I'm not a fancier of puns especially, but these (from Net Mail Verizon) struck my funny bone. Some of them are bound to make you smile.
How do you catch a Unique Rabbit? (Answer: Unique up on it.)
How do you catch a tame rabbit? (Tame way, unique up on it.)
How do you get holy water? (You boil the hell out of it.)
What do you call a boomerang that doesn't work? (A stick.)
Why don't blind people like to sky dive? (Because it scares the dog.)
What do you call cheese that isn't yours? (Nacho cheese.)
How do crazy people get through a forest? (They take the psychopath.)
What are Santa's helpers called? (Subordinate clauses.)
What comes from a pampered cow? (Spoiled milk.)
Where would you find a dog with no legs? (Right where you left him.)
Why do gorillas have big nostrils? (Because they also have big fingers.)
What lies at the bottom of the sea and twitches? (Nervous wrecks.)
What would you get by crossing a snowman with a vampire? (Frostbite.)
What is the biggest difference between roast beef and pea soup/ (Anybody can roast beef.)
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Playing With Your Food
By the late 1990's McDonalds claimed to be opening a new store somewhere every three hours. Today nearly two million people work at 36,000 McDonalds fast food restaurants in 119 countries. Transitioning to foreign countries has meant experimenting with their 75-year old tried-and-true operation. In Sweden this has even meant a ski-through.
Menus have also been played with, and have become more nutritious because of demand. And local foods have been incorporated, like the Hula Burger (with grilled pineapple) in Hawaii, Filet-O-Fish launched in 1982 to capture Lenten business, and the McLean Deluxe, made with seaweed to save calories.
They haven't been alone playing with their food choices, of course. KFC, for instance, has debuted a burrito stuffed with fried chicken, cheese, bacon and bourbon barbecue sauce in New Zealand.
The Filipino enclave in Las Vegas, Nevada, is making changes there. Filipino spaghetti, unlike Italian style, is sweet. In place of tomato sauce they use banana ketchup, which was developed during World War II when tomatoes were in short supply. And they plunk sliced hot dogs into it, instead of meatballs. They also use rice noodles instead of the wheat noodles the Chinese prefer.
Some other foods they just import as is, like siopao, which is the Chinese steamed buns with meat inside; Spanish flan they call leche flan; and adobo, which is a derivative of Chinese soy sauce chicken. Frozen foods include banana leaves, squash flour, horseradish fruit, grated casava, and macapuno and cheese ice creams. And halo-halo, which is rather unforgettable. This is sort of an ice cream sundae, but the ice cream is purple (made from yams), evaporated milk replaces whipped cream, boiled beans - garbanzo, white and red - replace nuts, and coconut, palm fruit, pounded rice flakes, jack fruit and shaved ice are added. Halo-halo quite logically means "hodge podge".
Companies that produce the foods and drinks used in restaurants, and in our homes, also have experimentation periods where tasting panels play with flavors. In attempting to find their product's "bliss point", where the perfect amount of sugar creates the maximum amount of appeal, the Cadbury Schweppes company tasters prepared 61 distinct formulas and subjected them to 3,904 tastings before creating their popular cherry-vanilla Dr. Pepper.
They aren't alone in their failures. In a given year up to 89% of new items, like Classic Coke, fail.
To show how far afield this playing with food goes, some of the foods we now eat have intriguing origins. For example, the bacteria responsible for sourdough bread originally came from rodent feces. Any sourdough we eat has that history, yet it is all perfectly safe, and delicious.
The first graham crackers, as another example, were invented by a Presbyterian minister "to reduce sexual desire". Sylvester Graham created a bland, white, wheat-like biscuit and it wasn't until after his death that it was turned into the sweet treat we know today.
Indiana dairy farmer Mike McCloskey dissected milk, adjusted its components and came up with a milk that has almost 50% more protein and calcium, half the sugar, and no lactose.
Not everything turns out so well with this sort of individual tinkering. J.M. Hirsch, a writer for Associated Press, in a report on a new ketchup, states that Traina Foods, producer of all manner of dried fruits and vegetables, "has combined the world's two most perfect condiments" to make sweet and spicy Sriracha Sun Dried Tomato Ketchup. Then he spoils it by relating how he uses it - in what he calls "ketchup-pickle soup". Here is his recipe: Fill a cereal bowl with bread-and-butter pickle chips, then overfill this with Sriracha Ketchup. He eats this with a spoon!
(Sourdough and graham cracker items courtesy of Rob Dunn in "The Man Who Touched His Own Heart" and Libby O'Connell in "The American Plate: A Culinary History in Two Bites" respectively.)
Menus have also been played with, and have become more nutritious because of demand. And local foods have been incorporated, like the Hula Burger (with grilled pineapple) in Hawaii, Filet-O-Fish launched in 1982 to capture Lenten business, and the McLean Deluxe, made with seaweed to save calories.
They haven't been alone playing with their food choices, of course. KFC, for instance, has debuted a burrito stuffed with fried chicken, cheese, bacon and bourbon barbecue sauce in New Zealand.
The Filipino enclave in Las Vegas, Nevada, is making changes there. Filipino spaghetti, unlike Italian style, is sweet. In place of tomato sauce they use banana ketchup, which was developed during World War II when tomatoes were in short supply. And they plunk sliced hot dogs into it, instead of meatballs. They also use rice noodles instead of the wheat noodles the Chinese prefer.
Some other foods they just import as is, like siopao, which is the Chinese steamed buns with meat inside; Spanish flan they call leche flan; and adobo, which is a derivative of Chinese soy sauce chicken. Frozen foods include banana leaves, squash flour, horseradish fruit, grated casava, and macapuno and cheese ice creams. And halo-halo, which is rather unforgettable. This is sort of an ice cream sundae, but the ice cream is purple (made from yams), evaporated milk replaces whipped cream, boiled beans - garbanzo, white and red - replace nuts, and coconut, palm fruit, pounded rice flakes, jack fruit and shaved ice are added. Halo-halo quite logically means "hodge podge".
Companies that produce the foods and drinks used in restaurants, and in our homes, also have experimentation periods where tasting panels play with flavors. In attempting to find their product's "bliss point", where the perfect amount of sugar creates the maximum amount of appeal, the Cadbury Schweppes company tasters prepared 61 distinct formulas and subjected them to 3,904 tastings before creating their popular cherry-vanilla Dr. Pepper.
They aren't alone in their failures. In a given year up to 89% of new items, like Classic Coke, fail.
To show how far afield this playing with food goes, some of the foods we now eat have intriguing origins. For example, the bacteria responsible for sourdough bread originally came from rodent feces. Any sourdough we eat has that history, yet it is all perfectly safe, and delicious.
The first graham crackers, as another example, were invented by a Presbyterian minister "to reduce sexual desire". Sylvester Graham created a bland, white, wheat-like biscuit and it wasn't until after his death that it was turned into the sweet treat we know today.
Indiana dairy farmer Mike McCloskey dissected milk, adjusted its components and came up with a milk that has almost 50% more protein and calcium, half the sugar, and no lactose.
Not everything turns out so well with this sort of individual tinkering. J.M. Hirsch, a writer for Associated Press, in a report on a new ketchup, states that Traina Foods, producer of all manner of dried fruits and vegetables, "has combined the world's two most perfect condiments" to make sweet and spicy Sriracha Sun Dried Tomato Ketchup. Then he spoils it by relating how he uses it - in what he calls "ketchup-pickle soup". Here is his recipe: Fill a cereal bowl with bread-and-butter pickle chips, then overfill this with Sriracha Ketchup. He eats this with a spoon!
(Sourdough and graham cracker items courtesy of Rob Dunn in "The Man Who Touched His Own Heart" and Libby O'Connell in "The American Plate: A Culinary History in Two Bites" respectively.)
Thursday, May 14, 2015
YOUNGSTERISMS
Children, with their limited language skills, still manage to bridge that gap - when they want to describe or explain something new or unusual to them - by wonderfully simplifying both thought and wordage.
A St. Louis elementary school teacher named David Harvey coined a name for this - youngsterisms. He once illustrated these by writing about some of the answers he got on a quiz about Christmas.
Observations concerning Christmas trees brought these comments:
"A star is for living in Heaven when it is not for wearing in a Christmas tree's hair."
"Needles are found in both pin cushions and Christmas trees."
"Pine trees are not the only Christmas tree. Christmas grows on many kinds of trees."
And "Pine trees give us Christmas and turpentine."
"I was thinking all pine trees were small enough to take into the house and put Christmas decorations on. When I learned different, all the thoughts I was going to say went in a swallow down my throat."
Christmas carols sometime get a bit mangled, he found, recited as "Round John Virgin", "partridgenapur tree", "onion version, Mother and Child...Sleep in half and in peace" and the shepherds who "fell on their faces and were sore afterward".He learned "the lyrics of White Christmas are what Irving Berlin wrote as well as the words." And discovered why one moppet's favorite was "Old Cumalye, Faithful". Who was Old Cumalye? Jesus' dog, of course. He did attempt to correct the singer of "We three kings safari ain't are, bearing gifts we trap us a fire".But when he mentioned those words didn't make sense, the singer replied, I know. But it rhymes and things that rhyme don't have to make sense."
The term Xmas was explained as "10 Xmases equal one Christmas". And he learned "There is no such thing as a humbug, but it is old and grouchy when there is."
Several boys had their own takes on Christmas mistletoe, or "kisseltoe" as one called it: "Mistletoe means watch out for slobbery girls," and. "A good thing to remember about Christmas is standing under the mistletoe is don't."
A St. Louis elementary school teacher named David Harvey coined a name for this - youngsterisms. He once illustrated these by writing about some of the answers he got on a quiz about Christmas.
Observations concerning Christmas trees brought these comments:
"A star is for living in Heaven when it is not for wearing in a Christmas tree's hair."
"Needles are found in both pin cushions and Christmas trees."
"Pine trees are not the only Christmas tree. Christmas grows on many kinds of trees."
And "Pine trees give us Christmas and turpentine."
"I was thinking all pine trees were small enough to take into the house and put Christmas decorations on. When I learned different, all the thoughts I was going to say went in a swallow down my throat."
Christmas carols sometime get a bit mangled, he found, recited as "Round John Virgin", "partridgenapur tree", "onion version, Mother and Child...Sleep in half and in peace" and the shepherds who "fell on their faces and were sore afterward".He learned "the lyrics of White Christmas are what Irving Berlin wrote as well as the words." And discovered why one moppet's favorite was "Old Cumalye, Faithful". Who was Old Cumalye? Jesus' dog, of course. He did attempt to correct the singer of "We three kings safari ain't are, bearing gifts we trap us a fire".But when he mentioned those words didn't make sense, the singer replied, I know. But it rhymes and things that rhyme don't have to make sense."
The term Xmas was explained as "10 Xmases equal one Christmas". And he learned "There is no such thing as a humbug, but it is old and grouchy when there is."
Several boys had their own takes on Christmas mistletoe, or "kisseltoe" as one called it: "Mistletoe means watch out for slobbery girls," and. "A good thing to remember about Christmas is standing under the mistletoe is don't."
Friday, April 10, 2015
Never Have So Few Been Enabled to Know So Much
Never has any individual been enabled to know so much! If someone should give a smartphone to a Masai warrior in Africa, who's never seen technology, he would have access to more information than the president of the United States did in the year 2000. That's a stunning statistic, noting just how fast information on this, that and the other thing has proliferated and been mounting up in archives everywhere.
The media has become so invasive that it is impossible for anyone to stop their education... well, to stop their learning at least. Education presumes a planned continuum in some field of endeavor by teachers trained to impart pertinent information. Learning usually is a collection of self-interest bits of knowledge imparted by people who merely want to be read or heard.
I've enjoyed both. I loved school, attending and/or teaching at eight colleges or universities while earning three and a half degrees. Since giving school up and going to work, my innate curiosity has kept me on that other track, learning via media-borne information. I subscribe to eight magazines that I peruse cover-to-cover. I read two books a month. And I love the Internet and television, though I do pick and choose to avoid most of the clap-trap it often parades in front of us. I merely mention all this as an introduction of sorts into the theme of this particular blog. I want to share some of the "learning clips" I've discovered in all that reading, hoping what intrigued me will also interest you.
First off is an item stating "Music can make you mighty strong". Basically it reported that deep bass sounds (in music) are associated with "dominance". Researchers from France and the universities of Northwestern and Columbia found that people who listened to bass-heavy music reported feeling more powerful than those who listened to the same tunes with a reduced bass level. As a sidelight, those people also generated more power-related words in a word-completion task. (Think how strong a bass player must feel!)
Item 2: There is a real place named Shangri-La. That's a surprise for those of us who thought it only a mythical place in the 1933 novel and 1937 Frank Capra film, Lost Horizon, about a magical Himalayan paradise. Actually, it turns out, it was a big public relation success story. A town called Dukezong, located on the border of Tibet and Yunnan, renamed itself and profited with economic prosperity via traveler visits by claiming to be the inspiration for that story.
Item 3: Of the approximately 50 tech startups of the past decade to be valued at more than ! billion, at least nine have photos at the core of their businesses - Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Pinterest, Airbnb, Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr.
Iem 4: There is always the other side of the startups stories to consider, like Square Reader. This was a minimalist device for swiping credit cards that plugged into phones via an audio port, opening up a needed service to a massive, growing industry of micro-merchants, like baristas, food truckers,and florists. Merchants were charged a flat 2.75% rate per transaction, eliminating hidden costs and untangling antiquated charging models with credit cards. By late 2011 the company was processing $1 billion in payments annually A year later - not long after the company launched Register (software that transforms an iPad into a point-of-sale terminal) - its annual volume ballooned to $10 billion. But too much of their service cost intake was going to intermediaries they worked with and, when the execs tried to branch out, they lost their way and their customers. That's one of the biggest turn-arounds I've heard about.
Item 5: We already have more than 16 billion active wireless-connected devices and, according to ABI Research, that number may exceed 40 billion by the year 2020.
Item 6: According to Carrie Hessler-Radelet, director of the Peace Corps, 12 presidents in Africa credit a Peace Corps volunteer with starting them on their paths to presidencies.
Item 7: Scanadu, a device designed by Yves Behar, pressed against your forehead will read your temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and other vitals, then send this info to your phone via a connected app. It's awaiting FDA approval.
Item 8: Though 51 is the average age for menopause, 13 babies are born per week (2013 average) to women 50 years of age and over. The oldest recorded birth has been at age 70 - Rajo Devi in India. The top reasons given for delaying children: career, second marriages and filling an "empty nest".
Item 9: Unhappy with the direction of your life? Try plastic surgery on the lines in the palms of your hands, an operation that is a rage in Japan among those who believe the lines dictate one's future. The doctors say most men want to change lines associated with business and money, while most women seek to alter their love lines.
Item 10: In a couple New Orleans funeral parlors undertakers are posing the deceased - for viewing prior to burial - in death as they appeared in life (to family members). One woman was seated at a kitchen table with a can of beer in front of her and a cigarette between her fingers. The body of a boxer was arranged standing in a boxing ring. And a former paramedic was propped up behind the wheel of an ambulance. (I wonder what they will do with their first request for a sexual scene?)
I have no idea what you will do with these ten blips of esoteric trivia. But they gave me a column. I can only hope it was interesting, even if not useful to you too.
The media has become so invasive that it is impossible for anyone to stop their education... well, to stop their learning at least. Education presumes a planned continuum in some field of endeavor by teachers trained to impart pertinent information. Learning usually is a collection of self-interest bits of knowledge imparted by people who merely want to be read or heard.
I've enjoyed both. I loved school, attending and/or teaching at eight colleges or universities while earning three and a half degrees. Since giving school up and going to work, my innate curiosity has kept me on that other track, learning via media-borne information. I subscribe to eight magazines that I peruse cover-to-cover. I read two books a month. And I love the Internet and television, though I do pick and choose to avoid most of the clap-trap it often parades in front of us. I merely mention all this as an introduction of sorts into the theme of this particular blog. I want to share some of the "learning clips" I've discovered in all that reading, hoping what intrigued me will also interest you.
First off is an item stating "Music can make you mighty strong". Basically it reported that deep bass sounds (in music) are associated with "dominance". Researchers from France and the universities of Northwestern and Columbia found that people who listened to bass-heavy music reported feeling more powerful than those who listened to the same tunes with a reduced bass level. As a sidelight, those people also generated more power-related words in a word-completion task. (Think how strong a bass player must feel!)
Item 2: There is a real place named Shangri-La. That's a surprise for those of us who thought it only a mythical place in the 1933 novel and 1937 Frank Capra film, Lost Horizon, about a magical Himalayan paradise. Actually, it turns out, it was a big public relation success story. A town called Dukezong, located on the border of Tibet and Yunnan, renamed itself and profited with economic prosperity via traveler visits by claiming to be the inspiration for that story.
Item 3: Of the approximately 50 tech startups of the past decade to be valued at more than ! billion, at least nine have photos at the core of their businesses - Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Pinterest, Airbnb, Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr.
Iem 4: There is always the other side of the startups stories to consider, like Square Reader. This was a minimalist device for swiping credit cards that plugged into phones via an audio port, opening up a needed service to a massive, growing industry of micro-merchants, like baristas, food truckers,and florists. Merchants were charged a flat 2.75% rate per transaction, eliminating hidden costs and untangling antiquated charging models with credit cards. By late 2011 the company was processing $1 billion in payments annually A year later - not long after the company launched Register (software that transforms an iPad into a point-of-sale terminal) - its annual volume ballooned to $10 billion. But too much of their service cost intake was going to intermediaries they worked with and, when the execs tried to branch out, they lost their way and their customers. That's one of the biggest turn-arounds I've heard about.
Item 5: We already have more than 16 billion active wireless-connected devices and, according to ABI Research, that number may exceed 40 billion by the year 2020.
Item 6: According to Carrie Hessler-Radelet, director of the Peace Corps, 12 presidents in Africa credit a Peace Corps volunteer with starting them on their paths to presidencies.
Item 7: Scanadu, a device designed by Yves Behar, pressed against your forehead will read your temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and other vitals, then send this info to your phone via a connected app. It's awaiting FDA approval.
Item 8: Though 51 is the average age for menopause, 13 babies are born per week (2013 average) to women 50 years of age and over. The oldest recorded birth has been at age 70 - Rajo Devi in India. The top reasons given for delaying children: career, second marriages and filling an "empty nest".
Item 9: Unhappy with the direction of your life? Try plastic surgery on the lines in the palms of your hands, an operation that is a rage in Japan among those who believe the lines dictate one's future. The doctors say most men want to change lines associated with business and money, while most women seek to alter their love lines.
Item 10: In a couple New Orleans funeral parlors undertakers are posing the deceased - for viewing prior to burial - in death as they appeared in life (to family members). One woman was seated at a kitchen table with a can of beer in front of her and a cigarette between her fingers. The body of a boxer was arranged standing in a boxing ring. And a former paramedic was propped up behind the wheel of an ambulance. (I wonder what they will do with their first request for a sexual scene?)
I have no idea what you will do with these ten blips of esoteric trivia. But they gave me a column. I can only hope it was interesting, even if not useful to you too.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
IS GENIUS WITHIN YOU?
Google terms like "gifted" and "head trauma" and you will find intriguing results, and just maybe something really unusual about yourself! You may find there is possible genius within you without you knowing! Science, according to Adam Piore in an article titled "The Genius Within" in Popular Science Magazine (March 2013), is looking for a way for everyone to tap into their individual "savant-ism". It has turned out that brain damage has unleashed extraordinary talents in a small group of otherwise ordinary individuals. That, of course, is a hard way to discover the genius within you, but imagine if science could do that for everyone without the trauma side effect!
Actor Dustin Hoffman introduced a savant named Kim Peek in the blockbuster film "Rain Man". Peek could read two pages of a book at the same time, one with each eye, committing both to memory. He had instant recall from some 12,000 books. (He died in 2009.)
Look what some of these 30 or so known savants (people with a remarkable talent, even though ordinary, or less, in other aspects) have done, as reported by Piore.
Back in the 19th century "Blind Tom" Bethune, a former slave, was able to reproduce any song on the piano. He played at the White House at age 11, did a world tour at 16 and earned a fortune at that time, $750,000.
A high school dropout named Jason Padgett, brutally beaten by muggers, is the only known person in the world able to draw complex geometric patterns called fractuals. He also claims to have discovered a mistake in pi, which could upset a long-standing mathematical "fact".
Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon in New York was struck by lightning while in a telephone booth. He then was able to learn to compose music and play the piano, something he had never been interested in before.
A stroke transformed a mild-mannered chiropractor named Jon Sarkin into a celebrated artist whose work has appeared in "The New Yorker" with works in galleries selling for thousands of dollars.
Stephen Wiltshire, who is autistic, drew buildings at age 8. As an adult in 2005 he flew over the Thames River for 15 minutes, then sketched seven square miles of London's streets, rivers and buildings, precise to the windows.
Leslie Lemke, blind since birth, at age 14 played a Tchaikovsky piano concerto after hearing it in a movie theater. He has performed since around the world, being able to reproduce thousands of songs from memory.
After recovering from a bad auto accident at age 14, Jim Carollo made a perfect score on a mastery of geometry test without having studied, and later passed calculus exams without ever taking trigonometry.
Daniel Tammet can master a new language in one week and do lightning-quick mathematical calculations.
Identical autistic savant twins Flo and Kay Lyman can name the day of the week for any date in the future or past. For any date in the past they can recall what they did, what they wore, what they ate and what the weather was like.
Allan Snyder, a neuroscientist at the University of Sydney in Australia, has studied brain functions of people with savant syndrome since 1999. He thinks such untapped potential lies within all of us, just awaiting accessibility with the right tools. We cannot readily access these abilities "because they are not conscious to us," he thinks.
Actor Dustin Hoffman introduced a savant named Kim Peek in the blockbuster film "Rain Man". Peek could read two pages of a book at the same time, one with each eye, committing both to memory. He had instant recall from some 12,000 books. (He died in 2009.)
Look what some of these 30 or so known savants (people with a remarkable talent, even though ordinary, or less, in other aspects) have done, as reported by Piore.
Back in the 19th century "Blind Tom" Bethune, a former slave, was able to reproduce any song on the piano. He played at the White House at age 11, did a world tour at 16 and earned a fortune at that time, $750,000.
A high school dropout named Jason Padgett, brutally beaten by muggers, is the only known person in the world able to draw complex geometric patterns called fractuals. He also claims to have discovered a mistake in pi, which could upset a long-standing mathematical "fact".
Tony Cicoria, an orthopedic surgeon in New York was struck by lightning while in a telephone booth. He then was able to learn to compose music and play the piano, something he had never been interested in before.
A stroke transformed a mild-mannered chiropractor named Jon Sarkin into a celebrated artist whose work has appeared in "The New Yorker" with works in galleries selling for thousands of dollars.
Stephen Wiltshire, who is autistic, drew buildings at age 8. As an adult in 2005 he flew over the Thames River for 15 minutes, then sketched seven square miles of London's streets, rivers and buildings, precise to the windows.
Leslie Lemke, blind since birth, at age 14 played a Tchaikovsky piano concerto after hearing it in a movie theater. He has performed since around the world, being able to reproduce thousands of songs from memory.
After recovering from a bad auto accident at age 14, Jim Carollo made a perfect score on a mastery of geometry test without having studied, and later passed calculus exams without ever taking trigonometry.
Daniel Tammet can master a new language in one week and do lightning-quick mathematical calculations.
Identical autistic savant twins Flo and Kay Lyman can name the day of the week for any date in the future or past. For any date in the past they can recall what they did, what they wore, what they ate and what the weather was like.
Allan Snyder, a neuroscientist at the University of Sydney in Australia, has studied brain functions of people with savant syndrome since 1999. He thinks such untapped potential lies within all of us, just awaiting accessibility with the right tools. We cannot readily access these abilities "because they are not conscious to us," he thinks.
Monday, March 30, 2015
Our After-Schooling Education
Once we leave school pretty much our only education comes in two ways, through learning from our mistakes and what we see or read in the media.
I don't wish to share my mistakes but, as an avid reader, I have recently learned a number of things in my reading, even though it is a higgeldy-piggledy mixture of trivia and not any lesson in one educative category, and I will share selected choices, in concise thumbnail bits, that intrigued me from that.
The Melon, innovated by Arye Barnehama, is a new headband that monitors your brain waves to help you stay focused. Sensors measure brain activity, then sync that data with your laptop or mobile device via Bluetooth and alerts you if your mind is wandering. (Can't you just imagine entire classes of students in years to come all wearing these and becoming geniuses!)
Spritz, which co-founder Mark Maurer launched in Spring 2014 on the Samsung Galaxy S5 and
Gear2Smartwatch, is another new learning aid. With this device, which exploits something called the optimal recognition point - the area that the brain uses to process a word, users can digest text up to 1,000 words per minute (about five times average).
The Juno Jumper is a compact, iPhone-sized jump starter (for $100 from Junopower.com, cables sold seperately) that needs only an overnight charge to be use ready. For those of us who have occasionally had to jump-start cars with dead batteries this is neat.
Pensa is a free-to-use public streetside charging station featuring plug-ins for a variety of different mobile devices, topped by three electric-generating solar panels. The pilot program in New York and on college campuses has been sponsored by AT&T and Goal Zone, a solar device company.
The GPS Smartsole ($299) is a waterproof shoe sole with built-in GPS tracking chip that can instantly map the wearer anywhere in the world. It works with a variety of smart phones, computers and tablets. Sounds ideal for dementia sufferers, kids who wander and executives fearing kidnapping. The battery lasts five days and is easily recharged, like a cell phone.
The Zubie, costing $100, has a small "key" that plugs into the 16-pin diagnostics port hidden in your car's dashboard, syncing to a smart phone app that pinpoints the vehicle's location at all times, thereby defeating its theft. It also includes a gas price and mileage tracker, as well as a battery and engine monitor that sends alerts if either is malfunctioning. It also "tracks" how you drive (a headache saver for parents with teens drivers).
Alex Klein co-founded the Keno DIY (DoItYourself) Computer Kit (Keno.me $99) that is said to be "as intuitive as a Lego set" and will de-mystefy the inner workings of our favorite gadgets. Once assembled, Keno syncs with a monitor or TV screen, and a very simple manual gets kids, of all ages, coding software.
Dentistry Today reports Kings College London is developing a technique that uses "electrically accelerated and enhanced remineralization...to heal teeth without drilling and filling cavities". The procedure uses a small electrical current to push the mineral to the tooth from the damaged site.
UCBerkeley, MIT and Microsoft researchers recently introduced a prototype that can make a digital screen correct a user's vision. A filter is clipped onto a phone, tablet or other device, and the user downloads software to input his or her individual prescription. The filter then interacts with the screen.
People blinded by the degenerative disease retinitis pigmentosa can now purchase the Argus II, a bionic eye that can be safely, surgically implanted and is paired with video camera-equipped glasses to help patients distinguish objects around them.
California-based VoiceVault gives business and consumers the option of attaching "vocal signatures" to documents by speaking into the receiver following a telephone prompt. Great for executives closing big deals, banking transactions and government "need-to-know" stuff.
Funomena, based in San Francisco, is part of an emerging "deep games" movement where players "win" by becoming more enlightened, empathetic people. A new crop of mostly small studios have released wildly inventive games that focus on narrative, aesthetics, and the exploration of intimate emotions rather than fast-paced action, competition and tricky game play.
Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, the company that promotes "share the ride" in cities, was riding a $40 million evaluation high when he promised to take 400,000 vehicles off the roads in Europe to fight traffic gridlock and over-the-top air pollution. Then Uber was ordered to stop operations in South Carolina and Madrid and was even indicted in South Korea for providing "illegal" rides.
I don't wish to share my mistakes but, as an avid reader, I have recently learned a number of things in my reading, even though it is a higgeldy-piggledy mixture of trivia and not any lesson in one educative category, and I will share selected choices, in concise thumbnail bits, that intrigued me from that.
The Melon, innovated by Arye Barnehama, is a new headband that monitors your brain waves to help you stay focused. Sensors measure brain activity, then sync that data with your laptop or mobile device via Bluetooth and alerts you if your mind is wandering. (Can't you just imagine entire classes of students in years to come all wearing these and becoming geniuses!)
Spritz, which co-founder Mark Maurer launched in Spring 2014 on the Samsung Galaxy S5 and
Gear2Smartwatch, is another new learning aid. With this device, which exploits something called the optimal recognition point - the area that the brain uses to process a word, users can digest text up to 1,000 words per minute (about five times average).
The Juno Jumper is a compact, iPhone-sized jump starter (for $100 from Junopower.com, cables sold seperately) that needs only an overnight charge to be use ready. For those of us who have occasionally had to jump-start cars with dead batteries this is neat.
Pensa is a free-to-use public streetside charging station featuring plug-ins for a variety of different mobile devices, topped by three electric-generating solar panels. The pilot program in New York and on college campuses has been sponsored by AT&T and Goal Zone, a solar device company.
The GPS Smartsole ($299) is a waterproof shoe sole with built-in GPS tracking chip that can instantly map the wearer anywhere in the world. It works with a variety of smart phones, computers and tablets. Sounds ideal for dementia sufferers, kids who wander and executives fearing kidnapping. The battery lasts five days and is easily recharged, like a cell phone.
The Zubie, costing $100, has a small "key" that plugs into the 16-pin diagnostics port hidden in your car's dashboard, syncing to a smart phone app that pinpoints the vehicle's location at all times, thereby defeating its theft. It also includes a gas price and mileage tracker, as well as a battery and engine monitor that sends alerts if either is malfunctioning. It also "tracks" how you drive (a headache saver for parents with teens drivers).
Alex Klein co-founded the Keno DIY (DoItYourself) Computer Kit (Keno.me $99) that is said to be "as intuitive as a Lego set" and will de-mystefy the inner workings of our favorite gadgets. Once assembled, Keno syncs with a monitor or TV screen, and a very simple manual gets kids, of all ages, coding software.
Dentistry Today reports Kings College London is developing a technique that uses "electrically accelerated and enhanced remineralization...to heal teeth without drilling and filling cavities". The procedure uses a small electrical current to push the mineral to the tooth from the damaged site.
UCBerkeley, MIT and Microsoft researchers recently introduced a prototype that can make a digital screen correct a user's vision. A filter is clipped onto a phone, tablet or other device, and the user downloads software to input his or her individual prescription. The filter then interacts with the screen.
People blinded by the degenerative disease retinitis pigmentosa can now purchase the Argus II, a bionic eye that can be safely, surgically implanted and is paired with video camera-equipped glasses to help patients distinguish objects around them.
California-based VoiceVault gives business and consumers the option of attaching "vocal signatures" to documents by speaking into the receiver following a telephone prompt. Great for executives closing big deals, banking transactions and government "need-to-know" stuff.
Funomena, based in San Francisco, is part of an emerging "deep games" movement where players "win" by becoming more enlightened, empathetic people. A new crop of mostly small studios have released wildly inventive games that focus on narrative, aesthetics, and the exploration of intimate emotions rather than fast-paced action, competition and tricky game play.
Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber, the company that promotes "share the ride" in cities, was riding a $40 million evaluation high when he promised to take 400,000 vehicles off the roads in Europe to fight traffic gridlock and over-the-top air pollution. Then Uber was ordered to stop operations in South Carolina and Madrid and was even indicted in South Korea for providing "illegal" rides.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
FINDING NEW NAMES FOR ROCK BANDS IS TOUGH
There is such a proliferation of music groups that they are running out of names for new ones.
That was the gist of a Cox News Service story by Scott Benarde back in 1992! It was sort of a scare that didn't materialize, rather like the U.S. Patent Office back sometime in the 1800s announcing the Patent Office would close because everything that could be invented had been.
There are no statistics that I know of, but just listing such musical group names shows that pretty much all the cool names with animals, colors, letter combinations, et al, have been used. Bands by '92 had already used up alphabet names from ABC to XYZ, including APB, ATC, BCH, BTO, CIA, DAD, DBX, DOA, DOC, EIEIO, EU, EMF, EPMD, ESP, INXS, FOC, FM, KGB, KLF, KMC, KMFDM, K-YZE, NWA, NRBQ, OTB, RTZ, TKA, TSOL, UTFO, UFO, ZTC and REO Speedwagon. If you remember but a handfull of them, don't fret. You're about average, along with me. Most of them didn't move our music to new heights.
But those are only the start of our list. Look at the mess of numbers once used: One, 2 Deep, 2 In A Room, 2 Nu, 2 Live Crew, 2 Smooth MCs, 2 Bigg MC, 2 Nasty 4 Radio, Three Grand, 3 Merry Widows, 3 Mustaphas 3, 4 Way, 4-Sure, Take 6, 7 Seconds, After 7, Crazy 8's, 9 Ways to Sunday, ll, 13 Engines, 21 Guns, Catch 22, 24-7 Spyz, 29 Palms, 38 Special, Level 42, the 49ers, 54-40, Highway 101, 101 North, 220 Volt, 808 State, 1927, Oaktown-3-5-7, 10,000 Maniacs, and The Millions. Some crews combined letters and numbers, like B-52s, U2, UB40, L7, K9 Posse, and WWIII.
They all probably h;ad a reason for the names chosen, but I don't (can't) explain them. I just report them.
And don't think we are done. Colors were used, but black seemed to be the favorite. Included were Black, Black Bambi, Black Box, Black Britain, Black Crowes, Blackfoot, and Black Velvet. The other colors are even harder to remember. I can't think of any still working.
For some reason the term "Big" was used a lot: Big Audio Dynamite, Big Brother and Holding Company, Big Country, Big Car, Big Bam Boo, Big Bang Theory, Big Daddy Kane, Big Dipper, Big Dish, Big Pig, Big Drill Car, Big Shoulders, Big Wheel, Big Youth, Mr. Big, and Bigga. "Ice" was also a favorite, judging from Icehouse, Ice-T, Ice Cube, Vanilla Ice, Ice MC, Ice Cream Tee, Icicle Works, and Ice Capades. Tribe" too got considerable play with Tribe After Tribe, A Tribe Called Quest, Rhythm Tribe, Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E., Tribe, and Tribal Tech.
Names using Club, Gang, Posse, Boys, Crew and Def were close to overkill. And space doesn't permit even getting into place names (Boston, Chicago, etc) used. But names of living creatures offered a little welcome imagination, like White Lion and the Iguanas, along with some fish - An Emotional Fish, School of Fish, Fishbone, Kingfish and Phish.
It got so newcomer outfits were using complete sentences to identify themselves. Maybe you will remember They Might Be Giants, We Are Going to Eat You, What Makes Donna Twirl?, They Eat Their Own, Pop Will Eat Itself, I See Why and I Don't Know.
Back to our original sentence. Seems we shouldn't have worried. It was soon discovered that the English language is infinite when it comes to music groups and their images they think describe themselves and sets them apart. In just this morning's entertainment pages I noticed several new group names all due over the weekend at a local Rendezvous in the Park showcase: Blue Funk Jailbreak, The Hoodoo Two, Yellow Dog Flats, An American Forest, Dawn of Life and Genius in Remission. On another page I found more: Chastity Belt, Smashclub, Blackwater Prophet, Youryoungbody, Childbirth, Bread and Circus, and Diazepam. And, like I said, I don't explain 'em, I'm just reportkng 'em.
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