Miss Cellania's Blog Posts

How Humble Moss Healed the Wounds of Thousands in World War I

In World War I, the number of wounded soldiers was overwhelming for every participating army. Poor conditions and the difficulty of evacuation meant that many wounds became septic. There just weren't enough bandages, and nothing could be kept sterile. So battlefront doctors had to get creative. They began to dress wounds with peat moss! Peat, or sphagnum moss, was not only plentiful, but it was super-absorbent: the moss can hold up to 22 times its weight in liquid.  

Sphagnum moss also has antiseptic properties. The plant’s cell walls are composed of special sugar molecules that “create an electrochemical halo around all of the cells, and the cell walls end up being negatively charged,” Kimmerer says. “Those negative charges mean that positively charged nutrient ions [like potassium, sodium and calcium] are going to be attracted to the sphagnum.” As the moss soaks up all the negatively charged nutrients in the soil, it releases positively charged ions (protons) that make the environment around it acidic.

For bogs, the acidity has remarkable preservative effects—think bog bodies—and keeps the environment limited to highly specialized species that can tolerate such harsh environments. For wounded humans, the result is that sphagnum bandages produce sterile environments by keeping the pH level around the wound low, and inhibiting the growth of bacteria.

Moss worked so well that volunteers back home held drives to gather and pack it for medical use. Read more about the wartime medical use of sphagnum moss at Smithsonian.


Indecision

Decisions, decisions. Sometimes we torture ourselves with all the pros and cons and the fear of choosing unwisely. Often one option is just as good as the other, which makes deciding all that much more difficult. The secret is to make the jump and don't look back. Once you've found the dress, or house, or career you select, quit shopping and tell yourself you made the right choice. Nothing is set in stone, not even regrets.      

This is the latest from Grant Snider at Incidental Comics. Read more about his inner conflicts in his book The Shape of Ideas.


Tai Chi and Chai Tea

Sinclair Martial Arts in Orillia, Ontario, is next door to a cafe, so they embellished their sign to make the amenities of the neighborhood clear. The owner of the school is named Ian Sinclair, which explains the tartan yin and yang. He said,

I don't know why it is that every place I have taught tai chi in Canada has been next to a cafe or pastry shop that serves chai tea.
In Vancouver, it was Bon Mangé, or Grabbajabba, or Starbucks. In Orillia, it was Euphoria. Now, we are next to Patilero.

Is it coincidence or synchronicity? Do I subconsciously choose pun-ready locations?

It's a clever pun, but as you could have guessed, it sparked a discussion about the habit of redundancy in using foreign terms, because "chai" means "tea." At home, "chai" means tea with cardamon, while "spice tea" means tea with cinnamon, and "tea" means that sweet stuff in the refrigerator. A plain cup is "hot tea." But I was told at an Indian restaurant, "chai" means plain tea, while "masala chai" means tea with cardamon (and other spices). Of course, being pedantic only ruins the pun in the sign. -via reddit


Cockatoo Yanks Eyeglasses

(Rumble link)

Sid the cockatoo must consider it his job to remove Dave's glasses. He hates the eyeglasses! No, wait, Sid thinks it's loads of fun.

Sid is a cockatoo with a huge personality and a highly developed sense of humor. He took a liking to Dave but didn't like his glasses. Sid repeatedly yanked them off Dave's face and threw them to the floor. It wasn't clear why Sid was doing this until he started to laugh at his own pranks. After a few minutes, this became a very entertaining game that had the two of them laughing. Cockatoos are highly intelligent and very social, demanding a lot of attention from their people. Amazingly, Sid even removes the glasses carefully before tossing them aside.

He's quite proud of himself! You won't be able to help but laugh at this prankster. -via Tastefully Offensive


The Tradition of the NASA Wake-Up Call

NASA began the tradition of playing music to wake up astronauts in 1965. Since you don't have the normal sunrise and sunset in orbit, it was considered important to regulate astronauts' sleep time to coordinate with each other and with Mission Control. The very first musical wake-up call was a parody of "Hello Dolly," with lyrics re-written for the mission, sung by Jack Jones. From that time until 2011, the NASA wake-up call has been a surprise for the astronauts, and often a meaningful selection.

No one really knows why a "Hello Dolly" parody was the first wake-up call, but NASA Chief Historian Bill Barry told PRI that it may have simply been an inside joke. Eventually, Houston expanded its musical tastes, piping in an array of tunes during the Gemini 7 mission for wake-up calls and times of inactivity. Because the flight took place in December, many songs were fit for the holidays, including "I Saw Mommie Kissing Santa Claus," requested by astronaut Jim Lovell's 12-year-old daughter.

The Apollo 10 crew woke up to Frank Sinatra's "Come Fly With Me," and heard "Fly Me to the Moon" when the actual moon shined brightly through the capsule's window. For Apollo 11, the mission that carried Neil Armstrong and company to the moon, NASA played news and sports reports instead, but soon went back to music for the Apollo 12 mission. Two years later, Apollo 15 astronauts woke up to the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Greetings were often taped by celebrities, and some even sing new versions of their songs for the wake-up calls. You can read about the tradition, and see videos of quite a few of the more memorable wake-up calls at Popular Mechanics. -via Digg


The Force And The Fury

A Jedi crashes into a lonely forest, with all communication cut off. What's worse, there's a mysterious enemy out to get him. And to top it all off, the batteries in his lightsaber are running out.

(YouTube link)

This short Star Wars fan film was made by Jason Satterlund of BigPuddleFilms. -via Geeks Are Sexy


Who Killed the Iceman?

Over 5,000 years ago, a man walking in the Alps was murdered. We would have never known about it, if the murder victim hadn't fallen into a ravine and became frozen in a glacier. Discovered by hikers in 1991, he became known as Ötzi the Iceman, the best-preserved mummy ever found. Ötzi's curators actually contacted Detective Inspector Alexander Horn of the Munich Police to investigate his cause of death. It was the coldest case Horn had ever tackled.  

Every modern murder investigation relies heavily on forensic science, but in Ötzi’s case, the techniques have been particularly high tech, involving exotic specialties like archaeobotany and paleometallurgy.

From examining traces of pollen in his digestive tract, scientists were able to place the date of Ötzi’s death at sometime in late spring or early summer. In his last two days, they found, he consumed three distinct meals and walked from an elevation of about 6,500 feet, down to the valley floor and then up into the mountains again, where he was found at the crime site, 10,500 feet up.

From the forensic evidence, Horn and his team were about to piece together the story of how Ötzi was murdered in bizarrely intricate detail. You can read that story at the New York Times. Horn admits that there is little chance of ever identifying the perpetrator. -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Thilo Parg CC BY-SA 3.0)


Driving a Stick Shift Explained with Death Metal

Guitarist David Wu of the band Cyborg Octopus and vocalist Travis Bartosek of the band Abiotic teamed up to explain the intricacies of driving a car with a manual transmission. With a death metal song. The task is not easy. I went through this lesson over 40 years ago, but back than we had the incentive of knowing that one either learned to drive a stick or one didn't drive at all. Contains NSFW language.

(YouTube link)

This is a ridiculous idea, executed by guys who fully appreciate how ridiculous it is. You gotta love that. -via Laughing Squid


Simon's Cat in Dinner Date: Just Desserts

We finally get part three of Simon Tofield's dinner date that began back in February. And as expected, Simon's Cat wants to be involved. To be honest, he wants to control the narrative.

(YouTube link)

The cat is certainly proud of himself! You can also see part one and part two, in case you missed them. -via Laughing Squid


10 Easy-to-Grow Plants for First-Time Gardeners

If you've caught the gardening bug because you finally have the land and the weather to do it, good luck in what is sure to become a satisfying hobby. First off, expect some failures, because that happens any time you try something new. To lessen the risk of complete failure, don't concentrate on just one kind of plant. And the real secret to gardening is to get rid of your failures immediately and show off your successes. Where should you start? Mental_floss has a list of 10 plants that are fairly easy for beginners to grow compared to what you'll want to try next, with some basic instructions. Flowers, vegetables, and herbs are all there. My only addition is to skip the root vegetables unless you have a spot of soft, well-drained soil with no rocks in it. And don't try to grow something you won't eat, because you may be too successful!  


Would You Buy a Used Car from This Man?

Eugene Romanovsky has finally decided to sell his 1996 Suzuki Vitara. He made an ad for the car that you will enjoy.

(YouTube link)

Yeah, you want to buy this car after seeing the ad, but Romanovsky lives in Israel. I can't read Hebrew, but I don't think it's been sold yet. -via reddit


Twerking Cat

You've seen how your cat gets ready to pounce on prey, whether real or toy: the head drops, the eyes dilate, and the hindquarters go into windup mode. Here we see Pusic (previously at Neatorama) putting that response to work. Shake that booty!

(YouTube link)

Pusic's people spend a lot of time editing his voluminous video clips to bring you such entertaining productions. The soundtrack really makes it.


The Nazi Who Infiltrated National Geographic

A propaganda program in Nazi Germany featured a commentator who called himself Paul Revere. He was an American who lauded the Hitler and the Nazi party in English six nights a week. Americans could monitor the show on short wave radio, and were shocked when the broadcaster eventually identified himself in May of 1941 as Douglas Chandler, a contributor to National Geographic magazine. In fact, he had photographed a 47-page article about Berlin a few years earlier for the magazine, which eventually became an embarrassment to the Nation Geographic Society.  

At National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., a memo was circulating among top editors with a newspaper clipping from The Washington Post: “Nazi ‘Paul Revere’ Proves Former Baltimore Man.” Letters began pouring in from magazine subscribers who had been listening to the disparaging broadcasts, in which Chandler had boasted about his employer while repeatedly railing against its leadership.

“I couldn’t have been more surprised if it had been the Annual Report of the Ladies’ Benevolent Society being ripped to ribbons!” wrote one concerned reader, who had heard the magazine mentioned a dozen times. “This is what I am curious about—how did the Nazis come to have such a spite against the ‘National Geographic’?”

Both National Geographic and the FBI had already been investigating Chandler’s Nazi ties. But now, with his radio reveal, the American public discovered that a National Geographic writer had—loudly—taken up the Nazi’s cause.

Now, National Geographic tells the story of Douglas Chandler, his relationship to the magazine, and how he became a traitor to his country.

(Image credit: Douglas Chandler/National Geographic)


Pop Culture Characters in Van Gogh's Starry Night

Artist Aja Kusick has a series of paintings that set fictional characters into the beautiful landscape of Van Gogh's iconic painting Starry Night. After a blog mistakenly attributed Kusick's painting of the Eiffel Tower to Van Gogh, she decided to run with the idea of "things Van Gogh never saw." Kusick painted scenes such as Van Gogh Was Never Abducted and Van Gogh Never Saw the Empire

The good news is that we can see those things, and even buy them. Prints of Kusick's artworks are available for purchase at her Etsy shop Sagittarius Gallery. -via TVOM


An Oral History of Austin Powers

It's been twenty years since Mike Myers introduced us to Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. The movie was a sendup of James Bond films, with the added flavor of other 1960s pop culture icons like Peter Sellers and the Beatles, and every other '60s trope they could throw in. Myers, director Jay Roach, Elizabeth Hurley, and almost all the cast got together to tell us how the movie came about.

Roach That nudity-blocking scene with Mike and Elizabeth — I shot 25 takes of that. We kept thinking it had to play out continuously, so I just kept shooting until there was a take that every single thing lined up perfectly. It was a hilarious scene, but it was actually really stressful because we were starting to feel like we may never get it.

Myers It took a lot of rehearsal. All I had to do was follow a pattern on a rug. It was Elizabeth who was going off of a reverse-polarity screen camera, left to camera right.

Hurley Bizarrely, we shot it in the Scientology Celebrity Centre in L.A. It took a whole day, as it was one continuous take. Mike and I were nude but covered with little bits of red sticky tape. We all knew each other so well by then, so we weren't self-conscious.

Read all about Austin Powers from the people who were there, at the Hollywood Reporter.  -via the A.V. Club


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