The American Chemical Society produced the video A Day Without Chemistry to raise awareness of the many ways we depend on chemistry in our daily lives. The International Year of Chemistry (IYC) officially begins on February 1st.
The 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 2011 as the International Year of Chemistry, envisioning a worldwide celebration of the achievements of chemistry and its contributions to the well-being of humankind. Also being celebrated in 2011 is the centennial of the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Marie Curie for her work on radioactivity, and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the International Association of Chemical Societies.
The American Chemical Society has a site full of ways to learn about chemistry and share your interest called ACS Celebrates IYC 2011, featuring new information and activities each day. Link
The Comedian of the Keyboard, also known as The Unmelancholy Dane, exited the earthly stage December 23rd, 2000. Victor Borge, the irrepressible musical humorist, didn’t quite make it into the true third millennium, but he lived almost 92 very full years and performed more than a 100 nights a year right up until the spotlight winked out.
Borge left the world a triple legacy. Born in Copenhagen to a family of musicians, Borge became a fine pianist and conductor. Too, he was that rare comedian who never used foul language and never made fun of anyone. "The smile is the shortest distance between two people," he observed. Most astonishingly, he became a genius in his second language -- English, which he learned by spending day after day in movie theaters.
Many years ago, Victor Borge created the game of inflationary language. Since prices keep going up, he reasoned, why shouldn't language go up too? In English, there are words that contain the sounds of numbers, such as "wonder" (one), "before" (four) and "decorate" (eight). If we inflate each sound by one number, we come up with a string of puns -- "twoder," "befive" and "decornine."
Here is a story based on Borge's idea. This tale invites you to read and hear inflationary language in all its inflated wonder -- oops, make that "twoder" and to remember the linguistically pyrotechnic genius of The Clown Prince of Denmark.
JACK AND THE TWODERFUL BEANS
Twice upon a time there lived a boy named Jack in the twoderful land of Califivenia. Two day Jack, a double-minded lad, decided three go fifth three seek his fivetune.
After making sure that Jack nine a sandwich and drank some Eight-Up, his mother elevenderly said, "Threedeloo, threedeloo. Try three be back by next Threesday." Then she cheered, "Three, five, seven, nine. Who do we apprecinine? Jack, Jack, yay!"
Jack set fifth and soon met a man wearing a four-piece suit and a threepee. Fifthrightly Jack asked the man, "I'm a Califivenian. Are you two three?"
"Cerelevenly," replied the man, offiving the high six. "Anytwo five elevennis?"
"Not threeday," answered Jack inelevently. "But can you help me three locnine my fivetune?"
"Sure," said the man. "Let me sell you these twoderful beans."
Jack's inthreeition told him that the man was a three-faced triple-crosser. Elevensely Jack shouted, "I'm not behind the nine ball. I'm a college gradunine, and I know what rights our fivefathers crenined in the Constithreetion. Now let's get down three baseven about these beans."
The man tripled over with laughter. "Now hold on a third," he responded. "There's no need three make such a three-do about these beans. If you twot, I'll give them three you."
Well, there's no need three elabornine on the rest of the tale. Jack oned in on the giant and two the battle for the golden eggs. His mother and he lived happily fivever after -- and so on, and so on, and so fifth.
This article is republished with permission from the Jan-Feb 2001 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!
Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
Ben Huh, who found success with I Can Has Cheezburger and its many spinoff sites, recently secured $30 million in investment funding. That may sound like success, but the real sign that you've arrived is when NMA makes an animation of your story for Asian news outlets. -via Laughing Squid
Can you name the most popular websites in the United States? That's the challenge in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. You have two minutes to name the top ten (you don't have to type the URL). There are really no surprises here, so if you don't get them all, you'll kick yourself when you see the answers. I got all ten in time, but I have to admit that I typed a lot of wrong guesses quickly! Link
The Fine Brothers are back with more movie spoilers -if you can keep up! If you don't want to know how these comedy films end, you might want to skip this, but you've probably seen them all. Anyway, these are mostly endings you can see coming a mile away. -Thanks, Benny & Rafi!
Isn't he sweet? You may have seen this picture around the web the last few days. No, It's not a tiny polar bear -it's plush! And you can make one yourself, with a pattern from Etsy seller Tatiana Scalozub. Link -via Arbroath
We'll have to wait until tomorrow to see what movies are nominated for the Oscars, but the 2010 Razzie nominations are out. Who will win the awards for the worst movies of the year? The nominees for Worst Picture are:
'Twilight Saga: Eclipse' 'The Last Airbender' 'The Bounty Hunter' 'Sex & The City 2' 'Vampires Suck'
Have you seen these movies? Are they really that bad? There are also nominations for worst actor, worst actress, supporting actor and actress, worst director, and more. Link -via The Daily What
Minnesotastan put this graph with his town's historical average high and low temperatures on his refrigerator to remind the family that they will get better, as they always do. The arrows are moved along every week.
It doesn't surprise me that the earliest humans recorded winter solstices, that they monitored the sun's positions, that religious festivals were created to celebrate rebirth from apparent death. There's an immense satisfaction in telling oneself that one has made it through the most difficult time, and that things are now going to get better.
A veteran of the Iraq War compares his readjustment to civilian life with that of the character Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's semi-autobiographical novel Slaughterhouse Five. Vonnegut wrote of becoming "unstuck in time", which is a launching point for the science fiction parts of the book, but Matt Gallagher says the feeling is real when you leap from one life to another.
I’ve walked by manholes in New York City streets and smelled the sludge river I walked along in north Baghdad in 2008. I’ve stopped dead in my tracks to watch a street hawker in Midtown, a large black man with a rolling laugh and a British accent, who looked just like my old scout platoon’s interpreter. And I’ve had every single slamming dumpster lid — every single damn one — rip off my fatalistic cloak and reveal me to be, still, a panicked young man desperate not to die because of an unseen I.E.D.
Despite these metaphysical dalliances with time travel the names on my black bracelet are, in fact, stuck in time. Or, more accurately, stuck in memory, where they’ll fade out and disappear like distant stars before becoming shadows of the men we served with and knew.
Shelley Jones and Marko Anstice take a trip through Venice in this stop-motion video by bayougirl. I sure wish those things really worked like that! ...except for the end, of course. -via Nag on the Lake
It's time for the Name That Weird Invention! contest. Steven M. Johnson comes up with all sorts of crazy ideas in his Museum of Possibilities posts. Can you come up with a name for this one? The commenters suggesting the funniest and wittiest names will win a free T-shirt from the NeatoShop. Let your imagination run wild, and good luck!
Update:ladybuggs wins a t-shirt for coming up with the name "the Toothsayer"! Also tripleX had the second place winning name with "ayePad", but didn't specify a shirt. Honorable mentions to Andrew X for "Den-Tell" and to Trevor for "DenTell Plaque."
Last week, we told you about the battle to end the sale of adulterated milk. Part II is the story of the fight to pasteurize the U.S. milk supply. It's an instructive tale. In spite of proof that pasteurization could save lives, Americans resisted it because it was a new idea... and because it "cost too much."
SOLID PROGRESS
During the latter part of the 19th century, improvements were made in the quality of milk sold in the United States.
Bottles: In 1884, for example, Dr. Hervey G. Thatcher patented the first practical milk bottle with a sealable top. He got the idea while standing in line in the street for his own milk a year earlier. When the little girl ahead of him dropped her filthy rag doll into the milk dealer's open milk can, the dealer just shook the doll off, handed it back to the little girl, then ladled Thatcher's milk as if nothing happened.
Thatcher's bottle wasn't a solution to all of raw milk's problems, but at least it kept impurities out of the milk after it left the dairy. Many dairies hated the bottles because they were expensive and broke relatively easily, but they caught on with the public and were soon in use all over the country.
The Lactometer: In the early 1890s, New York State began regulating the content of milk using a lactometer, a newly invented device that could measure the amount of milk solids in milk. For the first time, it was possible to compare pure milk with a test sample of a dairy's milk to see if it had been watered down or adulterated. If the milk tested didn't contain the same amount of milk solids as pure milk, the milk dealer could be fined or penalized.
BATTLING BACTERIA
But by far, the most important breakthroughs were scientific. The 1880s and 1890s were a period of great advancement in the understanding of bacteria and its role in causing disease.
In 1882, for example, A German scientist named Rupert Koch discovered that bovine tuberculosis, a form of tuberculosis found in cattle, could be spread to humans through diseased milk. This form of tuberculosis attacked the glands, intestines, and bones, frequently killing the afflicted or leaving them deformed for life.
"Children seem to be especially susceptible to bovine tuberculosis," James Cross Gilbin writes in Milk: The Fight for Purity. "[Victims] often spent years trapped into spinal frames...designed to prevent deformity while the body slowly overcame the infection."
Co-founder Jimmy Wales explains how Wikipedia came about ten years ago, how it works, and some interesting facts you might know about the website. -via Boing Boing
Almond was born in a maple tree last summer and never left. Ron Venden of Belleville. Wisconsin, says he's never sen the cat leave the tree, and there are no paw prints on the ground when snow covers his yard. And Almond doesn't need to leave the tree, since his needs are catered to.
To Venden's knowledge, Almond has no other home outside his maple. The cat was born there in June, and while the mother and the other kittens left, Almond stuck around. Venden has been feeding it ever since.
So why does Almond stay?
"I think it's because I'm treating it too good," said Venden, who at least twice a day climbs a ladder about 12 feet up to check on and feed Almond. He's also made a protected straw bed for the cat in a hollow of the tree, set up a dry cat food feeder and provides daily deliveries of fresh food, which Wednesday morning included a bowl of salami, meatloaf and milk.
"I kind of enjoy it," Venden said of caring for Almond, although he admits: "The neighbors think I'm goofy."
Vendon was scratched trying to remove the cat at first, but Almond is gentle enough when left where he belongs. http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/article_b9330ace-242a-11e0-94c6-001cc4c03286.html -via Fark
