Old People Rule!

 

Roman Senator

#80 October 14:  Since this is my challenge for my 72^nd birthday, this piece on old age caught my eye.  People in ancient times (Roman, Mexico 1500 CE) often lived into their 50’s as verified by examining pelvic bones. Life expectancy was lowered by infant mortality rates.  Those who made it through the first two years of life often lived long lives.  In fact, in ancient Rome, some offices required an age of 30+, similar to American Presidents at 35! Of course, Biden and Trump are pushing the limits! 9/30

Invention Surprises

 

#73 October 6:  Car radios were perfected during the Depression.  Others had attempted the idea but Paul and Joseph Gavin noticed a dip in sales of their radios during the Depression but noticed that car sales hadn’t dipped.  He worked on his design and decided to take it to the 1930 Radio Manufacturers Association.  They didn’t get a booth, but just parked their car outside and cranked up the radio.  They called their radio the Motorola and later named their company the same name.  9/27

#73 October 7:  Scotch tape was also invented in 1930, at the start of the Depression.  Richard Drew had just recently perfected masking for auto-painting processes using crepe paper, glue, and glycerin.  He noticed that bakeries were using the newly invented cellophane for packing but needed an attractive way to seal it.  His masking tape glue was brown, so he worked on clear tape using oil resins and rubber.  “Scotch” was actually a pejorative term referring to thrifty Scotch immigrants.  During the Depression, folks adopted scotch tape using it to mend clothing, cap milk bottles, and even repair cracked eggs. 9/27

#74 October 8:  In an article about inventions, this is fascinating:  The can opener was invented 50 years AFTER the invention of preserving food in cans (1810).  Before the can opener, cans were opened with a hammer and chisel.  During the Civil War, an opener with a series of blades that sawed off the can with a ragged edge was invented (resulting in how many rusty cuts?).  The hand crank opener wasn’t invented until 1925. 9/29

#75 October 9:  Cotton Candy was invented in 1860 by … wait for it… A DENTIST!, William J. Morrison.  They first called it “fairy Floss” and it was a big hit at the St. Louis World Fair, netting Morrison and his partner $500,000.  I wonder how much money he made in extra cavities!  9/29

#76 October 10:  And while we’re discussing food inventions…What do Pop Rocks, Tang, and Cool Whip have in common?  The same person, William A. Mitchell invented Pop Rocks, Tang, and Cool Whip.  Pop Rocks were invented by accident in his quest to create a self-carbonating soda.  Tang, of course, became wildly popular when it went to space to combat metallic-tasting water.  He also combined a quick set gelatin and powdered egg whites to make a whipped cream alternative:  Cool Whip. 9/30

#77 October 11:  Similarly to the tin can, parachutes were invented  127 years BEFORE the airplane.  Similar ideas date back to the 3^rd century when a Chinese historian recorded a young man saving himself from a burning building using bamboo hats.  DaVinci famously sketched a design for a parachute.  Frenchman, Louis-Sebastien Lenormand coined the word parachute and tested gravity by leaping from a tree with 2 umbrellas and flinging himself from the Montpellier Observatory with a 14 ft. parachute in 1783.  The Wright brothers finally flew in 1903.  9/29

#78 October 12:  My mother-in-law was a test baker for Betty Crocker and I knew immediately as a young bride, my role was to learn, never compete!  I read today about Ruth Wakefield who is credited for inventing Toll House cookies (chocolate chip).  She and her husband, Kenneth owned the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts and she developed the cookie by chipping off semisweet chocolate into tiny pieces with an ice pick and adding them to her Butter Drop Do pecan cookies..  Later in 1930 when Nestle hired her and bought her recipe they scored the bars of chocolate into 160 segments and enclosed a cutting tool!  Her recipe still appears on the bag of morsels and for her contribution, Nestle gave her a lifetime supply of chocolate.   Just think how rich she could have become if she had bargained for a penny per morsel or even per recipe!  9/29

#79 October 13:  Velcro was inspired by a walk Swiss engineer,  George de Mestral took in the woods with his dog.  They came home covered in burrs.  When he looked at the burrs under a microscope he noticed that they were not straight, but had tiny hooks on the end which grabbed fabrics and dog fur.  It took him 156 years to recreate what he saw and develop a product that could both stick securely, but be easily pulled apart. He used a neologism (ha! I used my new vocabulary!) to create Velcro from velours  (velvet in French and crochet (hook in French).  9/29

Another Smorgasbord!

 

Before charcuterie boards we had smorgasbords, or as I heard a comic say once, sandwich fixin's without the bread!  We're going on vacation next week so I'm trying to "catch up and get ahead".  Are these facts interesting?  You should see the ones I rejected!! lol

#61 September 24:  One more thing about zapping mosquitoes!  In the paper yesterday it said that if you didn’t want to get bitten by mosquitoes, DON’T DRINK BEER!  It appears that not only are mosquitoes attracted to our carbon monoxide, but they like us best when we have beer or alcohol breath!  That explains a lot!!  9/19

#62 September 25:  A suburb of Damascus was bombarded from 2021 to 2016 and went from 80,000 residents to 8,000.  A group of volunteers started salvaging books from the rubble and opened an underground library in the basement of an otherwise destroyed house.  It had a reading space and even a book club.  Classes in English, math, and history were taught.  But the Syrian army finally evacuated the town completely and the library was torn apart.  And we worry about banning books!  What if we had to have secret libraries! 9/24

63 September 26:  We tend to think of the wheel as the ultimate human invention.  But several useful items were invented first:  boats, glue, musical instruments, and alcohol.  In fact, the wheel was first used as a potter's wheel to make vessels to hold different brews.  I'm surprised they didn't invent the mosquito swatter next!  9/24/2023

#64 September 27:  My mom and dad had a love/hate relationship with squirrels.  One day I would visit and Dad would have out his BB gun and either be shooting them or capturing them and taking them away.  He said to get rid of them, you had to carry them across 2 bodies of water so he would cross a creek and take them across the dam of the lake.  The next time I would visit my mom would have seed corn and would be feeding her “pets”.  According to a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, male squirrels actually get smarter in the fall when their brains, particularly the hippocampus gets larger.  This allows them to gather more nuts and prepare for winter. The slightly larger brain may also help them remember where the nuts are hidden!  But my dad’s brain was bigger!! Lol 9/24

#65 September 28:  Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is one of my favorite movies.  It was so scary and fascinating.  I think it was one of the first movies that made me think about how special effects are achieved. Hitchcock used two sources of inspiration for the epic horror tale.  He was inspired by a short story by Daphne du Maurier but also there was a similar incident of birds gone wild in Monterey Bay in 1961 about 2 years before he made the movie. While not the crows and mix of birds portrayed in the movie, thousands of crazed seabirds called shearwaters were seen going “crazy” and flying into things. The birds were not attacking anyone but were poisoned by toxic algae. 9/24

#66 September 29:  About twice a year, the weatherman will alert me to a sighting of the International Space Station and we will go up on the roof and watch it pass by.  It always amazes me that even with all of the light pollution in uptown Charlotte, we can usually see it. The space station has been continuously occupied for 23 years since its launch in 2000!  But the fact that really grabbed me was that it is the most expensive item humans have ever created!  It cost $100 BILLION !! It is a combined collaboration among NASA, Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe) and CSA (Canada).  9/24

#67 September 30:  Another new word for my vocabulary:  mondegreen.  It is when you mishear a word usually something sung.  Like hearing “Betty in a Dress” instead of “Bennie and the Jets”.  It was coined in 1954 in a Harper’s essay by Sylvia Wright.  Her mother used to read poetry and her favorite line was “And laid him on the green.  She misheard it as Lady Mondegreen.  9/24

#68 October 1: Our national animal is the Bald Eagle, and England has the lion, but the national animal of Scotland is… wait for it… the unicorn!  To Scots, the mythical animal represents purity, independence, and an untamable spirit. Unicorns appeared on the country’s coat of arms starting in the 12^th century. 9/24

#69 October 2:  Green bell peppers are just unripe red bell peppers.  Yellow and orange peppers are just somewhere in between.  As the peppers ripen, they become sweeter.  Who knew?!  9/24

#70 October 3:  I really found this fascinating:  there is no bridge over the Amazon River, even though it is over 4000 miles long.  There are a few reasons:  waters rise 30 feet when seasons swing from dry to rainy,  the riverbanks are in a near-constant state of erosion from soft sediment, and the jungle is so sparsely populated there is little demand for a bridge.  9/26

#71 October 4:  This was under “facts that will change how you see the world”:  Continents shift at the same rate your fingernails grow, about 20 mm a year.  Sort of a useless fact, but I’ll think about it each time I cut my nails. LOL 9/26

#72 October 5:  Alaska is the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost state.  An island called Semisopochnoi in the Aleutians is 10 miles west of the prime meridian, making it the easternmost spot! 9/26

Improving my Vocabulary

 #59 September 22:  What is doxing (or doxxing, I’ve seen it spelled both ways)?  I read it in the paper this morning and it was used in a novel I’m reading by Stacy Abrams.  I sort of had an idea of the definition by context, but decided to look it up.  According to Google doxing is “the act of revealing identifying information about someone online, such as their real name, home address, workplace, phone, financial or other personal information without their permission.  Is it illegal?  Also according to Google, doxing itself is not a crime, but could contribute to another criminal offense such as harassment, stalking, identity theft, or incitement to violence.  And it may be against X, or Twitter, or other social media rules.  9/19

#60 September 23:  And here’s a 2^nd word I learned today:  neologism!  Neologism is a spelling alteration of an existing word to create a new one.  For example, doxing is a neologism derived from the slang “dropping dox” or documents, which according to Mat Honan in Wired was “an old-school revenge tactic that emerged from hacker culture in the 1990s”.  Darn!  I guess my vocabulary is stuck in the 80’s or worse!  As I read on about the history of doxing on Wikipedia, it cited examples all the way back to the Stamp Act of 1765 when the Sons of Liberty harassed tax collectors who did not comply with boycotts on British goods by publishing their names in pamphlets and newspaper articles! 9/19

Back to School to learn about Colors!

 #57 September 20:  I once described some really ugly carpet I “inherited” in a house we bought as “school bus yellow”.  Little did I know that this color has a rich history. In 1939, school transportation officials met at Columbia University and picked Color 13432 or “School Bus Glossy Yellow”  out of 50 shades of yellow and orange to be the standard for buses all over the country.  They had 2 goals:  to make them stand out and be safer and to standardize the buses to make them cheaper to mass produce.  Our own High Point NC Thomas Built Buses is the nation's largest school bus manufacturer, churning out as many as 16,000 buses per year for over 100 years. 9/18

Lucy, Ella, Marilyn, and Steven: Interesting things I learned about Famous People

 #55 September 18:  I didn’t know that Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe were friends.  They bonded over their mutually poor pasts. After Marilyn became famous, she helped her friend out.  Ella was denied a gig at the famous LA nightclub, Mocambo, because of her less-than-svelte figure.  Marilyn, who’s figure was renowned, thought that was unfair.  She contacted the owner and booking agent and said they would not be sorry if they booked her and she would personally attend opening night and sit in the front row to bring in a crowd.  They relented and Marilyn attended every performance, which was a big success, and helped launch Ella Fitzgerald’s career into major clubs. 9/18

#56 September 19:  Lucille Ball personally financed 2 pilot episodes of Star Trek and believed so much in the show, she produced it for Desilu Productions despite the board’s skepticism about its viability.  9/18

#58 September 21:  As a early childhood educator, I learned early on to “get down at the child’s level” to get their attention.  Steven Spielberg must know something about early childhood, for he shot the entirety of ET at child’s eye level.  The only grown up face shown in the whole movie is the mom, who is portrayed as very child-like. 9/18 

NASA Farmers

 #54 September 17:  NASA is into farming!  Well, helping farmers. As an avid wine drinker, this piece in the paper really caught my eye! It outlined how NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory decided to help grape growers by flying over their vineyards with a spectrometer that can spot viruses long before the laborious task of testing vine by vine.  That way vineyard growers can literally “nip it in the bud” and contain and stop the virus from spreading much sooner, not only saving much of the $3 Billion that leafroll virus costs growers each year, but also saving the environment by using less chemicals needed to stop its spread.  NASA hopes to scale the project up to help other crops worldwide, and to move from airplanes to satellites which could cover larger areas more efficiently.  9/18

Disturbing use of A-I

The narration said, "Pyramid power plants were possible."

#51  September 14:  Last night I was listening to the BBC and I heard a disturbing report about YouTube videos being generated by AI and marketed to children with FALSE information.  One was about ancient pyramids generating electricity and another was about aliens.  When shown to a class of 10 and 11-year-olds, they bought it hook, line, and sinker and were confused when told they were fake.  The makers of these videos are sensationalizing them to acquire clicks to get revenue from ads.  The article has good information backing up their claims and the danger to the education of our children.  It also has tips to avoid being misled by disinformation.  This site will take you to the entire article and a 3-minute video summary.   https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/66796495   9/14

Juxtaposition Enhances Arts' Presentation

The Tuskeegee Airman at the NC Museum of Art

 #49 September 12:  I spent yesterday at the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh.  I had heard great things and my daughter and I decided it would be a good mutual (if slightly belated) birthday present.  As a museum collection, I didn’t think it was any more spectacular than the Mint or some of the other museums I’ve been known to haunt on vacation.  But I did learn was a new-to-me way of displaying a collection.  In most museums I go to either the collection is sorted by era or artist.  At this museum, they purposely mixed the two.  For instance, they had a portrait gallery that would display a grand Dutch master portrait beside a hip-hop artist.  The wording on the entrance to the gallery gave you the usual overview but added questions to ask yourself. The juxtapositions were very thought-provoking and provided interesting discussions with my daughter. 9/14

To Zap or Not to Zap!

 

#50  September 13: This has been the summer of the mosquito.  Our townhouse community seems to be especially hit and we had not noticed that many on the mountain until this season and now regularly light citronella candles and apply Off.  In Wednesday’s paper, they cited 2 studies from the late ’90s (the University of Florida and the University of Delaware) that verified that BUG ZAPPERS DO NOT WORK.  Mosquitoes hone in on our carbon dioxide not ultraviolet light.  The Florida study verified that in one single night 10,000 insects bit the dust, but only 8 were mosquitoes.  And in the Delaware study over half of the bugs killed were beneficial to the environment or ATE mosquitoes!  When the reporter for The Washington Post asked Black and Decker to produce studies to support their marketing claims (which they are required to do by the FTC) they did not respond. If this has been known since 1997, why is it still out there?  I will readily kill an offending bug (or revert to “damsel in distress mode” and call my husband to “slay the dragon”), but the “ZAP” of bugs dying has always been a little gruesome to me.  I will say that I got an ultraviolet glue trap for my kitchen and it has all but eliminated fruit flies.  It’s like a purple nightlight with a sticky card behind it and no zapping sounds.  This reminds me, I think its time to replace the card for a refill!  Zzzzzzzap!   9/14

Braver Angels bring Dems and Reps Together

 

#48 September 11:  Yesterday I attended a Braver Angel workshop at the Galilee Center.  Braver Angels get their name from one of Lincoln’s speeches beseeching the “better angels of our nature” to give grace to each other.  Braver Angels gets equal numbers of folks leaning Democrat and Republican together to have a guided civil conversation around a topic.  There were “4 Reds and 4 Blues” and the facilitators and observers.  The topic was Trustworthy Elections.  It was amazing that at the end we had a set of values, concerns and solutions or policies that we all agreed with.  Of course, these folks were self-selecting and so were seeking “common ground.” It surprised me to learn that the “Reds” were concerned about the primary process and sought solutions to choose more moderate candidates and that losing candidates should not drive the outcome.  Both groups agreed on nonpartisan commissions drawing districts to combat gerrymandering, and exploring ways to both shorten the process with less money. If you are interested in civil discourse, I urge you to explore https://braverangels.org.  They are also partnering with the Carter Center (as in President Carter) to monitor next year’s election and make it safer and more secure. 9/10

Myth Busters, Hidden Logos, and Lincoln's Cave

This is NOT a Gillray cartoon, but I liked it!

Here's a smorgasbord  of things I learned last week:

#37 August 31:   I ran across a “myth buster” site and the busted myth I liked the best was about Napoleon.  He actually was only an inch shorter than the typical man of his time and maybe not even that.  But the myth about his height came from a political cartoonist named James Gillray.  He introduced a character named “Little Boney” to represent Napoleon and portrayed him as diminutive and juvenile often pitching tantrums and stomping around in oversized boots.  Napoleon even said that Gillray “did more than all the armies of Europe to bring me down”.  And our newspaper just quit printing political cartoons.  How will we get rid of our despots?!  8/30

#38  September 1:  The famous “Gunfight at the O. K. Corral between Virgil and Wyatt Earp and various outlaws lasted only 30 seconds and killed 3 people and did not take place at the corral but on a nearby vacant lot.  As we face many deaths today from gun violence, many towns in the “wild, wild West” actually had gun control laws. According to the Myth Buster site, the “wild, wild, West” was actually fairly tame with most folks living together peaceably.  8/30

#39  September 2:  Betsy Ross did not design and sew the first American Flag.  That distinction goes to Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and designer of other seals for U.S. government departments.  He asked for but was denied a payment of a quarter cask of public wine.  However, his flag was approved on June 14, 1777, which became Flag Day. Betsy may have sewn flags.  She was an upholsterer, but she wasn’t the first, nor the designer. 8/30

#40 September 3:  There is a cave including 9-foot stalactites under the Lincoln Memorial!  It was originally discovered and covered over during construction and includes caricatures of Woodrow Wilson and the monument’s construction foreman.  It was rediscovered in the 70s when excavation for an elevator shaft to accommodate disabled visitors was begun. 8/30

#41 September 4:  Another site I’ve discovered has hidden meanings in common logos.  I knew about the smile on Amazon going from the A to the Z, but I didn’t know about the arrow between the E and X in FedEx subliminally indicating that packages move from point A to point B speedily. 8/30

#42 September 5:  Similarly, there is a Hershey Kiss imbedded in the Hershey Kisses logo between the K and I. 8/30

#43  September 6:  Finally, the Tostitos logo has 2 people dipping a chip in salsa, represented by the “t – i-t” in the Tostitos logo.8/30

#44 September 7:  What do the color circles mean on the bottom of your Frito Lays, or any package for that matter?  Is it a secret nutrition code?  Nope!  I knew about color blocks in the selvages of bolt cloth and it really is the same thing.  I just didn’t know it applied to food packaging too.  The color circles are test colors for the printer to make sure the colors are consistent and “true”.  So when you reach for the yellow pack of M&M’s in CLT or Shanghai, the yellow color is the same. 8/30

The Font You Love to Hate: Comic Sans was Created for a Dog!

 

#47 September 10:  What’s wrong with Comic Sans? I always liked it, but I quit using it a few years ago when I kept getting feedback that it was “unprofessional”.  Supposedly there are whole websites and X or Twitter rants dedicated to deriding it as “childish, visually chaotic, and an affront to good typeface design”.  The creator, Vincent Connare, only used it once in a letter complaining to his broadband internet provider.  It was created for Microsoft Bob, a family-friendly interface that used a pop-up dog as a helper (I just remember the da@# paperclip!) and since “dogs don’t talk in Times New Roman”, Comic Sans was created for a dog! Bob went bust fairly quickly, in less than a year.  When I looked up a graphic for this item as a blog post, I don’t think I remember Bob at all.  But there is hope for the font folks love to hate.  One Facebook user has changed his Facebook group “Ban Comic Sans” to “Use Comic Sans” saying it is “so bad it’s almost cool again”.  So, if I use it, will I be childish (we all know I am!) or cool?  LOL   PS. I would have written this in Comic Sans, but it isn't even an option on this blog platform!! 9/6

Smart folks live close to Starbucks!

 #46  September 9:    According to TikTok, a most reliable source (!@#@$_), there are 3 factors that increase your home’s value, obviously not the only 3.  And these 3 you have virtually no control over, unless they factored into your original purchase:  proximity to a Starbucks, if someone famous lived in the house, and if the house number contains “lucky” numbers.  I found the Starbucks one really interesting.  Statistically according to Tatiana Londono , houses near a Starbucks appreciate faster than those in other neighborhoods. While being within walking distance to a coffee shop is an obvious advantage (to some who like their caffeine!), it has another layer.  Basically, Starbucks has done your research for you, for they do extensive research before placing a store to make sure that the area is vibrant and has potential for growth.  This makes sense.  I’m reminded of 2 “stories”… First back in the early 90’s we were traveling to the beach with 2 other couples, one a recent transplant from LA.  Donna said, “I could sure do with a coffee, stop at the next Starbucks.”  We were in Wadesboro, and we all exploded with laughter as we knew that the “land of Starbucks” was well behind us and we doubted that she would see another one until we returned to Charlotte.  (In fairness, I bet Wadesboro now has a Starbucks.)  And we know firsthand how superstitions and “lucky numbers” can play into real estate decisions.  We had neighbors who bought in our townhouse community because the other townhouse they looked at aligned with a cemetery, and this one had a lucky house number.  When we went to repaint, they insisted on yellow because the other colors were not fung shui!  9/3

Even Toys are Being Changed for Climate Change!

 

#45 September 8:  Here is a marriage of the toy company of our youth, Whamo, and climate change.  I was reading an article about the rebirth of the company and after being sold a few times, they are trying for a “comeback” marrying nostalgic toys with innovations.  One of them addresses climate change and drought.  They have a “secret formula” for creating a Slip’N’Slide that uses no water!  I hadn’t thought about how playing in the sprinkler is becoming harmful, not to mention politically incorrect.  But a slip-and-slide with no water is genius!  But... there's always a but!... How would you cool off?