Fact of the Day

[DarkRavie]

42 minutes ago, warriorpirate said:

Seriously?!

If I had known I wouldn't have thrown mine away!  

I know the feeling.  We throw away what could be worth a pretty penny when it gets a certain age.

 

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SPACE BEGAN WHERE?

Did you know... Where exactly does the frontier lie? It depends on who you ask.

 

If Star Trek has taught us anything, it’s that space is “the final frontier.” But where exactly does that frontier lie? It depends on who you ask.

 

According to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, the world governing body for aeronautics records, outer space begins 100 kilometers (roughly 62 miles) above sea level. This barrier, known as the Kármán Line, represents the height at which air is too thin to give a vehicle sufficient aerodynamic lift to maintain its altitude. In the FAI’s eyes, once you’ve crossed the Kármán Line, you’ve been to space.

 

Easy enough, right? Not if you’re the United States Air Force. By the military’s reckoning, space starts 12 miles sooner, at 50 miles above sea level. So, for Americans, that’s the threshold a pilot has to cross to become an astronaut.

 

Over the years, the debate has caused some strife. During the 1960s, eight American test pilots (including three civilians) flew the experimental X-15, a rocket-powered plane, above the 50-mile mark. While some of these flights crossed the Kármán Line, others only crossed the 50-mile barrier without making it up to 100 km.

 

By the American military definition, the pilots were all bona fide astronauts. This middle ground put NASA in an odd spot, though. Because some flyboys hadn’t crossed the Kármán Line, by international standards they’d never been to space. For nearly 40 years, NASA waffled on whether to recognize these X-15 pilots as official astronauts, but in 2005 the agency finally relented, awarding the three civilian pilots their astronaut wings.

 

 

Source: Where Does Space Begin?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SQUEAKY SHOES

Did you know... Much like with “The Tell-Tale Heart,” that tell-tale squeak can become maddening after a while. So, what gives?

 

It’s never clear where the squeak is coming from at first. One looks around like someone whose phone is ringing in a movie theater, as if the sound emanated elsewhere. But when the shoe whines again, there’s no denying it. 

 

You glance down and watch helplessly with each step as your shoes turn into a cartoon against your will. How did this happen? These kicks have only been used on dry land, not for wrangling catfish deep in a Mississippi swamp.

 

While it can be tempting to attribute this annoying everyday occurrence to a tiny pixie or sprite stuck in your sneakers, there are a few common things that cause shoes to squeak. The culprit could be trapped air, moisture, or even friction between your sole and insole. Sometimes, it’s just because the shoe doesn’t fit properly (should have used that metal doohickey in the store, after all).

 

Excess moisture in and around the insole is often the leading cause. To go to war with that moisture, try to pluck out that hopefully removable insole and sprinkle on some baking soda or talcum powder, allowing shoes to dry in front of a fan for at least a day or so. Some will tell you to put that footwear in the dryer, but that advice is for people who don’t care about their shoes or their dryer, as doing so can cause damage to both.

 

Sometimes, boots and sneakers may get squeaky because they need some lubrication. To handle this, grab some shoe conditioner appropriate for the material that the shoe is made of and focus on natural creases in the shoe, which may be partly to blame. And while you’re at it, consider applying some coconut oil underneath the insole as well. Let the sneakers sit after doing this, and don’t put them on immediately, or it will feel really weird (or good, which is potentially worse).

 

How to Fix a Farting Shoe
Though squeaky shoes are a common problem, it can still be pretty humiliating for some. But in the realm of footwear, there is something potentially more embarrassing: shoe farting. Shoe farts are rough because they’re never silent and can’t be blamed on an adjacent dog. But the solutions are much the same as they would be with squeaking, as shoe farting is typically a sign of air trapped underneath the insole that goes poof when pressed on. In this case, farting may be a tip-off that your insoles are loose and ill-fitting. In this case, you’ll want to apply some shoe glue underneath them or buy a better-fitting set.

 

All of these are good approaches for dealing with farting and squeaking, and a bit simpler than avoiding noisy surfaces like tile and linoleum for the rest of your life. If your new shoes begin to squeak or fart as soon as you put them on, they probably just haven’t been worn in enough. Give it a few weeks before you rush back to the mall and return them. But if you’ve missed the return window, it may be time to throw that footwear over power lines, bury them underneath the floor like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” or, you know, go to a shoe doctor. 

 

A cobbler can make adjustments to the overall fit of your shoes—and once they’re all set, you can head outside and stroll confidently amongst your fellow walkers, each step as quiet as an ant passing through a Twizzler. All that’s left now is to get that pebble out of there.

 

 

Source: Why Are My Shoes Squeaky?
 

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - HOT BUTTON

Did you know... The phrase dates back to the 1960s, and has more than one meaning.

 

Few buttons are as popular as the type served hot, as some recent news headlines show: “Immigration is a complicated hot button issue. Voters views are complicated too” (NPR). “Letters log April 25- May 2: One hot-button issue drew some nuanced responses” (NOLA.com). “North Macedonia to elect president after campaign focused on hot-button issue of EU membership” (AP News).

 

But what is a hot button issue anyway? And why is it called that?

 

The Meaning—and First Use—of Hot Button
These days, the phrase hot-button issue or hot-button topic refers to any matter that is fraught with emotion, especially the visceral type. If a subject gets people upset, agitated, excited, or out of sorts, the button temperature is high.

 

Some of the most searing hot-button topics are abortion, immigration, politicians, war, and religion. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the first known use of hot button was recorded about the latter subject in a 1966 New York Times article: “Dr. Martin E. Marty, Lutheran theologian … acknowledges that the ‘God Is Dead’ theologians have their finger on the ‘hot button.’”

Two senses of the term eventually emerged—there’s the hot-button topic as we think of it today and a less common commercial meaning. The OED defines the second sense as “a desire, need, or concern that motivates people to choose among consumer goods; (also) a product, idea, or form of advertising that exploits such motivation.” That usage overlaps with the political meaning for sure: Both marketers and politicians know which buttons to push to get an immediate, visceral reaction.

 

But Why a “Hot Button”?
Think of hot topics and hot takes. According to Grammarist, “Marketers used hot button to describe the desire or need that a product would fulfill and thereby entice a consumer to buy that product. The assumption is that the advertising devised by the marketers would ‘push’ that button and impel the consumer to [buy] the product.”

 

Author and journalist William Safire wrote about the topic of hot-button topics in a 1988 column for The New York Times (seemingly inspired, in a somewhat meta twist, by a piece in Newsweek); he included the column in his 1993 collection of essays on language, Quoth the Maven. In it, he asserted that the phrase “was created in the hard-sell field of consumer marketing.” Still, some of his readers disagreed: One correspondent wrote that, “I think the term hot button comes from psychotherapy, not marketing.” In What Do You Say After You Say Hello?, published in 1972, Eric Berne, the originator of transactional analysis, defines button as ‘an internal or external stimulus which turns on scripty or gamy behavior.’” That certainly fits with the various uses of hot button, in which reactions aren’t scripted but certainly are predictable.

 

So when you push someone’s hot button, they buy—or buy in by having an immediate, knee-jerk reaction. Hot button topics have something in common with pet peeves; when the peeve activated, the peeve-haver just can’t help but get upset.

 

Source: Why Do We Call Things “Hot Button” Issues?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day -ELEVATOR PITCH

Did you know... The phrase might have origins in a man risking his own life to sell his big idea. Sometimes a big idea conflicts with a small amount of time—and when you need to explain a concept quickly and succinctly, you might refer to it as an elevator pitch.

 

What Is An Elevator Pitch?
Usually, an elevator pitch involves taking anywhere from 30 seconds to two minutes to summarize a concept. They may be common at work when you need to accommodate a busy colleague or employer, or you might use them in your personal life: Your spouse or partner might be rushing home and you’ve got scarce time to convince them why they should pick up a pizza.

 

But why is it called an “elevator pitch”? It may have something to do with a people-moving pioneer and a stunt that could have turned deadly.

 

Elisha Otis and the Elevator Stunt
Given how often they’re used (according to one estimate, there are around 900,000 elevators in use in the U.S. that make 18 billion trips a year), elevators cause relatively few deaths annually—perhaps as few as 30. But in the 1800s, when elevators first came into widespread use, they posed far more significant risks. Any damage to the cables maneuvering the lift could result in occupants plummeting to their deaths. Many people avoided them altogether; rent for upper floors in residential buildings was often cheaper thanks to the difficulty in climbing stairs.

 

Elisha Otis, the owner of Otis Elevator Company, had a solution: He pioneered a mechanism for elevators in 1853 that would act as a failsafe. It was little more than a wagon spring attached to the cables and held in place by the downward pressure of the platform. If the cable snapped and the platform broke free, the spring would release; its ends would lock into notches in the beams on each side of the shaft, halting the platform’s descent.

 

Otis was so confident of his invention that he arranged for a public display of its effectiveness—and used himself as a guinea pig. He stood on a platform as it went up several stories in the air, then used a blade to cut the cable. As onlookers screamed, the spring was activated and Otis remained aloft.

 

The advancement revolutionized elevators, not only giving users confidence to ride them but also leading to more efficient construction as well as the emergence of skyscrapers. (It also raised the rent on the upper floors of buildings.) To some, this was the original elevator pitch—a brief, effective demonstration of an idea taken on literal terms. But elevator pitch as a figure of speech may have started in another industry.

 

Elevator Pitch Redefined
While Otis perfected the elevator pitch, the term may not have come into broader use until the 20th century. According to Forbes, screenwriters in the early days of Hollywood would seize upon elevator rides to capture the attention of busy executives.  Knowing they had a captive audience for at least a half-minute or so, the writers tried to sell decision-makers on movie ideas.

 

Charlie Fink, a onetime Disney executive, once wrote that elevator pitch was used at the company in the 1980s and 1990s. “When I worked at Disney in the ’80s and ’90s, we defined it as ‘[if CEO] Jeff Katzenberg steps into your elevator,’ ” he wrote. “ ‘You have two floors [or] 20 seconds to pitch him your movie.’ ” One example of an elevator pitch, according to Fink, was The Lion King, which he had summarized as “Bambi in Africa.”

 

But elevator pitch didn’t get much play outside of the film industry. One of the earliest printed examples of the phrase in another line of work didn’t come until 1966, when a First National Bank employee named Duncan Williams was overheard by a senior executive “giving somebody a sale pitch” in the bank’s elevator. Impressed with what a newspaper article on the events called Williams’s “elevator pitch,” the executive put him in the bond department. He eventually made senior vice-president.

 

Another version of the phrase, elevator speech, was mentioned in a 1980 Associated Press article as part of “Pentagonese,” or slang terms that were used “by the men and women responsible for America’s national security.” An elevator speech was a “short two or three-minute briefing.” In the decades that followed, elevator pitch (or speech) seemed to catch on in the business world.

 

It’s possible Otis brought the concept of an elevator pitch to life, with the film industry taking it from literal to figurative terms. But for the most part, people have used the phrase to conjure a brief window of time to explore an idea. If you couldn’t explain something in the time it takes to ride in an elevator, it’s probably not an elevator pitch.

 

 

Source: Why Is It Called an “Elevator Pitch”?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - OVERPASS PARKING

Did you know... A bridge or overpass isn't going to protect you. In fact, they make you even more vulnerable.

 

There aren’t many severe weather events that prompt as much concern as a tornado, a column of high winds that can cause massive and immediate destruction.

 

Intuitively, people seek shelter. If they’re driving, that may mean feeling an urge to park under an overpass or bridge. But is that really the best decision?

 

The answer, according to experts, is no. Speaking with news outlet KFOR in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, meteorologist Aaron Brackett cautioned against viewing such structures as safe—especially as tornado winds can actually increase underneath bridges. A tornado with winds moving at 100 mph can increase to 150 mph if air is being forced through a narrow area.

 

The fact that people may have the same idea only compounds the danger. “All it takes is a couple more vehicles doing the same exact thing and all of the sudden, you have a roadblock,” Brackett said, explaining how the underpass on a four-lane road can quickly “become a parking lot and everyone is at risk.”

 

Tornadoes can also decimate such structures, causing falling debris while cars and passengers are immobile underneath. All things considered, stopping under an overpass can be a fatal mistake. KFOR even cited a 1999 tornado in which residents were killed owing to their choice of shelter.

 

This advice is echoed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which also noted that half of survey respondents thought seeking an overpass was a good idea. FEMA also cautions against parking under trees, which are also unlikely to provide any protection.

 

What You Should Do While Driving in a Tornado’s Path
According to the National Weather Service, the safest place to be during a tornado event is indoors—ideally the basement of a building or a tornado shelter. Don’t look for sheds or mobile homes, as they lack the necessary support to endure high winds. Truck stops or convenience stores are a better option.

 

If you’re driving, your aim should be to get out of your car and into one of these structures: Get off the road (without blocking traffic) and find suitable shelter. If no building is nearby, you might be able to mitigate injury by staying in your car, keeping your seatbelt on and windows closed, and remaining low to the floor to avoid being hurt by broken glass. Leaving your vehicle and lying in the lowest spot to avoid flying debris and cars should be a last resort, since you’d be putting yourself at significant risk for injury.

 

Outrunning a tornado isn’t going to happen, but it may be possible to drive away from a tornado if you know its directional path. If it’s moving east, for example, you can drive to the south. But you’re far better off indoors.

 

 

Source: Should You Ever Park Under an Overpass During a Tornado?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CARNEVAL VS. CIRCUS

Did you know... Come one, come all, to learn what separates the two fun-filled attractions.

 

A traveling company of performers rolls up on the outskirts of your town; on the bill are entertaining clowns and impressive jugglers, which you can watch while munching on popcorn or cotton candy. But are you at a carnival or a circus? Although the line between the two is sometimes a little blurred, their origins are actually very distinct, so step right up to learn the difference.

 

What is a carnival?
American traveling carnivals can be traced back to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, a.k.a. the Chicago World’s Fair. At the outdoor Midway Plaisance, visitors could see attractions such as belly dancing, strongman shows, and even magic performed by Harry Houdini. They could also play fairground-style games, grab some food, and take a ride on one of the world’s first Ferris Wheels.

 

 

Otto Schmidt worked as a showman at the fair and soon afterwards set up the Chicago Midway Amusement Company to tour these attractions around northeastern states. Traveling carnivals steadily gained traction; by 1936, there were around 300 of them crisscrossing the country.

 

Entertainment at a carnival is spread across numerous small booths and tents. To begin with, the main draw was the games (ring toss, balloon darts, high striker, etc.) and attractions (sword swallowing, fire breathing, snake charming, etc.). Freak shows that exhibited conjoined twins, people with dwarfism, bearded women, and more were also a staple.

 

As freak shows fell out of favor during the 20th century due to changing attitudes toward physical differences, advancements made with mechanical rides allowed them to fill the gap. Tilt-a-Whirls, carousels, roller coasters, and bumper cars soon became common carnival features.

 

What is a circus?
The story of the circus begins in 1768, when Philip Astley and his wife, Patty, opened Astley’s Riding School in London. The couple performed stunts on horseback in a circular ring, and although trick riding was already an established form of entertainment, it was Astley’s idea to add clowns and acrobats to the show. He’s hailed as the “father of the modern circus” for bringing these elements together. Astley also figured out that a 42-foot diameter ring was the ideal size because the centrifugal force created by a horse galloping in a circle aided a rider’s balance; this has been the standard ring size ever since.

 

Astley never actually used the word circus. That credit goes to his rival Charles Dibdin, who opened The Royal Circus nearby later that same year. As for the popularization of the iconic circus tent—known as a big top—that’s down to Joshua Purdy Brown, who in 1825 started to use a tent so that his circus could travel more easily around the United States.

 

 

The centerpiece of the circus was (and still is) the display of skills such as acrobatics, flying trapeze, and tightrope walking. Audiences were guided through these feats by a ringmaster—often outfitted in a red tailcoat with gold trim, a waistcoat, and a top hat—who originally kept the horses running, but soon became a master of ceremonies. It also became increasingly common for circuses to showcase exotic animals, with audiences expecting to see lions jump through hoops and elephants stand on their hind legs.

 

Showman and charlatan P. T. Barnum is largely responsible for bringing freak show performers to the circus, having had success with them at his museum. Barnum got into the circus business in 1870 and hired giants and people with extra limbs to star in sideshows next to the main tent. Now, however, physical anomalies and cruel animal tricks aren’t as commonly displayed, with performances instead revolving around spectacular gymnastic skills.

 

How to Tell the Difference Between a Carnival and a Circus
These days, there are generally two major differences between carnivals and circuses, but they aren’t hard-and-fast rules. First, carnivals tend to feature many booths that offer simultaneous entertainment, while circuses usually take place within one big tent or theater. Second, carnivals normally include interactive rides and games; circuses, on the other hand, typically involve a seated audience watching stunts performed in the ring.

 

Source: Carnival vs. Circus: What’s the Difference?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - PIONEERS

Did you know... History has a notoriously capricious memory. Casting a spotlight on a select few, it condemns others to oblivion, no matter how significant their contributions. However, it’s never too late to change this! Let’s uncover some of the stories behind 10 forgotten figures of history that, in one way or another, helped shape our modern world.

 

1. Hedy Lamarr

As if a glamorous Hollywood career was not enough, Hedy Lamarr was also a brilliant inventor who - among other things - developed a groundbreaking frequency-hopping system during World War II to secure both communications and radio-guided torpedoes. And besides helping Allied forces gain a technological advantage during the war, her innovative ideas also laid the foundation for modern Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies.

 

2. Émile Gagnan

Émile Gagnan was a French engineer who partnered with famous diver Jacques Cousteau to create the Aqua-Lung , the first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (or SCUBA). The device, which utilized compressed air to allow divers to explore underwater for extended periods, not only completely revolutionized underwater exploration but its relative ease of use also led to a boom in recreational diving.

 

3. Mary Leakey

Mary Leakey was a pioneering figure in the field of paleoanthropology who made significant contributions to our understanding of human evolution. Alongside her husband Louis Leakey, she unearthed numerous hominid fossils in East Africa, including the famous discovery of the "Nutcracker Man," a skull of Paranthropus boisei, an extinct species of hominid that lived around 2.5 million years ago. Mary's meticulous excavation techniques and a keen eye for detail led to many more groundbreaking discoveries, such as the Laetoli footprints, providing crucial insights into early human locomotion.

 

4. Alice Ball

Alice Ball was a true pioneer in all regards. The first woman and first African American to graduate with a Master’s degree from the University of Hawaiʻi, she developed the first effective treatment for leprosy, known as the "Ball Method." Her technique allowed to make chaulmoogra oil - an antimicrobial extract obtained from the seeds of Hydnocarpus wightianus - water-soluble and thus injectable. She died before publishing her work, which was then stolen by fellow chemist Arthur L. Dean. However, thanks to the insistence of her colleagues, she eventually received the rightful recognition for her groundbreaking contributions.

 

5. Emilie du Châtelet

The outstanding work of the Marquise du Châtelet, also known as Emilie du Châtelet, significantly contributed to our understanding of energy conservation and the principles of calculus. Her 18th-century French translation of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica helped disseminate Newton’s work in Europe, and she introduced a series of contributions to Newtonian mechanics, including the postulate of an additional conservation law for total energy and a scientific definition for the concept of energy.

 

6. Al-Jazari

Considered by some to be the true "father of robotics" and modern-day engineering, Al-Jazari was a 12th-century polymath who revolutionized mechanical engineering with his ingenious designs, including the first recorded programmable humanoid robot. Among his many designs for automata were a waitress that could serve various drinks, an automaton that helped with hand washing, and a musical robot band.

 

7. Edmond Becquerel

Edmond Becquerel's experiments in the 19th century paved the way for solar energy research. His discovery of the photovoltaic effect laid the groundwork for modern solar cell technology, and his research in the topics of optics and light also contributed to the development of photography. Curiously, he was the father of Nobel laureate Henri Becquerel, one of the discoverers of radioactivity.

 

8.  Jethro Tull

Not to be confused with the rock band of the same name, Jethro Tull was an English agriculturalist born in the 17th century who revolutionized farming practices with his innovative inventions. His most famous creation, the seed drill, transformed agriculture by allowing seeds to be planted in neat rows at consistent depths, vastly improving crop yields and efficiency. Tull's dedication to scientific farming methods laid the groundwork for modern agricultural techniques.

 

9. Ada Lovelace

Often regarded as the world's first computer programmer, English mathematician Ada Lovelace made groundbreaking contributions to the early development of computing in the 19th century. Collaborating with Charles Babbage on his Analytical Engine, Lovelace is also notable for being the first to foresee potential in computing beyond mere calculation, as she reasoned that such an engine could easily work with entities other than just quantities, and could be applied to music, science, or have many other general uses.

 

10. Mary Anderson

Next time you are driving in the rain, think of Mary Anderson. An American inventor and entrepreneur, Anderson left an enduring legacy on the automotive industry with her groundbreaking invention - the windshield wiper. In 1902, while visiting New York City, Anderson observed streetcar drivers struggling to maintain visibility in inclement weather. Thinking on this problem, she envisioned a solution: a moving wiper blade that could be operated from the inside. Despite initial skepticism, Anderson's invention soon became standard equipment for automobiles, improving road safety everywhere in the world.

 

 

Source: Re-Discover These Forgotten Pioneers!

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CULT OF MUSICALITY

Did you know.... There weren’t a lot of hard rock bands like Living Colour in 1988. Their lead singer was into wearing neon Body Glove wetsuits. Their big Top 20 pop single name-checked Joseph Stalin and Mahatma Gandhi. Their bass lines could be as funky as their guitar riffs were heavy. And perhaps most jarring—at least to record executives trying to sell this music to a mass audience—they were Black.

 

“One person [at a label] thought I sounded too much like Ben Vereen,” Living Colour lead singer Corey Glover told SPIN in 2008, referencing the legendary Black singer and stage actor who originated the role of Judas in the Broadway show Jesus Christ Superstar. “Or they said the songs didn’t have hooks. But the bottom line was always: ‘We don’t know how to market this. We don’t know where to put this in a record store. They’ll put you in the R&B section because they’ll see your faces on the cover.’ ”

 

Those label execs were wrong. On the strength of the blistering “Cult of Personality”—the song with those aforementioned historical references—the group’s 1988 debut album, Vivid, reached No. 6 on the Billboard 200 and went double platinum. Living Colour toured with The Rolling Stones and Guns N’ Roses and exposed millions of impressionable teenagers to songs about racism (“Funny Vibe”), gentrification (“Open Letter [To a Landlord]”), addiction (“Desperate People”), and other important issues. Living Colour also wrote plain-old love songs. They were never one thing.

 

Nearly 40 years later, Living Colour are still rocking crowds and defying expectations, and for a variety of reasons—some related to professional wrestling, some to video games—“Cult of Personality” remains extremely relevant. This is a rock ‘n’ roll story unlike any other.

 

Made In Brooklyn
Living Colour is the brainchild of virtuoso guitarist Vernon Reid, who was born in the UK to West Indian parents then moved to New York City as a young child and grew up in Brooklyn. He credits his folks with exposing him to all kinds of music—not just the stuff deemed “Black music” by record companies and radio programmers at the time of the band’s rising.

 

 

 

“It was very eclectic,” Reid told Red Bull Academy in 2014 of his musical upbringing. “And the best thing about my parents, they never said this is white music, and this is bad music, and we don’t listen to that kind of music. My parents never said that. My mom was actually into British invasion bands like The Dave Clark Five. She literally had records of the Dave Clark Five and stuff like that.”

 

Inspired by Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix, Reid picked up the guitar as a teenager and eventually began listening to genre-pushing jazz artists like Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra. These and other sonic voyagers became major influences, though Reid never stopped spinning his James Brown and Kool & The Gang records. In the early ’80s, Reid linked up with avant-garde jazz drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson and joined his fusion band The Decoding Society. 

 

In 1983, after leaving Jackson’s crew, Reid formed Living Colour, in an attempt to marry his various divergent influences. “So punk was affecting me, the avant-garde was affecting me, pop was affecting me, all these things, and I wanted to find a way to pull it together—pulling all the various weird spaces in my head together,” Reid told Red Bull.

 

The following year, Reid accompanied his sister to a party and heard a guy sing “Happy Birthday.” The singer was Corey Glover, a multi-talented singer and actor from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who had soaked up the diverse sounds of his neighborhood. Glover told Reid, “What I really want to do is sing in a rock band,” and the two soon joined forces. Drummer Will Calhoun and bassist Muzz Skillings rounded out the lineup, and the band began playing around New York City.

 

Black Rock Coalition
Around the time he formed Living Colour, Reid went to see Eye & I, a new group started by his bassist buddy Melvin Gibbs. Reid was perplexed and incensed to find nobody in the audience, and that led him to call his friend Greg Tate, an influential music critic at The Village Voice. 

 

 

 

“I just got all these people in the room, and I was like, ‘Is it just me or is there something going on here? ’Cause I just went to this gig, there was nobody there, nobody knew about it. I just wanted to ask you all, am I bugging?’ ” Reid told Red Bull. 

 

From these conversations was born The Black Rock Coalition (BRC). Tate penned a manifesto that includes the following pronouncement: “The BRC embraces the total spectrum of Black music. The BRC rejects the arcane perceptions and spurious demographics that claim our appeal is limited. The BRC rejects the demand for Black artists to tailor their music to fit into the creative straitjackets the industry has designed.”

 

Reid became the organization’s president, and as Tate recalled years later, the attention generated by the BRC helped Living Colour cultivate its fanbase. 

 

“The early audience for Living Colour was definitely a Black BRC audience,” Tate said. “And it really kept that band’s name alive and afloat until things really started to happen for them, really even after the release of the record.”

 

The BRC wasn’t the only thing responsible for breaking Living Colour. Reid met Mick Jagger while the Rolling Stones frontman was auditioning musicians for his 1987 solo album Primitive Cool, and while Reid’s tryout was “terrible” in his own estimation, something good came of the session. Jagger told Reid that he’d heard good things about Living Colour, and that he wanted to see them live. Not long after, Jagger accompanied guitar god Jeff Beck and music journalist Kurt Loder to catch the band at CBGB, the iconic punk club where Living Colour were regulars. 

 

Jagger loved what he heard and offered to produce some demos for Living Colour. They recorded two songs, “Which Way to America” and “Glamour Boys,” and that led to some major label interest. Living Colour wound up signing with Epic. In 1988, they released their debut album, Vivid, produced by Ed Stasium, whose credits included Ramones and Talking Heads. The LP features Jagger’s two demos, a Talking Heads cover (“Memories Can Wait”), and a certain politically charged hard-rock anthem that would become Living Colour’s signature song.

 

Cult of Personality
“Cult of Personality” came together during a single band rehearsal in Brooklyn. Glover sang a run of notes, and when Reid tried to match him on guitar, he created a mammoth riff that reminded him of both Led Zeppelin and the jazz-fusion group Mahavishnu Orchestra. The heavy lick demanded equally heavy lyrics, and luckily, Reid had already written something about world leaders and their ability to captivate followers. As Reid told Louder in 2016, the song is about “celebrity, but on a political level.” 

 

 

“It asked what made us follow these individuals who were larger than life yet still human beings,” Reid said. “Aside from their social importance, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King both looked like matinee idols. That was a strong part of why their messages connected.”

 

The lyrics mention Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, John F. Kennedy, and Mahatma Gandhi—four very different men with similar levels of charisma. (Reid was originally going to name-check Adolf Hitler, but he decided against it.) The song samples speeches by Malcolm X, JFK, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the title takes its name from a 1956 speech by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. 

 

 

 

It was hardly the stuff pop-radio dreams are made of, and yet “Cult of Personality,” which was released as the LP’s second single, became a massive hit. The music video was all over MTV, and the single reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also earned the group a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance. The follow-up, “Glamour Boys,” all about shallow dudes who wear designer clothes and party their lives away, also cracked the Top 40, and Vivid peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard 200.

 

“There was a certain amount of, well, we arrived,” Reid told Red Bull. “You know, it felt almost disembodied, but of course we worked really hard for it to happen. It was cool, it was weird, it was hard, it was awesome, it was strange.”

 

Living On 
Living Colour didn’t fare quite as well with their 1990 sophomore LP, Time’s Up, another sonically adventurous collection featuring guest spots from Little Richard and rappers Queen Latifah and Doug E. Fresh. It stalled at No. 31 and managed only gold sales, though Living Colour did pick up another Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance.

 

 

 

The following year, Living Colour joined Jane’s Addiction, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, and others on the inaugural Lollapalooza tour, a signpost of the alt-rock era just getting underway. Living Colour’s third album, Stain, arrived in 1993, by which time Doug Wimbish had replaced Muzz Skillings on bass. Interpersonal issues were starting to take their toll, and the group split up in 1995. 

 

They reunited in 2000 and have since released three studio albums: Collideøscope (2003), The Chain In The Doorway (2009), and Shade (2017). The last of those—a “deconstruction” of the blues in the band’s unique style—includes covers of songs by The Notorious B.I.G., Robert Johnson, and Marvin Gaye. 

 

As the band continues touring and creating new music, “Cult of Personality” remains a part of popular culture. In 2004, the song turned up on the soundtrack for the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and in 2007, wannabe shredders wailed along to the song in Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. It’s since been used in various other games, including Shaun White Snowboarding and NBA 2K16. 

 

In 2011, professional wrestler CM Punk used “Cult of Personality” as his entrance music when he made his grand return to WWE’s Monday Night Raw after a highly publicized contract dispute. As a condition of re-signing with WWE, CM Punk insisted that the company pay to license the track, as it was his Little League team song in 1989.

 

 

 

“Wrestling is such a spectacle, and it’s so ritualized, with these storylines and narratives about good versus evil,” Reid told PopMatters. “The whole story of CM Punk taking on ‘Cult of Personality’ is a very moving story. We were talking one time, and he said, ‘When I was playing Little League when I was 12, “Cult of Personality” was our get-out-on-the-field music.’ They won their championship that year, and that stayed with him. It’s interesting to think of the life of the song.”

 

 

Source: How Living Colour Defied Expectations and Defined Hard Rock in the ‘80s

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - MORTAL KOMBAT CONTRAVERSY

 

Did you know.... At a press conference on December 1, 1993, the kids’ television host joined Democrat Senator Joe Lieberman and other officials to raise awareness of what the two perceived as a growing public health crisis: violent video games. The chief offender was Mortal Kombat, an arcade fighting game that was being released in home versions for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo consoles. Players could maim their digital counterparts via spine detachment, edged weapons, or worse, all while geysers of blood sprayed across screens.

 

“We’re not talking Pac-Man or Space Invaders anymore,” Lieberman said, invoking two popular titles of the 1980s that skipped decapitations. The politicians argued that Mortal Kombat and its kind were sacrificing morality for money.

 

Captain Kangaroo may not have held the rank to do much about it, but Lieberman did. Soon, he would organize congressional hearings on the matter, forcing video games into an existential crisis. The controversy around Mortal Kombat was more than just another moral crusade: It managed to turn an industry against itself in a fight that was just as metaphorically bloody as anything onscreen.

 

A Fighting Chance
The arcade version of Mortal Kombat, developed in 1991 and released in 1992, was intended to seize some of the quarters being fed into the arcade hit Street Fighter II. But the glut of fighting games meant that Midway, the company behind the game, had to conceive something that would stand out—and do it in an expedited 10-month window.

 

Game developers Ed Boon, John Tobias, John Vogel, and Dan Forden had a solution. The game used digitized actors that were recorded performing a variety of martial arts and fighting techniques, taking the game away from the pixelated or cartoonish style of other combat titles. They also decided to lean heavily into gore by featuring a series of “fatalities,” or finishing moves accessible via button combinations, which allowed players to rip each other apart.

 

When Mortal Kombat was released in fall 1992, it was met with a highly enthusiastic reception. Players—particularly teens and young adult males—flocked to the arcade cabinet to see if they could tear characters apart like rotisserie chickens. Midway offered arcade operators the option of turning off the excessive violence, but hardly any of them did: The outlandish violence was the selling point.

 

 

 

“I like it,” one player told The Reporter in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. “He pulls the guy’s heart out. You can’t get much better than that.”

 

“I love the blood and violence,” said another.

 

Despite these endorsements, Mortal Kombat quickly became a source of contention. Inevitably, the media turned to child psychologists and invited them to consider the consequences of kids playing an active role in simulated bloodshed.

 

“Videos like this may well have the same type of effect on children as TV violence because we are exposing them to violent models,” Michael Wexler, a family psychologist, told The Courier-Post of New Jersey in November 1992. “A recent study of 900 third graders found exposure to violence was a predictor of later aggressiveness and criminal behavior … when you put the realism and other factors like frustration and poverty together with it, this can lead to [violence].”

 

Violent video games were not a novel concept. In the 1970s, an arcade hit, Death Race, angered adults for offering high scores to players who ran over pedestrians with their (virtual) car. A Sega game series, Splatterhouse, took its cues from ‘80s slasher films and featured plenty of gore.

 

But Mortal Kombat seemed uniquely suited to strike at the heart of moral pundits. Unlike Death Race and Splatterhouse, it was a runaway smash hit. It was also about to hit home consoles backed by a $10 million marketing campaign.

 

Midway licensed Mortal Kombat to game cartridge distributor Acclaim, which planned to release the title in September 1993 on the two most popular home video game systems of the day: the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis. (Nintendo’s Game Boy and Sega’s Game Gear portable devices would get the game as well.) The family-friendly Nintendo blanched at releasing an uncensored version, insisting Acclaim strip out the fatalities and depict the blood as green instead of red.

 

“To my mind, Mortal Kombat was comic book violence, but some people got upset about it,” Acclaim chief executive Gregory Fischbach told the BBC in 2014. “People looked at it as though we were selling it to nine-year-old children.” Nintendo’s demand to change the blood color was, he said, “pretty stupid.”

 

Unfortunately for the gaming industry, Joe Lieberman didn’t come across the sanitized version of Mortal Kombat. It was the unvarnished Sega Genesis edition, where characters could rip out an opponent’s still-beating heart. Metaphorically, at least, that's just what Lieberman wanted to do to the violent games.

 

The Government Counterstrikes
Joe Lieberman might never have had first-hand knowledge of Mortal Kombat if not for Capitol Hill aide Bob Andresen, whose son sought out the game for his Sega Genesis. When Andresen saw the gameplay, he asked Lieberman about it.

 

Lieberman, who saw his congressional role partly as one of a moral adjudicator, was astonished. He called a press conference on the steps of Capitol Hill and invited Captain Kangaroo (real name Bob Keeshan), who had expressed similar sentiments. (The kid-friendly host was outspoken against violent programming.) Their objective: To put the video game industry on notice.

 

“Few parents would buy these games for their kids if they really knew what was in them,” Lieberman said. “We're talking about video games that glorify violence and teach children to enjoy inflicting the most gruesome forms of cruelty imaginable.”

 

 

Lieberman was candid: He preferred to see such games banned but recognized that would be a thorny First Amendment issue. Instead, he urged game companies to institute a ratings system. If not, he threatened government oversight would be next.

 

In fact, Sega had already done just that. In August 1993—just in time for Mortal Kombat—the company introduced a labeling system that rated their titles from GA (General Audiences) to MA-17, which warned against kids under 17 from making purchases. One of the earliest titles to earn the severe rating was Night Trap, a game that made use of the live-action capabilities of their Sega CD peripheral and featured a sorority under attack by blood-letting assailants. (Mortal Kombat got an MA-13.)

 

But Sega’s system didn’t apply across the industry. To placate Lieberman, gaming’s other giant—Nintendo—had to get on board. Rather than assign ratings, Nintendo was prone to scrubbing games of any potentially offensive content. But it was affecting their bottom line. Gamers were resoundingly voting with their dollars for Sega’s faithful Mortal Kombat game, which outsold the more docile Nintendo edition by a wide margin.

 

If Nintendo believed their self-censorship would give them a political pass, they were mistaken. When Lieberman convened his congressional hearing on December 9, 1993, he and other lawmakers assailed Nintendo for releasing what he considered “still a violent game.”

 

 

 

“This version does not have the death sequences, and instead of red blood spurting out, there’s …well, there’s some other liquid,” Lieberman said, referring to the green goo of the Nintendo game.

 

The panel decried both companies for equipping players with toy guns. Lethal Enforcers for the Sega CD was packaged with a Dirty Harry-sized handgun that fellow Senator Herbert Kohl warned “teaches our kids that a gun can solve any problem with lethal force.” As in Death Race, pedestrians were sometimes collateral damage, a facet of gameplay Kohl found abhorrent.

 

Various representatives from advocacy groups spoke in support of Lieberman and Kohl’s views. Nintendo senior vice-president Howard Lincoln and Sega of America marketing executive (and one-time Nintendo employee) Bill White were primarily left to defend the video game industry. Lincoln pointed out that Nintendo lost money by sanitizing Mortal Kombat for the Super Nintendo; White stressed that the market was gearing more toward adult players.

 

Though Lincoln and White were united in a common cause, neither appeared to bend over backward to acknowledge it. Instead, the hearing devolved into a public forum for the two gaming giants to lash out at one another.

 

Finishing It
Lincoln appeared annoyed at White’s suggestion that adults increasingly made up more of the gaming consumer segment.

“I can’t sit here and allow you to be told that somehow the video game market has been transformed from children to adults,” Lincoln said. “It hasn’t been. And Mr. White, who is a former Nintendo employee, knows the demographics as well as I do. Further, I can’t let you be subject to this nonsense that this Sega Night Trap game is only meant for adults. There was no rating on this game at all when it was introduced. Small children bought it as Toys ‘R Us, and he knows that as well as I do.”

 

White then brought out the big guns—literally. In an effort to elbow Nintendo out of the panel’s good graces, White produced a comically oversized bazooka sold by Nintendo for shooting games that worked like their Zapper light gun. Lieberman remarked that it “looks like an assault weapon to me.”

 

In clawing over each other to appease the Senate, both Sega and Nintendo did themselves few favors. It was clear the industry would have to embrace self-policing.

 

 

 

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board, or ESRB, was proposed in July 1994, several months after the initial congressional hearing and a second hearing, which was held in March 1994. The industry association’s ratings system, which eventually ranged from E (for everyone) to A (adults only), wasn’t ready in time for another Mortal Kombat marketing blitz, this time for Acclaim’s Mortal Kombat II in September 1994. (The ESRB didn’t begin rating games until November.) But due to the pending label—and likely because they lost millions on a sanitized version of the original—Nintendo opted to release the sequel without any redactions. (In a nod to the earlier controversy, the new Mortal Kombat allowed players to gift each other birthday cakes instead of fatalities.)

 

While the ESRB may have eased congressional tensions, it came a little too late for Nintendo, which saw itself cede majority market share in the home gaming market for the first time to Sega. It also did little to satiate concerns that violent entertainment leads to violent behavior, though a definitive link has yet to be identified.

 

“If we’re talking about violence, then the evidence is very clear that there is no causal link to violent video games,” Stetson University psychology professor Christopher J. Ferguson told The New York Times in 2018. “That’s pretty established at this point.”

 

The ESRB rating system remains in use today. When the 12th iteration of Mortal Kombat was released in 2023, it received an M label. Again, there was criticism over the game’s violence, but it didn’t come from politicians this time. Streamers who monetize playing games have complained the gore narrows their audience.

 

 

Soure: ‘Finish Him!’: When ‘Mortal Kombat’ Caused a Moral Panic

Edited June 1 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - STAY PUFT MARSHMELLOW MAN

 

Did you know.... The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is one of the most iconic images from Ghostbusters (1984), but it turns out he almost didn’t make the cut. In the short video above, Cinefix tells the story of Mr. Stay Puft from his original conceptualization by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis to his laborious creation by a team of special effects masters.

 

Unlike the CGI-heavy movies of today, Mr. Stay Puft is all practical effects. Shooting the climax of Ghostbusters—in which the giant, sinister marshmallow galumphs down Manhattan’s Central Park West, climbs a skyscraper, and ultimately explodes—took four puppeteers, multiple marshmallow suits, and almost 100 pounds of shaving cream. Creating the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, according to the video, was both a struggle and a labor of love—one which paid off when audiences went wild for the creepy, gooey marshmallow monster.

 

Filmmaking presented a unique set of challenges prior to the computer age. Most practical effects in early films didn’t make use of marshmallow suits or shaving cream, but they did require creative props, sets, and camera work. After watching the video above, you can see examples of how special effects artists made movie magic in the silent film era here.

 

 

Source: See How The ‘Ghostbusters’ Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Was Made

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - SNICKERS (candy bar)

Did you know... While names like Hershey’s and 3 Musketeers (which originally included three bars) are fairly straightforward, some candy bar monikers are more elusive. Case in point: What, exactly, is a Snickers? Well, it’s actually a “who” — and not a human “who” at that. The candy bar was named after one of the Mars family’s favorite horses. Franklin Mars founded Mars, Incorporated (originally known as Mar-O-Bar Co.) in 1911, introducing Snickers in 1930; when it came time to name his product, he did what any pet-lover would do, and immortalized his equine friend as only a candy magnate could. (By some accounts, the horse had passed away shortly before the product’s launch.)

 

As Mars has grown into America’s fourth-largest private company, it has retained a dual focus on both candy and pets. M&M’s, Twix, and Milky Way are all Mars products, as are Iams, Pedigree, and Royal Canin. If you’ve ever wondered how M&M’s got their name, the story is slightly less interesting — it’s simply the last initials of Forrest Mars (Frank’s son) and partner-in-candy Bruce Murrie. The company is known for secrecy, with the family itself having been described as a “reclusive dynasty,” which means it’s a minor miracle that the identity of Snickers the horse was ever revealed in the first place.

 

Baby Ruth bars weren’t named after the baseball player.

Despite how similar their names are, Baby Ruth bears no relation to Babe Ruth. The chocolate bar was actually named after Ruth Cleveland, daughter of President Grover Cleveland — assuming you believe the company’s official story, that is. The treat was introduced in 1921, 17 years after Ruth Cleveland’s untimely passing from diphtheria at age 12 and 24 years after the former President left office. The Great Bambino, meanwhile, had become the first person to hit 50 home runs in a single season the year before. The Sultan of Swat went so far as to end up in a court battle with the Curtiss Candy Company after he licensed his own name to a rival confectioner, but the 1931 ruling wasn’t in his favor. Baby Ruth’s connection to America’s pastime has only grown since then, and in 2006 it was even named the official candy bar of Major League Baseball for three years.

 

 

Source: The Snickers candy bar was named after one of the Mars family's favorite horses.

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - NAMED HAMBURGER

Did you know... Since hamburgers are famously made from beef, the logical assumption is that their name harks back to some bygone era when they were made from ham. That’s actually not what happened at all—but ham and hamburgers do have a connection of a different sort.

 

From Steak to Sandwich
As far back as the early 1600s, Hamburger referred to any person from Hamburg, Germany. The city has a centuries-long history of championing fine beef, and, according to Andrew F. Smith’s book Hamburger: A Global History, Hamburg beef was “an expensive gourmet food” in the 19th century. 

 

 

“One common way to prepare fresh Hamburg beef was to chop it, season it and form it into patties, but it would have to be used immediately,” Smith wrote. Since that wasn’t feasible for far-flung gourmands across Europe and in North America, they’d use non-Hamburg beef for these Hamburg-style beef patties. By the late 19th century, people had started calling them “Hamburg steaks” or “Hamburger steaks.”

 

It’s unclear who first slapped a Hamburger steak inside some bread to create the modern hamburger; a handful of American cooks have been credited with the innovation. What’s equally possible is that it wasn’t any one person: Hamburger steaks were often served with bread, so it seems natural that multiple people would have the bright idea to make a handheld meal from those elements. In any case, hamburgers of the sandwich variety gained popularity in the early 20th century, and eventually, hamburger—as a shortening of hamburger steak—came to refer to them.

 

Had the shortening ended there, people today might have an easier time remembering the connection between hamburgers and Hamburg—and be less inclined to wonder how ham fits into the picture. But, of course, the shortening didn’t end there.

 

Hold the Ham
At least as early as the 1930s, Americans had started calling hamburgers “burgers.” You can hardly fault them for that; hamburger is a misleading name for a food item whose main ingredient isn’t ham, but a completely different meat. Plus, this way, burger could become a customizable root word: Cheeseburger showed up in the written record around the same time, and vegeburger followed in the 1940s.

 

 

It’s pretty amusing that hamburgers got so firmly disassociated from the city that inspired them because people unwittingly broke the word into the wrong parts. Hamburger originated as Hamburg and the suffix -er, but then fractured into ham and burger.

 

Linguists have a name for this kind of misguided morpheme splitting: rebracketing. Helicopter is another example. The word came into English by way of the French hélicoptère, formed from the Greek helix (“spiral”) and pteron (“wing”). So helicopter should technically be split into helico- and -pter. Instead, we’ve rebracketed it as heli- and -copter and appropriated the latter as its own nickname for a helicopter—and also as a customizable root word (think gyrocopter). Hamburgers and helicopters have more in common than you thought.

 

All this to say that no, hamburgers weren’t originally made from ham. But they may at least be etymologically related to the meat. Ham gets its name from hamma, an Old High German word for the back of the knee. One theory about the ham of Hamburg is that it’s also derived from hamma, “in a transferred sense of ‘bend, angle,’ with reference to [the city’s] position on a river bend promontory,” per the Online Etymology Dictionary.

 

The other leading theory is that it comes from the Middle High German hamme, or “enclosed area of pastureland.” Really, it’s a full-circle moment either way—because what better to keep in a gated pasture than cattle?

 

Source: Why Is It Called a “Hamburger” If It Doesn’t Contain Ham?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - DEFINITION OF INSANITY

Did you know.... “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” It’s a well-circulated quote—often printed on inspirational posters adorning classroom and office walls—that gets invoked when someone wants to point to the futility of making the same mistake over and over again. Some attribute it to famed physicist Albert Einstein.

 

While Einstein is a fount of wisdom who’s come up with some pretty memorable quotes, the insanity definition isn’t one of them.

 

Einstein is among a number of historical figures who are often subject to misattribution due to both their fame and perceived wisdom. It’s an easy way for someone—or someone’s meme—to quickly establish credibility for a phrase. (Mark Twain, Marilyn Monroe, and Abraham Lincoln are some of the others.)

 

Garson O’Toole, author of Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations (2017), has debunked several of these citations. In examining the “insanity” quote, O’Toole found no evidence of Einstein imparting the thought. Instead, he discovered the phrase likely originated in the early 1980s—some 25 years following Einstein’s death in 1955—at 12-step meetings.

 

During a 1981 gathering of Alcoholics Anonymous, a participant was overheard by a journalist uttering the phrase, a possible reference to using other unsuccessful strategies to deal with their substance abuse issues. It was quickly and closely echoed in a pamphlet for Narcotics Anonymous that same year, albeit in a slightly different format: “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.”

 

These mentions seemed to be enough for the quote to reach the zeitgeist. In a 1983 novel titled Sudden Death, author Rita Mae Brown has a character using the quote.

 

So how did this utterance leap from Al-Anon to Einstein? That’s harder to pinpoint, but it wasn’t really the internet’s doing. The Einstein connection can be seen as far back as 1990, when newspapers quoted a district attorney attaching the quote to the scientist.

 

According to Merriam-Webster, the actual definition of insanity is “a severely disordered state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder.” Accurate, but not quite as catchy.

 

 

Source: ‘Definition of Insanity’: Did Albert Einstein Really Coin This Famous Phrase?

Edited June 5 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - ITCHY BITES

Did you know... That familiar tingle, that little pinch, that harbinger of things to come—if it’s mosquito season, you know it well. It’s a bug bite, and it’s probably about to make you (and your skin) feel pretty itchy. And you might feel itchy just thinking about feeling itchy. Sorry about that!

 

There are lots of reasons why some people are more prone to mosquito bites than others (most of which you can’t actually change). Scientists have theorized that your blood type or the composition of your skin’s microbiome may make you more attractive to the insects, while a 2022 study suggested that carboxylic acid, a compound made by sebaceous glands in your skin, is the real mosquito magnet. The study’s experiment showed that the more carboxylic acid the participants produced, the tastier they were.

 

Now let’s examine why those unavoidable bites can make skin crawl, tickle, and just plain itch.

 

That telltale itch doesn’t actually come from a bite. It comes from something that’s a fair bit worse: literal blood-sucking. A female mosquito uses her needle-like mouthparts (technically called a “proboscis”) to poke around on your skin in order to find the closest blood vessel, which she then uses to suck out blood as a snack. This process classifies her as an ectoparasite. The itchiness comes from her saliva, which she injects into her prey both before and during the actual blood extraction. It’s a clever tool, because her saliva serves as an anticoagulant that keeps the blood flowing during consumption.

 

(Fortunately for humans, male mosquitoes don’t feast on blood, but research has shown that they will still hang out around people—probably because they’re on the prowl for female mosquitoes.)

 

The human immune system responds to foreign intrusions like mosquito saliva by creating histamines, which make the blood vessels around the mosquito bite swell and create a “wheal” on the skin. That wheal is the bump that is so often referred to as a mosquito “bite.” All that swelling often disturbs nearby nerves, which then react by making your skin itch.

 

Don’t scratch too hard, though; it will only make the itching and inflammation worse, and breaking the skin by scratching can leave you susceptible to bacterial infections. The best way to calm the irritation is to apply calamine lotion, an over-the-counter hydrocortisone cream, or an ice pack. The real invader will have long since flown away, blood-filled belly and all.

 

 

Source: Why Do Mosquito Bites Itch So Much?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Did you know.... Condition is king when it comes to selling rare books. Torn pages, cracked spines, and annotations (unless made by the author themselves!) all dramatically lower the price that a book stands to fetch. This means that highly prized children’s books—which often aren’t handled as carefully as adult’s books—can be worth a fortune if they’re in pristine condition.

 

The most expensive children’s book ever sold is J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard—a book of fairy tales within the world of Harry Potter. In 2007, one of the seven limited-edition copies—which were handwritten by Rowling and decorated with semiprecious stones and silver—was bought at auction by Amazon for $3.97 million. The proceeds went to The Children’s Voice charity.

 

In second place is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, with author Lewis Carroll’s own first edition copy selling for $1.54 million in 1998. First published in 1865, the initial print run was withdrawn before it hit shelves because illustrator John Tenniel was “entirely dissatisfied with the printing of the pictures.” Just 23 copies are known to exist today. A copy of the first printing that was actually available for sale will set buyers back by around $30,000. There’s also the limited-edition 1969 version illustrated in surrealist style by Salvador Dalí, a copy of which sold on AbeBooks for $20,000 in 2014.

 

Carroll also has a link to another valuable book: J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937). Similarities between the two authors are pointed out on the first print run’s dust jacket (which was illustrated by Tolkien himself!): Both were Oxford academics who wrote children’s fantasy novels that they initially didn’t plan to publish. However, Carroll’s birth name—Charles Dodgson—is misspelled “Dodgeson” and the errant e had to be crossed out by hand before the books were put on sale. In 2015, one of these editions sold for $210,500. Check out some of the other most valuable children’s books below.

 

10 of the Most Expensive Children’s Books Sold at Auction

1. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, J.K. Rowling // $3.97 million
2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll // $1.54 million
3. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling // $471,000
4. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien // $210,500
5. Grimms’ Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grimm // $138,600
6. The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry // $125,000
7. The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter // $95,600
8. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame // $92,000
9. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe // $81,250
10. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum // $81,250

 

10 of the Most Valuable Children’s Books on the Secondary Market, According to AbeBooks

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling // $85,620
2. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien // $65,000
3. Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak // $25,000
4. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl // $25,000
5. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll // $20,000
6. The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams // $15,950
7. Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne // $11,851
8. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle // $11,000
9. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum // $8800
10. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, J.M. Barrie // $6500

 

 

Source: Most Valuable Children’s Books

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - CHAMELEONS

Did you know... Well known for their ability to alter the tones of their scaly skin, chameleons have even worked their way into pop culture vernacular as a word to describe people who shift personas or behavior depending on the situation. However, unlike guinea pigs, ferrets, or other animals often seen frolicking in their cages at pet stores, chameleons seemingly spend most of their time watching and waiting. Of course, there’s more going on behind those stoic faces than extreme patience, so here are nine facts all about the inner workings of these astounding critters.

 

1. Chameleons Change Color Thanks to Special Skin Cells

The chameleon's famed superpower comes courtesy of special skin cells called iridophores. These cells contain complex lattices of nanocrystals, which reflect different wavelengths of light as they expand and contract. As such, color changes are often affected by a chameleon's mood; when agitated by a rival, for example, a male's skin cells will stretch and reflect longer wavelengths of light such as yellow, orange, or red. Furthermore, because these animals can't generate their own body heat, they become darker or lighter to absorb or reflect sunlight as needed. Contrary to popular belief, chameleons do not change color to blend in with their surroundings.

 

2. Chameleons Range From Less Than 1 Inch to More Than 2 Feet

Most chameleons grow to a length of 7 to 10 inches, but there are extremes on both ends of the size spectrum. The 1.5-pound Parson's chameleon is the heaviest species by weight, while its length of 26 to 27 inches is matched by the Malagasy giant chameleon. The recently discovered nano-chameleon (Brookesia nana), on the other hand, sports a body length of just over a half-inch and a total length of less than nine-tenths of an inch, making it the smallest known reptile on the planet.

 

3. Chameleon Tongues Are Among the Fastest in the Animal Kingdom

While the animals themselves might be slow-moving, that adjective doesn't apply to the chameleon’s tongue, which propels from its mouth at a peak acceleration of 264 times the force of gravity (the equivalent of going zero to 60 mph in one-hundredth of a second). These organs reach super speed thanks to a spring-loaded accelerator muscle and spirally wound protein fibers that work “sort of like a telescopic catapult,” in the words of one researcher. And thanks to a slathering of mucus that's 400 times more viscous than human saliva, these powerful tongues can easily latch onto and reel in an insect or small animal of up to 30% of the chameleon’s body weight.

 

4. Chameleons Have Incredible Vision

Another distinct feature of these animals: those domed, swiveling eyes. Protected by conical lids that leave only a small opening for the pupil, chameleon eyes are capable of nearly 360 degrees of panoramic views as they alternate between monocular and binocular vision. Although scientists previously believed that chameleon eyes acted independently of one another, recent research indicates that each eye keeps track of the other's activities even when seemingly focused elsewhere. And what chameleons see would dazzle human minds: They combine a nearsighted lens with a farsighted cornea to work like a telephoto lens, while also possessing the ability to detect ultraviolet light.

 

5. Some Chameleons Glow Under UV Light

If specialized skin cells, eyes, and tongues aren't enough to inspire a favorable impression of these creatures, how about bones that glow in the dark? This discovery came courtesy of a team of German researchers, who detailed in a 2018 paper how these lizards sport rows of bony protuberances close enough to the skin to produce conspicuous glowing beneath UV lighting. It’s unclear what evolutionary processes drove this trait, as not all chameleons display visible fluorescence. However, because the glowing is more readily apparent among species that live in low-visibility rainforests, researchers have proposed that it aids with communication and sexual selection.

 

6. Chameleon Toes Are Bundled Into Two Groups

While they possess five digits per foot like most lizards, chameleons are distinguished by their zygodactylous feet, in which the toes are fused into opposing bundles of two and three. This feature, which develops in the embryonic stage, provides these animals with a sturdy grip when clinging to trees. Furthermore, chameleons have been found to possess hairlike "friction-enhancing" growths on their feet; while these bristles lack the adhesive properties of similar growths on geckos, they nevertheless provide additional support for climbing and grabbing.

 

7. Most Chameleons Have Prehensile Tails

Most chameleon species receive another climbing assist from a prehensile tail, an appendage strong enough to keep an individual tethered to a tree while it releases its feet to reach for a branch. However, the benefit these tails provide to arboreal chameleons is offset by their lack of expendability in battle; while many other lizards can self-amputate a tail in the grip of a predator and later grow it back, a chameleon can do neither. Owners will notice that their pets sometimes keep their tails curled up in a ball, an act that could reflect a need to keep balanced on a perch, or a range of emotions from anxiety to contentment.

 

8. Chameleon Eggs Can Take Up to Two Years to Incubate

Although some chameleons give birth to live young, most females of the extended family lay eggs in a clutch that can number two to four for smaller species and 80 to 100 for large ones. Incubation periods also widely vary; some eggs hatch after four months, while those of the massive Parson's chameleon can take around two years. While baby Labord's chameleons emerge from their shells after nine months, these animals survive for only about four months afterward, which means the adult population is already gone by the time the next generation of hatchlings enter the world.

 

9. As Many as One-Half of All Species Face Threats to Survival

Native to areas of southern Europe, western Asia, and especially Africa (nearly half of the 200-plus identified species are found only on the island of Madagascar), chameleons occupy a wide range of habitats across deserts, rainforests, grasslands, and mountains. However, these slow-moving animals are range-restricted, which leaves them vulnerable to destructive human activities such as slash-and-burn farming. As a result, approximately one-third to one-half of all chameleon species face a troubling classification status of threatened or near-threatened.

 

Source: Colorful Facts About Chameleons

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - EQUINE IDIOM: GIFT HORSE MEANING

Did you know... Like many old proverbs, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” used to have a very literal meaning before the passage of time turned it into a figure of speech. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth means being thankful for a gift, even if you secretly wished for something better—and it originated long before the invention of cars, when horses were widely used for work and transportation.

The first appearance of this proverb is often traced back to the London-born writer John Heywood’s Middle English text A Dialogue: Of the Effectual Proverbs in the English Tongue, published in 1546, in which the author argues that “No man ought to looke a geuen [given] horse in the mouth.” 

 

However, the proverb appears to be much older, with etymologists pointing to Saint Jerome of Stridon, an early Catholic priest who—in his commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians in the New Testament, dated to 400 CE—wrote, “Noli equi dentes inspicere donati,” which translates to “Never inspect the teeth of a given horse.”

 

The saying seems to have taken on its contemporary phrasing sometime during the 17th century, The poet Samuel Butler incorporated the line “He ne’er consider’d it, as loath / To look a gift-horse in the mouth,” in his popular 1663 poem Hubridas, setting a standard subsequent writers would follow.

 

But why a horse? And, more specifically, why its mouth? As any modern-day equestrian could tell you, a horse’s teeth betray its age. “Horses have two sets of teeth, baby teeth and adult teeth,” according to a post by the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station. The older a horse gets, the more its adult teeth elongate and project outward. (From here we get another equine idiom, “Long in the tooth.”) 

 

“When people needed horses every day, a horse’s value was based on his age. So if you were going to buy a horse, you would want to know its age before offering a price,” the post continues. However, if someone offered you a horse for free, it was considered rude to look into its mouth and inspect its age—just as it is considered gauche today when you look up your Christmas gift’s price tag on Amazon. 

 

 

Source: What Is a Gift Horse, and Why Shouldn’t You Look Inside Its Mouth?

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - JOSHING

Did you know... The word dates back to the mid-19th century, and has taken many forms. 

 

Josh is a slang term that you’ve probably used before. “Don’t take me seriously,” you may have said when messing around with a friend or colleague. “I’m just joshing.” The word means “to joke or tease,” and as Candace Osmond writes for Grammarist, “When you’re joshing with someone, you’re engaging in playful, harmless fun.” But what’s the history of josh? And is there a primordial jokester named Josh who inspired the term?

 

The First Uses of Josh
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) separates the verb form of josh into two subtle shades of meaning. The first, “To make fun of, chaff, banter, ridicule,” has been around since at least 1852; the OED’s first citation (which seems to describe someone reminiscent of Popeye) comes from a New York publication called the Lantern: “The squint eyed chap’s been jossin’ ye.” That alternate spelling has turned up from time to time over the years.

 

The second shade of meaning is defined as “To indulge in banter or ridicule” and appears to be slightly older. The first known use is from 1845 in the St. Louis Reveille: “Look out in future, and if you must Josh, why, give a private one.”

From Verb to Noun and Beyond
When joshing, a josh is produced. The less common noun form of the term—which the OED defines as “A piece of banter or badinage; a good-natured or bantering joke”—has been around since at least the late 19th century. The first known example is from 1878 in Fred H. Hart’s book The Sazerac Lying Club: “Be there anything in this … or ain’t it only one of them ‘joshes’ they get up in the Reveille sometimes?” A near-synonym is used in Stewart Edward White’s 1909 book The Rules of the Game: “Perhaps all this monkey business was one elaborate josh.”

 

An even rarer form is identified in Green’s Dictionary of Slang: to put the josh on (meaning “to tease”). Owen Wister’s 1902 book The Virginian contains this example: “Trampus put the josh on him.” Putting the josh on someone is to joshing as getting your dance on is to dancing. You might also call someone who engages in joshing a “josher,” a usage that dates back to the 1890s; joshy, meanwhile, was an adjective meaning “amusing.”

 

There are other, non-joking uses of josh, too: According to Green’s, in the late 19th century, the word was an exclamation used as “a cry of encouragement.” One slang dictionary discussed how it was employed on the New York Stock Exchange: “If a member drops asleep, ‘Josh! josh!’ comes roaring from a dozen lungs, and the broker is awakened by the cry.”

 

Will the Real Josh Please Stand Up?
So who was Josh? Many discussions of joshing point to Josh Billings (real name Henry Wheeler Shaw), an American humorist who lived from 1818 to 1885. (You might recognize his name from John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row.) The only problem is there isn’t any real evidence for this etymology, which is definitely of the folk or popular sort—in other words, it’s a believable, plausible origin that people like to cite despite the lack of hard proof. Folk etymologies are the urban legends of the word world.

 

Like many words, we don’t know for sure where joshing as a term for kidding around came from. We wish we could tell you there was a king of kidders named Joshua Funnyman who definitively inspired the term, but if we did, well, we’d just be joshing.

 

 

Source: Why Does ‘Joshing’ Mean “Kidding Around”?

Edited June 11 by DarkRavie

[DarkRavie]

Fact of the Day - COLD FEET?

Did you know... When any kind of joint project is imminent and seemingly a done deal, a participant pulling out is said to have gotten “cold feet.” While it’s used in the context of business deals, the cold feet idiom is most often applied to pending wedding nuptials. A bride or groom thinking twice about spending eternity with their would-be spouse develops cold extremities.

 

Where did the phrase come from? One theory has it that “cold feet” came into use when soldiers who developed frostbite on their toes were subsequently unable to serve. The phrase was meant to be taken literally. While people who were reluctant to serve in World War II were said to be “cold-footers,” the origin of “cold feet” actually predates the war by decades—and possibly centuries.

 

In 1895, a newspaper column appeared in The Republican-Journal in Darlington, Wisconsin, and was attributed to The Washington Post. It described a poker game in which the author planned to exit once he developed a case of “cold feet,” or an unwillingness to continue losing money if things weren’t going his way:

 

“I hastily made up my mind to stay long enough to lose one hundred dollars or so, and then suddenly grow ill and extricate myself. It was a happy thought. ‘Cold feet’ would pull me out, if my losses became too towering.”

 

Author Fritz Reuter used the phrase much earlier than that, in Seed Time and Harvest, a German-language novel published in 1862. In it, Reuter describes a card player and gambler who departs a game after developing a case of cold feet.

 

It’s hard to know what or who may have inspired the columnist and Reuter to use “cold feet” to describe a wary gambler, though there was precedent for it. In the 1605 play Volpone by Ben Jonson, the Lombard (an Italian dialect) proverb “cold on my feet” is used. In this context, it referred to someone with no money and presumably no resources for proper footwear. A gambler with dwindling cash may have gotten a case of cold feet, which eventually grew to describe anyone metaphorically walking away from the table.

 

Reuter’s novel was later published in English in 1870. In 1896, Artie: A Story of the Streets and Town by author George Ade contained the phrase. (“He’s one o’ them boys that never has cold feet and there’s nothin’ too good for a friend.”) So did a revised edition of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane released that same year. (“I knew this was the way it would be. They got cold feet.”)

 

How “cold feet” moved from general apprehension to wedding woes is less clear. Perhaps it’s because those with cold feet consider love to be as much of a gamble as poker.

 

 

Source: Why Do We Say People Get ‘Cold Feet’ Before a Wedding?