%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |    Not for the faint of art. |
|
Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning Best Blog in the 2021 edition of [Link To Item #quills] !](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award-1375927_6.gif) ![Merit Badge in Quill Award 2
[Click For More Info]
2022 Quill Award - Best Blog - [Link To Item #1196512] . Congratulations!!!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award_2-1375927_6.gif) ![Merit Badge in 30DBC Winner
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning the Jan. 2019 [Link To Item #30dbc] !!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-30DBC_Winner-2064535_14.gif) ![Merit Badge in Blogging
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning an honorable mention for Best Blog at the 2018 Quill Awards for [Link To Item #1196512] . *^*Smile*^* This award was sponsored by the blogging consortium including [Link To Item #30dbc] , [Link To Item #blogcity] , [Link To Item #bcof] and [Link To Item #1953629] . For more details, see [Link To Item #quills] .](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Blogging-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Highly Recommended
[Click For More Info]
I highly recommend your blog.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/Kudos-Highly_Recommended.gif) ![Merit Badge in Opinion
[Click For More Info]
For diving into the prompts for Journalistic Intentions- thanks for joining the fun!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/genre-Opinion-1150.gif) ![Merit Badge in High Five
[Click For More Info]
For your inventive entries in [Link To Item #2213121] ! Thanks for the great read!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/Kudos-High_Five.gif) ![Merit Badge in Enlightening
[Click For More Info]
For winning 3rd Place in [Link To Item #2213121] . Congratulations!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Enlightening.gif) ![Merit Badge in Quarks Bar
[Click For More Info]
For your awesome Klingon Bloodwine recipe from [Link to Book Entry #1016079] that deserves to be on the topmost shelf at Quark's.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quarks_Bar-2046190_12.gif)       |
| Well, yesterday's entry was about hamburgers (mini-contest results below). So it's only fitting - though random - that today's is about beer. The bubbles in your pint of beer are a scientific marvel  Pouring a chilled beer into a tilted glass produces about 1.5 million bubbles This gives me a chance to trot out one of my favorite words again: zythology. While the article focuses on effervescence, that's part of what makes beer great. Beer is one of the oldest drinks that humans have made. Praise Ninkasi! And in a recent study, a pair of scientists from the Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne... They weren't kicked out for studying la bière instead of le champagne? (To be fair, probably to avoid losing whatever passes for tenure in les universités françaises, the article goes on to note that they also studied this in champagne. I also love wine, sparkling or otherwise.) ...have drawn attention to a dazzling event that occurs every time we pour a cold one in a glass, by focusing on a key ingredient, carbon dioxide (CO2). I was going to quibble over the use of the word "ingredient" there. When magic yeast eat sugar, they piss ethanol and fart carbon dioxide. So it's not an ingredient in the sense of "additive," not like the classic water-malt-hops-yeast; it's more of a byproduct. Well, like I said, I was going to quibble until I remembered that a lot of breweries enhance their products via carbonation, much as soft drink manufacturers do, so I guess it really is an ingredient and I'm glad I thought about it before I got pedantic. By the way, one of the things that stuck with my from my background in chemistry is a weird thing about dissolved gas in a liquid. Most people are aware that heating a liquid usually increases the solubility of solid ingredients. For example, if you're making simple syrup for cocktails, you need to heat the water so the sugar will fully dissolve. When it cools down again, it usually stays in solution; this is called "supersaturation." Well, it's the opposite for most gases: the colder the water, the more dissolved gas it can hold. This is one reason why you want to open warm beers very, very carefully (if at all; warm beer sucks, though some are best at cellar temperature). Beer is a liquid supersaturated with carbon dioxide gas. While contained in a sealed bottle, a high pressure keeps CO2 dissolved in the liquid in a larger amount than would normally exist at atmospheric pressure. But when the bottle is opened, CO2 quickly escapes into the air producing a wave of bubbles and foam. This is also why you don't shake carbonated beverages. One TV/movie trope I absolutely despise is the one where they're celebrating, so they shake the fuck out of a bottle of champagne before opening it, causing a fire hydrant spray of foam. This is an atrocity, a blasphemous practice that is disrespectful to the manufacturer and, worse, to the beverage itself. The scientists compared bubbling in beer with the same feature of champagne. They found that pouring a chilled Heineken over a tilted glass produced about 1.5 million bubbles – not very different from champagne, which produced slightly over 1 million bubbles. Right now you may be wondering, "why does sparkling wine, including champagne, have bubbles while regular wine doesn't?" I dunno, and I can't be arsed to look it up. I imagine it has something to do with the strain of yeast involved. However, the number of bubbles produced was dependent on the size of microcrevices in the glass. Microcrevices are sites on the surface of a glass wall that are only visible with a microscope, and they are where bubbles originate. They can span from 1 to 10 micrometers in size, roughly as small as a grain of sand. This is misleading. The 1 to 10 micrometer range might overlap with the size of sand grains (whose definition is, as I noted in a previous entry, entirely arbitrary), but not according to the sources I found. Look at it this way: We can see down to about 0.1 mm . Most of us can distinguish individual grains of sand, so they're generally bigger than 0.1mm. One micrometer is 0.001 mm - two orders of magnitude smaller. So something's off here. (We also usually can't see microcrevices because, duh, they're "micro.")Another key finding was that champagne contained about five times more dissolved CO2 than beer. And surprisingly, the amount of CO2 dissolved in beer was only a little over that of carbonated water. In addition, beer bubbles were smaller than champagne bubbles and move through the drink differently. Smaller bubbles are preferred in champagne, according to Liger-Belair, “Mainly because small ascending bubbles rise more slowly which is more elegant.” Oooh, elegant. Screw elegance; I just want a fine-tasting fermented beverage. But yeah, effervescence is one factor that goes into my enjoyment of a beer. Different beers have different bubble profiles. There's a Belgian beer I know that forms a thick, foamy head that lingers. Other beers lose foam quickly, but keep the effervescence. Some beers don't ship well, and the bar will infuse it with nitrogen right there at the tap; this is usually done for darker beers, and the resulting cascade of minute foamy bubbles is an integral part of the experience. You can watch them rise to the top in waves. This is especially fascinating after you've already had a few. It does alter the taste, though, making a beer more creamy. I like it, but some people prefer the larger bubbles from CO2.  Mini-Contest Results! You know, sometimes I don't think my cunning plans all the way through. I have a routine medical procedure scheduled for this week, one that requires me to follow a certain diet for a few days. You know what I can't have on this diet? Raw vegetables. And a lot of cooked ones, like onions. Which makes most of the mouth-watering burger recipes the Forbidden Fruit, at least until Thursday evening. So why did I ask for hamburger recipes? Like I said, sometimes I don't think my cunning plans all the way through. Damn, I'm craving a burger. Sure, I could eat just cooked ground beef on a roll, even with cheese, but that's not going to cut it right now. I loved all the various burger descriptions and recipes. Some of them are more appealing to me, personally, than others are, but I could tell that you all loved what you were writing about, and that's cool. You all made it tough to pick just one, but for today I'm going to go with ForeverDreamer  for his awesomely described ideal burger, even though I'm not a fan of ramps (I did say I wasn't going to necessarily pick one I'd personally like). But all y'all gave me some good ideas and different perspectives on the culinary wonder that is the Hamburger.And made me very, very hungry. I like mine with lettuce and tomato Heinz 57 and french fried potatoes Big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer Well, good God almighty which way do I steer |
| I like to see journalism that covers the most important issues of our day, things of great import with far-reaching repercussions. Yes, I follow a site called The Art of Manliness. Shut up. The big keys to cooking a great burger center on using the right meat and grilling technique. There are other acceptable ways to cook a hamburger patty, but we all know that grilled is superior. But once you’ve got those fundamentals in place, the architecture of your burger can also enhance the taste and overall eating experience. I'd also add that choice of toppings is essential. Take the tomato, for example. There are approximately 158,343 varieties of tomatoes in existence. You can rule some of them out right away: cherry, Roma, etc. Too small. You'd think "beefsteak" tomatoes would be best because they're enormous and one slice can just about cover the whole patty, but beefsteak tomatoes taste like cardboard. It's a variety sold not just for its size, but because it stacks without mushing, travels well and ripens in transit (or something like that). But no - one thing that spoiled me growing up on a farm was access to fresh vegetables such as vine-ripened tomatoes. As long as a vegetable didn't need much preparation, my mom couldn't destroy it by cooking. Size is a bit less important than flavor, here. I know not everyone has access to fresh, off-the-vine tomatoes, so my privilege is showing, but dammit, what's the point of privilege if you can't eat decent food? Personally, I can take tomatoes or leave them. I don't understand the over-the-top love for those squirty things. But if I'm going to eat a tomato, I get to be picky about it. (In addition, don't refrigerate them if you can avoid it; they become mealy.) Also, never, ever put iceberg lettuce on a burger. Iceberg, fresh or not, is like 98% water, 1.5% sadness, and 0.5% apathy. Pretty much any other variety of lettuce is superior. My take on other burger toppings is similar. The article covers the classics. Of course, I have Opinions, which might as well be Facts in this case. Plenty of people structure their burger willy-nilly, and really, there’s no wrong way to do it. But there are ways that make it more or less likely that you’ll have issues with things like soggy buns, suboptimal flavor melding, and, most vexing of all, escaping toppings; it’s not fun to have those toppings squirting and falling out as you try to get your delicious meat sandwich in your mouth. No, the structure is certainly a matter of personal preference, though the article goes on to make some good suggestions for optimal construction. But I just gotta say: nothing pisses me off more when I'm eating something than if it makes a mess. If it's a food that's supposed to be eaten in the hand -- a sandwich, a taco, a sub/hoagie/grinder/whatever, fried chicken; pizza, anything that's meant to be shoved into your gaping maw by your grubby paws instead of utensils -- I utterly despise having shit falling out the other side, getting on my clothes or the table. It's okay if a little gets on my hands, but licking it off is an absolute no-no. I've lost friends over this. They'll suck their fingers and I'll be like "Ew, go away." We invented napkins, shirtsleeves, and pantlegs for a reason. You'll note I didn't put hot dogs in the above examples. That's because hot dogs are already included. No, they're not sandwiches. They're tacos. Fight me. The article builds a burger from bottom to top. I'll address them in order. Bottom bun. Choice of bun is also of great importance. To me, the purpose of eating anything is the bread. If it's not a bread I wouldn't eat alone, I don't want to stack shit on it. You know what I like to use for a bun? An English Muffin. There, I said it. Not the flimsy crap ones with the Thomas' label, but a nice thick crispy-outside-chewy-inside toasty bready thing. Kaiser rolls are also acceptable, as are many other types of real bread. What's not acceptable? Wonder bread and its ilk. First condiment of choice. Distribute your condiments (mustard, ketchup, mayo, etc.) between the top and bottom buns. Mayonnaise does not belong on a burger. Save that shit for BLTs, tuna salad, potato salad, and for luring Midwesterners into your spice den. Also, don't cheap out on the condiments. French's Yellow Mustard says "I don't care about actual flavor; I just bought whatever costs the least." Lettuce. With its placement atop the bun, the lettuce acts as a shield that blocks the patty’s juices from soaking into it and making it soggy. Again, this has to be the right kind of lettuce (anything but Iceberg). And dammit, don't use shredded lettuce of any variety. That subverts half the purpose of putting lettuce on in the first place, which is to keep the bun from getting soggy. Tomato. Slippery veggies like lettuce and tomato are best placed beneath the burger and are less likely to slip when used as foundational pieces rather than sitting on top of the patty. You know what contributes more to general burger sogginess than the patty? The damn tomato. Often I'd leave it off entirely, if I can't exercise my snobbery, detailed above, about this vegetable. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a restaurant and ordered a burger, only to find the tomato is half-green, crispy, and, worst sin of all, contains part of the stem attachment. Burger patty with melted cheese. There's a link at the original article to the "best" choice for patty meat. Personally, I prefer the more lean ground beef. If you're into other meats besides beef, that's fine. And I'm going to piss off my fellow carnivores here by saying: Veggie patties are okay, too. I haven't tried the new almost-meat varieties yet; traditional veggie patties are very dry, making condiments more important. I'd even forgive mayo on such a burger. And you'd better believe I have opinions about the cheese. I did a whole blog entry a week or so ago on the glories of cheese. There's a lot of room for personal taste here, sure, but that "pasteurized process cheese food" plastic bullshit is never acceptable on a burger. Onions. Ideally, red onions. White onions are okay, too. NOT yellow onions; those are for cooking. Which reminds me, it's almost time for me to make my French onion soup again. And my chili. I guess there are some good things about cooler weather, but this entry is most likely the last time I'll admit that for a while. Pickles. Yes, pickles are an essential part of any burger. Hell, if I'm feeling lazy, that will be the only topping I put on besides cheese. Lettuce has to be washed before it's used; tomatoes, washed and sliced; and every time I slice an onion I'm convinced I'm about to chop off a finger. But pickles? Pull out of jar. Slice lengthwise so there's less chance of topping displacement. Also I can't keep a vegetable in my fridge for more than a couple of days before it becomes a biology class project, but the whole raison d'être for pickles is they keep a long time. That said, I'm a snob about pickles, too. Dill is fine. Half-sours are superior, if you can get them. Bread & Butter pickles can fuck right off, as can any labeled "sweet." Those have their place, but that place is not on my burger. Second condiment of choice. Since mayo is absolutely unacceptable, this will be ketchup or mustard or, as is my personal preference, something that bites back like, say, ghost pepper sauce or something with habaneros. Top bun. Now I have an idea for a Tom Cruise movie parody. So that's the factsmy personal opinion about burgers. I'm sure you have different opinions. Therefore, we'll do another contest. Merit Badge Mini-Contest! In the comments below, describe your perfect burger. It can be one you've had or, as in my case, a Platonic ideal that I've never quite achieved (though I've come close). It doesn't have to have the "classic" toppings; I also like, for example, mushroom-swiss burgers. Nor does it have to contain dead animal. My above rantings (which really should be taken humorously) aside, I know that tastes vary, so even if it's something I don't like, that's fine (though admittedly, you're going to have to be pretty convincing if you include mayonnaise). As always, the deadline is midnight at the end of today, Sunday October 10, according to the WDC clock. The best description (again, not necessarily one that I'd like) will earn its chef a Merit Badge on Monday. |
| Back for another "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] entry today. Gotta love a good pun, which is, by definition, also a bad pun. A bad pun that alliterates is even better. A bad pun combined with a quadruple alliteration (or close enough)? Gold. Sioux Chef, Sean Sherman. Come on. You gotta check out the link for that alone. When I was in Minneapolis around the beginning of July, wandering around the riverfront in the vicinity of the waterfall and lock (once a civil engineer, always a civil engineer, and massive public works projects intrigue me), I discovered the restaurant, Owamni, featured in the above link. Okay... "discovered" is a bad word in this context and obviously I should be shunned forever for daring to use it. It's kind of like the faux pas I made as I was checking into a hotel in Kayenta, Arizona, several years ago. Kayenta is in the Navajo nation in the far north of the state; tourists with an inexplicable need to be *shudder* outdoors use it as a gateway to all the cool shit in southern Utah, whereas I was just passing through. I'd planned the stop in advance, so I staggered into the hotel (I think it was a Holiday Inn Express, or maybe Hampton; one of those franchise chains) under my load of luggage, stumbled up to the counter, and said to the nice lady, "Yeah, hi, I have a reservation..." And immediately regretted it. She didn't kick me out. This hotel, it turned out, included a restaurant run by a Navajo chef, and thus was I introduced, for the first time, to the absolute delight that is Navajo frybread. The pre-invasion people living in North America were, of course, quite diverse, as is the country's climate and terrain. Without the benefit (and don't misunderstand me; it is actually a benefit) of international trade, people kind of have to use what food sources are available wherever they happen to be. This was, of course, true of people everywhere in the world, but today I'm talking specifically about the continent I live on. But I also know this: humans are humans, wherever they are. When I was growing up, I got full-on indoctrinated into the whole "Indians lived off the land in harmony with nature" schtick. While there's probably some degree of truth in that, it's kind of idealist and dehumanizing all at the same time. Humans migrate, and we tend to take with us some of the food from wherever we came from. And as we saw several entries back, agriculture was most definitely A Thing in North America before the Europeans got here. In any case, the point is, what the Sioux or Dakota people ate on the Northern plains would have been different from what the southern desert people ate. I mean, duh. It's kind of like how, now, you can't eat anywhere in New Mexico without being asked "red or green chili?" whereas in Minnesota, the idea of any sauce more powerful than mayonnaise is met with absolute shock and horror (yeah, yeah, I know, not all Minnesotans, whatever). So you can imagine how thrilled I was to see the sign for Owamni there on the bank of the Mississippi, and how utterly devastated I was to find that it had not yet opened. I think it's open now, but of course I'm not in Minnesota. I did get to tour the river lock, though, and that was cool. |
| Okay, this makes three Cracked links in a row by my count. Whatever. Some people say they read this blog to learn stuff. Well - here's a lot of stuff to learn. Hell, I didn't know most of it. I gotta take issue with the title, though. Knowledge isn't the same thing as smarts. If it were, the internet would be the smartest thing ever, and... well. No. It's not memorizing trivia that makes you smart; it's being able to draw conclusions from it. Today, I wrote not one but two poems, so I'm about written out. So I'm mostly just going to leave the link here for your (and my future) reference. See, being smart, I know when to shut up and let other people do the taking. Sometimes. From the walkmans in Guardians of the Galaxy to Jim Henson's coffee-fueled pre-Muppets career, here are 60 fun facts and random trivia tidbits that will inevitably make you the smartest person in the room. So that's where I read the thing about the Guardians walkmen. Walkmans. Whatever. From a previous entry. Just a word of warning, though: I didn't verify any of these. Don't take any of them as The Truth without backing it up from somewhere. Also, a comment on just one of them: 15. The longest, non-technical word in the English Language has 45 letters. Beating Disney’s “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” by 11 letters, pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, is a 45-letter word for “a pneumoconiosis caused by inhalation of very fine silicate or quartz dust,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. That's a technical word, dammit. I'm about burned out, but if you decide to look at the list and have any comments, feel free to post. Not doing a mini-contest today (though I will do one soon), but I'm perfectly happy to respond to your comments later. Found an error? Dispute an interpretation (as with the technical word above)? Let's hear it. |
| No, I don't get all my information from Cracked. But it's enough so the random numbers occasionally give me two or more in a row. I see M-B stuff fairly often, though not as often as I used to. I haven't been a fan, but I also lack the background to criticize it in any meaningful way. Fortunately, others have stepped up. If you use social media or dating apps, you’ve seen Myers-Briggs Type Indicators in profiles. INTJ, ENFP, STFU, and so on. I see what you did there. But I don't use social media or dating apps. The 16 different personalities are shorthand for how you view the world. Essentially horoscopes for people who think they’re too smart for horoscopes, they’re often found alongside words like “Believer in Science” or “I’d let Nikola Tesla touch my spheres.” Basically, this. It won’t shock you to learn that they’re about as predictive as a quiz on the Denny’s children’s menu, but why? And how did we reach the point where they’re so popular? Of course, the article goes on to answer its own questions. I'll let you take a look for yourself. But Myers-Briggs still has plenty of issues, starting with the fact that basing a test on Jungian archetypes is like basing your surgery on bloodletting. Jung himself warned that his archetypes were only rough concepts and, like the MBTI, they’ve since been discredited almost entirely. I will say this, though: as with archetypes, or horoscopes, the test might have no validity in the real world, but I feel like if people want to use it for writing? Go for it. It's like... I have no belief in the supernatural, and yet I enjoy reading/viewing supernatural fiction. I know it's fiction; I don't try to apply it to The Real WorldTM. And no one is just an extrovert or an introvert like a stock TV character; not only are there too many factors to declare such stark differences, but introversion and extroversion are largely constructs that lack context (you can, for example, be introverted at work around colleagues but extroverted at a party among your friends). I've described myself as an introvert before, though I've never been diagnosed as such (as if it were some sort of disease, which obviously it isn't). What I mean by being an introvert is that I need my downtime away from other people. Generally, when I am around other people, I can be as open and outgoing as anyone. Some of you have met me, and have probably noticed this. I just have a limited amount of energy for such things. If I had to be around other people for too long -- say a day or so -- it would be utterly exhausting. But I don't get my self-diagnosis from the MBTI; it's just that after a few years of trying, I got to understand myself better. Plus, if people take the test twice within a few weeks they often get different results, which doesn’t really make it an ironclad concept to build your personality around. Confession: I've taken it a few times. What can I say? I'm a curious sort (I think that's on the test too). My results change almost every time. Also, some of the responses can be easily gamed. If you want to come across as an extrovert, for example, you can give a positive response to "I love being around other people." Or something. It's been a long time, so I don't remember how the questions are actually worded. People say, "Well, you're only supposed to take it once." But if a test purports to measure a person's basic personality, and that personality doesn't change over time, it should give consistent results. If someone's personality does change over time, why bother testing it? It becomes a mood ring instead of a tattoo. Free idea: use mood ring ink in tattoos. You're welcome. None of this were a problem if people weren't using MBTI to determine a person's actual fate. It would be like if you went to a job interview and everything was going swimmingly. You're really clicking with the interviewer, and you're nailing the hard parts, like "What do you see as your greatest weakness?" and "If you were a bear, what kind of tree would you scratch your ass on?" Then the interviewer asks, "So, what's your zodiac sign?" "Pisces," you say with great confidence, as even non-astrologers have their sun signs memorized. The interviewer gasps through her teeth. "Oh, sorry, we don't hire Pisceses." And you're done. I mean, okay, such a scenario isn't as bad as racism, sexism, ageism, anti-Semitism, or any of those other isms, but you're still getting banged on out of there for something you can't control. And yet, even getting passed over for Piscesism can't be so bad; after all, you wouldn't want to work for a company that's that committed to pseudoscience, would you? Such a company would be fishy. But the MBTI has the patina of science, unlike astrology. You've just been kicked out for a completely bullshit reason. The article goes into this, too; I just wanted to put my own spin on it. If someone can find guidance from Myers-Briggs without building their whole life around it, well, we all need guidance from somewhere. But there’s something bleak about carving humanity up into immutable categories based on fundamental misconceptions like we’re in a YA dystopia. Sometimes I get guidance from a die roll or a coin toss. I don't pretend it's fate working in mysterious ways; it's just that sometimes, any decision is better than waffling. I don't think MBTI is any better or worse than a 20-sided die, except that my D&D character never had to try to dodge a fireball using the MBTI. So anyway, I hope I (and Cracked} didn't burst anyone's bubble here, but basically, MBTI might as well stand for "More Bullshit Testing Ideas." Or something. I suck at acronyms; where's that on the test? |
| Corporations do some shady shit sometimes, but corporations, like Soylent Green, are made of people, so that should be no surprise. In general, companies are evil and do all kinds of antisocial nonsense. But some tactics don't fill us with rage. They leave us wanting to clap the company on the back, saying, "You son of a gun, I wish I thought of that." Link is from Cracked, so of course it's a reverse numbered list. 5. Nathan's Hot Dogs Dressed Customers As Fake Doctors To Make The Food Look Healthy No one buys hot dogs because they're good for you. We buy them because fat and salt are delicious, as though ground lips and anuses are the tastiest pasts of the animal. Hey, credit where it's due: "You know what they make those things out of, Chet? You know? Lips and assholes!" I had to look it up, but it's from a movie called The Great Outdoors, from 1988, and it was a Dan Aykroyd line. Never saw the movie. Been quoting it for decades. In the end, the cheaper dogs did win out, and this was helped by Nathan's scheme to make the meat look safe. He planted some customers at the stand wearing white coats, and also photographed some of these very scientific-looking men for promotional photos. He never actually said these were doctors, so he didn't commit fraud. But customers assumed these were staff from the nearby Coney Island Hospital, and if the dogs were good enough for the doctors, they couldn't be that bad after all. Wouldn't be the last time, either. Us old folks will remember the ad: "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV." 4. A Vodka Company Created A Whole Bank Roustam Tariko made his first fortune importing a restricted product into Russia and breaking protocol by selling at stores anyone could access. This product was Ferrero Rocher chocolates. He moved on to importing alcohol then created Russia's first own premium vodka brand. Vodka had always been popular in Russia of course, but up till this point, we guess people just made vodka from rotting potato peels, as anything more extravagant was previously banned under communism. Almost every story I see about Russian people -- not the government, mind you, but the people -- involves two things: 1) vodka and 2) a badass. I have to think that's not a coincidence. Incidentally, there's a popular misconception that vodka is made from potatoes. It can be, but you can make it from any starch or sugar. Consequently, you make it from whatever's cheapest. Like, maybe, rotting potato peels. When Tariko's new Russian Standard vodka debuted in 1998, it was a huge success. I should also note that, while I'm not a vodka snob the way I am with other booze, I always buy Russian Standard. It's just that good. But that's not the important part of the story. You'll have to go to the link to get the details, but basically, he found a remarkably clever way around Russia's various bans on advertising alcohol. 3. The "I Don't Care" Phone Company Grabbed Customers Who Didn't Care Kids these days will simply not comprehend this entry. Hell, I barely remember those dark times when different communications companies were competing for long-distance call revenue. 2. The Case Of 1-800-OPERATER More dark stories of a dark time. At least hot dogs and vodka are still around. (I don't eat hot dogs anymore, by the way; I can't get the lips and assholes line out of my head whenever I see one. Even beef ones.) 1. Home Depot Filled Itself With Prop Merchandise Again, best to read the actual article so I don't fill this up with quotes. But I gotta say, this one was genius. Pure, evil genius. I don't shop at Home Despot, either. Now, if only I could come up with a sinister yet legal plan to part rich people from their money and transfer it to me...   I'd never seen the first Venom movie. Much as I like comics-based movies, I've never been a big fan of the Venom character. But I wanted to see the sequel, which meant renting the original first so I wasn't going into a sequel completely unprepared. I liked the first one well enough once it got the momentum going, but this isn't about the first movie; it's about the second. So. One-Sentence Movie Review: Venom: Let There Be Carnage Don't expect high art here; this movie is a CGI slugfest, and if that's your expectation going in, you probably won't be disappointed -- though you should definitely see the first movie before doing so, or it will make even less sense than it already does. Rating: 3.5/5 |
| Entry #2 for "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] Lion's Mane Probably for as long as there have been people, it's been in our nature to classify things. I'm sure someone could make up a bullshit evolutionary biology reason for it ("it was important for our ancestors to quickly tell a lion from an antelope" or something), but whatever the reason, we have a need to sort things into groups of like objects. No one is more obsessed with classification than scientists. Thing is, though, some things aren't so easy to group. Take rocks for example. You have boulders, stones, rocks, pebbles, and sand, among other names (those being generally in descending order of size). But reality doesn't always provide neat, well-defined boundaries. At what size does sand become pebbles? When do pebbles become stones? This is further complicated by the irregular shape of some hunks of mineral. Usually, it doesn't matter for everyday purposes, but rock sizes exist on a continuum. The difference between a stone and a boulder probably has a defined cutoff, but that cutoff is purely arbitrary. People are still sore about the "demotion" of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet. (Get over it already; whatever we call it, it's still there.) Orbiting bodies, too, exist on a continuum, and if we're going to define them, there has to be some minimum size or other criteria for when to call something a "planet" or "dwarf planet" or "moon" or "asteroid" or "dust." Size alone won't do it, because there are moons in our solar system bigger than Mercury, which is defined as a planet. But we were talking about Lion's Mane. Lion's Mane is, by all classification systems I'm aware of, a mushroom. All mushrooms are fungi; not all fungi are mushrooms. Biology is absolutely fucking intent on classification, so you get the practice of taxonomy. I don't pretend to know everything about it, but in the early days of taxonomy, before we were able to do cool things like sequence genomes, and even before Darwin changed the way we looked at life on Earth, every known species (which has a particular definition that's itself kind of fuzzy around the edges) got lumped into groups, subgroups, sub-subgroups, etc. At the top of that list were, at first, plants and animals -- two "kingdoms" that were pretty easy to tell apart: if it moves, it's an animal; if it doesn't, it's a plant. It didn't take long to find a) plants that moved b) animals that don't and c) other realms of life. But for a long time, fungi were lumped in with plants because they didn't move. Turns out (spoiler) that fungi are much closer, genetically, to animals than they are to plants, and are now considered to be a kingdom of their own. Long, long ago in the course of evolution, after animals split off from plants, fungi split off from the line that would lead to animals and, ultimately, us. This has been determined through genetic analysis. Keep that in mind next time you see a vegan happily chomping on a portabella. "You know, that's closer to animal than plant." "Yeah, whatever, it's not cute. But it is very, very tasty." And mushrooms can, indeed, be very, very tasty. At least according to me. But it's also well-known that some mushrooms have... other effects besides nutrition. And still others will kill you dead. So, unlike the question of "Is Pluto a planet," the field of mycology (the word comes from the Greek word for fungus, which itself is Latin, so there's another classification thing going on here) has a direct impact on everyday life, at least if you're going to eat shrooms. But, as with most classification systems, things aren't always black-and-white, live-or-die. There's a good bit in between. Some mushrooms are definitely safe, like creminis. Others, like the death cap... well, it's called death cap for a reason. Others fall somewhere in the middle; as they say, the dose makes the poison. Incidentally, I've grown to dislike the word "edible." Not only has it been hijacked by the cannabis industry, thus muddying its definition (I have no problem with the cannabis industry; it's just that, like "organic," words are supposed to mean something), but the simple truth is that everything is edible at least once. What I want to know is, will I live to eat it again? Or, will I wish I hadn't because my insides are becoming my outsides for a couple of days? Where does Lion's Mane fall on this spectrum? Well, for that we have to look at the article linked in the prompt, or the much better organized Wikipedia page . Okay, looks safe enough to eat, though I'm not sure about having a hairy thing on my plate. But both sources talk about its medicinal qualities, and that's where my inner skeptic kicks at my peritoneum.Look at the language used in the first article. "Research suggests..." weasel "...including reduced inflammation..." any time I see the word "inflammation" my mind goes, "quack." "...both the fungus and its extracts appear to be beneficial to health." weasel "Lion’s mane mushrooms may help..." and I "may" have a beer later. "Lion’s mane mushrooms may enhance the immune system..." Or it may not. "Research on mice suggests that lion’s mane mushrooms may boost the activity of the intestinal immune system." in rodents. "Extracts from lion’s mane mushrooms may be beneficial in the treatment of anxiety and depression." Or they may not. "In a 2015 study, mice that consumed lion’s mane mushroom extract..." were mice that consumed lion's mane extract. "In a small Japanese study, women with a variety of health complaints... ate cookies containing lion’s mane extracts or placebo cookies for 4 weeks." Yeah, I looked at the study. 30 women. Four weeks. Pass. "It is possible that lion’s mane mushrooms might boost cognitive function, but the existing research is mainly on animals." Do I have to spell it out again? Starts with W. Ends with L. I could go on, but I won't. Just because something is "traditional medicine" doesn't mean it works. It also doesn't mean it doesn't work. People used to chew willow bark for pain relief. Scientists did studies on it, and behold, aspirin was invented. (This "natural" remedy is not without side effects, though.) So it's not outside the realm of possibility, but dammit, study it! Preferably using more than 30 people from a single demographic for more than 4 weeks. The Wikipedia link sums it up more succinctly: "There is no high-quality evidence from clinical research to indicate that lion's mane mushroom has medicinal properties." It also notes that the German name for the mushroom translates to "hedgehog goatee," which, I mean, honestly, is a lot funnier than lion's mane. But whatever. It's apparently nonpoisonous in at least moderate quantities, so if you like it, eat it. Me? I can't get past the hedgehog goatee thing. |
| People can be clever sometimes. While I think the most important invention of all time was the snooze button, I will admit that some others deserve mention too. Here are some of them. I'm not going to go over all of them; that's what the above link is for. Still, some highlights: You might find it impossible to imagine a world without your smartphone, or have trouble remembering a time when Wi-Fi wasn’t everywhere, but many of today’s most relied-upon technologies would not have been possible—or even dreamed of—if it weren’t for the game-changing inventions that came before them. Yes, I remember well when fire was invented. That led to all sorts of problems, but in the end it turned out to be a fairly good deal for us. Dry and flush toilets have been around for thousands of years, and while many of us take these pieces of porcelain hardware for granted these days, there’s no doubt that life would look much different—and much worse—without them. “Toilets are the key to a thriving, healthy society,” Kimberly Worsham, sanitation expert and founder of FLUSH (Facilitated Learning for Universal Sanitation and Hygiene), tells Mental Floss. Okay, you see that? That acronym right there? Someone thought they were clever, coming up with that, torturing the language to find vaguely appropriate words whose first letters make another word. Someone else approved it. Even more people perpetuate it. Stop it. It's on the same level as Calvin's Club G.R.O.S.S (Get Rid Of Slimy girlS) Though many of today’s kids didn’t know what a Walkman was until they saw Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill flaunt one in 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy, they pay unofficial homage to the device every time they play a song on their smartphone. Transistor radios had been around since the 1950s, but it was Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka who really revolutionized the idea of playing whatever you want wherever you are (provided that you had the cassette tape on hand). I read somewhere else that the prop used in Guardians of the Galaxy had to be made from scratch, because genuine Walkmans (Walkmen? I never did figure that one out) were being sold for thousands of dollars. Why it was cheaper to pay union scale to fake one than to buy a real one off eBay, especially for a movie with a multi-million-dollar budget, is beyond me. When Lyman Spitzer proposed the invention of a space telescope in the 1940s, humans could look at our universe only through land-based instruments. Earth’s atmosphere acted like a veil between the land-based telescopes and space, blurring images and hindering detection of far-off celestial phenomena. Spitzer’s research paved the way for the Hubble Space Telescope, the first space-based major optical telescope, launched in 1990 and named for the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble. I gotta admit, space-based telescopes are almost right up there with the snooze button in terms of great inventions. Of course, in the 1940s, we'd put nothing into orbit - not until Sputnik at the end of the 50s. But the vision was there (pun intended). This was at about the same time that Arthur C. Clarke figured out that geosynchronous orbit would be an awesome parking spot for broadcast satellites, but still decades after Tsiolkovsky proposed building an elevator to space. I'll also point out another invention for space viewing: adaptive optics. That shit's cool as fuck. Basically, the problem with ground-based telescopes is they have to look through a soup of air molecules, and that soup is in constant motion. Density waves refract an object's light as it passes through the atmosphere. Adaptive optics compensate for the density waves by actually moving the mirrors by a tiny bit, steadying the image so you can get a longer exposure. It's still not as crisp as an image made by a space telescope, but there aren't that many space telescopes. There will soon be one more, as the article notes, and I for one can't wait to see what it'll show us. The pizza industry has undergone numerous innovations in recent decades, but one element that has remained largely the same is the box your pie comes in. Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan changed the game in the early 1960s when he worked with Triad Containers in Detroit to develop the modern pizza box. Prior to this, pizzas were delivered in bags or paperboard bakery boxes. These containers were flimsy and often crumpled under the intense heat of the pie before they reached their destinations. Domino’s corrugated cardboard containers were much more durable. As a bonus, they tasted better than the "pizza" inside them. Duct tape was the brainchild of Vesta Stoudt, an Illinois mom whose two sons were in the Navy. Stoudt worked at Green River Ordnance Plant packing and inspecting boxes of ammunition. The boxes were sealed with paper tape, dipped in wax, and had a tab to open them. Stoudt noticed that the boxes had a flaw: The tape was flimsy and tabs often tore off, which meant that soldiers couldn’t quickly open the boxes when they were under fire. Why not create a cloth-based waterproof tape to seal the boxes? Okay, I can admit when I'm wrong. Duct tape is maybe above the snooze button in the list of awesome inventions. Anyway, there are many more at the link. Twenty, in fact, as promised in the headline. As you can see from the list, the inventions range from the dead simple (the pizza box, e.g.) to the incredibly sophisticated (like the space telescope). One should not discount the value of simplicity -- when you want to prop a door open, you use the ancient low-tech wedge; you don't stick your computer monitor in front of the door. Unless it's broken, in which case, go for it; that's about all it's good for at that point anyway. But the fascinating thing about inventions, to me, is how they build on each other. This is what misanthropes miss when they smugly proclaim that other animals use tools, too, so we're obviously not that special. Yes, some have been observed using simple tools, sure, but I haven't heard of a single case of a nonhuman animal using a tool to build other tools. That requires a level of planning beyond "I see a piece of food and I'm hungry." Which brings me back to how awesome it was to learn how to make fire. |
| Usually, people cling to the first thing they hear about a subject, ignoring or dismissing any further evidence. This is called the Irrational Primacy Effect, and it's a form of confirmation bias. It's worst, I think, when the first thing you hear already speaks to your inherent biases (and we all have them). Then, when you get evidence to the contrary, your first reaction is often, "bullshit." I'm not going to go through this item-by-item, but it's a Cracked link, so at least there's some humor sprinkled in, which (for me anyway) helps to soften the blow of being told what I thought I knew is wrong. History is so complicated that it’s arguably a minor miracle the average person knows as much as they do. Sometimes dumbing down complex events is enough to help us get the point of how it’s shaped the modern world; you don’t need a PhD to understand that the Nazi were bad. But sometimes simplifying accidentally leaves everyone with the completely wrong impression... All of the things at the above link are subject to misreporting and simplification, and I think it's important to get a fuller picture, including facts learned later on in the process. Science and knowledge are supposed to correct as well as refine old ways of looking at things, as the section about Galileo hints at. And we see it all the time, even now. Perhaps the worst example, both in terms of outright falsehood and deleterious effect on society, is the reported link between childhood vaccines and autism. Leaving aside for the moment that believing this is basically saying, "I'd rather have a dead child than an autistic one," which is a big slap on the face to anyone on the spectrum, the entire report was completely fabricated in order to sell a book. Not only is there absolutely no link between vaccination and autism, but the person who perpetrated the hoax in the first place ended up losing his license. I won't name him, because I don't like giving oxygen to frauds, but you probably know who I'm talking about. And yet, you still have people clinging to that complete falsehood. They might say, "why take chances?" Well, because the alternative is sick or dead kids, and more epidemics. They might say, "But my kid was fine until he got vaccinated, and then he became autistic." If true, that's coincidence, not causation. There are, of course, likewise falsehoods being spread about other, more recently developed vaccinations. This is not a matter of people having different opinions; it's about some people simply clinging to the wrong set of facts. None of us should feel bad if we fall victim to the irrational primacy effect, though; it can -- and does -- happen to everyone. But once you know about it, you have a mental check on it. Not that every bit of contradictory information suddenly changes the truth, so a healthy skepticism is still required. So yeah, if you want humor, read the link. I'm entirely too frustrated with willfully ignorant idiots to even make jokes right now. Mini-Contest Results! Thanks for all the ideas for replacing the utterly despicable "revenge bedtime procrastination" label. Honestly, I thought all of them were better than the original. I'm going to award the one by Writer_Mike  for its appropriate acronym: TIMES UP. (See yesterday's entry's comments for what that is, and for the other good ideas.)I'll do this again soon, so there will be more chances at a Merit Badge! |
| Today in New Stuff We Just Made Up For Attention ‘Revenge Bedtime Procrastination’ Is Real, According to Psychologists You know that thing where you stubbornly stay up late for no reason because you feel like you didn't get any time to yourself? Here's how to stop. Okay, so not "today," but way back in January. Whatever. "Revenge Bedtime Procrastination" is a goddamn stupid name for this phenomenon and nothing is going to change my mind about that. It’s late and you’re exhausted. You barely had time to eat dinner and shower after work. Maybe you watched a few episodes of a show, read a chapter of your book, struggled through your skin-care routine. Now you’re in bed, and you know you should sleep. People have time to watch a show AND read a book? And what's a skin-care routine? But you keep scrolling—past the point that feels good. Your eyes start to close and you have to be up at 5 a.m. for work, but you’re not ready for rest. Some part of you is unsatisfied. This activity has a name: bedtime revenge procrastination. But it was called "revenge bedtime procrastination" in the headline. Either way, it's a goddamn stupid name. It’s deeply validating to learn that this habit has a name, and that you are not alone in doing it. Oh, wonderful, you've achieved validation. How nice. “Where people will refuse to sleep because they don’t have much control over their daytime life, so they will sleep very late at night, even if they’re super tired, because they just don’t want that free time to end at night, and they don’t want tomorrow to start?” I just figured this was Toddler Mode. You know, you're a kid and your mom says "Go to bed," and you cross your arms, stamp your foot and go "NO! Don' wanna!" “There's lots of research showing that feeling like you have a bit of free time is super important for well-being,” she says. But at the same time, “many of the problems that drive revenge sleep procrastination—feeling depressed, being too burned out to enjoy your day, and so on—can be helped by simply getting more sleep,” she adds. Oh. That's very helpful. The problem is you don't want to sleep and it can be alleviated by getting more sleep. Did someone take out student loans to be able to say that? Also, now it's a third formulation of the phrase. I get that it's a translation from Mandarin (says so near the top of the article.) Still, you'd thing English speakers would do their usual shoehorning of a phrase into an acronym. You can also do more to optimize the time you do spend on your nighttime “revenge,” she says. I think at least part of the problem is too much optimization. How about... stop optimizing everything? “Often, when we get free time, we flop down and watch TV or scroll through social media. These leisure activities don't really give us the well-being bump we assume.” Have you tried drinking or smoking weed? So, okay, I will agree that this is a Real Thing -- I did it some when I was overloaded with work -- but I also maintain that the name of it is the stupidest fucking thing I've seen in a long time. So... Merit Badge Mini-Contest! Can you come up with a better name for this phenomenon? It can be serious or funny. It can turn word salad into an acronym if you want, or it doesn't have to; whatever you think it should be called. I have to admit I'm at a loss, myself, but I just can't keep that stupid name for it in my head. The one I like best will get its attractive and creative author a Merit Badge tomorrow. Deadline as always is midnight tonight, Saturday, October 2, WDC time. But if you can't think of one, feel free to comment anyway (even if you disagree that it's a stupid name). |
| Let's kick off October with an entry for "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] Cheese Back in the noughties, I visited the UK for a couple of weeks, and spoke to a lot of nice British folks (and some who weren't so nice, but not for quite as long). "Oh, you're American," they said as soon as I uttered a single word. "You must like Bud Light." Well, no, I hate that watered-down fake excuse for beer. Even then, I was a craft beer snob, and I told them so. "Actually, there are thousands of local and regional craft breweries in the US, and I've made it my life's mission to try them all." It's similar there, only they called it "Real Ale." Whatever; I'm used to us having different words for the same concept. "Well, what about wine? Surely you get all your wine from France." "Actually, while French wine is quite good, we have thousands of local and regional vineyards producing spoiled grape juice. In fact, I live very close to the place that perfected the science of winemaking in less-than-ideal climate conditions." I got, "Wow, the US is more advanced than I thought." (I decided not to contradict them on this point.) "Well, what about cheese?" "...okay, you got me there." The UK produces and exports a wide variety of cheeses, mostly named after their region. The most famous and widespread (pun intended) of these is, of course, Cheddar. While there are certainly some small cheesemakers in the US, most of the crap you find in stores is industrially prepared, quality-controlled, and distributed nationally, and as far as I know, we haven't innovated our own cheese styles like the British (or French or Swiss or anyone else) has. One exception is Monterey Jack, .which, while American in origin, is more Mexican in ancestry, as it came from that part of California. Most of the real cheese produced in the US seems to be copies of European styles: Gruyere, Brie, Gouda, Stilton, etc. A lot of the cheese sold here isn't "cheese" in anything but the most legal, FDA-approved sense, in that it passed near a cow on its way from the factory to the store. The worst offender is the plastic "pasteurized process cheese food" usually marketed as American cheese; or, as I like to put it, the dairy counterpart to Bud Light. Of course it's called American: it's bland, fake, and uncultured. While I admit to a) liking that stuff as a kid and b) buying mass-produced real cheese from the store because it's cheaper, I'm just as much of a cheese snob as I am a beer and wine snob. Very little pleases me more, where food is concerned, than walking into a new-to-me grocery store and discovering that they have a wide variety of domestic and imported cheeses. And I like all of it. Some more than others, of course. Soft cheese, hard cheese, cottage cheese, moldy cheese, whatever, doesn't matter. There's also an art to pairing different cheeses with different wines or beers. As with all art, I suck at it, but I can appreciate others' efforts. One reason I will never be vegan is, in fact, cheese. Not meat -- I could suffer through the rest of my life without meat if I had to, but you will have to pry my cheese from my cold, dead, cholesterol-soaked hands. There are simply no good vegan substitutes for cheese, though some of the meatless "meats" are quite tasty. Speaking of the US riffing off the UK, and cheese, I found this on the internet, so I don't know who to attribute it to. But it's relevant: Sweet dreams are made of cheese Who am I to dis a Brie I cheddar the world and a Feta cheese Everybody's looking for Stilton Though someone went on to do a complete parody of the song , and it's hilarious, especially because I can't stand the original.In closing, you know how YouTube generates recommended videos whenever you're there? Well, when I watched the video that prompted this entry (you'll have to click on the contest link above to get a link to it), this was the top recommendation. Not really relevant to cheese (the history of both cheese and domestic cats seems to be traced the Fertile Crescent at about the same time, though this is probably a coincidence), but YouTube has me pegged: it's definitely relevant to my interests: |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
Talk about retaining water... 
