulletin board system - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




According to the FidoNet Nodelist, BBSes reached their peak usage around 1996, which was the same period that the World Wide Web and AOL became mainstream. BBSes rapidly declined in popularity thereafter, and were replaced by systems using the Internet for connectivity. Some of the larger commercial BBSes, such as MaxMegabyte and ExecPC BBS, evolved into Internet service providers.

The website _textfiles.com_ serves as an archive that documents the history of the BBS. The historical BBS list on _textfiles.com_ contains over 105,000 BBSes that have existed over a span of 20 years in North America alone.[9] The owner of _textfiles.com_, Jason Scott, also produced _BBS: The Documentary_, a DVD film that chronicles the history of the BBS and features interviews with well-known people (mostly from the United States) from the heyday BBS era.

In the 2000s, most traditional BBS systems migrated to the Internet using Telnet or SSH protocols.  Between 700 and 800 are thought to be active in 2020 – fewer than 30 of these being of the traditional "dial-up" (modem) variety.


----------



## Daniel

The surprising origin of fried chicken
					


Fried chicken is as emblematic of the US South as collard greens and sweet potato pie. But it may be more Scottish than Southern.





					www.bbc.com
				




In China, chickens were considered sacred and able to predict the future because they announced daybreak.


----------



## Daniel

Hip Pain: The 4 Best Hip Stretches to Do If You Spend All Day Sitting
					


Struggle with tight hips after a long day of sitting at your desk? These four stretches will help prevent and relieve hip pain.





					getpocket.com
				




While we’re all too aware of how bad sitting down all day can be for our backs and the discomfort it causes in our necks, it’s also responsible for those tight hips you’ve probably been experiencing.

Whether they’ve been seizing up during your daily runs or stop you from performing deep squats, the reasons for hip pain are often due to the shortening of our hip flexors and reduced mobility from sitting all day long.

Because our bodies are so intricately connected, tightness in the hips inevitably has a knock-on effect elsewhere. Tight hips can also lead to back, knee and ankle pain as well as tight glutes and hamstrings.


----------



## Daniel

How pizza can be part of a healthy diet
					


Quick – when did you last have a slice of pizza? If you’re like most of America, you may have a slice or two of ‘za every week – and that’s not a big surprise given it’s been called the world’s most popular food.





					www.usdairy.com
				




Pizza is the number three source of calcium in Americans who are two-years-old and older.


----------



## Daniel

Feed a family with a single item at McDonald's:









						McDonald’s Menu Hacks Coming Soon! | McDonald’s
					


McDonald’s Menu Hacks are almost here! Get ready for a fun twist on the menu at McDonald’s with your own menu hacks starting 1/31. Get them in our app!





					www.mcdonalds.com
				



Land, Air & Sea​Cover all bases and cravings with this menu hack of a Big Mac®, a McChicken®* and a Filet-O-Fish®. It might float. It might fly. It might take a walk. Take a bite and enjoy.


----------



## Daniel

The Age of the Unique Baby Name
					


Parents used to want kids to fit in. Now they want them to stand out.





					www.theatlantic.com
				




In 1880, the percentage of babies who got a top-10 most popular name was in the neighborhood of 32 percent, according to Wattenberg’s calculations. In 1950, it was about 28 percent. And in 2020, it had fallen to an all-time low of 7 percent...

For much of American history, many people just named their kids after someone on the family tree, which helped keep names in circulation for a long time. This was especially true for baby boys, who have historically had less varied names than baby girls in part because they were more likely to inherit a family name. For instance, in Raleigh Colony, roughly one in two boys had the name John, William, or Thomas. Those three names remained in or near the top 10 from the 1880s, when the Social Security Administration’s records begin, through the 1960s.


----------



## Daniel

Is Zinc an Important Trace Element on Bone-Related Diseases and Complications? A Meta-analysis and Systematic Review from Serum Level, Dietary Intake, and Supplementation Aspects - Biological Trace Element Research
					


Bone-related diseases are very common problems, especially in the elderly population. Zinc takes part in the growth and maintenance of healthy bones. This meta-analysis aims to evaluate the effects of zinc supplementation or dietary zinc intake on serum zinc levels and bone turnover markers. A...





					link.springer.com
				




The adult human body contains closely 2–3 g of zinc.


----------



## Daniel

10 Collagen-Rich Foods Better Than Supplements — Eat This Not That
					


Wondering how to increase collagen production? Simple: skip the supplements and eat more collagen-rich foods and foods that increase collagen synthesis.





					www.eatthis.com
				




Per a study in the journal _Food and Nutrition Sciences_, fish collagen may even be preferable to collagen found in protein-packed meats such as beef or pork. According to the research, fish collagen is absorbed up to 1.5 times more efficiently into the body when compared to bovine or porcine sources of collagen. Due to the fact that fish collagen is absorbed more efficiently (and therefore enters the bloodstream at a quicker rate) it is considered to be one of the best sources of collagen.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Collagen.... huh.... what is it good for? Absolutely something. Sing it again...


----------



## gooblax

Eliza's not a fan of the spotlight.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

That looks rather like embroidery or crossstitch.  Or reministic of pointilism if you blow it up.

_*Note:* "blow it up" in this context should not be taken literally. It is not an incitement to start exploding stuff. Really, all that will do is make a mess of your monitor and ruin whatever you might be drinking or eating if bits fall off. It is not actually recommended except in the most extreme situations, like the Alexa next door repeatedly playing Bay Shark at high volume. Even then it probably makes more sense to blow up one of their monitors so you don't break your own stuff. As an alternative, I don't know how much a sniper costs in your neck of the pointilistic woods, but if you could get someone to whack Alexa that usually thwarts toddlers from playing the same song selection ad nauseum.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. On Channel 6, you have the Olympics. On every other channel you have the Olympics. Sorry but that's just the way life is these days._


----------



## Daniel

David Baxter said:


> _*Note:* "blow it up" in this context should not be taken literally._


Exactly, unless you are doing explosion-based art therapy (EBAT) or explosive behavior therapy (EBT). To increase the effectiveness of either approach, it is best to augment with spotlight-focused gecko pet therapy (SFGPT).


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Now that's funny... even tying in the gecko phobia.  Well done!


----------



## Daniel

Possibly the most international gift card:









						Starbucks – The Best Coffee and Espresso Drinks
					


Starbucks uses the highest quality arabica coffee as the base for its espresso drinks. Learn about our unique coffees and espresso drinks today.





					customerservice.starbucks.com
				




Starbucks® Cards issued in the U.S. or Canada are accepted at most Starbucks locations in North America, including airport and grocery locations. Starbucks Cards can also be used interchangeably at most stores in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and Mexico.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Love Starbucks, except for the inflated prices and the dramatic names and sizes.


----------



## Daniel

Last year, I got my mother a Starbucks gift card.  She saved money by buying bags of their coffee to make at home.  The nice thing is they will ground the beans for you.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> Last year, I got my mother a Starbucks gift card.  She saved money by buying bags of their coffee to make at home.  The nice thing is they will ground the beans for you.



That is mostly what I used to do and if you buy the coffee itself it's definitely not as expensive. Sadly, I can't drink coffee any more, at least for now. I'm stuck with 1 or 2 cups of tea a day.


----------



## Daniel

Well, it's good you are getting back to your English roots 🍵 

I was mostly a tea drinker before I met my husband and became a social coffee drinker.   My favorite teas are the ones served at the Chinese restaurants like Oolong and Jasmine.

What I still cannot get over though are the Starbucks Uber Eats commercials, which have fortunately decreased.    Starbucks is expensive enough without having to pay for delivery and a delivery tip.  I rarely use the term "lazy," but it seems appropriate in this case. And the irony, of course, is they are delivering to homes with working coffee makers (as opposed to going to Starbucks for a Thermos-free coffee on the road).


----------



## David Baxter PhD

I agree. Coffee, like scotch, is an acquired taste.

Mind you, unless things have changed radically in the last decade or so, it's no mystery why the English prefer tea.

Their version of coffee is to start with a weak brown liquid that probably said coffee on the label, and then serve it further weakened by mixing the brown liquid 50%-50% with milk or cream. So basically, they just make hot milk (which can be great when you're sick, unless it's a stomach illness) with a bit of  brown colouring.

There are a lot of very good things about England, especially if you're visiting rather than living there. Coffee is just not one of them.

(Hamburgers used to be another. They had a chain called Wimpey's - the Wimpy Burger was disgusting. Maybe McDonalds has moved in and educated them as to what a burger should look, smell, and taste like. But I wouldn't chance it again. Go for the fish and chips or the ploughman's lunch in a pub.)


----------



## Daniel

I am going to buy ginger juice to add novelty to my tea.   I also use lime wedges (as an alternative to lemon).

I just tried this iced tea, which is delicious if you like "a kick of ginger."  The ginger juice easily overpowers the grassy taste of the green tea:






						Lattes & Iced Tea Mixes
					


Discover our selection of tea lattes such as green tea lattes and chai tea lattes in assorted flavors. Available in K-Cup® pods liquid concentrates.





					www.tazo.com
				




(The ginger also seemed soothing after having minor heartburn.)


----------



## Daniel

I am surprised by Miami housing costing more than Los Angeles:











						Rents reach 'insane' levels across U.S. with no end in sight
					


Rents have exploded across the country, causing many to fall behind on payments, dig deep into their savings or downsize to subpar units.





					www.latimes.com


----------



## Daniel

PetSmart Charities - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




PetSmart Charities and PetSmart Charities of Canada are non-profit organizations dedicated to saving the lives of homeless pets. In the United States, *PetSmart Charities is the largest financial supporter of animal welfare* and among the 400 largest philanthropic organizations working on any issue...

The primary source of funding is from in-store PIN pad donations when customers check out, as well as PetSmart employee contributions...








						Petco Love
					


Fluxx - The Grants Management Platform





					petcolove.org
				




Recently [in September 2017], we hit a major milestone as we surpassed $200 million invested in lifesaving animal welfare work...

Petco Love has invested more than $11 million to support service, therapy and working pet heroes and $13 million to help find a cure and develop new treatments for pet cancer.






						Chewy Gives Back
					


At Chewy, we share your passion for pets. You can help us make an even greater impact by donating items to your local shelter or rescue through their Wish List. Ready to bring love home? Search for your new family member today.





					www.chewy.com
				




Since 2012, we've donated more than $97M in products to ensure that shelter and rescue animals get the quality care they deserve.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> I am surprised by Miami housing costing more than Los Angeles:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rents reach 'insane' levels across U.S. with no end in sight
> 
> 
> 
> Rents have exploded across the country, causing many to fall behind on payments, dig deep into their savings or downsize to subpar units.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.latimes.com



I'm surprised by all of them. I have a two bedroom (I need a separate room for my office) apartment now for $1180 CAD — it's an older building but well maintained and quiet and only 5 minutes away by Uber from the Cancer Center at the Ottawa General Hospital — perfect for me.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> PetSmart Charities - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PetSmart Charities and PetSmart Charities of Canada are non-profit organizations dedicated to saving the lives of homeless pets. In the United States, *PetSmart Charities is the largest financial supporter of animal welfare* and among the 400 largest philanthropic organizations working on any issue...
> 
> The primary source of funding is from in-store PIN pad donations when customers check out, as well as PetSmart employee contributions...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Petco Love
> 
> 
> 
> Fluxx - The Grants Management Platform
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> petcolove.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Recently [in September 2017], we hit a major milestone as we surpassed $200 million invested in lifesaving animal welfare work...
> 
> Petco Love has invested more than $11 million to support service, therapy and working pet heroes and $13 million to help find a cure and develop new treatments for pet cancer.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Chewy Gives Back
> 
> 
> 
> At Chewy, we share your passion for pets. You can help us make an even greater impact by donating items to your local shelter or rescue through their Wish List. Ready to bring love home? Search for your new family member today.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.chewy.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Since 2012, we've donated more than $97M in products to ensure that shelter and rescue animals get the quality care they deserve.



Up here, PetSmart also showcases animals ready for adoption from the Ottawa Humane Society so you know there are no puppy mills involved and the animals have already been vaccinated, micro-chipped, and checked for other health issues (which are fixed if they can fix them). z

I also like the way the OHS and other reputable shelters in this area publish information like "needs a one pet family", "gets along with cats but not with other dogs in the home", "suitable for families with only older children, not babies or toddlers", etc.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

One of my "dad jokes" when my kids were younger was every time we passed a PetSmart store I'd say, "Some pets smart. Some pets dumb."

I had a LOT of dad jokes.


----------



## Daniel




----------



## David Baxter PhD

I wonder what he asked Santa to bring him? 🤣


----------



## Daniel

Putin and the Power of Disobedience
					


Anonymous acts of insubordination can change history.





					www.psychologytoday.com
				




It is tempting to regard the poor performance of Russian ground forces in Ukraine as solely the product of poor decision-making, strategy, tactics, equipment, training, and readiness. In fact, each of these factors is probably partly to blame. But we should not forget another factor that is likely at work — waning conviction on the part of those who have been sent to do the fighting. Abandoned military equipment, convoys that resemble logjams, and foraging soldiers may represent symptoms of something far more significant than mere incompetence — namely, they may be signs of active disobedience.


----------



## Daniel

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."  ~ James Joyce









						Podcast examines Ukraine-Russia conflict through the lens of history
					


The UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy interviewed three historical observers to help provide important context and framing for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.





					newsroom.ucla.edu
				




“The situation in Russia and Ukraine seemed to many to come out of nowhere. But in fact, there is a long and complicated history between Russians and Ukrainians.”









						Ukraine - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC. During the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture under Kievan Rus', which was ultimately destroyed by the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. Over the next 600 years, the area was contested, divided, and ruled by external powers, including the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Tsardom of Russia. The Cossack Hetmanate emerged in Central Ukraine in the 17th century but was partitioned between Russia and Poland, and ultimately completely absorbed by the Russian Empire.

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution a Ukrainian national movement re-emerged, and the Ukrainian People's Republic was formed in 1917. This short-lived state was forcibly reconstituted into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became a founding member of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1922. From 1932 to 1933 the Holodomor killed millions of Ukrainians. In 1939, Western Ukraine was annexed from Poland by the USSR. Ukraine was the most populous and industrialised republic after the Russian Soviet Republic. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union Ukraine regained its independence in 1991...

Ukraine is among the poorest countries in Europe and suffers from low life expectancy and widespread corruption.[18][19] However, due to its extensive fertile land, pre-war Ukraine was one of the largest grain exporters in the world.[20][21] It is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the OSCE, the GUAM organization, the Association Trio, and the Lublin Triangle.


----------



## Daniel

alright - Wiktionary
					







					en.wiktionary.org
				




Some distinguish between _alright_ and all right by using _alright_ to mean "fine, good, okay" and all right to mean "all correct"...

The Oxford Dictionaries also conclude that "_alright_ remains nonstandard"[2] and that it is "still regarded as being unacceptable in formal writing".[3] Other dictionaries and style manuals also consider it incorrect or less correct than _all right_.









						Alright or All Right—What’s the Difference?
					


Although actor Matthew McConaughey’s cornerstone catchphrase “All right, all right, all right” is a widely accepted part of pop…





					www.grammarly.com
				




People are often surprised to learn that alright is not an accepted spelling of all right. Although the one-word spelling of alright is seen in informal writing, teachers and editors will usually consider it incorrect. To use the expression with impunity, it is best to spell it as two words: all right.


----------



## Daniel

Batman (1989 film) - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Despite initial negative reactions from comics fans prior to the film's release, Keaton's portrayal of Batman was generally praised.[71][90] James Berardinelli called the film entertaining, with the highlight being the production design. However, he concluded, "the best thing that can be said about _Batman_ is that it led to _Batman Returns_, which was a far superior effort."[91] _Variety_ felt "Jack Nicholson stole every scene" but still greeted the film with positive feedback.[92]

Roger Ebert was highly impressed with the production design, but claimed "_Batman_ is a triumph of design over story, style over substance, a great-looking movie with a plot you can't care much about." He also called the film "a depressing experience".[93] On the syndicated television series _Siskel & Ebert_, his reviewing partner Gene Siskel disagreed, describing the film as having a "refreshingly adult" approach with performances, direction and set design that "draws you into a psychological world."[94]


----------



## Daniel

TRPC4 - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Deletion of the _trpc4_ gene decreases levels of sociability in a social exploration task. These results suggest that TRPC4 may play a role in regulating social anxiety in a number of different disorders.[10] However deletion of the trpc4 gene had no impact on basic or complex strategic learning.[11] Given that the trpc4 gene is expressed in a select population of midbrain dopamine neurons it has been proposed that is may have an important role in dopamine related processes including addiction and attention.[9]


----------



## Daniel




----------



## Daniel

Study finds Ivermectin is ‘not clinically useful’ against Covid
					


Drug has become a cause celebre in parts of the vaccine-skeptical American right





					www.independent.co.uk
				












						What is ivermectin? How a livestock dewormer became a rumored COVID-19 aid with bad side effects
					


‘There have been lots of cases of liver problems and liver failure, severe GI upset and even things like seizure and coma,’ says UCLA Health’s Dr. Dan Uslan





					connect.uclahealth.org
				




"It is painstaking scientific testing, not magical thinking, that reveals what works well."


----------



## Daniel

Dry Fasting: What it is and why you shouldn’t do it
					


What 'dry fasting' is and why you shouldn't do it  By Jessica Roy, LATimes.com Feb. 13, 2020...





					forum.psychlinks.ca
				




An  orange has about a half-cup of water in it; to get to the recommended 68 ounces of water a day, you'd have to eat around 17 oranges. That's a  lot of peeling.


----------



## Daniel

You Can Still Get a Good Flight Deal This Year—Here’s How
					


Airfares are on the rise, but experts offer some tips and tricks on how to find good flight deals this year.




					www.afar.com
				




Most experts agree that booking at least four weeks in advance—ideally six to eight weeks before travel—is key to getting a better deal and could save travelers as much as 51 percent, especially if they use the calendar search feature offered on numerous search sites, such as Google Flights, as well as on the airlines’ own reservations systems. This feature allows travelers to see the entire span of airfares and select dates when pricing is lowest. Often, traveling a day before or after your originally intended travel dates can get you a cheaper fare, says Hahn.

Another way to save money is with what is called a “hacker fare,” or combining two one-way flights on different carriers. “Flying out with one airline and back with another, or using different airports, can save money,” Hahn adds.

An easy and timeless bargain-hunting hack is simply signing up for a price-monitoring alert service, which is available on the Hopper app and on a number of other travel booking sites, including Kayak and Google Flights.


----------



## Daniel

30 Great Black-and-White Horror Movies Worth Revisiting
					


Classic films, cult favorites, and a couple newer titles.





					www.vulture.com
				






_*The House on Haunted Hill*_* (1959)*

William Castle’s magnum opus, _The House on Haunted Hill_ is one of the greatest haunted-house movies of all time. An eccentric millionaire played with perfection by Vincent Price offers $10,000 to anyone who can spend a night in the titular mansion, the site of a plethora of murders. The participants are faced by a ceiling dripping blood, a severed head, a vat of acid in the cellar, and the iconic skeletal apparitions that walk on their own. While a fantastic movie in its own right, _The_ _House on Haunted Hill_’s more prominent legacy is rooted in Castle deciding to gear his horror films to a teenage market, a trend that horror films followed moving forward. _Available on Amazon Prime._


----------



## Daniel

Why is so little known about the 1930s coup attempt against FDR? | Sally Denton
					


Business leaders like JP Morgan and Irénée du Pont were accused by a retired major general of plotting to install a fascist dictator





					www.theguardian.com
				




If the plotters had been held accountable in the 1930s, the forces behind the 6 January coup attempt might never have flourished into the next century.


----------



## Daniel

Origin of name for Maxwell House coffee:









						Maxwell House - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




In 1884 Joel Cheek moved to Nashville and met Roger Nolley Smith, a British coffee broker. He was said to be able to tell the origin of a coffee simply by smelling the green beans. Over the next few years, the two worked on finding the perfect blend. In 1892 Cheek approached the food buyer for the* Maxwell House Hotel* and gave him 20 pounds of his special blend for free. After a few days, the coffee was gone, and the hotel returned to using its usual brand. But after hearing complaints from patrons and others who liked Cheek's coffee better, the hotel bought Cheek's blend exclusively. After six months, the hotel agreed to allow Cheek to name his coffee after his first big sale.


----------



## Daniel

Beyond The Menu - Waffle House
					


Check out fun facts about Waffle House in Beyond the Menu.





					www.wafflehouse.com


----------



## Daniel

The Waffle House I go to is the most western one in the United States:









						Waffle House - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Although the Waffle House chain is concentrated in the Southeast, it has reached as far to the north as Austinburg, Ohio, near Ashtabula, as far to the west as Goodyear, Arizona, in the suburbs of Phoenix, as far to the south as Key Largo, Florida, and as far to the east as Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania.


----------



## Daniel

There’s Always More Money for Weapons
					


The bipartisan urgency to spend billions of dollars on weapons for Ukraine and a military buildup in Europe stands in stark contrast to Congress's frugality when it comes to social spending.





					www.jacobinmag.com
				




The bipartisan urgency to spend billions of dollars on weapons for Ukraine and a military buildup in Europe stands in stark contrast to Congress's frugality when it comes to social spending...

There’s nothing outrageous about sending military aid to Ukrainians who are trying to fight off an invasion. The trouble is the long-term consequences of pouring weapons into one of Europe’s biggest arms-trafficking markets, and one filled with far-right militias that spent the years leading up to this war derailing peace efforts through anti-government violence and threats of a coup.

At the same time, nonmilitary solutions to help Ukrainians, like forgiving their foreign debt or a political settlement that could’ve prevented the war from happening in the first place, are not even considered...


----------



## Daniel

Ukrainian cuisine - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




The national dish of Ukraine is _borscht_, the well-known beet soup, of which many varieties exist. However, _varenyky_ (boiled dumplings similar to pierogi) and a type of cabbage roll known as_ holubtsi_ are also national favourites and are a common meal in traditional Ukrainian restaurants.[3] These dishes indicate the regional similarities within Eastern European cuisine.


----------



## Daniel

The Korean Immigrant and Michigan Farm Boy Who Taught Americans How to Cook Chow Mein
					


La Choy soy sauce bottles and canned bean sprouts are a familiar sight in American grocery stores, but behind this hundred-year-old brand is a story fit for Hollywood.





					tastecooking.com
				




In the United States, La Choy is the top-selling brand for chow mein noodles and Asian vegetables, and the second-best-selling brand for soy sauce behind Kikkoman.

“Non–Chinese American individuals and organizations such as La Choy played a role in the development of Chinese food in America,” says Yong Chen, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of _Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America_. “This is something that some of us who write about that history sometimes did not pay sufficient attention to.”


----------



## Daniel

The Price Kids Pay: Schools and Police Punish Students With Costly Tickets for Minor Misbehavior
					


Illinois law bans schools from fining students. So local police are doing it for them, issuing thousands of tickets a year for truancy, vaping, fights and other misconduct. Children are then thrown into a legal system designed for adults.





					www.propublica.org
				




Illinois law bans schools from fining students. So local police are doing it for them, issuing thousands of tickets a year for truancy, vaping, fights and other misconduct. Children are then thrown into a legal system designed for adults...

Across Illinois, police are ticketing thousands of students a year for in-school adolescent behavior once handled only by the principal’s office — for littering, for making loud noises, for using offensive words or gestures, for breaking a soap dish in the bathroom...

“Basically schools are using this as a way to have municipalities do their dirty work,” said Jackie Ross, an attorney at Loyola University Chicago’s ChildLaw Clinic who specializes in school discipline. “It’s the next iteration of the school-to-prison pipeline. Schools might be patting themselves on the back and saying it’s just the school-to-municipality pipeline, but it’s the same philosophy.”


----------



## Daniel

The Riskiest Doctor Specialties
					


Is job security guaranteed?





					www.medpagetoday.com
				




There aren't as many high-cost procedures in emergency medicine, so EM physicians rely on seeing a high volume of patients as opposed to seeing just a few complicated ones.

It's also very expensive to keep an emergency department open all day, every day, and have the necessary staffing and resources. Since physicians are the highest-paid members of the medical team, hospitals are incentivized to stretch each physician as far as they can.


----------



## Daniel

The Lessons Taiwan Is Learning From Ukraine
					


Russia’s invasion on the other side of the world has spurred ordinary Taiwanese to take practical steps to guard against similar action by Beijing.





					www.theatlantic.com
				




Russia’s invasion on the other side of the world has spurred ordinary Taiwanese to take practical steps to guard against similar action by Beijing.


----------



## Daniel

The cost for a prepackaged, less-than-fresh ham sandwich at a major airport (Denver International) is now $15.50 (USD).

In contrast, in 1941 at the LaGuardia Airport, a ham sandwich made to order was 10 cents.


----------



## Daniel

1933:



Source: The Obsessive Life and Mysterious Death of the Fisherman Who Discovered The Loch Ness Monster


----------



## Daniel

World population milestones - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




It is estimated that the population of the world reached one billion for the first time in *1804*. It would be more than 100 years before it reached two billion in 1927, but it took only 33 years to reach three billion in 1960.


----------



## Daniel

The same vision for all primates: The world's smallest primate reveals the incredible preservation of our visual system through millions of years of evolution
					


Primates process visual information similar to pixels in a digital camera, using small computing units located in their visual cortex. Scientists of the University of Geneva have investigated whether these computational units scale across the large differences in size between primates. The gray...




					www.sciencedaily.com
				




Primates process visual information similar to pixels in a digital camera, using small computing units located in their visual cortex. Scientists of the University of Geneva have investigated whether these computational units scale across the large differences in size between primates. The gray mouse lemur is one of the smallest of them and his visual processing units reveals that all primates, independent of their body size, have an equivalent computational units.


----------



## Daniel

Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans
					


See estimates for worldwide deaths, broken down by country, in World War II.





					www.nationalww2museum.org
				



Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II​

Deaths by Country​
CountryMilitary DeathsTotal Civilian and Military DeathsAlbania30,00030,200Australia39,80040,500Austria261,000384,700Belgium12,10086,100Brazil1,0002,000Bulgaria22,00025,000Canada45,40045,400China3-4,000,00020,000,000Czechoslovakia25,000345,000Denmark2,1003,200Dutch East Indies--3-4,000,000Estonia--51,000Ethiopia5,000100,000Finland95,00097,000France217,600567,600French Indochina--1-1,500,000Germany5,533,0006,600,000-8,800,000Greece20,000-35,000300,000-800,000Hungary300,000580,000India87,0001,500,000-2,500,000Italy301,400457,000Japan2,120,0002,600,000-3,100,000Korea--378,000-473,000Latvia--227,000Lithuania--353,000Luxembourg--2,000Malaya--100,000Netherlands17,000301,000New Zealand11,90011,900Norway3,0009,500Papua New Guinea--15,000Philippines57,000500,000-1,000,000Poland240,0005,600,000Romania300,000833,000Singapore--50,000South Africa11,90011,900Soviet Union8,800,000-10,700,00024,000,000United Kingdom383,600450,700United States416,800418,500Yugoslavia446,0001,000,000
Worldwide Casualties*​
Battle Deaths15,000,000Battle Wounded25,000,000Civilian Deaths45,000,000

*Worldwide casualty estimates vary widely in several sources. The number of civilian deaths in China alone might well be more than 50,000,000.


----------



## Daniel

Mexican Spanish - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




*Mexican Spanish* (Spanish: _español mexicano_) is the variety of dialects and sociolects of the Spanish language spoken in Mexican territory. Mexico has the largest number of Spanish speakers, with more than twice as many as in any other country in the world. Spanish is spoken by just over 99.2% of the population, being the mother tongue of 93.8% and the second language of 5.4%.


----------



## Daniel

Canada and Australia (in dark green) are less corrupt than the US:



			https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
		


The *Corruption Perceptions Index*(*CPI*) is an index which ranks countries "by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys."


----------



## Daniel

Tomato juice - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Tomato juice was first served as a beverage in 1917 by Louis Perrin at the French Lick Springs Hotel in southern Indiana, when he ran out of orange juice and needed a quick substitute...

In the United States, most tomato juice is made from tomato paste. In Canada, tomato juice is unconcentrated and pasteurized, made from fine tomato pulp from ripe and whole tomatoes...

 In the UK tomato juice is commonly combined with Worcestershire sauce.


----------



## Daniel

Daniel said:


> "A twenty-five-year-old is 133 percent more likely to pay an overdraft fee than a sixty-five-year-old, and nearly 11 percent of consumers between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five have more than ten overdrafts per year.  No wonder millennials envision a future without banks."
> 
> -- _The Unbanking of America: How the New Middle Class Survives_  (2017)



Similarly:  Yes, overdraft fees cost Americans more than burglaries

Many credit unions are even worse than banks when it comes to charging multiple overdraft fees.

Some great news about overdraft fees, including Capital One and Citibank no longer charging them:









						Elizabeth Warren is not happy with America's banks: ‘They are still squeezing families on overdraft fees’
					


The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a hearing this week to discuss bank overdraft charges.





					www.marketwatch.com
				




Ally announced its plan to eliminate the fees across the board last June, becoming the first among the major U.S. banks.

Capital One and Citibank followed suit in the intervening months. Others are lowering their overdraft fees: Bank of America will reduce its overdraft fees from $35 to $10 starting from May; Wells Fargo announced plans in January slashing non-sufficient fund fees and overdraft protection fees, and offered a 24-hour grace period before charging overdraft fees.

JPMorgan Chase also announced last December that it would eliminate insufficient fund fees, and will increase the overdraft cushion from $5 to $50 in addition to a one-day grace period and early access to direct deposit.

Increased competition from the fintech companies in Silicon Valley also prompted more U.S. banks to give up overdraft fees, analysts say. As fintechs offer easier access and services online, mainstream banks have offered more fintech-inspired services in an effort to stay relevant, including no-fee overdrafts.


----------



## Daniel

List of the oldest currently registered Internet domain names - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				





RankDate of registrationDomainRegistered to1March 15, 1985symbolics.comSymbolics2April 24, 1985bbn.comBBN Technologies3May 24, 1985think.comThinking Machines4July 11, 1985mcc.comMicroelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation5September 30, 1985dec.comDigital Equipment Corporation6November 7, 1985northrop.comNorthrop Corporation7January 9, 1986xerox.comXerox8January 17, 1986sri.comSRI International9March 3, 1986hp.comHewlett-Packard10March 5, 1986bellcore.comBell Communications Research11March 19, 1986ibm.comIBM12March 19, 1986sun.comSun Microsystems13March 25, 1986intel.comIntel14March 25, 1986ti.comTexas Instruments15April 25, 1986att.comAT&T16May 8, 1986gmr.comGeneral Motors Research Laboratories17May 8, 1986tek.comTektronix18July 10, 1986fmc.comFMC Corporation19July 10, 1986ub.comUngermann-Bass20August 5, 1986bell-atl.comBell Atlantic21August 5, 1986ge.comGeneral Electric22August 5, 1986grebyn.comGrebyn Corporation23August 5, 1986isc.comInteractive Systems Corporation24August 5, 1986nsc.comNational Semiconductor25August 5, 1986stargate.comStargate Information Services[2][3]26September 2, 1986boeing.comBoeing27September 18, 1986itcorp.comInterrupt Technology Corporation28September 29, 1986siemens.comSiemens AG29October 18, 1986pyramid.comPyramid Technology30October 27, 1986alphacdc.comAlpha Communications Development Corporation


----------



## Daniel

Why your favourite colour is probably blue
					


From a young age we are primed to choose a favourite colour, but strangely as we grow up our preference often changes – and it's largely due to influences outside our control.





					www.bbc.com


----------



## Daniel

What Did Neandertals Dream About?
					


Did Neandertals have creative dreams and what may have happened to those dreams?





					www.psychologytoday.com
				




What did Neandertals dream about? In all likelihood, they still dreamt of the same common themes we dream about and that is being chased, falling, flying, being unable to move, being unprepared, improperly clothed or naked, being lost, losing a tooth or having sex.


----------



## Daniel

In Arizona, I have had tacos that are more like a tortilla with a salad on top than anything else:









						Mexican cuisine - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Tacos are the top-rated and most well-known street Mexican food. It is made up of meat or other fillings wrapped in a tortilla often served with cheese added. Vegetarian fillings include mushrooms, potatoes, rice, or beans.


----------



## Daniel

USNews rated Canada #1 for quality of life and best country overall.  The US is way down the list at #20 for quality of life (#6 overall).   Australia is #6 for quality of life and also ranked immediately above the US for overall best country.


----------



## Daniel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilma_Mankiller
*Wilma Pearl Mankiller* (Cherokee: ᎠᏥᎳᏍᎩ ᎠᏍᎦᏯᏗᎯ, romanized: _Atsilasgi Asgayadihi_; November 18, 1945 – April 6, 2010) was a Native American (Cherokee Nation) activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation...

In 2021 it was announced that Mankiller, along with Maya Angelou, Sally Ride, Adelina Otero-Warren, and Anna May Wong, were selected to have their likeness appear on the quarter-dollar coin as a part of the United States Mint's "American Women Quarters" Program.


----------



## Daniel

The Big Book of Canadian Trivia
					


Here in one big book is all the trivia and facts about Canada anyone needs to know. The Big Book is jam-packed with facts and stories. There are stories of important Canadian artifacts and history including what became of Canada’s World War II spy camp. All regions and provinces are covered, as...




					www.google.com


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilma_Mankiller
> *Wilma Pearl Mankiller* (Cherokee: ᎠᏥᎳᏍᎩ ᎠᏍᎦᏯᏗᎯ, romanized: _Atsilasgi Asgayadihi_; November 18, 1945 – April 6, 2010) was a Native American (Cherokee Nation) activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation...
> 
> In 2021 it was announced that Mankiller, along with Maya Angelou, Sally Ride, Adelina Otero-Warren, and Anna May Wong, were selected to have their likeness appear on the quarter-dollar coin as a part of the United States Mint's "American Women Quarters" Program.



Unfortunate name, although it kinda applies to a couple of my exes.


----------



## Daniel

Sandra Day O’Connor: First Woman on the Supreme Court
		




As the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, Sandra Day O’Connor became an inspiration to millions.

--------

A quote from her in 1992:

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State."


----------



## Daniel

https://gothammag.com/bentley-motors-nft
		


“Bentley customers are living their lives online, purchasing luxury goods with digital currency, and establishing businesses in the Metaverse. We’ve always engaged our customers where they explore their passions, and today that means being present in digital marketplaces and offering NFT assets. We’ve seen how NFTs have raised the profiles of both art and artists, and we believe the same can happen in the luxury automotive space” said Alain Favey, member of the board for Sales and marketing.

These NFT drops are the essential first steps Bentley needed to take into the Web3 world. In the future, Bentley plans to explore NFCs (non-fungible chips), online gaming, blockchain technology, and Metaverse applications.

All proceeds from the NFT and future endeavors will go towards the brand’s philanthropic efforts and supporting students passionate about engineering, design and manufacturing. Bentley also hopes to use its proceeds to support organizations dedicated to increasing sustainability, especially when it comes to transportation.


----------



## Daniel

Lithia water - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Between the 1880s and World War I, the consumption of bottled lithia mineral water was popular.

Lithia water contains various lithium salts, including lithium citrate.

An early version of Coca-Cola available in pharmacies' soda fountains called Lithia Coke was a mixture of Coca-Cola syrup and Bowden lithia spring water.

The soft drink 7Up was named "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda" when it was formulated in 1929 because it contained lithium citrate. The beverage was a patent medicine marketed as a cure for hangover. Lithium citrate was removed from 7Up in 1948.


----------



## Daniel

2021 Census shows changes in Australia’s religious diversity
					







					www.abs.gov.au
				




The 2021 Census has revealed increasing diversity in the religions Australians identified, reflecting continuing changes in our social attitudes and belief systems.

Christianity is the most common religion in Australia, with over 40 per cent (43.9 per cent) identifying as Christian. This has reduced from over 50 per cent (52.1 per cent) in 2016 and from over 60 per cent (61.1 per cent) in 2011. As in earlier Censuses, the largest Christian denominations are Catholic (20.0 per cent of the population) and Anglican (9.8 per cent).

While fewer people are reporting their religion as Christian, more are reporting ‘no religion’. Almost 40 per cent (38.9 per cent) of Australia’s population reported having no religion in the 2021 Census, an increase from 30 per cent (30.1 per cent) in 2016 and 22 per cent (22.3 per cent) in 2011.

Other religions are growing but continue to make up a small proportion of the population. Hinduism has grown by 55.3 per cent to 684,002 people, or 2.7 per cent of the population. Islam has grown to 813,392 people, which is 3.2 per cent of the Australian population.


----------



## Daniel

"Homemade cancer drugs, violence in hospitals, doctor shortages: We take you inside China’s broken health care system."






						Violence against doctors in China - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Public Hospitals in China received full government funding before 1985. After economic reforms, the Hospitals are now receiving very limited financial support from the government, thus forcing them to operate for-profit. Drug and examination costs have become the main means for public hospitals to get profits. Drug sales can even account for 40 percent of China's public hospital revenue.

Higher drug costs and the selection of some high-priced drugs can indeed bring profits to doctors and hospitals, but they greatly increase patients' burden. Patients' dissatisfaction with doctors, caused by inflated drug prices, has become an important reason for the deterioration of doctor-patient relations, especially after its exposure by the media and the government...

Violence against doctors has been cited as one reason for a decrease in the popularity of medicine as a profession.


----------



## Daniel

Tex-Mex - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Generally, cheese plays a much bigger role in Tex-Mex food than in mainstream Mexican cuisine, particularly in the popularity of _chile con queso_ (often referred to as simply "queso"), which is often eaten with chips (alongside or in place of guacamole and salsa), or may be served over enchiladas, tamales, or burritos.


----------



## Daniel

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tejanos
*Tejanos*...Spanish for "Texan", originally borrowed from the Caddo _tayshas _are the residents of the state of Texas who are culturally descended from the Mexican population of Tejas and Coahuila that lived in the region prior to it becoming what is now known as the state of Texas before it became a US state in 1845. The term is also sometimes applied to all Texans of Mexican descent...

The cuisine that would come to be known as "Tex-Mex" originated with the Tejanos. It developed from Spanish and North American indigenous commodities with influences from Mexican cuisine.[31]

Tex-Mex cuisine is characterized by its widespread use of melted cheese, meat (particularly beef), peppers, beans, and spices, in addition to corn or flour tortillas. Chili con carne, burritos, carne asada, chalupa, chili con queso, enchiladas, and fajitas are all Tex-Mex specialties. A common feature of Tex-Mex is the combination plate, with several of the above on one large platter. Serving tortilla chips and a hot sauce or salsa as an appetizer is also a Tex-Mex development.[32] _Cabrito_, _barbacoa_, _carne seca_, and other products of cattle culture have been common in the ranching cultures of South Texas and northern Mexico. In the 20th century, Tex-Mex took on Americanized elements such as yellow cheese, as goods from the rest of the United States became cheap and readily available.[33] Tex-Mex has imported flavors from other spicy cuisines, such as the use of cumin. Cumin is often referred to by its Spanish name, _comino._

A common Tex-Mex breakfast dish served is a "breakfast taco." This usually consists of a flour tortilla or corn tortilla served using a single fold. This is in contrast to the burrito-style method of completely encasing the ingredients. Some of the typical ingredients used are a combination of: eggs, potatoes, cheese, peppers, bacon, sausage, and barbacoa. Breakfast tacos are traditionally served with an optional red or green salsa.[34]


----------



## Daniel




----------



## Daniel

Mustatil - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




*Mustatils* are prehistoric monuments made of sandstone walls which are found in northwest Saudi Arabia.










						A mysterious cult that predates Stonehenge
					


Spread over a vast, remote landscape in north-western Saudi Arabia are millennia-old archaeological remains that could change our understanding of prehistory.





					www.bbc.com
				




"The mustatil suggests large social networks, innovative architectural skills and vast exploration in prehistoric Arabia."


----------



## Daniel

RoboCop - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Filming took place almost entirely on location in Dallas,[10][45][48] with additional shooting on sets in Las Colinas, and in Pittsburgh.[8][45][49] Verhoeven wanted a modern filming location that looked like it was from the near future.[45] Detroit was dismissed because it had many low, featureless, and visually uninteresting buildings.[26][45] Neumeier said it was also a trade union town, making it more expensive to film there.[50] Detroit does make a brief appearance in stock footage shown during the film's opening.[16] Chicago was dismissed for aesthetic reasons, New York City for high costs, and California because, according to Davison, Orion wanted to distance themselves from the project.[26][45]

Dallas was chosen over Houston because it offered modern buildings as well as older, less-maintained areas where they could use explosives.[45] The filming schedule in Dallas was nine weeks, but it soon became clear it was going to take longer. Based on filmed footage, Orion approved extending the schedule and increasing the budget to $13.1 million.[32][44][51] The weather during filming fluctuated: the Dallas summer was often 90 °F (32 °C) to 115 °F (46 °C);[26][37][52] the weather in Pittsburgh was frigid.[10]


_Dallas City Hall__ appears as the exterior of OCP's headquarters. Matte paintings were used to make it appear taller._


----------



## Daniel

Prehistoric Climate Change Repeatedly Channelled Human Migrations Across Arabia
					







					www.shh.mpg.de
				




"While today the Nefud desert is a very arid region, deep hollows between the large sand dunes created places for small lakes to form during occasional increases in rainfall. As a result, the Nefud region was periodically transformed from one of the most uninhabitable parts of Southwest Asia into a lush grassland that provided opportunities for repeated population movements."










						Palaeodeserts - Climate Change and Hominin Evolution in the Arabian Desert
					







					www.palaeodeserts.com
				




"The Palaeodeserts Project is examining environmental change in the Arabian Desert over the last one million years. A multidisciplinary team of researchers is studying the effect of environmental change on early humans and animals that settled or passed through the Desert and how their responses determined whether they survived or died out."


----------



## Daniel

Clothing - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Ralf Kittler, Manfred Kayser, and Mark Stoneking, anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, conducted a genetic analysis of human body lice that suggests clothing originated around 170,000 years ago. Body lice are an indicator of clothes-wearing, since most humans have sparse body hair, and lice thus require human clothing to maintain presence on their host. Their research suggests that the invention of clothing may have coincided with the northward migration of modern _Homo sapiens_ away from the warm climate of Africa, thought to have begun between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. A second group of researchers using similar genetic methods estimate that clothing originated between 114,000 and 30,000 years ago.


----------



## Daniel

Reports of Homo erectus' laziness are 'moronic'
					


If you’re into ancient anthropology, you’ve probably seen a headline or two touting a new discovery about Homo erectus—that laziness may have done them in.





					www.popsci.com
				




“It’s why Starbucks has a shop every couple blocks, because we can’t be bothered to go further to get our coffee,” Anton says. “It’s a really smart adaptive strategy to not only live within your resources, but also to balance your energy with your output. That’s potentially why the species survived for so long.”


----------



## Daniel




----------



## Daniel

A history of tooth-whitening
					


In 3000 B.C., people used something called chew sticks.





					www.seattletimes.com
				




The practice of teeth-whitening began around 4,000 years ago with the ancient Egyptians, who created a whitening paste using ground pumice stone mixed in wine vinegar. White teeth were a mark of beauty and a sign of wealth.


----------



## Daniel

List of foods named after people - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				












						Fettuccine Alfredo - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




"This act of mixing the butter and cheese through the noodles becomes quite a ceremony when performed by Alfredo in his tiny restaurant in Rome. As busy as Alfredo is with other duties, he manages to be at each table when the waiter arrives with the platter of _fettuccine_ to be mixed by him. As a violinist plays inspiring music, Alfredo performs the sacred ceremony with a fork and spoon of solid gold. Alfredo does not cook noodles. He does not make noodles. He _achieves _them."

— George Rector (1933)


----------



## Daniel

As Inflation Rages On, Retailers Turn to AI and Dynamic Pricing | TechTarget
					


In this guest post, Matt Pavich from Revionics talks about how AI-driven dynamic pricing can help retailers combat market variables





					www.computerweekly.com
				




"The ability to raise prices on items seen as less critical by shoppers is what funds retailers’ ability to keep prices steady – _or even to lower prices_ – on high-visibility items, such as bread and bananas."


----------



## Daniel

John Stith Pemberton - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




*John Stith Pemberton* (July 8, 1831 – August 16, 1888) was an American pharmacist and Confederate States Army veteran who is best known as the inventor of Coca-Cola. In May 1886, he developed an early version of a beverage that would later become Coca-Cola, but sold his rights to the drink shortly before his death.

He suffered from a sabre wound sustained in April 1865, during the Battle of Columbus; his ensuing morphine addiction led him to experiment with various painkillers and toxins. In the end, this led to the recipe that later was adapted to make Coca-Cola...

He blended the base syrup with carbonated water by accident when trying to make another glassful of the beverage. Pemberton decided then to sell this as a fountain drink rather than a medicine. Frank Mason Robinson came up with the name "Coca-Cola" for the alliterative sound, which was popular among other wine medicines of the time. Although the name refers to the two main ingredients, because of controversy over its cocaine content,  The Coca-Cola Company later said that the name was "meaningless but fanciful". Robinson hand wrote the Spencerian script on the bottles and ads. Pemberton made many health claims for his product, touting it as a "valuable brain tonic" that would cure headaches, relieve exhaustion, and calm nerves, and marketed it as "delicious, refreshing, pure joy, exhilarating", and "invigorating".


----------



## Daniel

Daniel said:


> Study finds Ivermectin is ‘not clinically useful’ against Covid
> 
> 
> 
> Drug has become a cause celebre in parts of the vaccine-skeptical American right
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.independent.co.uk
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What is ivermectin? How a livestock dewormer became a rumored COVID-19 aid with bad side effects
> 
> 
> 
> ‘There have been lots of cases of liver problems and liver failure, severe GI upset and even things like seizure and coma,’ says UCLA Health’s Dr. Dan Uslan
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> connect.uclahealth.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "It is painstaking scientific testing, not magical thinking, that reveals what works well."



Another unfortunate case of using "alternative" medicine instead of going with medical advice:









						Doubting mainstream medicine, COVID patients find dangerous advice and pills online
					


A 75-year-old woman became enmeshed in conspiracy theories about COVID. After she got infected, she rejected effective treatments and sought out black market drugs instead.





					www.npr.org
				




"For Americans like Stephanie who don't trust the medical establishment, there's a network of fringe medical doctors, natural healers and internet personalities ready to push unproven cures for COVID. And a shady black market where you can buy them. Stephanie was plugged into that alternative medical network, and doctors say it ultimately cost her life."


----------



## Daniel

An integrative model of new product evaluation: A systematic investigation of perceived novelty and product evaluation in the movie industry
					


The literature on perceived novelty and product evaluation has diverged into two disparate streams of research. The first stream builds on theories of curiosity and argues that the perceived novelty of a new product benefits product evaluation because ...





					www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
				




Utilizing content analysis and big data approaches with a large sample of 49,835 reviews of 147 movies in the movie industry, we found that an evaluator’s perception of the novelty of a new movie benefited product evaluation but only when that perceived novelty was moderate; at higher levels of perceived novelty, the product evaluation decreased.


----------



## Daniel

History of Cancer
					


Explore a timeline of the history of cancer from 18th century BCE to 2011.





					canceratlas.cancer.org


----------



## Daniel

Milton S. Hershey - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Hershey Chocolate supplied the U.S. Armed Forces with chocolate bars during World War II. These bars were called Ration D Bars and Tropical Chocolate Bars. The Ration D Bar had very specific requirements from the army: It had to weigh 1 or 2 ounces (28 or 57 g); it had to resist melting at temperatures higher than 90 degrees, and it had to have an unpleasant-enough flavor to prevent the troops from developing cravings for them.


----------



## Daniel

4 Shower Products That Are Ruining Your Pipes, According to Plumbers
					


What to skip, what’s safe, and how to fix any problems that do pop up.





					getpocket.com
				




Mulder recommends enzymatic drain cleaners if you are attempting to use a product to clean your drain pipes. “They are safe and ‘green’ because they contain bacteria or enzymes that eat the organic components of the clog to eliminate it,” he says. Boiling water and baking soda and vinegar mixes are two other gentle options for loosening up clogs.


----------



## Daniel

Odds of Winning Latest Mega Millions Prize? Math Professor Has Answers
					







					news.syr.edu
				




*Q: If someone is looking at the overall odds of winning this major prize, what are they?

A:* The odds are one out of 302,575,350.

*Q: What other astronomical odds can you compare a lottery win to?

A:* From the web, I got that the odds of getting struck by lightning in a given year are about one out of one million. That is about 300 times more likely than winning the Mega Millions jackpot with one ticket. Of course, you can increase your odds by buying multiple tickets.

Here is another comparison: There are one billion different possible social security numbers. So, if you try to randomly guess someone’s social security number, your chances of getting it right with one guess are one out of one billion. That is about three times harder than winning the Mega Millions jackpot with one ticket.


----------



## Daniel

As inflation soars, how is AriZona iced tea still 99 cents?
					


Tall cans of AriZona iced tea have cost 99 cents since 1992. The family behind the company says it's committed to that price even as the prices of aluminum and corn syrup climb higher.





					www.latimes.com
				




Vultaggio, a Brooklyn native with the accent to prove it, got the idea for the tea company when he was running his route as a beer distributor in Manhattan. He noticed that people were drinking Snapple, even though it was freezing outside. He decided to get into the iced tea business then and there.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> Odds of Winning Latest Mega Millions Prize? Math Professor Has Answers
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> news.syr.edu
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *Q: If someone is looking at the overall odds of winning this major prize, what are they?
> 
> A:* The odds are one out of 302,575,350.
> 
> *Q: What other astronomical odds can you compare a lottery win to?
> 
> A:* From the web, I got that the odds of getting struck by lightning in a given year are about one out of one million. That is about 300 times more likely than winning the Mega Millions jackpot with one ticket. Of course, you can increase your odds by buying multiple tickets.
> 
> Here is another comparison: There are one billion different possible social security numbers. So, if you try to randomly guess someone’s social security number, your chances of getting it right with one guess are one out of one billion. That is about three times harder than winning the Mega Millions jackpot with one ticket.



I always liked the description of lottery tickets as a tax on fools.


----------



## Daniel

What are the hardest adjustments to make when visiting Japan?
					


Graham D Brown's answer: Here are 10 adjustments to Japanese life you may find difficult...    1) TIPPING    Don't do it (they'll stare at you blankly or give you the money back) - I actually prefer this one. For tippers, it might be hard adjusting to the fact that what it says on the menu is how...





					qr.ae
				




"Wow, this is how Japanese kids see the world. For the first time I had to adjust to the idea that my country wasn't the center of the world, but somewhere out on the edges... that was a hard adjustment but a liberating experience."


----------



## Daniel

The Most Surveilled Place in America
					


“The idea is that if enough people get hurt, they’ll stop coming.”





					www.theverge.com
				




...Border Patrol’s most powerful tool is not its fleet of drones and helicopters — it’s the desert itself. Since the mid-1990s, the agency has relied on a strategy called “prevention through deterrence” to reduce unauthorized border crossings. The idea is simple: if you put more manpower and surveillance technology in highly trafficked areas, including big border cities like Nogales, migrants will have no choice but to travel through “more hostile terrain, less suited for crossing and more suited for enforcement,” as Border Patrol’s 1994 strategic plan stated.

“Early on, they were like, ‘If we’re going to do this, people are going to get hurt,’” Jason De León, an anthropology professor at UCLA and author of _The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail_, told me. “But the idea is that if enough people get hurt, they’ll stop coming.”

...The Sonoran  Desert isn’t an untouched wilderness. It’s a massive unmarked grave...

Nearly every person I met in southern Arizona told me they keep a few gallon jugs of water in their car, just in case they happen to come across a migrant in distress on the side of the road...


----------



## Daniel

This 10-Minute Ab Workout Will Fire Up Your Entire Core and You Can Do It Between Meetings
					


Build a strong core with this quick workout.





					www.bicycling.com
				




"By adding a 10-minute ab workout to your training a few times a week, you’ll be able to build a strong core..."

"You can never have too much lower abdominal activation, especially when riding a bike.  These all-important muscles work with the hip flexors to help generate power.”


----------



## Daniel

Video game crash of 1983 - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




In 1982, a price war that began between Commodore and Texas Instruments led to home computers becoming as inexpensive as video-game consoles;[21] after Commodore cut the retail price of the 64 to $300 in June 1983, some stores began selling it for as little as $199.[13] Dan Gutman, founder in 1982 of _Video Games Player_ magazine in an article in 1987, recalled in 1983 that "People asked themselves, 'Why should I buy a video game system when I can buy a computer that will play games and do so much more?'"[22] _The Boston Phoenix_ stated in September 1983 about the cancellation of the Intellivision III, "Who was going to pay $200-plus for a machine that could only play games?"[13] 

Commodore explicitly targeted video game players. Spokesman William Shatner asked in VIC-20 commercials "Why buy just a video game from Atari or Intellivision?", stating that "unlike games, it has a real computer keyboard" yet "plays great games too".[23] Commodore's ownership of chip fabricator MOS Technology allowed manufacture of integrated circuits in-house, so the VIC-20 and C64 sold for much lower prices than competing home computers. In addition, both Commodore computers were designed to utilize the ubiquitous Atari controllers so they could tap into the existing controller market.

"I've been in retailing 30 years and I have never seen any category of goods get on a self-destruct pattern like this", a Service Merchandise executive told _The New York Times_ in June 1983.[21] The price war was so severe that in September Coleco CEO Arnold Greenberg welcomed rumors of an IBM 'Peanut' home computer because although IBM was a competitor, it "is a company that knows how to make money". "I look back a year or two in the videogame field, or the home-computer field", Greenberg added, "how much better everyone was, when most people were making money, rather than very few".[24]


----------



## Daniel

*I'itoi*, the Man in the Maze







						Man in the Maze - We R Native
					


“The maze is a symbol of life … happiness, sadness … and...





					www.wernative.org
				




_“The maze is a symbol of life … happiness, sadness … and you reach your goal … there’s a dream there, and you reach that dream when you get to the middle of the maze … that’s how I was told, my grandparents told me that’s how the maze is.”_

This figure is called Se:he or I’itoi (“Big Brother”) in the Tohono O’odham language. He is shown at the top of a labyrinth, or maze, and is often referred to as the “Man in the Maze”. For the Tohono O’odham, the symbol represents a person’s journey through life. The twists and turns represent choices made in life; with each turn, man becomes more understanding and stronger as a person.

In the middle of the maze, a person finds their dreams and goals. At the center (the last turn in the design), man has a final opportunity to look back upon his or her choices and path before they pass into the next world. Several other tribes related to the Tohono O’odham use the same or similar symbol, sometimes with a slightly different interpretation.

Here is how Alfreda Antone, a Tohono O’odham tribal citizen, sees Se:he and the labyrinth:_ 

“Elder Brother lived in the maze … and the reason why he lived in the maze was because … I think how I’m gonna say this … magician or oh, medicine man that can disappear, and that can do things, heal people and things like that … that was Elder Brother … Se:he … they called him … he lived in there … but he had a lot of enemies so he made that, and to live in there people would go in there but they couldn’t find him … they would turn around and go back.

“But in real life … when you look at the maze you start from the top and go into the maze … your life, you go down and then you reach a place where you have to turn around … maybe in your own life you fall, something happens in your home, you are sad, you pick yourself up and you go on through the maze … you go on and on and on … so many places in there you might … maybe your child died … or maybe somebody died, or you stop, you fall and you feel bad … you get up, turn around and go again … when you reach that middle of the maze … that’s when you see the Sun God and the Sun God blesses you and says you have made it … that’s where you die.

The maze is a symbol of life…happiness, sadness…and you reach your goal…there’s a dream there, and you reach that dream when you get to the middle of the maze…that’s how I was told, my grandparents told me that’s how the maze is.”_


----------



## Daniel

Pigs as Pets | Animal Rescue Centre | Goodheart Animal Sanctuaries
					


Here you will fill details of having Pigs As Pets at Goodheart Animal Sanctuaries. Click to find out more information about having pigs as pets.





					www.goodheartanimalsanctuaries.com
				




"Food can cause friction between pet pigs and their human housemates, as their drive to forage can lead them to overturn bins and other containers, and they are intelligent enough to open fridges, cupboards and pantries in order to reach the food inside."


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Not a fan of pet pigs. I mean they can be pets in the barn - they don't need to sleep on your couch.


----------



## Daniel

Especially since it's recommended to have at least two pigs to keep each other company 






						Couple share home with 17-stone Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs - and they even hog the sofa!
					


Janey and Dave Bryne spend £100 a month on pig food, plus £350 to cut their trotters every three months





					www.mirror.co.uk


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Some animals are born to be outside.


----------



## Daniel

Especially spiders


----------



## Daniel

Throat lozenge - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Candies to soothe the throat date back to 1000 BC in Egypt's Twentieth Dynasty, when they were made from honey flavored with citrus, herbs, and spices.  In the 19th century, physicians discovered morphine and heroin, which suppress coughing at its source—the brain. Popular formulations of that era included Smith Brothers Cough Drops, first advertised in 1852, and Luden's, created in 1879. Concern over the risk of opioid dependence led to the development of alternative medications.


----------



## Daniel

Depths of Wikipedia - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




"Created on Instagram in 2020 by Annie Rauwerda, a college student at the University of Michigan, the account shares excerpts from various Wikipedia articles on humorous or absurd topics."



			https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki
		


One example:






						FoldiMate - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Daniel

Just How Dumb Was the Average Dinosaur?
					


Did all dinosaurs have a brain the size of a walnut, or might some of them have been as smart as very small mammals? Here's a look.





					www.thoughtco.com
				




"If you met a live Velociraptor today, it would probably strike you as slightly dumber than a chicken."










						Velociraptor - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




_Velociraptor_ (commonly shortened to "*raptor*") is one of the dinosaur genera most familiar to the general public due to its prominent role in the _Jurassic Park_ films. In real life, however, _Velociraptor_ was roughly the size of a turkey, considerably smaller than the approximately 2 m (6+1⁄2 ft) tall and 90 kg (200 lb) reptiles seen in the novels and films (which were based on members of the related genus _Deinonychus_).

"If animals like velociraptor were alive today our first impression would be that they were just very unusual looking birds."


----------



## Daniel

Skeuomorph - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				





_Electric light bulbs imitating the shape of candle flames_

A *skeuomorph* (also spelled *skiamorph*, /ˈskjuːəˌmɔːrf, ˈskjuːoʊ-/) is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were necessary in the original. Skeuomorphs are typically used to make something new feel familiar in an effort to speed understanding and acclimation. They employ elements that, while essential to the original object, serve no pragmatic purpose in the new system.

Examples include pottery embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar pots made of metal and a software calendar that imitates the appearance of binding on a paper desk calendar.


----------



## Daniel

"Are you a people person?"

The road to my house:


----------



## David Baxter PhD

The big problem with living isolated like that is trying to order pizza or tacos for delivery.


----------



## Daniel

"Is this thin crust?  It doesn't look like thin crust.  Can you come back with a thin crust?"  🍕


----------



## Daniel

New Spain - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




At its greatest extent, the Spanish crown claimed on the mainland of the Americas much of North America south of Canada, that is: all of present-day Mexico and Central America except Panama; most of present-day United States west of the Mississippi River, plus the Floridas...


_Maximum extent of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. The areas in light green were territories claimed by New Spain._


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## Daniel

For my next staycation to Flagstaff, Arizona:









						Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument | park, Arizona, United States
					


Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument,  geologic formation in north-central Arizona, U.S. The monument lies 15 miles (24 km) northeast of Flagstaff and about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Wupatki National Monument. Established in 1930, it occupies an area of 5 square miles (13 square km)...




					www.britannica.com
				














						Sunset Crater - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument is a U.S. National Monument created to protect Sunset Crater, a cinder cone within the San Francisco Volcanic Field. The monument is managed by the National Park Service in conjunction with nearby Wupatki National Monument.
-----------








						Basic Information - Wupatki National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)
					







					www.nps.gov
				





These Old Walls Can Speak

Wupatki National Monument preserves dozens of ancestral Puebloan villages. Though silence reigns today, this place was once a bustling hub of trade and life. People of the Northern Sinagua, Cohonina, Kayenta, and Hohokam archeological culture groups planted corns, beans, squash, and cotton among these seemingly barren hills and washes. Where many now see only dirt and hear only wind, ancient Native American people lived, raised children, and thrived. Wupatki is not as silent as it seems. Walls can talk, and if you linger long enough to listen, these teach many lessons.


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## Daniel

Our early ancestors first metabolized alcohol 10 million years ago, a find that helps shape primate evolution
					


Have you ever wondered why you crave for a drink from time to time or why you can drink alcohol in the first place, for that matter? Our ability to ingest





					www.zmescience.com
				




Our early ancestors lived mostly in the trees. Once they began to live on the ground as well, they naturally ingested food fallen from the trees as well. Unlike the fruits hung up in trees, the fallen kind is exposed to bacterial degradation, which converts sugars into alcohol.



> “If you were the ancestor without this new mutation in ADH4, the ethanol would quickly build up in your blood and you’d get inebriated much faster,” Carrigan says. “You’d be a cheap date.”


Only a couple of fallen fruits would be enough to get a primate ancestors ‘drunk as a monkey’. Instead of being metabolized, most of the alcohol from the fermented fruits would wind up directly in the blood stream, intoxicating the animal and making it an easy prey. Those primates that bore mutations that allowed them to metabolize more alcohol could eat more fruits without exposing themselves to any additional danger. Because they had more resources at their disposal, these primates were more likely to survive hence they the genes were selected and passed down to the human lineage we know today.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> Our early ancestors first metabolized alcohol 10 million years ago, a find that helps shape primate evolution
> 
> 
> 
> Have you ever wondered why you crave for a drink from time to time or why you can drink alcohol in the first place, for that matter? Our ability to ingest
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> www.zmescience.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Our early ancestors lived mostly in the trees. Once they began to live on the ground as well, they naturally ingested food fallen from the trees as well. Unlike the fruits hung up in trees, the fallen kind is exposed to bacterial degradation, which converts sugars into alcohol.
> 
> 
> Only a couple of fallen fruits would be enough to get a primate ancestors ‘drunk as a monkey’. Instead of being metabolized, most of the alcohol from the fermented fruits would wind up directly in the blood stream, intoxicating the animal and making it an easy prey. Those primates that bore mutations that allowed them to metabolize more alcohol could eat more fruits without exposing themselves to any additional danger. Because they had more resources at their disposal, these primates were more likely to survive hence they the genes were selected and passed down to the human lineage we know today.



Interesting. First, that alcohol ingestion goes that far back in time, and, second, the evolutionary advantage that being able to tolerate a tissue poison gave to those early primates.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

^^^ Rather like koala bears being able to eat the toxic eucalyptus leaves.


----------



## Daniel




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## Daniel

Neurasthenia - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Americans were said to be particularly prone to neurasthenia, which resulted in the nickname "*Americanitis*" (popularized by William James)...

Barbara Ehrenreich, restating James's view, considers that neurasthenia was caused by the Calvinist gloom, and it was helped by the New Thought, through replacing the "puritanical 'demand for perpetual effort and self-examination to the point of self-loathing'" with a more hopeful faith.

---
Related book:
Amazon product


----------



## Daniel

“Make the customers feel good about themselves and they will like you."

"When people feel good about themselves and do not attribute the good feeling to a specific cause, they tend to associate the source of that good feeling with the person who is physically close to them at the time."

~ Jack Schafer, Ph.D.


----------



## Daniel

Santa Fe de Nuevo México - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				







_Map of Mexico in 1824_


----------



## David Baxter PhD

I guess that was Mexico's Jay Day.


----------



## Daniel

Mexico - Population
		


During the course of its history, Mexico has experienced dramatic shifts in population. Demographers estimate that the country's population at the time of the Spanish conquest in the early 1500s was approximately 20 million. By 1600, however, barely 1 million remained--the result of deadly European diseases and brutal treatment of the indigenous inhabitants by the Spanish colonizers. 

At the onset of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, Mexico's population stood at approximately 15 million persons. Not until 1940 did Mexico reach the population level it had in 1519.


----------



## Daniel

One way the "1 percent" in America legally avoids taxes:









						How To Make $1 Million Dollars And (Legally) Pay Zero Taxes
					


Not only is it possible to make $1 million or more and pay zero taxes, but it's actually quite common, at least among the wealthy. Here are the strategies the wealthy use to earn high incomes and pay little or no income taxes.





					www.forbes.com
				




Let’s say a business that’s 100% owned by a single individual generates $10 million in revenue in a typical year. They also generate a cash profit of $1 million.

But because the business holds assets worth $15 million, they’re also able to claim $1 million in depreciation expense on those assets.

*The $1 million in depreciation reduces the $1 million cash profit to zero.* If the owner of the business holds it as a sole proprietorship or LLC, he or she will collect $1 million in cash profit on the business. But because the depreciation expense eliminates the profit for tax purposes, the owner pays no tax on the income.


----------



## Daniel

Contempt of court - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




There have been criticisms over the practice of trying contempt from the bench. In particular, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote in a dissent, "It is high time, in my judgment, to wipe out root and branch the judge-invented and judge-maintained notion that judges can try criminal contempt cases without a jury."


----------



## Daniel

Empire of the Sun (film) - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




The apocalyptic wartime setting and the climactic moment when Jim sees the distant white flash of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki gave Spielberg powerful visual metaphors "to draw a parallel story between the death of this boy's innocence and the death of the innocence of the entire world".


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Daniel said:


> Empire of the Sun (film) - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The apocalyptic wartime setting and the climactic moment when Jim sees the distant white flash of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki gave Spielberg powerful visual metaphors "to draw a parallel story between the death of this boy's innocence and the death of the innocence of the entire world".



An excellent movie. Try to find a copy if you haven't seen it yet.


----------



## Daniel

What gets lost in many versions of Cortés' conquest is that Spaniards made up only 1% of the conquering army, according to historians. Most were Indigenous rivals of the Aztecs.


----------



## Daniel

Just read that Prescott, Arizona was named after a famous historian:



> William H. Prescott - Wikipedia
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> en.wikipedia.org
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *William Hickling Prescott* (May 4, 1796 – January 28, 1859) was an American historian and Hispanist, who is widely recognized by historiographers to have been the first American scientific historian. Despite having serious visual impairment, which at times prevented him from reading or writing for himself, Prescott became one of the most eminent historians of 19th century America. He is also noted for his eidetic memory...
> 
> The _Conquest of Mexico_ has endured more than any other of Prescott's work: it is regarded as his greatest literary accomplishment...
> 
> The City of Prescott in Arizona was named in his honor, as was the William H. Prescott House (Headquarters House), which was designated a National Historic Landmark for its association with him.  Colegio Anglo Americano Prescott, a school in Arequipa, Peru, also bears his name.  Prescott Street, two blocks from Harvard Yard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is named after him.



The town/city of Prescott was a former capital of Arizona (when it was a territory) and is where I do all my shopping.


----------



## Daniel

9 International Hot Dogs to Try On National Hot Dog Day
					


Prepare yourself for more a lot of mayonnaise.





					www.foodandwine.com
				




*Sonoran Dog (Mexico)*



While this beloved style is available throughout Arizona as well, the Sonoran dog originated across the border in Hermosillo, the capital of the Mexican state of Sonora. The Sonoran dog includes a bacon-wrapped hot dog grilled, served on a bolillo-style roll and topped with pinto beans, onions, tomatoes, and often times mayonnaise, mustard, and jalapeño salsa.

-------------



-------------
_








						Montreal hot dog - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				



_
_All-dressed (Montreal Style)_: This hot dog, usually a 'steamie', is topped with mustard, chopped onion, relish and fresh coleslaw or plain chopped cabbage ("_choux_" in French); however, sauerkraut, or coleslaw of the creamy variety, is rarely used. An all-dressed hot dog typically does not include ketchup, which must be requested specifically.


----------



## Daniel

Ron Popeil - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




 He made appearances in infomercials for the Showtime Rotisserie and coined the phrase "Set it, and forget it!" as well as popularizing the phrase, "But wait, there's more!" on television as early as the mid-1950s...

Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker piece "The Pitchman" about Popeil won Gladwell the 2001 National Magazine award. The article was first published in _The New Yorker_ in 2000.


----------



## Daniel

1909 in aviation - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				





On November 4, 1909, as a joke to prove that pigs could fly, John Moore-Brabazon makes the first live cargo flight by airplane when he puts a small pig in a waste-paper basket tied to a wing-strut of his airplane.









						November 4, 1909: The First Pig to Fly
					


The first historically recorded flight of a pig took place on at Leysdown in Kent (Great Britain) on November 4, 1909. With this flight, the...





					www.vintag.es


----------



## Daniel

For at least one fifth of the world population, an arrest is essentially a verdict:






						Conviction rate - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




In China, the justice system has a conviction rate of 99.9% in 2014. Out of 1.2 million tried, only 1,039 were found not guilty -- an acquittal rate of around 0.08 per cent.

In 2018, the gross conviction rate in Russia was above 99%. In 2018, 0.25% of court cases ended in acquittal, compared with 0.3% in 2017 and 0.54% in 2014.


----------



## Daniel

Watch Flight / Risk | Prime Video
					


Flight / Risk follows everyday people who find themselves in the midst of a global tragedy when two Boeing 737 Max planes crashed only five months apart in 2018 and 2019. This powerful documentary is told through the perspective of affected family members, their legal teams, whistleblowers, and...




					www.amazon.com
				






"Flight / Risk follows everyday people who find themselves in the midst of a global tragedy when two Boeing 737 Max planes crashed only five months apart in 2018 and 2019. This powerful documentary is told through the perspective of affected family members, their legal teams, whistleblowers, and Pulitzer-winning Seattle Times journalist, Dominic Gates."


----------



## Daniel

Kvasir - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




In Norse mythology, *Kvasir* (Old Norse: [ˈkwɑsez̠]) was a being born of the saliva of the Æsir and the Vanir, two groups of gods. Extremely wise, Kvasir traveled far and wide, teaching and spreading knowledge...

Scholars have connected Kvasir to methods of beverage production and peacemaking practices among ancient peoples...


----------



## Daniel

5 Ways to Stay Warm During a Winter Power Outage - Consumer Reports
					


Here's how to stay warm during a winter power outage, with expert advice from Consumer Reports.





					www.consumerreports.org
				




• Never use a generator indoors or within 20 feet of your house.
• Have working smoke and carbon monoxide alarms on every floor.
• If you use your car to stay warm or charge devices, make sure it’s outside the garage.
• Never use a device (such as an oven) to produce heat unless that’s its intended purpose.
• Indoor portable heaters should have an automatic shutoff switch in case they tip over.

...Even without heat, on a sunny day in particular you can maximize your warmth inside by gathering in a room with southern-facing windows.

Use a compass app on your phone or a real compass if you have one to find a room that fits that bill. Then keep your family in this shared space as much as possible. The collective heat generated by your bodies will also keep the space warmer...


----------



## Daniel

Will Shortz - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




*William F. Shortz* (born August 26, 1952) is an American puzzle creator and editor and crossword puzzle editor for _The New York Times_...

He eventually graduated from Indiana University in 1974, and is the only person known to hold a college degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles.


----------



## David Baxter PhD

Interesting...


----------



## Daniel

One reason Amazon is still extremely popular -- compared to buying elsewhere online:


----------



## Daniel

Why people can be quite mean at Reddit:






						Online disinhibition effect - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Daniel

Ping time between Washington and other cities - WonderNetwork
					







					wondernetwork.com
				












						Ping time between Toronto and other cities - WonderNetwork
					







					wondernetwork.com
				






			https://wondernetwork.com/pings/London
		










						Ping time between Sydney and other cities - WonderNetwork
					







					wondernetwork.com


----------



## Daniel

List of busiest airports by passenger traffic - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org


----------



## Daniel

I was wondering why the waiter was bowing to me at the Thai restaurant:









						Thai greeting - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




"The _wai_ gesture originated in Buddhism and has similar origins as namaste in Hinduism. It was basically a yogic posture of the palms and signifies the equal meeting of the two palms. It means that the other party is treated as an equal human being."


----------



## Daniel

The only Black Friday deal I am interested in 

Frother included:



			https://www.bestbuy.com/site/keurig-k-latte-single-serve-k-cup-pod-coffee-maker-black/6468131.p?skuId=6468131


----------



## Daniel

Head shake - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




There are varying theories as to why head shake is so frequently used to mean "no". It has been stated that babies, when hungry, search for their mother's milk by moving their heads vertically, but decline milk by turning their head from side to side.


----------



## Daniel

Peggy Whitson - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




Peggy Annette Whitson is an American biochemistry researcher, retired NASA astronaut, and former NASA Chief Astronaut. Whitson has a total of 665 days in space, more than any other woman or American...

Whitson was a guest (along with two imposters) on an ABC-TV _To Tell the Truth_ episode in which Patti LaBelle correctly selected her as the record-holding time in space astronaut.


----------



## Daniel

Harvest festival - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org
				




In Britain, thanks have been given for successful harvests since pagan times...

In the early days, there were ceremonies and rituals at the beginning as well as at the end of the harvest._  Encyclopædia Britannica_ traces the origins to "the animistic belief in the corn [grain] spirit or corn mother." In some regions the farmers believed that a spirit resided in the last sheaf of grain to be harvested. To chase out the spirit, they beat the grain to the ground.  Elsewhere they wove some blades of the cereal into a "corn dolly" that they kept safe for "luck" until seed-sowing the following year.  Then they plowed the ears of grain back into the soil in hopes that this would bless the new crop.


----------



## Daniel

Do we really live longer than our ancestors?
					


The wonders of modern medicine and nutrition make it easy to believe we enjoy longer lives than at any time in human history, but we may not be that special after all.





					www.bbc.com
				




While medical advancements have improved many aspects of healthcare, the assumption that human life span has increased dramatically over centuries or millennia is misleading.

Overall life expectancy, which is the statistic reflected in reports like those above, hasn’t increased so much because we’re living far longer than we used to as a species. It’s increased because more of us, as individuals, are making it that far.


----------



## Daniel

Source: Wikimedia Commons (2012)









						List of countries by English-speaking population - Wikipedia
					







					en.wikipedia.org


----------

