For a long time, 350 degrees was the most common oven temperature in cook books. What was the thinking behind that?

The magic of cooking at 350 degrees isn’t magic at all, but chemistry. It is, for example, the level associated with the Maillard Reaction, the chemical process that gives so many foods a complex flavor profile—and an appealing golden-brown hue—when sugar and protein are heated together just so.

“Without Maillard chemistry we would not have a dark bread crust or golden brown turkey,” wrote the authors of a Royal Society of Chemistry book about the reaction, “our cakes and pastries would be pale and anemic, and we would lose the distinctive color of French onion soup.” The Maillard Reaction—which actually entails a series of reactions—isn’t all toasty goodness, however. It’s also responsible for making apples turn brown, which many people find unappetizing “despite negligible effect on flavor,” the authors write.

Well, it turns out that oven temperatures weren't nearly as precise before they had degrees on the dial, and it hardly mattered. They aren't even that precise now. Cooks from bygone eras pretty much learned what worked by experience. If your oven was hotter or cooler, you just adjusted your baking time. An article at the Atlantic tells us about how precise oven temperatures came about, and why recipe publishers chose the settings they did. I use 400 degrees more often these days, since I'm putting something frozen in the oven.  -via Digg

If theres a prophesy about you, you might want to read the fine print. That part about saving mankind? That was just luck. Besides, it was only one day out of the many years of your life. You have to live with the rest of it one day at a time. This story is from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Moscow artist Catherine Abanina made this plush Alien xenomorph that's downright cute! It's just one of her many plush art pieces available at her Etsy store Abalaba. There are other pop culture pieces such as Salvador Dali's elephant, the Cheshire Cat, and Minions in various costumes. -via Geeks Are Sexy

A Sankey diagram is "a specific type of flow diagram, in which the width of the arrows is shown proportionally to the flow quantity." The Wikipedia link talks about energy flow, but style of the graph is used for other things. More helpful than a general definition is an example, like the Sankey diagram above made by flashman, named How 52 ninth-graders spell 'camouflage.' You can see exactly how many students diverged in their spelling as the word gets longer.

This may look like it would be complicated to graph, but there is a Sankey diagram generator called the Sankeymatic that will do it for you. You enter the data, and the graph comes alive. See examples of how people are using it at the Sankeymatic Twitter feed.

How votes are expected to split between MACRON and LE PEN in the 2nd round. This according to Ifop polling on Friday: #Presidentielle2017 pic.twitter.com/OzW5EFGXiI

— Hannah Murphy (@MsHannahMurphy) April 23, 2017

-via Metafilter 

We know the story of Narcissus. We've aware of narcissism, the psychological condition of being obsessed with one's self. But do we understand what's wrong with these people?  

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No, we don't have to be tolerant of people who are arrogant, selfish, and oblivious to the welfare of those around them. But it might help if we understood what is going on with them. If we can't help them, avoiding such people may be the best thing for your own mental health. This video is from The School of Life. -via Laughing Squid

Redditor makenzie71 has an 8-year-old son. He somewhat misinterpreted the instructions on this assignment. Well, he thought he was doing the right thing, but it's not what the teacher wanted. Still, he ended up doing way more work and the the answers were perfect considering what he was doing. If I were a teacher, I'd give him full credit!

If you draw the usual family tree, you can potentially go back too far, where there are more people in your family tree than there were people on the planet at the time. Yeah, this family trees can't grow exponentially forever, and yes, some of our ancestor were related to each other. But that's no reason to panic.

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The YouTube channel It's OK to Be Smart explain how human ancestry and DNA diversity really works. -via Geeks Are Sexy

You may or may not be old enough to remember the horror of Thalidomide, a drug that caused thousands of birth defects in Britain, Canada, and West Germany in the late 1959s and early '60s. It didn't do much harm in the U.S. because the drug was never approved by the FDA. Therein lies a story, much of it the work of Frances Oldham Kelsey. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act was passed in 1938, in no small part due to Kelsey's work.

Kelsey was first introduced to the dangers of mass marketed unsafe pharmaceuticals in 1937, when the FDA enlisted Geiling to solve the mystery of Elixir of Sulfanilamide. Sulfanilamide effectively combated infections, but it came in a large and bitter pill that needed to be taken in large dosages. To make the drug more appealing, especially to children, manufacturers added it to a solvent with artificial raspberry flavor.

The problem was that the solvent they chose was diethylene glycol—commonly known as antifreeze. Between September and October, the drug killed 107 people.

Geiling and his lab of graduate students, including Kelsey, set out to determine what exactly in the elixir was killing people: the solvent, the flavor or the sulfanilamide. Through a series of animal studies—which at the time were not required by federal law for a drug to go to market—Geiling and his lab were able to determine that it was the diethylene glycol that was the cause of death.

Kelsey went to medical school and joined the FDA in 1960. Read her story, and how her research on Thalidomide saved American babies, at Smithsonian.

What could possibly be more important than remembering Mom on Mothers Day? A video game! I can understand, and even recommend, linking different things in your life as a memory aid, but let's be clear that whether it works or not, you don't have to be this honest about your priorities. This comic is the latest from Megacynics.

If you watched Fargo in a theater in 1996 and stayed through the credits, you would have seen this. Was Prince really in the movie? Between 1993 and 2000, Prince used this symbol as his name. But it's laid on its side, and there's a smiley face in the circle. Was it a joke? Yes and no. Peter Stormare, who played the villain Gaear Grimsrud, spilled the beans about Prince's role in the Coen brothers movie.

Prince is from there and a friend of theirs — this was during his battles with his record company and that sign was the only thing he was allowed to use. He wanted to do a smaller part — I was told — but it didn’t work out. But just having his symbol there helped his image a little in his long battle getting out from a stupid record contract!

The "victim in the field" was actually played by one of the storyboard artists from the film. I hope he didn't mind giving up a screen credit for the stunt. Read a lot more about the movie Fargo from the viewpoint of Stormare in the interview.  -via TYWKIWDBI

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If you're feeling hot, maybe you can take a dip into the ocean with us! John Green has a ton of interesting tidbits about the waters that cover most of our planet. Who was the first to cross the ocean in a hot air balloon? Who named the Pacific Ocean? How far south do Arctic icebergs get? Can we live under the water? Find out in the latest episode of the Mental Floss List Show.

The stories of supernatural happenings in the Harz mountains of Germany, and in particular the highest peak called the Brocken, have been around forever. Harry Price found those beliefs ridiculous. The skeptic Price had studied the supernatural for some time, and even owned a book of old German spells and rituals, which got him invited to the Brocken in 1932 to create some magic.

Price’s attempt at a magical ritual atop the Brocken came about thanks in part to the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe famously had an interest in the occult, and visited the Brocken peak, hiking a path that is still memorialized as the Goethe Way. Inspired by the mysterious atmosphere of the Harz region, Goethe set portions of his most famous play, Faust, there, including the surreal walpurgisnacht scene where the devil Mephistopheles leads Faust around the Brocken, observing witches and even a gorgon. “Paganism died hard in the Harz country,” Price would later write.

In 1932, the region was celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Goethe’s death, and that's why Price went to the Brocken, along with fellow philosopher C.E.M. Joad, to perform a magic ritual that was supposed to change a goat into a boy. He had to take a fair maiden and a goat, too, along with a bunch of journalists and spectators. Read the story of that ritual and how it turned out at Atlas Obscura.

(Image credit: German Federal Archives)

Ginny Di and her friends Tara Westmor and Lexi Dali sing Sam Cooke's "What a Wonderful World" with new lyrics from the world of Harry Potter! In the song, they are students at Hogwarts, telling us what they don't know much about. You know, alchemy, spells, etc.

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So all in all, it's a Harry Potter love long. The lyrics are at the YouTube page. -via Geeks Are Sexy

You don't have to break the bank to enjoy a great steak, but you do have to treat your meat purchase right to get the best flavor. How much you spend determines the cooking method, and there are things you van do to make a relatively cheap steak truly delicious.

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Of course, if you insist on buying the bottom-of-the-barrel meat at your local butcher's counter, you might be better off to make stew or something. -via Digg

Have you ever heard of Gudetama? He's a character developed by Sanrio, the folks who brought us Hello Kitty. Believe it or not, Gudetama is an egg yolk, and he's unbelievably popular in Japan.

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It just goes to show that there are no stupid concepts anymore. Gudetama's popularity is a convergence of many factors, many of them exclusive to Japan, as explained by Vox. -via Viral Viral Videos