The Daily Apple

Apple #567: Ambergris

2012-01-23T01:44:00.000-05:00

In keeping with my previous entry whose subject was inspired by a book I was reading, I thought I'd investigate another topic similarly inspired. I've been reading Moby-Dick. Slowly, about three pages a day, since October. If I had to read many more pages at a time, I'd have given it up long ago. But I'm determined to make my way through it for once. I recently read the chapter about ambergris. It's such a mysterious substance, and I have to admit, I didn't quite believe Ishmael's explanation or description of it. So I thought I'd find out for myself.

I don't think Ishmael would take that amiss. In fact, I think that looking up the information outside of the narrative would be perfectly in keeping with the book.

Anyway, here are a few facts about ambergris:

Ambergris is defined as a waxy substance that originates in a sperm whale's intestines. It can be found freely floating in tropical seas or washed up on shore. It can be used as a type of glue, or as a perfume. It used to be used in cooking.

It can be white, ash-gray, yellow, or black.

The word itself comes from the French for "gray amber."

This is what black ambergris looks like. This is ambergris that has washed up on shore around or near New Zealand. Looks a lot like regular stones, doesn't it?
(Photo from ambergris.co.nz)

Fresh ambergris reportedly smells like scented cow dung. But once it's had time to age, the scent changes. It retains some of its musky aroma, but it takes on another, lighter, mossy fragrance that people find subtle, sweet, and so enchanting that once they inhale the scent, they want to smell it more.

I'm sorry to cut this short. I've had the flu for the past four days. I'm feeling a little better, but I must go to sleep. More soon, I promise.

Sources
Merriam Webster, ambergris
Lexicus, definition of ambergris
Online Etymology Dictionary, ambergris
Ambergris.co.nz, identification

Apple #566: Covering Your Tracks

2012-01-18T23:56:00.001-05:00

I'm reading the Hunger Games trilogy. At the moment, I'm in the second book. At one point Katniss said she covered her tracks, literally did something to obscure her footprints so that anyone trying to follow where she walked would have trouble finding her. This reminded me that, ever since I was a teenager and read such things in books, I have wanted to know, how exactly do you cover your tracks?

If this guy really wanted to, could he hide or disguise his tracks in the woods well enough that someone wouldn't be able to follow him?
(Photo from Just This)

I walk in the woods a lot. I've also walked on a lot of sandy beaches and snowy roads, and I've realized, it's got to be dang hard to make all evidence that you've just walked past completely disappear. Yet in so many books and movies, the heroes seem to be especially expert at it, and they are able to foil the bad guys who are trying to catch them. What do they know that I don't?

I absolutely loved this book when I was a kid. Good Luck Arizona Man is about a white boy who grew up with a bunch of Apaches and gets curious about how he came to be there. There's all sorts of tracking and following and disguising of tracks in this book. And there's a horse race. And gold.
(Photo and book available through Amazon, though it's a collector's item now and sells for $30)

Covering your tracks -- and I don't mean online, I mean in real life -- is referred to as "counter-tracking."

The people who are best at counter-tracking are those who are good at tracking. They know what signs people leave behind as they walk through any wild area, so they know how to erase those signs or change them so that they give false information.

According to what I've read, it is in fact dang hard to erase your tracks. The books and movies which make it sound so easy are exaggerating. To do it right takes a lot of time and even then, a good tracker won't easily be fooled.

Think about it. Every time you set your foot on the ground, you're disturbing something. Grass bends under your feet and because of your weight, it stays that way for a while. Sand or soil is displaced and you leave some sort of footprint. Rocks get turned over as you push off so that the darker, moister undersides are exposed. Little branches get broken underfoot. All sorts of things happen.

To make it truly appear as if no one has walked there, you have to stop and put all those things back into place or else hide and disperse the evidence far and wide. But even your dispersal can leave marks that may be easily read by a skilled tracker.

These tracks were made by a grizzly bear, but you can see how the grass gets smashed down with each step. Not so different when people walk through grassy areas.
(Photo from the Grizzly Bear Blog)

CHANGE DIRECTION

One of the common recommendations for counter-tracking is to walk backward in your own footprints for a while. I tried this once, walking home from school when I was in eighth grade or thereabouts, and the tracks I left were completely obvious to me as the tracks of someone who had walked backwards.

When you walk forward, especially if you're wearing shoes, the bulk of your weight falls on the heel. This makes your footprint deeper at the heel and lighter at the toe. If you walk backward, most of your weight falls on the toe, so you leave a deeper impression there. What's more, you're much more awkward going backward, so you tend to kick up a lot of snow (or dirt or sand or whatever medium you're walking in) and the tracks look really messy. That won't fool anybody.

This person is walking forward and you can see how the impression at the heel is deeper than at the toe. I couldn't find good photos of backwards footprints, so you'll just have to trust me when I say that walking backwards the impression is deeper at the toe.
(Photo from Guardian Angel)

Some counter-trackers recommend walking in a zig-zag. Walk in a zig-zag for about 30 meters, then walk in your straight line, then zig-zag some more. This works best on hard-surface areas where you don't leave as many footprints. If you're in an area of tall grass you'll have to straighten the grass as you go, which is time-consuming. If you're walking across someplace which is all sand or all snow, the misdirection may not help much at all. But at the very least, you may be able to confuse a tracker for a while about where you've entered a hard-surface or grassy place and where you've exited.

ERASE YOUR TRACKS

Another method people talk about a lot is brushing out your tracks. Lots of characters in books or movies take a leafy branch and brush away the footprints, or maybe they use a blanket or a shirt to wipe away the tracks.

But, I thought, don't you leave tracks in the sand or dirt where you've dragged the leaves and branches? And wouldn't a piece of cloth that gets dragged over the ground leave pretty distinctive marks? Wouldn't that be obvious?

Skilled trackers say yes. Brushing out or camouflaging in these ways can leave signs of their own that are pretty clear to trackers. In fact, the main thing you accomplish by doing this is to give your tracker additional information about you, primarily that you're trying to camouflage yourself and you're not doing a very good job of it.

There is a more involved method of erasing your tracks. If the soil where you've walked has some substance to it, use a stick to dig out the footprint you've left, stir up the soil, sprinkle more soil over the stirred-up place taking care to use soil that is exactly the same color and texture of the place where you walked, and if any loose debris like fallen leaves or dead grasses are lying about in the area, sprinkle some of that over the place you just walked too.

But then, of course, you have to do the same obscuring sort of thing to the place where you were crouching where you were doing all this digging & stirring & sprinkling work, and that quickly becomes an exercise in ad infinitum insanity.

Use a stick to fluff up the grass where you've just walked. You'll want to be careful that the stick doesn't make marks in the dirt or soil as you're fluffing. Or if you are walking through tall grass, take the time to unbend the grass you've just walked through. Very time-consuming, this.

ALTER YOUR SHOES

In general, this one seems to be the most effective. If you happen to have an extra pair of shoes, switch them. Of course you'll want to do this someplace where it won't be obvious that the tracks of one shoe stops and the other one starts.

If you're in an area where other people have walked, switch to the kind of footwear that the locals use. In this way, your footprints will blend in with others'.

The types of shoes that are least likely to leave marks are -- no surprise here -- moccasins or else shoes with soles covered in fur. I know that most of us don't have shoes like that, but if you can somehow approximate a softer sole, that will help.

The best way to do that is to cover your shoes with some sort of soft material. Tying them in rags or other clothing, or even leaves if you can get them to stay on, will alter the shape of the footprint you leave behind, and the soft material will keep the shoe from making as deep a print in the soil.

An additional variant of this is to disguise your tracks. Cover your shoes with some soft material and then walk on your toes. Twist your foot as you walk or flick your toes backward. This will leave an impression that is something like animal tracks. You have to be good at this otherwise you will just look like a person walking funny and it will be just as telling as if you'd stomped around in big fat honkin' hiking boots.

One option is to hide your tracks among lots of other footprints like these pictured here. Hide yourself among the crowd, so to speak.
(Photo from the Snapshot Travel Blog)

AVOID MAKING TRACKS IN THE FIRST PLACE

Try not to flex your foot as you walk but place your foot flat on the ground and pick it up just as flatly. This will disturb the vegetation and the soil much less.

Walk on surfaces where you're less likely to leave marks. Paved roads are best, or else choose big stones or large rocks that won't turn over when you step on them. Railroad tracks are good too. This, of course, assumes your shoes aren't muddy and you're not leaving traces of dirt or mud or sand that happen to be stuck to your shoe. Those kind of footprints are called "transfer prints."

You might think you wouldn't leave footprints on hard, smooth surfaces like asphalt or linoleum or wooden floors. But there's still the potential to leave "transfer prints" like these.
(Photo from Katie Rowland's World Race)

DON'T WALK ON SURFACES AT ALL

Shimmy up fences and walk or scuttle along the tops of them. Climb trees and go from the canopy of one tree to another. Of course you may leave behind some broken branches, but if you don't snap off too many of them, a tracker may think those are part of the landscape.

If you can manage to cross from one tree to the next and the next, you won't leave many tracks at all. It can't be that hard. Squirrels do it all the time.
(Photo from Public Domain Photos)

Well, none of these suggestions is fool-proof. I'm sort of disappointed that there isn't some special tracks-covering secret that's been lurking out there all these years. But on the other hand, I'm glad to know I wasn't wrong in thinking that it's hard to cover one's tracks--and as it turns out, a lot more difficult than books and movies would have you believe.

And this is just the visual stuff. I didn't even touch on the whole problem of disguising your scent.

Sources
Kim A. Cabrera and Universal Tracking Services, Tracking Glossary, Beartracker's Animal Tracks Den
Karl, An introduction to Counter-Tracking. . . . The art of the scout, Ranging, Pathfinding, Bushcraft & Survival Notes, March 25, 2011
Selous Scouts, Tracking and Countertracking
Joseph Longshore II, Way of the Scout: Counter-Tracking, Wildwood Tracking

Apple #565: Elephant Feet

2012-01-15T22:45:00.000-05:00

Way back before Christmas, I was watching a documentary about elephants. The elephants were walking along in their slow, rhythmic way, and I was noticing their feet. When they stepped on the ground, their feet seemed to squash outward, like there was a cushion built in there. Of course an elephant's feet have to support a lot of weight, so I thought maybe they're built in some special way that gives them extra support. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know, how is an elephant's foot put together.

Here is a brief video of an elephant walking to show you a little bit of what I was looking at. Watch the back feet of this young elephant to see most clearly how the feet sort of squash outward with each step.

It turns out, elephant feet do come equipped with an interior cushion.

The way elephant feet are built, the animals are essentially walking on their tip-toes the entire time.

This is what the bones of an Asian elephant's back foot look like. If you put your hand tent-like on a table so that only the tips of your fingers touched the table, you'd have a good representation in front of you.
(Photo from Elephants Encyclopedia)

A cushion of "fibrous connective tissue" and "adipose tissue" (which means fat), along with collagen and various other protein-like substances acts as a cushion that sits between the bones of the foot and the outer skin.

This diagram shows the position of the bones within an elephant's foot. The gray shaded area represents where the cushion of fatty tissue and cartilage supports the bones. To see a full-color artistic depiction of the same idea, check out Margaret Meintjes' print (she won't allow any reproduction of her image whatsoever or I'd show it to you here)
(Diagram from The structure of the cushions in the feet of African elephants, Weissengruber et al., Journal of Anatomy, December 2006)

The fibers within the fatty tissue give the cushion a little more substance and structure than it would have otherwise. This is one of the things about an elephant's foot that helps it to grip the ground better.

The cushion is also why elephants walk so softly -- which is pretty remarkable given what enormous animals they are.

Here is a whole family of elephants walking past the jeep of the person taking the video. The noise of the wind blowing is louder than the footsteps of the elephants. (By the way, that's Serengeti.)

Another thing that gives an elephant's foot traction is the channels or "tracts" on the bottom of their feet.

The bottom of a healthy elephant's foot. Tracts like these that are clean and distinct help an elephant to maintain traction on slippery ground. And yes, this is the photo from my latest teaser.
(Photo from The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee)

Since elephants also use their feet to push aside vegetation and dirt to make their "sleeping spots," the tracts turn out to be helpful in excavation, too.

Elephants have toenails, too, except they're technically not toenails because they're not connected in any direct way to the toes. The bones of the toe are buried deep within the foot, and the "nails" live independently on the outside of the foot. The nails are more like protective shields for the front of the foot. "Cornified nails" is the way one site described them.

Elephant "toenails" technically aren't toenails.
(Photo from Elephant Information Repository)

Like humans' toenails, elephants need to have their toenails trimmed periodically. In the wild, all the walking around and digging they do along with the mud baths they give themselves--all that activity helps to keep their toenails worn to so that they're even with the bottom of their feet, their tracts stay clean, and the cushion stays tihck and healthy.

In captivity, however, elephants don't move around or "excavate" as much. Because their feet don't get the kind of use they need in order to stay healthy, they tend to have a lot of foot problems. In fact, 50% of elephant health problems in captivity are related to their feet. So elephant foot care becomes extremely important. Lots of sites online have all sorts of instructions about how to give elephants baths and, in particular, how to wash and care for their feet.

Apparently, it's much easier to trim an elephant's toenails if the foot is warm and still damp from a bath.

This is how an elephant gets a pedicure -- with an iron rasp.
(Photo from the Elephant Encyclopedia)

These keepers at the Dublin Zoo are doing it the way you're supposed to: give the elephant a bath first, then trim the toenails and, yes, trim the bottom of the foot too. Trimming keeps the tracts clean and healthy.

Two more interesting tidbits about elephant feet:

There are all kinds of variations among elephants in terms of toes and nails. In general, African elephants have 4 toenails on their front feet and 3 on the back, while Asian elephants have 5 on the front feet and 4 on the back. But these numbers aren't true for all elephants. In fact, some elephants have 0 nails on one or more feet. Why this is so, no one is quite sure, except that it might be part of the variations within the species.

Bulls make different footprints than females. Bull elephants place their back feet just to the side of where the front feet fall, so their footprints usually show two rounded or ovoid prints side by side. Females, however, place their back feet in exactly the same spot as the front.

OK, one last video. This shows Raja (pronounced Rai-ya) getting her nails filed. I don't think the keeper has washed her feet first so this is probably not the best way to do it. But what I like about this video is how Raja keeps sneaking her trunk out through the bars, trying to get more of those carrots.

Sources
Weissengruber et al., The structure of the cushions in the feet of African elephants, Journal of Anatomy, December 2006, 781-792.
Elephant Information Repository, The Feet
Elephants Encyclopedia, Elephant Feet, Trimming Elephant Feet
Elephant Encyclopedia, Feet Hoof Care
The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee, African Ele-Diary 2004
Carol Buckley, Captive Elephant Footcare: Natural-Habitat Husbandry Techniques
Remote Animal Monitoring Solutions, Thermography of the Elephant Foot

Apple #564: Seattle Facts

2012-01-04T23:33:00.001-05:00

I know I promised you the answer to the latest teaser, but I didn't leave myself enough time to do the full Apple. I'm leaving tomorrow at the crack of ouch for Seattle for several days. So I'll give you a few quick facts about Seattle before I go. Answer to the teaser when I get back.

Seattle skyline with Mount Rainier in the background
(Photo from Business Insider)

White settlers came to what is now Seattle from Portland. So Portland came first.

They originally called their new town "New York." Later they added a Chinook word which means "by-and-by," so that the name became "New York-Alki."

Eventually the village was named after a Duwamish (or Suquamish) native leader who befriended the settlers. He was called Sealth.

Seattle grew on the industries of first lumber (1850s), then coal (1870s), then gold (1890s).

In World War I, its primary industry became shipbuilding. That industry was revived again in World War II.

I love that Elvis Costello song, Shipbuilding. Beautiful. Not happy, but beautiful.

Boeing set up shop way back in 1916, but it wasn't until the 1950s that it really began to take off (hey, that's a pun). Aerospace is still considered Seattle's primary industry.

A 42-story building, the L.C. Smith building, was completed in 1914 and remained the tallest building in the US West until well into the 1950s.

Space Needle at Night
(Photo from iPad Wallpaper Gallery)

When the Space Needle was built in 1962, that became the tallest building West of the Mississippi.

The very tippy top of the Space Needle rises to 605 feet.

The Needle was built to withstand all sorts of weather and wind and temperature stresses. On a hot day, the structure expands as much as one inch.

In 1965, a 6.5 earthquake shook Seattle. The Space Needle was shaken enough that the water sloshed out of the toilets.

The Space Needle's center of gravity is 5 feet above ground.

The Needle's revolving restaurant is the second of its kind of the world. The first was in a shopping mall in Hawaii. That one is closed now, but there are all sorts of revolving restaurants around the world.

Starbucks cups a-plenty
(Photo from Woman's Day)

In 2010, Starbucks had a total of 137,000 employees. This is twice the population of Greenland.

This rate has decreased since the recession, but as of 2007, Starbucks added an average of two new stores per day since 1987.

The original Starbucks sold coffee in 8 ounce cups. One size only. That size is no longer on the menu, but you can still order it. It's known as the "kid's size."

The 30 ounce Trenta holds 916 milliliters. That's 16 milliliters larger than the capacity of most people's stomachs.

The owners almost called their business Pequod, the ship in Moby-Dick (once you start reading that book, you see it everywhere).

Mount Rainier is the tallest mountain in Seattle, and it's the highest mountain in the entire Cascade Range.

It's actually a huge inactive volcano. The last time it erupted was some time in the early 1800s. Geologists do expect it to erupt again at some point.

The mountain was originally called Tacoma, which is a Puyallup word meaning "mother of the waters."

There are five glaciers at the top and several on the mountainsides. The largest glacier, Emmons Glacier, extends 6 miles down from the summit.

While tens of thousands of people try to climb Mount Rainier each year, few succeed because the glaciers make climbing very difficult.

During the warm months, the mountainsides are blanketed with wildflowers. It was these flowers that moved John Muir to recommend that the area be designated as a national park. In 1899, President McKinley did just that.

Mount Rainier wildflowers
(Photo from Rainier Visitor Guide)

Sources
Seattle.gov, Brief History of Seattle
Visit Seattle, Seattle Facts
Space Needle Mysteries revealed
Glass Steel and Stone, The Space Needle
Meredith Lepore, 15 Facts About Starbucks That Will Blow Your Mind, Business Insider, March 25, 2011
Brynn Mannino, 9 Things You Didn't Know About Starbucks, Woman's Day
Earth in Pictures, Mount Rainier

Another Teaser

2011-12-30T13:02:00.001-05:00

I'm on vacation, so I have time to do some Daily Apples for you. Since a lot of people enjoyed the last teaser, I thought I'd give you another one.

What do you think this is?

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-23T15:06:00.001-05:00

I'm headed out of town for Christmas. I'll see you when I get back in a few days -- and boy, do I have the Apples planned for you.

Until then, have a very Merry Christmas!

Apple #563: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas

2011-12-18T14:35:00.087-05:00

Christmas is only seven days away. On this blog, that's practically tomorrow. So an entry on "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" seems appropriate.

Here it is read by Perry Como, with illustrations by Florence Sarah Winship from a children's book published by Whiteman Publishing in 1958.

Our conception of Santa Claus as driving a sleigh pulled by reindeer originated with this poem.

Santa's appearance as a fat, pipe-smoking elf was solidified in our imagination with this poem, too, but that depiction first appeared in Washington Irving's Knickerbocker's History of New York. That's significant, for reasons you'll see later on.

This poem, now attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, was originally published in the Troy Sentinel 1823 with the title "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Anonymous. It was very common at that time for poems to be published without an author's name, but recently, this poem's authorship became a bone of contention.

Clement Clarke Moore: theologian, scholar, poet.
(Image of an 1840 engraving from the Poetry Foundation)

Clement Moore was a religious and classical scholar. He translated the poems of Juvenal, constructed a Hebrew dictionary--the first of its kind in the very early United States--wrote political treatises, wrote letters to his local newspaper's editor, published lots of scholarly papers about classical Greek literature, and was generally a learned and highly respected man.

He also published a book of poems. This book was not published until 1844, when he was 65, and he did so grudgingly, at his children's request. One of the poems in the book is "A Visit from St. Nicholas."

Since that book's publication, Moore has been widely considered to be that poem's original author.

However, in the meantime, the family and descendants of a certain Henry Livingston, Jr. have maintained that Moore was not the original author, Livingston was.

Major Henry Livingston, Jr., reputed author of "A Visit"
(Image from Mary Van Deusen's genealogical site on the Livingstons)

Major Livingston fought in the Revolutionary War, after which he became a farmer and surveyor and justice of the peace in Poughkeepsie. He was also a lover of classical literature and he wrote several poems, publishing them often anonymously except for the pseudonym initial "R." His poems were witty, humorous, and often written for children.

Livingston's family didn't know that Moore had taken credit for "A Visit" until they saw Moore's book of poems in 1860. By this time, Henry Livingston had died, so Livingston wasn't available to say whether that was his poem or not. But the family maintained among themselves that Moore took false credit for the poem.

Seven generations later, one of Livingston's descendants, Mary Van Deusen came along. She had grown up hearing that Livingston was the poem's true author, and she found out about a guy named Don Foster who claimed to be a literary sleuth. Remember that book Primary Colors, written by Anonymous, which was a barely-fictional account of Bill Clinton's campaign for the 1992 Presidency? Well, Foster is the one who figured out the book's true author (Joe Klein). She thought, hey, maybe this Foster guy can establish for certain whether Livingston is the true author of "A Visit."

Donald Foster, "literary sleuth" and English professor at Vassar
(Photo from Vassar College)

By this time, Foster was pretty famous. People were contacting him left and right asking for help with this sort of thing. Because in addition to the Primary Colors thing, he also found a little-known poem called "Funeral Elegy" and demonstrated that Shakespeare was its true author. That got all sorts of people all excited -- a new poem by Shakespeare?! Wonderful! -- so Foster was very much in demand. In fact, he complains about how much in demand he was in his book. But he decided to take up Mary Van Deusen's case.

He wound up writing a book called Author Unknown in which he details his method of proving authorship of all sorts of disputed works. Basically, he looks at patterns of word choice, rhythm, grammatical patterns and so on. He says these kinds of language choices are as distinctive as a fingerprint and once you know a person's language style, you can identify their work whether there's a name on it or not.

One chapter in his book is about "A Visit." In this chapter he says with absolute certainty that Clement Moore is not the author of "A Visit," and that Major Henry Livingston is.

How convenient, Foster said, that Clement Moore waited until after Livingston died to step forward and say that he had written this poem. This wouldn't be the first time Moore had plagiarized, Foster said. Moore once upon a time donated a manual about sheep farming to a nearby library. He wrote on the inside cover that he had translated it from the French. But in very small print inside is a note that someone else was the manual's sole translator.

In fact, Foster said, Moore was a cranky old classics scholar who hated children. Never mind that he had nine children of his own, he wrote all sorts of poems that were all about scolding naughty children. And besides, the other poems he wrote had completely different meters and styles than "A Visit."

"A Visit" is written in anapestic tetrameter. That means each line has four (tetra) big beats per line, and each one of those four stressed syllables is preceded by two unstressed syllables (anapest): da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM, da-da-DUM. the CHILdren were NESTled all SNUG in their BEDS.

Foster said that the only other poem Moore wrote using an anapest meter was "The Pig and the Rooster," and that was a finger-wagging poem about how bad it is to be lazy and arrogant. Nothing like the fun-loving St. Nick in there.

By contrast, Livingston's poems are bawdy, full of fairies and elves and talking animals and various imaginative and fantastic creatures. He uses the word "all" a lot in his other poems too, just as "A Visit" says "all snug in their beds." He also uses the phrase "Happy Christmas" in other poems where pretty much everyone else says "Merry Christmas."

In short, Foster said, Moore was far too cranky and mean ever to have written "A Visit," while Livingston had practically written it several times over in other poems of his.

Well. It turns out that Foster was pretty much full of it.

That Shakespeare poem he apparently discovered? Turns out Shakespeare didn't write it after all. Other scholars elsewhere have definitively proven that some other guy, John Ford, wrote it. Foster had also gotten involved in trying to identify the author of the note left behind in the JonBenet Ramsey case and accused someone who had already been cleared by the police, someone who could not possibly have committed the crime.

Foster's claims about "A Visit," too, turn out not to hold much water.

A dealer in antique documents who is used to proving provenance and authorship, Seth Kaller, was the first one to say that Foster's theories are hogwash. He said Foster "cherry-picked" which poems and documents to consider. Anything that didn't agree with his theories, he ignored.

Seth Kaller, dealer in antique documents, rare stamps, and coins, and champion of Clement Clarke Moore.
(Photo from Seth Kaller Inc)

Moore was a stodgy child-hater? Not so, Kaller says. Look at this poem he wrote for his granddaughter: "The house is all too dull and quiet;/ I long to hear you romp and riot/ When e’er you’re full of harmless fun,/I dearly love to see you run."

Moore was a bah-humbug Christmas hater? Not so, says Kaller. The Museum of the City of New York has a copy of a letter Moore wrote, in poem form, to Santa Claus the year before "A Visit" was published.

In fact, Moore was friends with Washington Irving (remember that bit about the Knickerbocker Christmas? I told you that would be important). Both Moore and Irving were members of the Knickerbocker Group. Irving was perhaps the original Knickerbocker, which meant he was a Dutch New Yorker, and he wrote and published all sorts of humorous, satirical stories about early Dutch New York.

Besides publishing stories, one of the things the Knickerbockers did was to make St. Nicholas the patron saint of the New York Historical Society.

Thomas Nast's engravings of Santa Claus, like this one, were influenced by 'Twas the Night before Christmas, which he asked his wife to read aloud to him.
(Image from Musings of a Sea Witch)

Oh, and that manual that Moore donated to the library and supposedly claimed to have translated himself? The so-called incriminating note at the beginning was in someone else's handwriting, not Moore's, and it awkwardly meant to indicate the fact that the book was donated by Moore, not translated by him.

Other historians besides Kaller picked up the case as well, demonstrating with still other letters and documents and historical timelines that, first of all, the anecdotal stories that filtered down through the generations about Henry Livingston were factually incorrect on several points (various people had died before thus & so was said to have happened, for example).

Second of all, the literary analysis they conducted showed that Moore's writing was influenced by Irving's, that a playfulness and joy pervaded other poems of his, that he used the phrase "Happy Christmas" in a poem that Foster conveniently ignored, etc., etc., and so in sum, Clement Moore should be officially reinstated as the author of "A Visit," now known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

OK. So why did I bring all that up? If Clement Moore was and still is considered the poem's true author, isn't all of the above just a tempest in a teapot? Well, as one person put it elsewhere, "the Internet never forgets." There are sites out there that still say that Henry Livingston may be the poem's author.

For example, the Poetry Foundation's website lists Clement Clarke Moore as the author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and it also says that Henry Livingston is the poem's author.

Maybe, Poetry Foundation, it's time to correct that?

Here is the poem in its entirety:

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the luster of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

Santa from 1901
(Image from Nancy Marshall's The Night Before Christmas site)

Related entries: Santa Facts

Sources
Nancy H. Marshall, The Night Before Christmas site, biography of Clement Moore
Twas the night before Christmas Poem
David D. Kirkpatrick, Whose Jolly Old Elf Is That, Anyway? Literary Sleuth Casts Doubt on the Authorship of an Iconic Christmas Poem, The New York Times, October 26, 2000
Mary S. Van Deusen, The Livingston Branch
Reader comments on Author Unknown: Tales of a Literary Detective
brothersjudd.com Review of Donald Foster's Author Unknown
Steve King, Today in Literature, December 23, 1823: Santa Anapests
Ted Mann, Ho, Ho, Hoax: Did Clement Moore rip off "The Night Before Christmas? Scarsdale Magazine, November 30, 2006
Michael Hill, 'Twas a Christmas poem whodunit, AP News, December 8, 2007
Seth Kaller, The Authorship of The Night before Christmas
Collaborative essay "All About 'A Visit from St. Nicholas'" by students of Paul Schacht's 2005 SUNY Geneseo class
Jennifer Ciotta, Who Wrote 'Twas the Night Before Christmas? A Literary Debate
Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas and comments thereon
Poetry Foundation, Clement Clarke Moore, Henry Livingston, Jr.

Apple #562: Christmas Lights

2011-12-12T03:35:00.002-05:00

A Daily Apple reader, Zim, stopped by and looked for an entry on Christmas lights. Not finding any, he (or she?) suggested I make one. Your wish, Zim, is my Daily Apple.

"
Zim, I'm assuming you mean strings of lights like these.
(Photo by Gabriella)

It all boils down to the fact that Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year, literally in the weeks when we have the least daylight. For centuries people have been lighting lights and candles and luminaries and Yule logs and fires, all sorts of methods of illumination to try to combat the darkness of winter.

So the first Christmas lights weren't light bulbs but candles.

But the direct ancestor, the parents let's say, of the Christmas lights were the candles on the Christmas tree.

That's right, people used to put open flames on the branches of very sappy and flammable pine trees. It was very dangerous, and there are some reports that families used to light the candles on the tree only once and only briefly on Christmas Eve, and they all stood waiting with buckets of water at the ready in case the whole thing went up in flames. Which did happen sometimes.

Christmas tree decorated with candles, date unknown. I wonder if everyone is so close to the tree because they want to be ready at a moment's notice in case the whole thing goes up in flames.
(Image from the Christmas Archives)

A lot of sources say that the Germans were the first people to have the lit and decorated Christmas tree, or that Americans borrowed the tradition from German immigrants who lit and decorated their trees.

But actually, a German fraternity (back in the day, fraternities were more brotherhoods of adult men rather than collections of hard-drinking college guys) called Black's Fraternity researched the origins of their Christmas tree traditions, and they maintained that the first decorated tree was in Riga, Latvia, in 1510.

Here's another little aside for you: legend has it that even before the lit-up tree in Riga in 1510, a 7th century monk who was from England but who was doing his monk thing in Germany decided to use the triangular shape of the fir tree as a way of demonstrating the Holy Trinity. This caught on, but over time, the use of the symbol changed somewhat. In the 12th century, Germans were hanging fir trees from their ceilings upside down, as a representation of the Trinity.

OK, back to the lights. So people were putting candles on their trees. Not so safe. Especially since they affixed the candles to the branches by melting a pool of wax on the branch and sticking the stub end of the candle into the wax.

They tried various alternatives. One guy invented a clip-on candle holder so that you didn't have to mess around with the wax. Some people used oil lamps because they could be attached to the branches and they didn't have the open flame problems that candles did. But the oil lamps were heavy and fell in among the branches, or smoked, and in the end weren't that much safer.

Clip-on candle holders looked something like this. These are currently available--apparently they're coming back into fashion again. Note that these candles are outside and they are not lit. Probably the safest choice.
(Photo from Mother Goose Online)

The real innovation happened thanks to Thomas Edison.

Edison invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879. To put his invention on display for people and to prove how wonderfully his bulbs worked, he put on a magnificent light display around Menlo Park. Some sources say this happened "during the Christmas season" in 1879, and other sources say he did this on New Year's Eve 1879-1880. So I'm not sure we can officially call this the first display of Christmas lights per se.

But the first Christmas tree decorated with electric lights happened not long after that. The Library of Congress says that it was Edison's friend, Edward Johnson, who first put incandescent light bulbs on a string and wound the string around a Christmas tree. The lights were red, white, and blue, and there were 80 of them. This was in 1882. Oh, and the Christmas tree also revolved. The miracles of modern electricity.

Although people were delighted by the display, electricity and electric lights remained far too expensive for most people to afford them. In 1900, a sixteen-foot strand of lights cost $12. Posh! you say. That's how much they cost now! Ah, but in 1900, $12 was roughly equivalent to today's $300.

This is the first known ad for Christmas tree lights. It appeared in Scientific American in 1900.
(Image from Gizmodo)

According to some estimates, before 1903, today's average Christmas tree would have cost today's equivalent of $2,000.

Various innovations were made to the electric Christmas lights. They were made so they didn't get as hot, they were strung on parallel wires so that if one bulb went out, the whole thing didn't go out. Slowly, the cost for electric lights began to go down and indoor electrically lit Christmas trees began to get more popular.

It's not clear when exactly the first outdoor electrically lit Christmas trees began to appear. But the first really public and famous one was lit by President Coolidge in 1923. Previous Presidents had had indoor electrically-lit trees, but this was the first Presidential outdoor one. It was a 48-foot tree with 2500 lights.

Two years later, in 1925, the first strings of outdoor lights were available for sale to the public. They were still expensive, got too hot, and weren't all that easy to use, but their popularity began to spread.

These two girls are standing next to their outdoor Christmas tree, some time in the 1920s. I can't tell if it's got lights on it or not. Those might be lights in that left photo. Anyway, that tree is pretty short and scraggly compared to our standards today.
(Photo was on sale at eBay. Probably by the time you read this, it won't be any longer.)

It took various New Deal programs in the 1930s that brought electricity to more people, especially in rural areas, for the electric Christmas lights to begin to gain a foothold among the majority of the population.

Here's one house decorated with electric lights in 1937. At that time, each bulb used 9 watts. By comparison, a typical string of 50 mini lights today uses about 25 watts. Fifty of those 1937 bulbs would therefore use 450 watts. Yikes.
(Photo from Papa Ted's Place)

During World War II, people were supposed to conserve electricity and there simply weren't as many resources available to manufacture non-essential things like Christmas lights. But even though people weren't supposed to use them, especially not outdoor lights, they wanted to buy them. People saw Christmas lights, especially on their indoor Christmas trees, as a source of comfort, a sign of home and family and warmth in a difficult time. But because of the shortages, there simply weren't enough available to meet the demand.

After the War, Christmas lights boomed along with everything else. Throughout the 1950s companies began to innovate all sorts of features and variations. There were bubble Christmas lights, miniature ones, sparkling ones, twinkling ones, blinking ones, elfin ones, star-shaped ones.

This is what the bubble lights looked like. Apparently they contained a liquid that, when heated, would bubble, causing the light to flicker. Sounds kind of like a mini lava lamp.
(Photo from Chuckman's Photos on Wordpress)

Here's one family and their Christmas tree from some time in the 1950s. Nice curtains! Note also the electric candles on the windowsill at the left.
(Photo from 1950s Atomic Ranch House)

Outdoor light displays boomed too. In 1957, Rockefeller Center boasted of its sixty-five foot lit-up tree. The Miracle Mile in Los Angeles featured 27 giant illuminated snowmen. Communities held outdoor lighting display competitions, and it wasn't long until suburbs across the country were lined with Christmas lights.

That's pretty much been the situation ever since. In the 1980s the large cone-shaped lights returned to general popularity. In the 1990s, the trickling icicle varieties became popular, even though those used far more electricity than the single large bulbs.

Now the strings of LED lights are popular. They're way more energy efficient, but I have to say I find them hard to look at. Something about the low light especially in the ones that twinkle makes them not so easy on the eyes.

The 2011 National Christmas tree on the Ellipse in front of the White House. There are way more than 2500 lights on that tree.
(Photo from the Fairfax at Embassy Row)

This is a Christmas light display from 2008 in front of a house in Dyker Heights, NY. All sorts of residents of this 'burb hire professional crews who spend weeks decorating a house to its owner's specifications. December's electric bill for a house decorated like this one rings in at around $5,000.
(Photo from Selectism)

More resources: Skating at Rockefeller Center

Sources
Brian Murray, Christmas Lights and Community Building in America
Gizmodo, Christmas Lights, the Brief and Strangely Interesting History of
Library of Congress Everyday Mysteries, Who invented electric Christmas lights?
The Christmas Archives, The Chronological History of the Christmas Tree
Home of the First Christmas Tree
Howstuffworks, Christmas mini-lights

Apple #561: Asphalt Planers, Pavers, and Rollers

2011-12-04T12:43:00.007-05:00

A few months ago, they re-paved my street. No, I don't know who "they" is. The city? Some contractors? Anyway, they scraped off the old asphalt one day and then they came back on a different day and put down new asphalt. The construction equipment was pretty huge and loud and impressive, so I took some pictures.

Naturally, as your intrepid Apple Lady, I have also looked up what these machines are, so I'll provide a little bit of information about each one.

Asphalt or Cold Planer
(Photo from Baucm.com)

Asphalt Planer or Cold Planer

The first machine may have been the most impressive. This one I thought of as the asphalt scraper. But actually, to people who sell these sorts of things an asphalt scraper is a shovel. This machine is called an asphalt planer or a cold planer.

I had to split the video into two parts so I could upload it to Blogger. Part 1 is the faraway big picture version; part 2 gives you some close-up views.

The teeth of this machine is a rotating cutter drum with spikes on it. As the vehicle moves slowly forward, the drum underneath spins so that the spikes bite into the pavement, chopping the pavement into pieces. The drum gets pretty hot, so a system continually sprays water over the drum to keep everything from overheating.

Drum for tearing up asphalt

Drum with more teeth for tearing up concrete.
(Photos and drums from Trackless Vehicles Ltd.)

There are some smaller walk-behind versions of this type of machine. They're referred to as "hand" cold planers, I think because instead of sitting in a big giant honking thing to operate it, you can walk behind it and push it with your hands, even though it is power equipment.

Here you can see the underbelly of a hand cold planer. Even though I didn't see one of these in action, I thought it might be helpful to show you this version. Because according to the specs I've seen, the drums on the big honking machines are 7'2" long, which is apparently the standard.
(Photo from Taguchi Industrial Co., Ltd.)

The chopped-up pieces of asphalt or concrete are funneled up out of the machine on a conveyor belt that extends out of the machine. The conveyor belt has to be very sturdy and durable to carry lots of debris, it has to withstand high temperatures, and it's usually tracked so that the pieces don't slide back down the belt but are carried up and out of the machine. The pieces drop into a dump truck that follows behind the planer.

This is a different type of machine, a miller, but it also uses a conveyor system. The inset shows you what the conveyor belt looks like.
(Photo from Everpads)

There are lots of varieties of asphalt planers. Some are as wide as a highway lane, others are half-lane widths or narrower. You can get them with two, three, or four tracks (like wheels).

The enormous planers like the one I saw weigh somewhere between 6.5 to 8.5 tons.

In all cases, the drum seems the most crucial part. People selling used cold planers online (there are a lot of them for sale, surprisingly) talk about the relative newness or sharpness of the drum as its main selling point. The Roadtec RX60b, which is what is shown in my video and which apparently they don't make anymore, has a standard 7'2" drum and a 750 horsepower engine. A used 1998 asphalt planer, by the way, sells for $85,000. Newer ones don't have prices posted, so you know they cost a sweet bit of cash.

Asphalt Paver

That machine went by on day one. Day two (I don't actually think it was the next day, but a few days later) they came back with more machines. This time, they were laying down new asphalt.

To lay down the asphalt to their satisfaction, they used 3 types of machines. The first was the asphalt paver.

Asphalt paver with two guys helping to spread out the asphalt more evenly.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

The asphalt paver has a dump truck driving in front of it, feeding in the new asphalt. The paver itself is made up of two major components, the tractor and the screed.

The tractor part is pretty much the drive train, the thing that makes it go. It also includes a means of getting the asphalt from the hopper in the front to the back of the machine. Some pavers use an internal conveyor system to move the asphalt within the machine, others have simply a chute that lets gravity carry the asphalt to the back of the vehicle.

In sort of the mid-section of the paver, the tractor distributes the asphalt onto the pavement. I had thought in my photos that the back end of this machine had all sorts of nozzles lined up across the back and the nozzles were spraying the asphalt onto the surface. But now, since my photos aren't clear enough and based on the descriptions I've read of these various equipment types, I'm not so sure.

At the very back of the machine is the screed. The screed vibrates and tamps down the asphalt. It's heated, either by diesel fuel or by electricity, which helps melt the asphalt and keeps it from sticking to the screed.

The screed is where a lot of asphalt-paving-equipment people focus their attention. The screed comes off and you can buy different ones with different specs, depending on the thickness of the material you're putting down, or how wide the road surface is that you want to pave at one time, or how compressed you want the asphalt to be.

Diagram of a Carlson Paver with some of the parts labeled to try to entice you to buy it. The label that I think is most interesting is the "extendable walkways," which explains how the guy in my video could stand on the back of that machine and not melt his shoes or get hurt.
(Photo from Carlson Paving Products)

Pavers weigh about 34,000 pounds. I don't know why I keep looking up how much these things weigh. I guess I'm trying to get at the hugeness of these machines.

Once again, I've got some videos for you. The first one zooms in but not quite clearly enough to see how the asphalt is put down on the pavement.

The second one follows the paver for a bit, then swings back to the roller running behind the paver.

Asphalt Rollers or Compactors

Now we come to the third part of the process, which was compressing the asphalt still further. They did this using rollers or compactors.

There are lots of different kinds of rollers which vary in size from 1 ton to 5 tons, and they vary in complexity. The point of the rollers is to pack down the asphalt and to make it smooth and even. In resurfacing my street, they used two different kinds of rollers.

The first kind was larger, and it had a roller in front and in back. These are called articulated rollers. As you can see in the photo below, there's a joint where the two halves connect. That joint allows the two rollers to move independently of each other, which requires a lot more control on the driver's part. This also enables the operator to get a lot closer to the edge of the road bed, for example, or to move one side to smooth out one particular section or another.

Articulated asphalt roller
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Like the pavers, the rollers require water to be sprayed over the business end of the equipment. The hot water and resulting steam keeps the asphalt from sticking to the roller and allows the asphalt to be compressed evenly without getting picked up onto the roller in clumps. In the photo above, you can see the steam coming off the top of the rollers.

According to one manufacturer, the water is distributed from the on-board water tank over a mat which allows the water to spread all across the roller evenly. The mats are called cocoa mats because they're made of coconut husks.

Here's more video of the articulated roller in action.

More shots of the articulated roller. The construction people are looking to the left because that's where the paver is. They're following it, tamping down the asphalt that the paver has just put down. The roller pretty much drove backwards, away from the paver, compressing the asphalt, then went forward again to catch up the paver, then backward again and so on down the street.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

The back end -- or maybe I should say the left side -- of the articulated roller.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

The second kind of roller they used was a static steel-wheel roller. These don't have that joint in the middle like the articulated kind do. They're called "static" because the rollers don't vibrate (some types of rollers do).

These also spray water over the rollers to keep the asphalt from sticking.

One resource says you have to be careful with these not to drive them back and forth over the asphalt too much because they can squash the asphalt down too much, pushing it sideways, and making it too thin in places or even making cracks appear. And you just put that asphalt down too.

Static steel-wheel asphalt roller.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Technical Note:
Splitting an avi file in half was trickier than I expected. The first 8 programs that people recommended crashed or didn't work or produced useless files, etc. Finally I tried VirtualDub. It actually worked, produced files that would play, and came with instructions for how to use it. Kudos to AfterDawn!

Sources
Roadtec Cold Planers
Dimensions Guide, What is the size of a Cold Planer?
Machinery Trader, Roadtec RX60B for sale
Answers.com, How is an asphalt paver made? Originally from Gale's How Products are Made, 2002
King Machinery APELLC, Asphalt Pavers and Asphalt Rollers
Global Security.org, Military Field Manual 5-436, Chapter 3: Equipment Used in Bituminous Operations
Leeboy, Asphalt Pavers
Dynapac, Pavers
Machinery Trader, Roadtec Asphalt Pavers for Sale
B&W Equipment Company, Dynapac Static Rollers and Dynapac Tandem Rollers
Ritchie Wiki, Asphalt Distributors

Apple #560: Bathtubs

2011-11-29T02:59:00.001-05:00

My apartment lacks a bathtub. I've got a shower, no bathtub. On cold, blustery nights when I'm tired or achy or just want to have a nice warm soak, I long for a bathtub.

So I'm going to ruminate about bathtubs.

Look, she's saying, "What would I do if I didn't have a bathtub? Oh, I'd be bereft."
(Photo from Home improvement blog)

The whole bathing-in-a-receptacle thing goes back thousands of years.

On the island of Crete, somebody found a 3,000 year-old, five foot-long tub-like deal on a pedestal. Some people say this is the ancestor of the modern bathtub.

Wealthy people in ancient Greece also had bathtubs in their houses. I'm not sure how the Greek baths were filled but they were self-draining.

The Romans had their public baths, but some wealthy Romans also had private baths in their houses. Their baths were more like enormous shallow swimming pools. Ah, that must have been the life.

Even when the Dark Ages came along and they snuffed out all sorts of advancements in engineering and philosophy and government and intelligence, they didn't entirely flush good hygiene along with it (oh, I am on fire with the puns).

In those days, for the most part, people were afraid of bathing. But a very few wealthy people had bathtubs. These ladies of the house had a special room where they had bathing parties. The water was heated and brought in by servants and scented with rose petals and herbs. Sometimes the ladies bathed by themselves or with other ladies.

Here, one of the titled lords of the house is having a bath -- they had a receptacle brought into their bedchambers -- and he's having food brought to him as he bathes. Now there's an idea.
(Photo from the Clawfoot Bathtub Warehouse)

Still, it was only the oddball wealthy who bathed. It took the bubonic plague before Europeans in general started to think about washing. Even then, bathing didn't quite catch on across Europe for some time.

By the late 1800s, Victorians were bathing in portable receptacles that were brought into their bedrooms in front of the fire and filled with hot water. These were considered "hip baths" and you were meant to sit in them with your legs hanging out.

Other bath tubs at this time had a shelf that jutted out into the interior of the tub, and that was where you were supposed to sit. I can't find any photos of bathtubs like that, but I know I've seen some at antique stores.

This is a contemporary drawing, I know, but it's the best image I could find that showed how those hip baths were used.
(Photo linked to from Discworld and Pratchett Paraphernalia)

A variant method of using a Victorian hip bath
(Photo from Venus Observations NSFW)

Eventually, as running water became available, Victorians started converting bedrooms into bathrooms. The bathrooms usually adjoined another bedroom and the now-bathroom still had the fireplace and stained glass windows and other bedroom decor.

I don't know when this brown marble bathtub was made. I suspect perhaps it's Italian, 19th century? Or maybe it's older than that. The lady at the top of the tub is holding some kind of ewer which is actually a spout from which the running water would have emerged. So this marble tub would have been connected to pipes of running water.
(Photo from About Chinese Antique)

In an interesting turn, as people became more concerned with hygiene, they stopped using the running water in the converted bedroom and went back to the free-standing tubs. They put tiles on the floor to make it easier to clean, and the brass and copper pipes were left exposed so that the owners could be certain they were clean and germ-free (hah). The free-standing tubs were more desirable than the tubs connected to pipes because the servants could move the tub to clean underneath it.

English roll-top copper tub, popular from around 1890-1930. The handles on the side made for easy carrying. These were available in a wide range of sizes, anywhere from 4 feet long to 7 feet long. You could also have them painted in a color of your choice.
(from Meryl's Short History of Antique Bathtubs)

At about the same as some people were going back to the free-standing receptacle, other people were trying out the clawfoot tubs. These could be connected to running water pipes, and it was possible to clean underneath them, swab down the bathroom tile and all that. The feet were practical but also decorative and sturdy.

Clawfoot bathtubs are popular again now, so I had trouble finding an period image of one. Here, the feet are painted to match the tub. More often, the feet on the early clawfoot tubs were made of iron, and the tub itself was made of tin.
(Photo from Elle Fowler's blog)

Right around this time, which is about the 1870s or so, is when a guy named J. L. Mott started making bathtubs. His products were all made of iron or cast-iron, and he made tubs of all sorts for various purposes. The first bathtub for people was promoted as a dual-use appliance. What you bought it for first and foremost was hog-scalding. Then if you felt like it, you could also use your hog scalder for your biannual bath.

J. L. Mott's first bathtub / hog scalder.
(Image from Clawfoot Bathtub Warehouse)

The problem with all these receptacles, whether they were made of cast iron or copper or zinc, was that they all corroded. If they didn't corrode, they turned color or rusted, or they were hard to keep clean at the welds. Who wants to take a bath in a bunch of corrosion? Not me.

In the 1850s, tub-makers in England began to experiment with various glazes. They tried various ceramics and glazes. They hit on porcelain and for a while, that was The Thing. A solid porcelain tub could be made with very smooth, rolling, sensuous curves that people found very appealing.

With the advent of porcelain, bathtubs and bathrooms became more luxurious. Tubs were made within very intricate cabinets or with lots of carving and decoration.

J. L. Mott luxury bathroom featuring a combination bathtub and shower.
(Image from Clawfoot Bathtub Warehouse)

What could be in this cabinet?

Why, of course! It's a fold-out bathtub!

Manufactured by the Mosley Folding Bath Tub Company in Chicago in the 1880s, this bath system features an onboard ten-gallon copper water tank, which is heated by a kerosene burner. The tub is 76 inches long and 25 inches deep. The original advertisement boasts that this tub is "available at a moment's notice."
(Photo from Tiny House Blog)

The porcelain was lovely and everything, but it had its problems. It scratched very easily. And those solid porcelain tubs were super-heavy. People who sell antique bathtubs today warn their customers that if they want to install a Victorian tub in their home, they'd better make sure their floors are thick and bolstered enough to hold up all that weight.

People still liked the porcelain, though, and nobody knew of another ceramic that worked better. So they coated tubs made of metal -- iron usually -- with porcelain.

This is a clawfoot tub from 1899 coated in porcelain enamel.
(Image from Victoriana Magazine)

Then in 1911, Kohler -- which had also marketed their early bathtubs as hog scalders -- came up with the idea for the built-in tub. They cast the tub all in one piece with an apron that didn't just roll over at the top but went all the way down to the floor. Homeowners liked these built-in tubs because the fact that it was built-in meant it had been shipped directly from the factory and no one else had used it first.

Since the standard bathroom was 5 feet long, the built-in tub was also 5 feet long. Actually, that made the well in which you sat less than 5 feet long (a source of some discomfort for many people who would like to be able to stretch their legs to their full length in the tub).

In the 1920s, as cars began to be available in other colors besides black, people started to want their house fixtures available in other colors. That went for bathrooms, too. So the built-in bathtubs started to be manufactured in all sorts of colors besides just the hygienic white.

Bathroom suite in Spring Green sold by Kohler in their 1939 catalog. Note the separate, small dental sink.
(Photo from Rejuvenation Archives via This Old House)

Here I must depart from my lovely chronology to debunk some bad history. In 1917, H.L. Mencken published a false, facetious article called "A Neglected Anniversary," in which he discussed various tidbits related to baths and bathtubs, and he said, revealing his poor opinion of Americans, that Americans did not use bathtubs until Millard Fillmore had one installed in the White House in 1842.

The whole thing was a lie. Mencken made it up. He even published a second article in 1926 admitting as much. "This article was a tissue of somewhat heavy absurdities, all of them deliberate and most of them obvious."

Obvious or not, people bought the story, hook line and sinker. In spite of the veiled mockery of Americans and their bathing habits, Americans and Europeans both were quoting his article as fact, apparently never bothering to find out if any of what he had said was true.

They continued to quote his article's "facts" even after Mencken revealed his trickery in 1926. In fact, people still assert that the first bathtub was installed in the White House in 1842 bathtub thing to this day. (It's still not true.)

One historian suspects, though she cannot prove for certain, that Mencken had a purpose in writing this fake article. “Through his hoax,” she said, “Mencken demonstrated to himself and to selected friends that the American public would believe any absurdity, as long as it appealed to their imagination or emotions.”

In recalling the success that politicians have had in convincing the public of this or that assertion, simply by stating it several times, I think that Mencken's supposed theory still holds water. Even if his bathtub tale itself does not.

H. L. Mencken, American literary critic who made no secret of his annoyance with "American sham, pretension, provincialism, and prudery."
(Photo from Helian Unbound)

Oof. Sorry to introduce that crusty guy into our discussion of lovely, relaxing bathtubs. I'll try to make amends forthwith.

A present-day built-in bathtub with all sorts of decorative amenities
(Photo from House Beautiful)

Today, bathtubs may still be made with a metal base that is then coated with some type of enamel, or they may be made entirely of acrylic or fiberglass. If you want to see how both types are made, complete with helpful diagrams, check out How Products Are Made - Bathtub.

There are a lot more options besides the 5-foot built-in tubs, though. Some people are going back to the old clawfoot varieties, as I mentioned, or they're buying newly made clawfoots that look like the old porcelain ones.

There are also scads of other variations that you probably never even considered. I'll show you a few of those here for your bathtub enjoyment.

Free-standing clawfoot bathtubs are also very useful for giving your circus lion a bath.
(Photo from Wisconsin Historical Images via Flickr)

This solid copper bathtub looks like a free-standing antique, but it's recently made and considered very luxurious. It's 65 inches long, can hold 71 gallons of water, and when empty, weighs 154 pounds. I don't know what they do about the corrosion situation, but it's probably something clever and expensive.
(Photo from Eastern Refinishing)

Sunken whirlpool tub. I'd be too worried about splashing and getting water all over the floor. I guess you wouldn't have to fill it all the way to the top.
(Photo from Modern House Designs)

Illuminated bathtubs are a fairly new species on the scene. I'd like to get in this one and try it out.
(Photo from Mix Possessions)

Ovoid-shaped, for the nesting sort.
(Photo from Home Design Gallery)

If you're really into shapely tubs, perhaps you'd like the shoe-shaped tub. No joke. This is the Audrey tub, available in three styles, all with similar mosaic on the outside, from Mosaic artists in Italy.
(Photo from Homedit)

Or maybe you're more traditional, and you prefer the wooden bathtub. These are made to order by hand in Maine.
(Photo from Bath in Wood of Maine)

These are called Kali'-Art bathtubs. The sites that talk about these tubs don't explain that phrase, but they do say these tubs have acrylic interiors and wood exteriors (this one is oak) with leather finishing on the corners. The headrests -- the things that interest me the most -- are optional extras. These bathtubs cost between $7,400 and $13,400.
(Photo from Trendir)

In my super dream luxury home, this is the bathtub I'd choose, mainly because of that fireplace right next to it. The room looks warm and cozy, yet the tub looks long enough for stretching out. Yum.
(Photo from Home Design Gallery)

Sources
Old House Journal, Coming Clean: The History of the Bathtub
About Chinese Antique, A Short History of Antique Bathtubs
ClawfootTubs.com, Clawfoot Tub History
Clawfoot Bathtub Warehouse, History of Bathtubs and Some More Things You Might Not Have Known
Professional Bathtub Refinishers Association, The History of Antique Claw Foot Bathtubs
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub
Mental Floss, Notable Bathtubs in History

Teaser

2011-11-28T02:05:00.000-05:00

I didn't finish my Daily Apple for tomorrow. I apologize. But it is in the works and I should have it done soon. In the meantime, I'll give you a teaser. See if you can guess what it's about.

Apple #559: Getting the Wind Knocked Out of You

2011-11-20T21:02:00.007-05:00

A week or so ago, a bunch of friends and I were watching a football game. After one play, one of the players was lying on the field not moving for a few moments. It turned out not to be serious, and we speculated that maybe he'd just had the wind knocked out of him. Then we realized we weren't sure what causes that.

What exactly happens when you get the wind knocked out of you?

Basically, your diaphragm stops working correctly.

Normally, your diaphragm, which is the muscle beneath your lungs, contacts to pull air into your lungs and relaxes to push air out.

Diagram of the diaphragm. This seems the opposite of what you'd expect, but when the diaphragm contracts, the area in your chest enlarges and allows air to rush in. In other words, you inhale. When the diaphragm relaxes, the chest cavity gets smaller, air rushes out, and you exhale.
(Photo from Merck Manuals)

Here's the motion of the diaphragm in a video:

The diaphragm is controlled by a bunch of nerve cells called the solar plexus. Medical professionals call this bunch of nerves the celiac plexus.

The solar / celiac plexus lives pretty much in the central-most part of you. It's below the xiphoid process, behind the stomach, but in front of the aorta (major artery from the heart). In other words, it's tucked away in that soft spot beneath where your ribs open out.

A sudden, strong blow to your solar / celiac plexus shuts off those nerve cells which in turn stuns the diaphragm muscle, and it spasms.

I always thought "spasm" meant that a muscle flutters or twitches. Nope. "Spasm" means that a muscle suddenly and involuntarily contracts and stays that way for some time.

So, when your diaphragm spasms, that means it zaps into contracted mode and it stays that way. It's stuck in the position that pulls air into your lungs.

That's another weird thing about all this because when you get the wind knocked out of you, it feels like you can't get any breath into your lungs, can't inhale. But your diaphragm is stuck in the inhale position.

But since it's stuck there, it can't contract any farther to bring in more air, nor can it relax to push air out, allowing you to inhale new air. So it feels like you've got no air in there.

The only thing to do when you're in this situation is wait for your diaphragm to relax out of its spasm -- which it will do shortly, though when you feel like you can't breathe, "shortly" will seem like a long time.

You can help your diaphragm relax by lying on your back, bending your knees and pulling your legs up to your chest.

Then take long, slow, calming breaths. As your breathe, concentrate on making the breathing happen. This will help get your diaphragm working again as well as helping you to calm down, and it will also get more oxygen circulating so your whole system will start to feel better.

It happens to animals, too. Here, one cat knocks the wind out of the other.

Sources
Nemours, KidsHealth, Getting the Wind Knocked Out of You
Straight Dope, What happens when the wind gets knocked out of you? and message board on the subject
Motorcross Action Magazine, Just Breathe: Getting the Wind Knocked Out of You
SportMedBC, Getting the Wind Knocked Out of You
Merriam Webster, solar plexus and celiac plexus

Apple #558: Aerial Cable Cameras

2011-11-13T22:24:00.001-05:00

This topic seems like bad timing, given the recent news about the Sandusky/Penn State nightmare. But I was asked to find out about how skycams work before that whole story broke, and in spite of my horror and disgust at that news, I discovered over the weekend that I do still like to watch football. Probably many of you out there do too. So I'm going ahead with this.

Specifically, longtime Daily Apple reader Demarcus wanted to know, how does the camera that flies over the football field work? He said at the last football game he attended, he'd noticed wires coming from each of the four corners of the stadium, and that the camera hung from the nexus of those four wires. Beyond that, he couldn't really figure out how it works.

The Skycam travels along cables over a football field to provide aerial images of the game in action.
(Photo from Wired)

This video below shows examples of the kinds of shots that are possible with these aerial cameras. In this gane, the camera used is called a SpiderCam.

These aerial cameras are typically referred to by the brand name Skycam, but there are lots of brands and manufacturers who make aerial cameras. Another common one is Cablecam.

[side note: Skycams are not to be confused with SkyCams which are stationary cameras mounted on tall buildings and other various key locations around the country and which are used to photograph weather events.]

Whether it's a Skycam or a Cablecam or some other aerial cam, they're set up in essentially the same way, with three major components.

Component 1. The wires or cables. The cables are made of very sturdy braided Kevlar. There are four of them, as Demarcus correctly noticed, and the camera hangs where the four reels intersect. The cables extend to each corner of the stadium, runs through a pulley and down to a reel and winch. Because of the cables, the camera systems are sometimes called cable cameras.

Component 2. The camera itself and the on-board motor and controls. The most recent version of hte Skycam uses a Panasonic AK-HC900 2/3" IT CCD camera, which is an HD camera that, in 2004, cost around $35,000.

Above the camera is a box that includes motors that allow the camera to pan and tilt, various electronics, and Steadicam stabilization sensors. A fiber optic cable carries the signal from the camera up to the central control (component 3). The camera and the black box together are sometimes known as the mobile spar.

The mobile spar is three feet tall and weighs somewhere between 25 and 45 pounds. It can whiz along the cables at speeds up to 40 mph.

A Skycam, as of 2006. Inventor Garrett Brown was awarded an Oscar for making this.
(Photo from GizmoWatch)

On the Cablecam, the box with the motor in it is flatter and more rectangular than the Skycam. This Cablecam also has a microphone attached to the bottom of the camera.
(Photo from Sports Video Group)

Component 3. The rest of the system is up in the booth, or somewhere remote from the camera. This is the computer which tells the camera what to do, and may be referred to as central control. Most of this system runs on Linux, or a version of it (specifics about the operating system have continued to change as the technology improves, but this is still generally true).

Two people control the system. One person operates a computer which directs the camera itself, adjusting the lens, its tilt and focus. Another person, the pilot, directs the reels to tighten or loosen the cables as necessary, thus moving the camera system over the field. The pilot watches a rendering of what the camera is doing on a computer screen and directs the reels using a mouse.

Initially, the system was controlled using a joystick.

[side note two: I find the use of the joystick pretty interesting, since the idea to use the above-the-field-camera in football came from video games. One guy who pilots the camera for his job says, "it's tricky. . . . It's like a video game."]

[side note three: the superimposed on-screen yellow first down stripe is another idea that came from video games. I agree with my dad, that this is one of the best improvements to television coverage of football games maybe ever.]

I really wanted to find a diagram of the black box where the camera motor is housed so I could see how those innards work. The best I could find was this schematic from Cablecam, which describes lots of pieces of the system, but in a fairly general way. It's hard to see much of the detail at this size, but you can see it better at this larger size, which especially helps in reading about how the winches and reels work.
(Diagram from Cablecam, hosted at Free Image Hosting)

A reel and winch controlling the cables in a Skycam system.
(Photo from Digital Producer Magazine)

The systems have multiple built-in back-up plans so that if a reel does snap, another one is there to catch the camera or a program is in place to move the camera out of the way.

But on at least one occasion that I know of, the Skycam actually did malfunction and drop to the field. This happened during a Saints-Seahawks game in 2007. Play was stopped and the network looped a whole bunch of commercials until someone got the camera fixed.

Skycam way too close to the field in this football game in 2007.
(Photo from Awful Announcing)

The whole system is constructed so that neither the spar nor the reels should interfere with play. But the aerial camera does sometimes make its appearance in shots of the field taken by other cameras, which some viewers find annoying.

It also happens sometimes that players will look up at the aerial camera and smile and wave or otherwise play up to it.

The guy who invented Cablecam and who was often on the field before the game helping with set-up, said that during warm-up, kickers often try to kick the ball so that it will hit the camera.

That was in 2005, and I don't know if anyone's succeeded in hitting the camera yet. I hope someone does, as that would be an achievement with major bragging rights.

As of 2005, it cost about $40,000 to $50,000 to use an aerial camera per game. Costs may have come down a bit since then, but man. That's a lot of money for one camera in one game.

The aerial cable camera was invented in the 1980s, but its uses were limited due to limitations in the computer software. In the 1990s, it was used more often and in more applications. In the SuperBowl in January 2001, it entered the world of football as EyeVision. The aerial cable camera's fortunes have only gone up from there.

Its use has spread to other sports and other venues. It's now been used in tennis, hockey, boxing, soccer, Major League Baseball, the Olympics, X-games, ice skating, swimming, bowling, even the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. Lots of film crews have also used aerial cable cameras to help them get a specific shot, in movies, TV shows, and commercials. It's even been used at the Academy Awards.

Today, Cablecams and Skycams are used in about 200 events each year.

Photographer Emanuel Schwermer using a cable cam to film a car for a commercial.
(Photo from Emanuel Maximilian Schwermer's site)

More resources:

Two-page spread detailing all the types of cameras used in a professional football game.

Photo showing how the cables are attached to the roof of a stadium.

How the yellow, superimposed first-down line is done.

Sources
Henry Fountain, "A Chance to Peek Over the Quarterback's Shoulder," The New York Times, January 6, 2005
Eric Gwinn, "Working the angles," Chicago Tribune, November 11, 2004
Monday Night Football: Behind the Scenes, Digital Producer Magazine, December 3, 2004
Michael Hiestand, "Suspension sends Irvin Message," USA Today, December 1, 2005
Greg Wyshynski, "Chatting with NBC Sports Executive Producer Sam Flood about Winter Classic," Yahoo! Sports, December 21, 2010
Cablecam, What We Do
Skycam, skycam in action

Apple #557: Roadrunners

2011-11-06T13:41:00.005-05:00

I've had a number of requests, which is always very exciting for your Apple Lady. I'm going to take them in turn. Up first is road runners. What do they look like in real life? Do they bear any resemblance at all to the cartoon Road Runner? What are some facts about them, like what do they eat and so on?

First, here's the cartoon Road Runner (Fastius tasty-us)

Note the blue feathers with a tuft of darker blue feathers on top, the yellow beak, the long plume-like tail, orange legs which are super long, and the characteristic Meep Meep. Any resemblance to the real life roadrunner?

A real-life roadrunner
(Photo from White Wolf Journeys)

Feathers: not blue but mainly brown and white speckled. Also a patch of bright red or orange above the eye.

Tuft of feathers on the head: a real road runner does have a little mohawk or crest of feathers, but it's brown, not blue

Beak: not yellow but brown, and not thick and curved upward but long and pointy with a downward curve at the end

Tail: long, but the feathers stick straight out, not in a curvy plume

Legs: not very long at all, more of a pinky-beige color

Vocalizations: of course you didn't expect a real roadrunner to say "meep meep." Their primary sound is a cooing almost like a pigeon. They make a variety of other sounds, including crows, clacks, and clucks.

Name: the cartoon Road Runner spells his name in two words. The real life roadrunners spell their name in one.

Real life roadrunner running
(Photo from Picture Depot)

The real-life roadrunner does not run so fast its legs become a circular blur, but it can run up to 18 miles an hour. When running at top speed, it holds its head and tail in line with its body and parallel to the ground.

The Greater roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) is actually a type of cuckoo.

Roadrunners live in the desert, mainly on the ground. They can fly, but they don't. They walk or run.

They eat mainly venomous desert-dwelling animals such as snakes, scorpions, spiders.

Their speed is what enables them to catch prey as intimidating as rattlesnakes, though sometimes two roadrunners will team up to go after larger snakes.

A roadrunner will use its wing like a matador's cape, and when it's distracted, snap the rattlesnake's tail and with the snake's tail firmly in its beak, crack the snake like a whip, banging the snake's head against the ground until it's dead.

It will swallow the snake whole. It make take a long time to work the snake through its system and it may even walk around with the end of the snake hanging out of its mouth, but it will eventually swallow the entire thing.

Roadrunner with a snake by the tail
(Photo from Canku Ota)

They can also snatch dragonflies or even hummingbirds out of the air.

Roadrunners have also been seen hopping straight up into the air to knock down and eat small birds lingering at feeders.

They've adapted well to desert life. Their skin is black which helps them warm up after a cold night in the desert and retain more heat at the end of the day.

They also have special salt glands in front of their eyes. Excess salt is excreted out of these glands, which allows them to go longer without water. In fact, roadrunners don't have to drink water, but they can often get enough moisture from the animals they eat.

They reduce their activity levels by half during the hottest part of the day. In winter, when food is very scarce, they eat mostly plants.

They make their nests in low-lying bushes or cacti.

Roadrunner nest
(Photo from Gardening for Wildlife)

Roadrunners have adapted to desert life so well, they've expanded their range from southern California as far east into Missouri and Louisiana.

Other species of roadrunner live in Central America, Costa Rica, and Bolivia. Still other species live in Southeast Asia.

Real roadrunners go anywhere they please. They do not keep only to the roads.
(Photo from Gardening for Wildlife)

So how did the animators get from the real-life roadrunner to the cartoon blue version? I could not find a satisfactory answer to this. Chalk it up to artistic inspiration, I suppose.

I did discover that

Chuck Jones, the animator and creator of the Coyote & Road Runner cartoons said, "'I first got interested in the coyote as an animal while perusing Mark Twain's 'Roughing It' at the age of 7. 'I thought of it as a sort of dissolute collie. And actually, that's just about what a coyote is! No one saw it more clearly than Mark Twain.''

''And we had very strict rules about Road Runner,'' he added, citing the list in his book, which includes the following: (1) The Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going ''beep beep.'' (2) No outside force can harm the Coyote - only his own ineptitude or the failure of the Acme products. (3) No dialogue ever, except ''beep beep.'' (4) The Road Runner must stay on the road; otherwise, logically, he would not be called Road Runner. (5) All materials, tools, weapons or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation. (6) The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.

Perhaps Chuck Jones' book would have more information about where his Road Runner came from.

Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist

Here's another interesting difference between cartoon Road Runner and the real-life roadrunner. The cartoon bird's chief characteristic is how he eludes capture, while what makes the real-life bird so interesting is the ways in which it captures other animals, especially animals that you would think would be its predators. Cartoon: preyed upon. Real-life: predator.

But they do have one thing in common, which is that they are quite wily. (Yes, as opposed to the coyote, har har.)

Sources
Desert USA, The Roadrunner
Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Greater roadrunner
Field Guide to Birds of North America, Greater Roadrunner
Canku Ota, How Roadrunner Became the Leader of the Birds
Glenn Collins, Chuck Jones on Life and Daffy Duck, The New York Times, November 7, 1989

Reminder

2011-11-05T19:51:00.002-04:00

Don't forget to set your clocks back one hour tonight!

That's one extra hour of sleep. Ahhh.

(Photo from Stylelist)

Daily Apple entry on Daylight Saving Time

Apple #556: Bored at Work

2011-10-31T23:57:00.002-04:00

For many years now, I've used Sitemeter to keep details of the traffic that comes to me site. to their data, I am well aware that a lot of people are looking at the Daily Apple during the work day. That suits me fine; in fact, it warms the cockles of my heart. This is because my original goal in creating this blog was to give people who are stressed out or overburdened or otherwise taxed by their jobs a place to go to read about everyday, relatively unstressful things. Learn something new for a bit, then go on back to work. So it seemed that I must be fulfilling that goal.

Is this how you feel before you go surfing around and wind up at the Daily Apple?
(Photo from Your Balance)

But recently it occurred to me, maybe people are stopping by here not because they're stressed out, but because they're bored. Looking for something, anything to break up the monotony. So why not make an entry for the bored, as well as for the stressed out? (As it turns out, boredom can be a version of stress. But more on that shortly.)

Of course, since I'm all about finding answers to questions, I thought I'd take up several questions on behalf of those who are bored at work: are other people bored in their jobs too, what's causing your boredom and what can you do about it, and why should your boss care if you're bored?

(Photo from Label Girl Hype)

Boredom Defined

Believe it or not, researchers have had trouble defining workplace boredom. One good definition is "a transient affective state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest in the current activity."

It's transient because if you do something else, you don't feel bored anymore. But as long as you're doing the current activity, you feel a pervasive lack of interest.

Traditionally when studying boredom, researchers focused on people working blue collar jobs. But now they recognize that office and white collar jobs can be just as unstimulating.
(Photo by Renault, from Treehugger)

Signs You're Bored at Work

You're tired all the time. You yawn about every 20 minutes, it seems.

You check the clock frequently. It seems to have hardly moved.

You try to focus on the task at hand, but you're uninterested and easily and willingly distracted. Tasks may take you twice as long as you know they should because you allow other things to pull you away.

The metaphorical needle that registers your intellectual or emotional involvement lifts only a fraction above zero all day long.

You find yourself doing pointless, non-job-related things at work, like looking at videos of kittens on skateboards, or playing Angry Birds, or shooting paperclips at the ceiling tile. For hours.

Is this sort of activity how you spend your time at work? Do you fantasize about the whole place crumbling down like this?
(Screen shot from Capsule Computers)

You imagine what you would be doing if you were at home or out with a friend or someplace else, anyplace else. The daydreams get longer and more involved as time goes on.

You show up later and later and you leave earlier and earlier.

You feel yourself "coming down with something" about once a week.

You find yourself looking at job ads while you're at work.

You check the clock again.

Another way to fill those dead zone hours.
(Photo from the Guardian)

Lots of People are Bored at Work

1/3 of Britons said they were bored at work for most of the day.

55% of US employees said they were "not engaged" by their work.

61% of college graduates who have since taken jobs say they are regularly bored at work.

Boredom has been found to be the second most commonly suppressed emotion at work (I wonder what the first is).

Professions who report the highest rates of boredom include:

Administrative/Secretarial: boredom gets a 10/10
Manufacturing: 8.1/10
Sales: 7.8/10
Marketing: 7.7/10
IT/telecommunications: 7.5/10
Scientific research: 7.3/10
Media: 7.1/10

People who do very technical but repetitive work, such as research lab assistants, also report high levels of boredom.
(Photo from Reuters)

Based on those results, it looks to me like just about every job has the potential to be boring.

Except maybe for teaching. Teachers gave their jobs a 4.0/10 on the boredom scale.

28% of graduate TAs, however, said they were bored in their jobs. Apparently, they require something other than, or in addition to, teaching to keep them engaged.

In spite of all the brightly colored decorations and stars which are probably meant to be motivational, these people look thoroughly unenthused in their cubicle land.
(Photo from Focus)

Even a job you might think of as challenging could become boring. One of George W. Bush's senior advisers admitted to ducking out to the movies out of boredom. One day while out and about he ran into an official from another department. I'm not sure if the other guy was headed to the movies too, but it was an encounter they both found awkward.

Why You're Bored

"Workplaces today are increasingly automated, with faceless technology being the interface through which many tasks are completed. Many jobs in the past that involved skill use, decision-making and contact with people can now be achieved with the press of a few (boring) buttons." -- Sandi Mann

Job is not challenging enough. This is probably the number one cause of boredom regardless of profession. You may have a lot of stuff to do, but if none of those tasks use your intellect to the extent that you possess it, you can get mighty bored pretty quick.

Having work that is unchallenging can be just as stressful as having too much work or having too many expectations placed on you. With monotonous work or work that's too easy, you can wind up just as burned out, disengaged, unmotivated, exhausted, and depressed as if you had too much to do.

Job does not fully utilize your skills or knowledge. This is a more specialized version of the same thing. If you've been trained at some point in a certain skill -- and that skill could be anything, mouth to mouth resuscitation, gas metal arc welding, speaking and reading Portuguese -- if that skill is important to you, and your job allows it to lie fallow, you can begin to feel bored. Even if the job requires you to use several other skills that you have, the fact that that one particular skill is going unused can be bothersome. It's like having two arms but only using one. Sure, you're using one arm, but that other arm is perfectly good. Soon enough, you'll feel those muscles beginning to atrophy, and dissatisfaction and unease will set in soon enough.

Job is full of repetitive and uninteresting routines. Lots of manufacturing jobs fit this description, but white-collar jobs can be mindlessly repetitive too. Filling out the same forms over and over, answering the phone the exact same way every two minutes and telling people the same thing again and again, creating the same spreadsheets with slightly different numbers--all of that can get pretty old pretty fast. Jobs that require watching for infrequent events (life guarding, patrolling, workplace inspection) also fall into this category.

Even the dog hates paperwork.
(Photo by Chris Scott, from the Cheerful Monk)

Not enough to do. Not having enough to do can actually be more dissatisfying than having too much to do. This runs a close second on the boredom/stress scale behind not being challenged enough. 800,000 employees surveyed rated jobs that offered "too little work" lower than jobs with "too much work."

People notice the lack of work especially after they've had bursts of time where they had a lot to do or even too much to do. They get used to operating at a higher level of productivity, and having to drop back to extremely low levels of engagement can be all the more frustrating afterward.

Too many constraints. The job has so many rules, requirements, and restrictions, it's hard to get anything accomplished. Or it's too physically restrictive; you can't leave your station to walk around, or you're not allowed to talk to the people nearby. Your employer feels so much like a third world dictatorship, you're not only bored out of your mind, you're contemplating storming the walls with catapults and battering rams.

The confinement may be intellectual rather than physical. A lack of opportunities to learn new things, and no provisions for training or for opportunities to interact with and learn from other professionals in the industry keep you from being challenged afresh. You have probably gotten very efficient at performing your job, but you're operating at that same level and you have done so perhaps for years on end. Stagnation, boredom, a feeling of mental atrophy have taken hold.

A screenshot from The Office was inevitable.
(Photo from Rookie Pastor)

Too many meetings. This is a specific form of constraint which keeps people from actually accomplishing anything. 82% of white collar workers report spending nearly 1/3 of their work week in meetings of one kind or another. Keep people in a room talking about how they're going to do something and talking about how they're talking and eventually someone's either going to fall asleep or run out of there screaming.

Job lacks meaning. The big-picture nature of one's job or industry may not match up with your values. Say you are passionate about the rights of children, but for your job, you design cereal boxes. Making sure cereal is packaged safely and so that the cereal lasts a long time and tastes good may be beneficial to children who eat cereal. But in a bigger picture way, over time, you may begin to feel the gap between what you really care about and how you're spending your workday. Though you may be very good at designing cereal boxes and though it may pose consistently new challenges to you, the fact that you don't really care all that much about cereal boxes may lead you to disengage from the work and become bored.

Job is too difficult. This one is less common, but it does happen, perhaps most often among students (by the way, all of these factors can apply in the classroom as well as on the job). When students took classes that were above their comprehension levels, they had difficulty grasping the material, so very soon they had difficulty paying attention and quickly became bored.

(Demotivational poster from MotiFake)

What to Do About It

"Boredom . . . is an alerting phenomenon that all is not well and something must be done."

This is a bit of a stressful, depressing topic, isn't it? Well, hopefully these possible solutions will bring some hope to the picture.

Short term solutions

Intersperse activities. Instead of doing one mindless task that takes hours until you're done, try breaking it up into smaller pieces and inserting another task in between. The inserted tasks may be just as mindless, but simply bringing some variety to the picture can help. Or you may find that the interspersing activity needs to be something more lively, like talking with a colleague, or walking to the vending machine for a coffee.

Take breaks. Get up from your desk and walk around. Go to the water cooler and get yourself a big cup of cool water. Go outside, breathe in some fresh air. Walk around the block. My friend Angelica, who is admittedly a bit nutty, does five quick push-ups in her cubicle to wake herself up.

Clean up your work area. Putting away the accumulated paperwork, cleaning off your desk, organizing files, sweeping the floor where you stand every day -- these are small things that first of all burn up some of your extra time. But a clean, newly organized work environment also contributes to a sense of being refreshed. Cleaner, more organized surroundings may wake you up a bit. Maybe you'll see things in a new light, and you'll see more possibilities within your work.

(Photo from Oprah.com)

Give yourself challenges. If you're supposed to enter the data for 199 reply cards an hour and you've mastered that, challenge yourself to complete 225 reply cards an hour. Perform the list of your daily tasks in alphabetical order. See if you can complete two versions of that insurance form, one in English to be filed and one in French for yourself.

A caution about this tip: it's possible you'll get so focused on your own self-imposed challenges that you'll lose sight of the more immediate and important goal of completing the work accurately. You want to be careful not to make your self-imposed challenges too difficult or diversionary. And since your self-imposed challenges are probably pretty meaningless, you may get bored with those soon, too. But they'll spark your brain for a little while at least.

Design your own rewards. Decide that if you finish filing that mountain of paperwork, you'll take yourself out to lunch. Every fifth call you field, you get to put a gold star on your desk calendar. The trick here is to choose rewards that don't wind up bankrupting you, and you'll want to alter them periodically so that even the rewards don't get old.

Here's one alternative to giving yourself gold stars.
(Photo from Xinjo)

Other people. Go talk to the person in the next cubicle. Form a friendship with the guy down the hall or the woman on the next floor. Socializing with someone for a little while can re-energize you and wake you up so you can go back and focus on that repetitive task again.

That said, in some workplaces, you may find the people around you to be boring. The things they're interested in may be things you find absolutely stultifying. If that's the case, then your boring co-workers can actually contribute to your boredom and stress.

Other work. If it won't get you in trouble, bring something from home to do. Read a book, write a letter to a friend, read the actual newspaper, write down the details of that invention you've been meaning to patent. Just be careful not to use company equipment to do your personal work. The advisability of this may also depend on the temperament of your boss. She may blow her stack at the sight of you knitting at your desk. Or he may be perfectly fine with you doing crossword after crossword while you wait for the phone to ring.

Find your Hobbes. Or draw him.
(Drawing by Xris at Buzznet)

Long term solutions

Ask for more work. As we've seen, simply increasing the workload may not be enough, especially if you're not feeling challenged by what you're already doing. But if you're underutilized and you have too much time on your hands, having more to do will help somewhat.

Ask your co-workers if they need help. Something they do might be slightly different than what you do, and having something different to do could perk up your interest. You'll want to be careful about how you approach people and whom you approach. Some workplaces get extremely territorial and offers to help could be regarded as efforts to steal someone else's turf. But if you phrase it so that it doesn't seem like you're taking their stuff away but rather helping them to look better in the long run, you might have better results.

Ask your boss for more responsibilities. Lots of people suggest phrasing this delicately. They say it's not a good idea to go to your boss and say, "I'm bored," because people have been known to get fired after saying that. It's better to come across as being proactive, solving a problem, and being willing to take on more work. Instead of going to your boss with a complaint, phrase it as an offer. Try something along the lines of, "I've found a way to be more efficient about filling in the boxes on those forms so I'm available to take on more work." Offer to take on something specific -- and new to you. For example, "I noticed that the mail room is a mess. It looks like it hasn't been cleaned in about a decade. Do you mind if I cleaned it up and possibly re-organized it too?" Or you could go Erin Brockovich and take on that weird, annoying thing that everyone has been ignoring and pushing being the filing cabinet, and it may just turn out to be something really interesting and challenging.

Ask your boss for more training. Learning something new, being challenged in a new way, and finding new approaches to performing old tasks can help wake up the work day. As a plus to your employer, you may learn how to be more productive, or more creative, or how to expand your products or services, and ultimately earn the company more money.

Seek opportunities outside of work. This isn't looking for a job elsewhere -- yet. These opportunities could be taking classes unrelated to your job, perhaps learning a new hobby or a craft or a skill. Or it could be volunteering, or joining a club, or planning an event like a block party or a reunion.

These people are volunteering to help keep their riverbanks clean and healthy. The work they're doing is probably labor-intensive and menial, but they're smiling because the work means something important to them.
(Photo from River Guardians)

Why Employers Should Care

If you're a boss and an employee comes to you asking for more work, or for work that challenges or stimulates them in new ways, believe them. It took some nerve for them to approach you with this, and they've probably already tried to live with things they way they are for quite some time. They're telling you they need more from the job, and they mean it. Just because you feel busy doesn't mean they do.

So give them what they're asking for. There are about a thousand reasons why you should.

Boredom can quickly lead to any or all of these negative consequences:

Poor performance

Increased errors

Accidents

Absenteeism

Stress-related illnesses

Increased thrill-seeking (which can lead to injuries)

Property damage

Here, Level of Pressure can be read as Workload. Note that the section where there is little to do and which is characterized by boredom has the lowest level of performance on the entire graph. The sweet spot of productivity is a workload that keeps you about 10% to 20% below fully occupied.
(Graph from Right Corecare)

Boredom "casts a pall on the whole organization and creates a demoralized de-energized atmosphere. Furthermore, it blocks creativity, which will undercut a company's ability to stay abreast of the marketplace competition," says one expert.

Says another, "Boredom can build like a critical mass that hurts the company's performance and market position."

All of these negative consequences translate directly to the bottom line. Whether it's in terms of lost revenue, decreased productivity, the cost to fix mistakes, increased insurance costs, even worker's compensation payments or liability lawsuits, as an employer, you're going to be shelling out money in one way or another if your employees are bored.

Eventually, you'll lose your employees altogether. 45% of hiring experts agreed that firms lost top workers because they were bored (1998).

24% of office employees surveyed said the reason they looked for jobs elsewhere was because of boredom.

Half of employees who say they're bored consider changing not just their jobs but their professions.

Which Leads Me Back to You, the Bored Employee

If you've tried all the ways to wring more out of your job and that's still not doing the trick, it's probably time to find a new job.

That's easier said than done these days, but if nothing else, the job search will give you something challenging to do.

You might want to look for a job whose work is meaningful to you. The people who report being the happiest in their jobs are those who in some way serve others.

Physical therapists, clergy, firefighters, teachers, psychologists, and authors are among those who say they are happiest in their jobs.
(Photo from Building Best Body)

"The cure for boredom is curiosity." --Dorothy Parker

(Photo from Christa in New York)

Get curious and try new things! Who knows what possibilities will open up for you?

Sources
Douglas LaBier, Feeling Bored at Work? Three Reasons Why, and What Can Free You, Psychology Today, May 3, 2010
Cynthia D. Fisher, Boredom at work: a neglected concept, Bond University ePublications, December 1, 1991
Dr. Sandi Mann, Boredom in the Workplace, Presentation for the Association of Business Psychologists, May 7, 2009 (PowerPoint slides)
Kate Hilpern, Chairmen of the Bored, The Guardian, June 28, 2008
Sirota Survey Intelligence, Bored Employees Are More Disgruntled Than Overworked Ones, Research Finds
Career Rookie, Combating Entry-Level Boredom
Zen Habits, 30 Things to Do to Keep From Getting Bored Out of Your Skull at Work
Deborah S. Hildebrand, Career Advice, How to Overcome Boredom at Work
HelpGuide.org, Preventing Burnout

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T03:25:00.001-04:00

Woof or treat!

Have a barking good time!

Apple #555: Ghosts, Goblins, and Ghouls

2011-10-28T15:59:00.008-04:00

Halloween is coming soon, so I thought you'd all want to brush up on the specifics of a few entities you might encounter as you're doing your Halloween thing this weekend. Just a quick introduction for each.

GHOSTS

Photo taken in 1936 supposedly of the ghost known as the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall
(Photo from Wikipedia)

Ghosts are the disembodied soul of a dead person, usually appearing as a pale or transparent form.

Originally the word simply meant soul or spirit. It wasn't necessarily good or evil.

Then the word came to be associated with various Germanic and Norse words that mean "to frighten" or "to be amazed." The phrase "to be aghast" means that you are shocked or frightened -- similar to being frightened by a ghost.

Generally, ghosts may simply be the spirit of a dead person and not necessarily malevolent. Or a ghost may be a spirit that has turned evil, or someone's evil spirit double.

Ghosts may not necessarily be the spirit of a person but could be spirits of dead animals, or more rarely, spirits of trees or other objects.

Candles and torches near graves or during funeral rites were initially intended to help guide the departing soul away and on into its next life. Candles etc. were also supposed to keep the evil spirits away from the dead body and from reanimating it.

A poltergeist, by the way, is a noisy ghost: poltern (make noise or rattle) + geist (ghost).

Some famous ghosts include the ghost of Hamlet's father, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and the ghost of Jacob Marley.

Hamlet sees his father's ghost.
(Image from USF clipart)

When Jacob Marley freaks out and starts yelling and shaking his boxes and chains at Scrooge, whoof, he's scary.
(Photo from Stuff from 311)

I loved this book when I was a kid. This is about a family of ghosts who move into a suburb to haunt it. The little children ghosts are thrilled to discover trick-or-treating, but they eat so much candy, they become tangible and turn into marshmallow.
(The Marshmallow Ghosts is out of print, but some people are selling used copies on Amazon)

GOBLINS

Goblins in the woods
(Image from Seligor's Castle)

Some people say goblins came from France in the 12th century, others say England. Still others say goblins hail from Germany, from kobold, the demon of mines, or from the Greek kobalos, the mischievous spirit.

Regardless of where they first came from, they have no home now, so they haunt other people's homes and old trees and the clefts of mossy rocks.

They're ugly little malevolent things.

Sort of like poltergeists, they like to mess up stuff. Their laughter sours milk or turns the fruit rotten and makes it fall off the trees. They'll turn direction signs around or blow out candles or hide little objects, all to confuse people.

They generally run around outside and wreak minor havoc.

Very different from how they appear in Harry Potter, by the way, where the goblins are in charge of Gringotts Bank, and even moreso from the movie versions where they're depicted according to stereotypes so anti-Semitic they made me wince.

Hobgoblin Detour

One of my favorite sayings is "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance)

But hobgoblins are different than goblins. They're more elf-like where goblins are more gnome-like.

Hob means "elf." It's a variant on the name Rob, which is short for Robin Goodfellow, who was a miscreant elf in German folklore.

They can be annoying and harassing, or downright terrifying.

Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps the most well-known hobgoblin. He's more mischievous than mean, though.

Puck, hobgoblin and trickster sprite.
(Image from Seismic Twitch)

GHOULS

The word comes from the Arabic ghul and it means an evil spirit that robs graves and feeds on corpses. The word comes from an Arabic verb meaning "to seize."

They're very similar to zombies, though not quite the same. Zombies are dead people reanimated to eat live people. Ghouls are spirits who eat dead people. Technically, ghouls would eat zombies. But I suspect the two would get along at a dance party.
Ghouls live in graveyards or deserts. They may take the form of a hyena.

Ghouls can also be people who are grave robbers, or it can be a more metaphorical insult for those who delight in the macabre so much, they are ghoulish.

Yikes. Ghouls are pretty scary.
(Image from Hypnogoria)

This is kind of funny and also historically accurate. This is Ghoul with a Pearl Earring. But see, in many of the cultures where the Arabic ghul originated, often the evil spirit was female. See?
(Image from Why not?)

My favorite line about ghouls comes from Hitchcock's Rear Window when they're looking out Jimmy Stewart's window and Grace Kelly says, "We're two of the most frightening ghouls I've ever known." But she says it in that Grace Kelly way which is so delicate, if she'd been talking to you, you'd almost delight in being so insulted.

Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly: two of the most frightening ghouls you've ever known?
(Screen shot from Rear Window from GoneMovie.com)

I sneaked in some Shakespeare there, did you notice? This turned out to be secretly a Shakespeare entry! A Shakespeare entry in a costume! Hahaha!

Ah, Halloween. Too much fun.

Sources
Onelook, ghosts, ghoul
Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, Ghosts
Online Etymology Dictionary, ghost, goblin, ghoul
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, goblin
Oxford World Dictionary, goblin
Long long time ago, Puck
bordeaux undiscovered wine shop, Of Goblins and Fairies for Halloween, October 29, 2009
Wisegeek, What is a hobgoblin?
tribe.net, ghoul

Apple #554: Candy Corn

2011-10-23T19:42:00.007-04:00

Someone brought candy corn in to work the other day, and I ate some. That sweet, smooth, creamy flavor reminded me immediately of when I was very little.

When my mom went grocery shopping, she took me with her because I was much too small to stay at home, and she told me I could have one treat at the beginning of the shopping trip. As an adult, I see this now as a clever trick to keep me occupied while she was shopping. But as a little kid, I thought, Oh boy! Whatever I want! Nearly every time, I chose candy corn. I loooved candy corn.

Candy corn. Beloved by thousands for over a century.
(Photo from Wikipedia)

Now, as the Apple Lady, I want to know how it's made.

Among candy makers, candy corn is considered a type of "mellow creme" which means it has no oils or fats but it's made from some type of sweetener and has a flavor that is at least marshmallow-like.

Candy corn doesn't just have a marshmallow-like flavor, actual marshmallow is one of its ingredients. That's what gives it that special milky, creamy consistency.

Recipes vary from one manufacturer to another, but in general, candy corn is made of:

sugar
water
corn syrup
some manufacturers also use honey
fondant (icing made of sugar, water, and corn syrup)
marshmallow
coloring
salt
gelatin and soy protein, to help it keep its shape
edible wax and oil glaze, for shine

In the variant candy corns with a brown layer, the brown is chocolate-flavored.
(Photo from College Candy)

Corn isn't actually an ingredient in candy corn, except that the molds are dusted with cornstarch, which helps the candy keep its shape and not stick to the molds.

Essentially, the candy corn is made upside-down. Kernel-shaped wedges are punched into trays. Then a machine called the Mogul fills the trays with the candy corn mixture or slurry. White first, then orange, then yellow.

Candy corn pumpkins: similar recipe, different mold.
(Photo from the Happy Home Fairy)

The trays of candy corn are left to dry, which may take 24 to 48 hours, depending on the moisture content of the mixture.

After they've been allowed to dry -- not too much, just enough -- the trays are brought back to the machine where they're turned over so the candy corns fall out.

The kernels are transferred to big bulbous metal bins called polishing pans where the glaze and wax are added. The kernels are tumbled together in the bins so that they polish each other as they bump against each other.

Once polished, they are bagged and labeled, boxed and shipped.

Remember that corn starch? It gets separated from any stray bits of candy corn, sifted, and dried so that it may be reused.

This video from the Food Network shows parts of the manufacturing process in action. My favorite part is when all the candy corns are going down the chute into those bins. Sorry about the commercial.

Candy corn was invented in the 1880s by a guy named George Renninger who worked for the Wunderlee Candy Company.

Not long afterward, a different candy company, Goelitz (go-litz) started making it on a larger scale.

All of the candy corn was mixed and poured by hand. People used to carry 45-pound buckets of the mixture from the mixer to the people called stringers who poured it into the molds.

The same company still makes candy corn, only that company today is called Jelly Belly. Actually, a lot of other companies make candy corn, too, with Brach's making the majority of it. Regardless of the manufacturer, they all do the entire thing by machine.

Estimates of how much candy corn is produced vary widely. Anywhere from 20 million to 35 million pounds of candy corn are made each year. Another estimate puts it at roughly 8.3 billion pieces of candy corn made per year.

75% of that production is for Halloween alone.

But candy corn isn't just for Halloween. You can get it in different colors for various holidays -- red white and green for Christmas, pink red and white for Valentine's Day, and pastel-colored for Easter.

I have never seen "bunny corn" before, but apparently it's out there.
(Photo and bunny corn, available in 10-lb cases, from MyPartyPlanner.com)

I would also like the answer to this burning question: do you eat candy corn from the top down, or the bottom up?

Candy corn cupcakes
(Recipe and Photo from The Little Kitchen)

Additional resources:
Make your own candy corn
Easy candy corn cupcakes
Crochet little ghosts, pumpkins, and candy corn
Dress up like candy corn for Halloween
Make Candy corn vodka tonic

Sources
TLC Howstuffworks, What is candy corn and how is it made?
enotes, How Products are Made, Candy Corn
Haunted Bay, Candy Corn

Apple #553: Kaleidoscopes

2011-10-19T18:57:00.004-04:00

I noticed that a lot of my entries lately have been about things that are white. Cotton balls. White caterpillars. Pantyhose. Well, that's not white, but it's blah-colored. I thought it was time for an entry with some color! Let's brighten things up around here! So I give you kaleidoscopes.

Pretty cool, huh?
(Photo and kaleidoscope by Peggy & Steve Kittelson who pretty much seem to be masters of the art)

Kaleidoscopes were invented in 1816 by a Scottish inventor named David Brewster. He was 35 years old.

David Brewster, several years after he invented the kaleidoscope.
(Photo from the David Brewster Society)

He was studying light and mirrors and optics. He was a pretty smart dude, by the way. He also invented the forerunner of the lighthouse, among other things. His method of calculating the angle at which light must strike a given surface to achieve maximum polarization of light, a calculation known as Brewster's Angle, is still used today in building microscopes and lasers and fiber optics, in adjusting radio signals, in meteorology, and all sorts of other applications.

So while he was doing all that investigating of light and mirrors and polarization, he noticed that the light bouncing off of two mirrors created patterns and colors that were visible on other surfaces. Long story short, he put the two mirrors inside a tube with an opening to look into it at one end and bingo, he had a kaleidoscope.

The word, by the way, is a compound word made of several Greek words. It breaks down like this: kalos (beautiful) + eodos (shape) + scopeo (to look at).

Dr. Peter Roget -- yes, the Roget of thesaurus fame -- said of the kaleidoscope, "In the memory of man, no invention, and no work, whether addressed to the imagination or to the understanding, ever produced such an effect."

Kaleidoscopes were an instant hit. People all over Britain and the United States were buying one or more for their homes. They were quite the Victorian fad.

With visions like this, it's easy to see why the gadgets became so popular.
(Grapevine kaleidoscope available from Victorian Connection)

One of the things that will determine what shape you see at the end of the tube is how many mirrors are inside the tube. Regardless of how many they are, the mirrors run the full length of the inside of the tube.

Most kaleidoscopes have two mirrors. They produce the image you see the most often. Some people call these shapes mandalas.

The image looks like a circle but when you look closely, you'll see it's actually a decahedron (10-sided object). The center is a five-pointed star.
(Photo from possumjim and elizabeth)

A tube with three mirrors creates a triangular-shaped image, like this one.
(Photo from Kaleidoscopes of America)

Very few kaleidoscopes use four mirrors, but this one does. Four mirrors produce a series of rectangular images that are on opposite sides of a center line.
(Photo and kaleidoscope from Peggy & Steve Kittelson)

The angle of the mirrors also affects the image you'll see. The smaller the angle, the greater the number of reflections. In a two-mirror kaleidoscope, if the mirrors are placed at a 10 degree angle, the number of reflections is 360 degrees in a circle / 10 degrees minus 1, or 35 reflections. If the mirrors are placed at a 40 degree angle, there will be 360 / 40 -1 or 8 reflections.

As you can imagine, making sure those mirrors have straight, aligned edges can make a lot of difference. Kaleidoscope makers do their best to make sure everything is lined up just right, but sometimes the mirrors wind up out of alignment.

In this one, something about the position of the mirrors wasn't aligned quite right.
(Photo from possumjim and elizabeth)

Some kaleidoscopes have an eyepiece at the front. That front lens is a diopter lens and it isn't involved in any of the reflecting activity in the body of the kaleidoscope. Its purpose is to magnify the image that you see at the end of the tube, making everything appear sharper and clearer to your eye. The longer the kaleidoscope, the more likely it'll have that front diopter, and the stronger it will have to be.

Many kaleidoscopes also contain liquid. This is to make sure the pieces slide around slowly and easily, rather than chunking and slipping and rattling abruptly into place. Often the liquid is mineral oil (a.k.a. baby oil) or glycerin. More recently, kaleidoscope makers use silicone, which is less prone to leaking.

This kaleidoscope has two mirrors, but it's oil-filled, which is what gives everything that rich, liquid feel.
(Photo and kaleidoscope by Peggy & Steve Kittelson)

A lot of kaleidoscopes being made today include found objects. Not just glass pieces, but other little tidbits like springs or buttons or doll eyes. My great uncle made a kaleidoscope. It had mostly pieces of glass in it but there were also a couple squares of window screen in there.

This kaleidoscope uses all sorts of seashells. I'm pretty sure that Judith Paul and Tom Durden made this one. They make a lot of seashell kaleidoscopes.
(Photo from balluun)

Some kaleidoscopes enclose the bits of glass and other goodies not in a chamber at the end of the tube but outside of it on a wheel which the user turns. Sometimes the shapes are fixed in place in the wheel, and sometimes the shapes are free-moving inside the glass wheel.

This is a three-mirror double-wheel kaleidoscope. This photo shows how the wheel is connected to the body. You can see that there are two layers of glass in the wheel, which will make for additional reflections and colors.
(Photo and kaleidoscope by Koji Yamami)

This is what you see when you look through one of his 3-mirror wheel kaleidoscopes. This one, I think, must be only a single-wheel.
(Photo and kaleidoscope by Koji Yamami)

Another variation is to use a tube instead of a wheel at the end of the kaleidoscope. The tube can be rotated or slid back and forth to change the scenery.

This is an oil-filled stained glass tube kaleidoscope.
(Photo and kaleidoscope by Koji Yamami)

The glass inside the tube are drawn and twisted to make very delicate shapes.
(Photo and kaleidoscope by Koji Yamami)

Once you realize that the basic components themselves can have so many variations, all sorts of possibilities start to open up. All you need is a tube -- which doesn't even have to be circular -- some mirrors to put inside it, and some shapes that will let at least some light through. From there, the sky is the limit.

This kaleidoscope is made from a wine cask.
(Photo and kaleidoscope by Mitsuru and Yuriko Yoda)

This is what you see when you look in the wine cask kaleidoscope.
(Photo and kaleidoscope by Mitsuru and Yuriko Yoda)

Kaleidoscopes that include images of the thing you point them at are called teleidoscopes. Instead of the end of the scope being a piece of glass with black backing on it, it's another lens. So the mirrors inside the tube are reflecting the image of what's outside the tube.

This is the view through a teleidoscope looking up at the treetops.
(Photo by jcarwash31 on Flickr, sourced from Rikki's Teleidoscope)

The variations and the permutations are endless. That's one of the reasons kaleidoscopes continue to fascinate us.

Additional resources:
Tips on how to take photos of kaleidoscope interiors
Instructions for how to make a simple three-mirror wheel kaleidoscope

Sources
Brewster Kaleidoscope Society, Sir David Brewster
Kaleidoscopes of America
Japanese Kaleidoscopes

Apple #552: Concord Grapes

2011-10-15T15:41:00.006-04:00

I love Concord grapes. For one thing they remind me of my brother, who loves them even more than I do. But I also love them for themselves. They taste dark but sweet, and that juicy, fruity, delectable place between the flesh of the grape and the inside of the skin I find absolutely divine. I put one in my mouth, pop the skin, and suck on that juice. Mm-mm.

They are one of the things, along with apple cider, that for me, embody fall. Those late October days when it's sunny but the air is crisp and you catch a whiff of the fallen, drying leaves, I swear sometimes I can also smell Concord grapes on the air. Mm-mm.

You can almost smell these Concord grapes, can't you?
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Eating Them

Concord grapes are one type of purple grapes. They're known as slip-skin grapes, meaning the skin isn't attached to the meat of the grape. (Ah, so that's what allows me to pop the skin off of them and eat the skin and the innards separately.)

Other purple grapes from Europe are not slip-skin grapes. For some reason, this means it's easier to ship them than it is to ship Concords.

The Concord Grape Association says

"you don't really 'chew' Concords - you suck them out of their skin to get the juice and flavor and swallow the grape whole (after you separate the seeds). You eat them somewhat like oysters."

I'm glad to see this because I thought my family were the only ones who ate Concord grapes this way. The skin on its own is pretty tart and I usually don't eat it. Sometimes I'll chew the innards and spit out the seeds, but usually I swallow the insides whole.

Nice, plump Concord grapes showing off their protective white bloom.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

The white coating on the grape is called the "bloom." This is a protective coating that's found on many types of grapes and also on blueberries. It's a naturally-occurring oleanolic acid which the grapes themselves produce to keep the fruit from losing essential moisture.

It's harmless to us, so it's no cause for alarm. You'll want to rinse the grapes before eating as you would with any fruit, and that usually takes off most of the bloom. A little light rubbing will remove the rest.

History

Concord grapes were first cultivated in 1854 in Concord, Massachusetts. Hence, the name.

Concord is a little place north and west of Boston.
(Map from the Massachusetts Hokkaido Association)

Ephraim Wales Bull, the first guy to cultivate the Concord grape.
(Photo from the American Indian Health and Diet Project)

Ephraim Wales Bull used seeds of the wild, native purple grapes which grew near his house. His home and farm, by the way, were "just down the road" from the homes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Luisa May Alcott.

It's thought that he may have crossed two varieties, the Vitis labrusca and the Catawba.

After planting some 22,000 seedlings, he hit on a variety that he liked best. It ripens early which means it avoids being killed by the fall frost, and it still has a rich, full flavor.

A 100-year-old descendant vine from his original seedlings still grows near where Bull once lived.

This is Ephraim's house, now called Grapevine Cottage. Apparently it's for sale, priced at $799,000. It comes with the gravestone which reads "He reaped, others sowed," referring to the fact that he died quite poor, as well as the 100-year old grapevine.
(Photo from Elizabeth Bolton, realtor in Cambridge, MA)

Growing Them Today

Despite the plant's roots in New England, more than half of today's Concord grapes are grown in Washington.

The next-highest producing states in descending order of production are New York state, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Missouri.

This particular box of Concord grapes came from Michigan.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

The Lake Erie Concord Grape Belt, which is a stretch of land along the northwestern edge of New York state, is the largest grape-growing region in the United States outside of California. It encompasses 30,000 acres of grapes grown on 800 different vineyards. This is where the Welch family started their commercial grape juice business.

The Lake Erie Concord Grape Belt
(Map from the Lake Erie Concord Grape Belt Heritage Association)

Concord grapes on the vine. Here the bloom is very visible.
(Photo from the world wide wine)

Most Concord grapes are turned into grape juice or jam because few people like to deal with the seeds.

Concord grapes are sometimes used to make wine, though not so often any longer because the wine they turn into is intensely sweet. Some Kosher wines are still made with Concord grapes.

Concord grape jam. That's some good-looking jam, isn't it?
(Photo from the Hungry Mouse)

Now I'm hungry for a peanut butter & jelly sandwich.

Sources
Concord Grape Association, The History of Concord Grapes
Washington State University Cooperative Extension, Concord Grape Establishment and Production Costs in Washington, 1996
Dan DeClerico, This Old House magazine, A History of the Concord Grape
Spade & Spatula, The Off-the-Beaten-Track Grape Guide and 3 Easy Recipes, October 10, 2011
The American Indian Health and Diet Project, Food Indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, Grapes
World's Healthiest Foods, Grape

Apple #551: Make Pantyhose Last Longer

2011-10-14T16:47:00.005-04:00

I confess, I wear hosiery. In the winter I prefer tights because they're warmer, but in fall or spring when I don't want something as heavy and warm as tights, I like pantyhose better (much as I detest that word, or pretty much any word involving "panty").

But the dang things get holes in them after two or three wearings. Unlike socks, they can't be sewn up or fixed in some way. You can try to stop a run or a hole from getting bigger with nail polish, but sometimes the hole or run busts right through and keeps going to encompass several toes or extend all the way across the foot.

Keep wearing a pair of hose long enough and any run will turn into a ginormous thing like this, I don't care how much nail polish you use to try to stop it.
(Photo from Tanng J)

I'll also turn them around so that the hole that started on top of one toe is now on the bottom of the toe, but sometimes that hole gets bigger down there, or another one starts at the top of another toe. So my toes are poking through the dang things all over the place, which gets uncomfortable not to mention annoying. The rest of the garment is fine, but the toes are shot. The whole pair is then worthless and must be replaced.

Is there any way to make these stupid things last longer?

These fancy pairs of hosiery are pretty and they're fun to wear. But they probably don't survive many wearings at all.
(Photo from The Daily Green)

Lots of sites have many suggestions. Some of them I already do, to no avail. Other suggestions are new to me. I'll separate the suggestions that way.

Tips I Do Already

Buy the kind with reinforced toes. I never buy sheer toes anymore. Absolutely isn't worth it. But I bust through even the reinforced toes within a few wearings.

A lot of fashion adviser people will tell you to stay away from the reinforced toe varieties because they're not exactly pretty. But those fashion adviser people probably make a lot more money than I do and can afford to replace their hosiery after one or two wearings.
(Photo from essentialapparel.com)

Buy the thicker, sturdier kind. One woman swears by the Resilience brand. I tried those before, and I do remember noticing they were a bit more durable than usual. But they still develop holes or snags. One snag in this suggestion (ha ha pun): Hanes discontinued them in 2007.

If it says "support" on the package, those are probably going to be more durable.
(Photo and pantyhose from onehanesplace)

Put them on properly. Bunch one leg of hosiery all the way down to the toe, work it slowly over your foot, and gently unfurl the bunched hosiery as you slide up the leg. Bunching it up at the outset keeps you from pulling or tugging at the material. In general, the more gently you handle the hosiery, the better.

Prevent snags. Keep your toenails trimmed, trim hangnails, file rough edges on fingernails or toenails, wear lotion on your hands, put lotion on your feet and legs -- anything to smooth the whole process of putting on the nylons. Some people even suggest wearing cotton gloves. That sounds like some kind of Mommy Dearest obsession so I'm probably not going to do that.

This kind of hole and its related runs probably came about because the wearer bumped against something sharp or maybe she accidentally put her fingernail through the hosiery while putting them on.
(Photo from eHow)

Inspect your footwear. Perhaps you have some roughened surface inside your shoes, or perhaps your shoes are too tight. Extra friction at the toes could wear the garment out sooner.

Try upsizing. Especially if you're in between sizes, buy the next larger size up. A roomier garment means less strain. Upsizing doesn't always work for me, though. Sometimes the next size up is Saggus McBaggus. That is decidedly less attractive than a minor run across the foot.

Rotate pairs. Don't wear the same pair multiple days in a row, or even two days in a row. Let them rest.

Hand wash only. I used to hand wash my hosiery. It takes longer, and I always suspected I didn't get all the soap out. Now I wash them in the gentle cycle of my washing machine. I put them in an old pillow cover that zips so they won't wrap around the core of the machine. But maybe I should go back to hand washing. Sigh.

Use Hosiery Mate. This is a special detergent designed only for washing hosiery. I used to use this too. It had a funny, over-detergenty smell that I didn't really like. I didn't notice much difference when I used this versus a regular laundry detergent, either. But one woman swears it helps her hosiery last longer -- although, reading her comment again, she says it's her tights that have lasted 10 years. Well, sure, I've had pairs of tights last that long, too. But I'm talking nylons, woman!

Suggestions That Are New to Me

Buy the kind with more lycra or spandex. I've never looked at ingredient labels on hosiery packages, but I doubt they have the fabric contents broken down by percentages. Still, if the packaging says somewhere that they're about 15% lycra or spandex, that kind will probably last longer, since those materials are more durable than nylon.

Wash before wearing. That's right, after you take them out of the package, don't put them on, wash them instead. Some people recommend cold water in the gentle cycle of the washing machine, others say only hand washing will do.

Wash them with liquid starch. This is by hand washing only. Follow the instructions on the bottle of starch. No idea if it's got instructions particular to washing hosiery, but if it doesn't, I'd guess use less than a capful in a sink of cold water.

I've only ever seen spray starch in cans that my mom used while ironing. This is a gallon of liquid starch. One bottle costs about $3.
(Photo from thriftyfun)

Freeze them. Lots of people recommend this and have done so for years, apparently. It's such a common suggestion that even Snopes investigated it to see if it's true. The only conclusion Snopes arrived at was to say that the reason this might have worked had more to do with the type of fabric used in making hosiery about 30 years ago (more nylon then than now?). Today it probably has less of an effect, they guessed, but they couldn't say anything definitive it.

One science-sounding guy said he thought there might be some truth to it. I kind of doubt that he's an expert, but I'll give you his explanation in his own words:

"When you get something real cold, the molecules stop moving, then you bring it back to room temp and as the molecules warm up they rearrange and release much of the internal stress between them. This makes the material very uniform on a molecular level. Thus, internal stress is reduced as things warm back up. This reduces the weak spots in the nylon material and allows the panty hose to stand more abuse prior to tearing or 'running'."

So, what the heck, why not give it a try?

This mom keeps her pantyhose in the freezer. You can see the large package sticking up at the left.
(Photo from The Daily Green)

People differ in their instructions about how and when to freeze them. The variations break down into two camps, to wet first or not to wet first. Here the instructions for each:

Before wearing the first time, keep them in the package and freeze for 24 hours.

Before wearing the first time, wet them, squeeze out most of the excess water, put them in a bag, and put them in the freezer. Thaw and allow them to dry before wearing.

There are still more suggestions, ones that have nothing to do with freezing.

Lightly spray them with hairspray after you have put them on. I'm intrigued by this one. Some hairsprays are like shellac, so it stands to reason that they might impart some durability to nylon as well as hair.

Wash them as soon as you get home. Some people say as soon as they get in the door, they're taking off the pantyhose and going to the sink to wash them out.

Soak them in salt water. Not sure if you're supposed to do this before wearing or after. The person who suggested it did say to let them soak for a day.

Double up. If you get a run in one leg, cut the bad leg off, leaving the panty (ugh, that word) intact. Match that half-amputated pair with another amputated pair and wear them together. This means that you'll have to wear both panties, one on top of the other, each with one good leg. I know I won't be trying this one.

Store them in a Ziploc bag or other container where they won't get snagged on the inside of your drawer.

If you go the doubling-up route, you'll want to be careful about matching the two legs with each other, or you might get something like this, except even less fashionable.
(Photo from Just Humor Me)

After having read all these recommendations, especially the odder-sounding ones like freezing the pantyhose, I thought I'd consult the expert. Who knows more about pantyhose than Heloise? Interestingly, when I searched her site (or ran several searches for "pantyhose" and "Heloise"), I found scads of tips for what to do with those old pantyhose that you can't wear anymore. I didn't find a single tip about how to make your pantyhose last longer.

Tree Hugger is another place that has lots of suggestions for what to do with your old pantyhose.
(Photo from Tree Hugger)

Wear Something Else Instead

I thought this was kind of funny. A lot of people's suggestions about making pantyhose last longer included at least two or three ideas in this category -- simply avoid them altogether. Which says to me that it's pretty much a losing battle, trying to make these things last any length of time.

Try thigh-highs instead. I'm not a fan of these, since they get stretched out and slide down almost immediately. But some people say they last longer than pantyhose. [shrugs]

Wear trouser socks instead. These will only work if you wear pants, not skirts. But they're cheaper, and they're usually more durable to boot (ha ha another pun).

Trouser socks are hosiery in knee-high form, with some added durability.
(Photo and this pair available from Simply Tall)

Wear tights instead. They're thicker and more durable. Yes, they definitely are.

Wear longer skirts and no hose.

Wear tall boots and no hose.

One thing that everyone agrees on: the expensive kind are no more durable than the cheap kind. You might buy the pricey kind because you like the way they look or they've got one of those built-in body-shaper things (a.k.a. girdle), but don't expect them to last longer just because you spent a lot of money on them. The reverse is also true: just because you get the cheap kind, that doesn't mean they'll fall apart faster.

So I guess the moral is, buy what you like, do your best to make them last, and move on.

If I didn't care anything about price, I'd try these. It's hard to tell from this small photo (the only one I could link to here) but they look pretty good to me. They might also be the answer to my question. They're matte tights, but they look like pantyhose. So they might last as long as tights. The drawback? They're $48.00 a pair.
(Photo and Wolford 'Fatal 15' Seamless Tights from Nordstrom)

There's also these, which are supposed to look transparent, so they're probably fragile as all get-out. But from the photo and the description, it sounds like they'd be smooth. As it happens, the description does have a percentage content breakdown. They're 96% polyamide (a.k.a. nylon), 3% elastane (generic for Spandex), and 1% cotton. They're sheer, with a sheer toe, of course. Completely indulgent purchase this would be. But if I had a kajillion dollars, I'd try them.
(Wolford Naked 8 Sheer Pantyhose, $30.00 at bare necessities)

These are more in my price range. I like the silky shiny ones, but they wear out at the drop of a shoe. These are -- get ready for this uber-long name -- Berkshire Silky Control Top Extra Wear Sheer Lycra Leg Hosiery. The color is French Coffee.
(These range in price depending on the color, but this one is $5.21 per pair through Amazon. Not bad.)

All right, that's enough of my pipe-dream hosiery shopping. You're just lucky I didn't start looking at tights!

Oh, I almost forgot: if you have tried any of those techniques that are new to me, tell us in the comments how well they work (or maybe don't work) for you.

Sources
eHow, How to Make Pantyhose Last Longer, October 11, 2011
Dollar Stretcher, Pantyhose Budget Buster
The Thrifty Couple, Daily Dose of Thrifty: Make Your Nylons and Pantyhose Last Longer
Chrissy Stewart, Wryte Stuff, How to Make Your Pantyhose and Stockings Last Longer, September 17, 2008
Snopes, Storing batteries in a refrigerator or freezer will improve their performance (that's false, by the way. They also investigated freezing pantyhose and refrigerating nail polish. Their jury is still out on the latter two.)
Ask Metafilter, Replacement for Hanes Resilience nylons?
Democratic Underground, Does freezing pantyhose really make them last longer? March 23, 2006

Apple #550: Alfred Nobel and His Prizes

2011-10-10T00:27:00.005-04:00

All this week, they've been announcing the Nobel prize-winners. Canadian physician Ralph Steinman was announced to have won, along with two others, the prize in medicine for his development of a new treatment for cancer. Unfortunately, the prize committee learned, he had died of pancreatic cancer three days previously.

If that weren't ironic enough, the Nobel Prize has a rule that no prize may be awarded posthumously. He and his children had even had a conversation about this:

"We were like 'OK Dad, I know things aren't going well, but the Nobel, they are going to announce it next Monday'. And he's like: 'I know, I have got to hold out for that. They don't give it to you if you have passed away. I got to hold out for that.'"
--Alexis Steinman, Ralph's daughter

But he wasn't able to hold out that long.

Ralph Steinman, 2011 Nobel Prize-winner in Physiology or Medicine
(Photo from Curious Cat)

However, the committee has another rule which says that if the recipient dies in between the time that the committee decides on a recipient and when the award is given, then that person is still the award-winner. So Steinman will still appear on a list of award-winners, and his children will be given the big-money prize.

This whole no-posthumous-awards struck me as unusual. Then the contingency plan seemed even more odd and specific. I wondered if there were other odd rules associated with the Nobel Prize. I also wanted to know about the money. I have the impression that they give out a pretty big sum of money. That must come from some pretty big pool of money. Who provides the funds for that?

So I started reading. Turns out, a lot of things about the Nobel Prize are pretty odd. The whole thing came about because some guy -- Alfred Nobel -- willed it into being. Literally, he put it into his will. Everybody has to abide by what his will says. So the oddities about the Prize owe first of all to the fact that this was the brainchild of one person whose interests and particularities were as unique and individual as any one of us.

You can see how various features of the Prize reflect who he was and what he did.

Young Alfred Nobel
(Photo from Nobelprize.org)

The Nobel Prize is awarded for excellence in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace. Why those three science disciplines, plus literature and peace?

Alfred Nobel was educated by private tutors in the natural sciences as well as literature and languages.

During what were essentially his college years, he went abroad to study chemical engineering. His knowledge of chemistry turned out to be crucial to his experiments with nitroglycerine and his invention of dynamite.

His early jobs involved building military equipment for the Russian army and designing steam engines -- both of which require a solid knowledge of physics.

Alfred Nobel in his laboratory
(This painting is all over the place. Here, sourced from the Daily News)

As for the medicine piece, he was always sort of sickly, even when he was young. He suffered from indigestion, headaches, and bouts of depression. He sought relief at many European spas, but to little avail.

"Sickly, probably hypochondriac, he had his whole life been visiting spas and specialists to cure sore muscles, sudden fainting, nose bleeds, rheumatism, migraine, insomnia, cold sores, bad stomach, and heart problems. He disappears for days, weeks and returns with sunglasses and bandaged head."
--Karlsson on Nobel, from Svenska Uppfinnare

His experiments with nitroglycerine may have been a contributing factor to his headaches. But later in life when he developed heart trouble, it had been discovered that nitroglycerine could be helpful in treating angina pectoris. So he wound up taking nitroglycerine for his health.

He also maintained an interest in other chemicals that might be useful for anesthesia and conducted various tests in his laboratory to that purpose.

He might have been appreciative of the doctors who provided some easing of his symptoms, and hoped for medicine to be able to do more for others in the future.

As for the literature piece, he wrote poetry and plays for several years. Early in his career as a chemical engineer, he toyed with the idea of ditching engineering in favor of writing poetry for a living. He was fluent in Swedish, Russian, French, English and German by the age of 17, and throughout his life he read extensively. Friends commented on his "well-stocked library, capable of satisfying the most divergent wishes." At his death, his library housed over 1500 volumes.

Wait. The guy who made the Peace Prize invented dynamite?

Yes, Nobel invented dynamite. He also invented the blasting cap, which made it possible to light dynamite with a fuse. He founded a number of companies which manufactured and sold dynamite all across Europe. It is probably the extensive sale of dynamite which formed the monetary foundation of the Prize's existence.

Bit of a contradiction there, eh? But wait, there's more.

In the course of his experiments with nitroglycerine and dynamite, an explosion killed his brother. So he knew how deadly dynamite could be. Yet he kept working with it and, once he'd invented dynamite, manufactured and sold it widely.

An explosion courtesy of dynamite. Here, it's used for construction purposes. Dynamite was and still is used to blow open the sides of mountains to make a way for roads to tunnel through.
(Photo from History of Science 2009)

Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying that Nobel must have established the Peace Prize as a way to atone for the damage he made possible when he invented dynamite. But in fact, Nobel's letters and journals suggest otherwise.

Nobel thought that dynamite was so powerful and explosive, it surely must lead to the eradication of war. As he put it in 1891,

"Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will surely recoil with horror and disband their troops."

This was a couple of decades before World War I, so he didn't see that no troops disbanded despite horrors greater than he ever imagined. This was also the same argument behind nuclear weapons. We've seen how well that argument works.

But back in his day, Nobel regarded dynamite as a deterrent to war. Though he made a boatload of money from the stuff, he apparently wished that war would not happen. As he wrote in a letter, "Good wishes alone will not ensure peace."

That letter was written to a friend of his, Bertha von Sutter, who was an Austrian countess and a devoted peace activist. She wrote an anti-war novel called Lay Down Your Arms which was widely read and regarded. She and Nobel conducted a lengthy correspondence, and it is thought that her ideas influenced Nobel.

After having met her, he became a member of the Austrian Peace Association and donated funds to it. So he did take some action during his lifetime in support of pacifism.

All that said, the exact rationale behind his establishment of the Peace Prize is not really known.

Bertha von Sutter, peace activist and friend of Alfred Nobel. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905.
(Photo from Skandinav i Florida)

If the Prizes were established by one guy, how come they're awarded by different groups of people from different countries?

The short answer is because that's what he said he wanted in his will.

His will, which is surprisingly short given all that it put in motion, said the prizes would be determined as follows:

Physics and Chemistry each to be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences
Physiology or Medicine to be awarded by the Karolinska Institutet in Stokholm, Sweden
Literature to be awarded by the Swedish Academy
Peace to be awarded by a committee of five people elected by the Norwegian Storting (a.k.a. Parliament)

What's interesting about this, first of all, is that Nobel spent the majority of his life in France and Italy. Paris was the city he loved best. He grew up in Russia. But he was born in Sweden, and after the family fell on hard times in Russia, they returned to Sweden. It was Sweden that Alfred chose as the seat from which his Prizes should be determined.

But if he's from Sweden, how come the Norwegian Parliament handles the Peace Prize?

That's because when Nobel wrote his will in 1895, the two countries were ruled as one, by a single monarch. In 1905, Norway became a separate kingdom.

The Norwegian Storting in 1905 when it voted to separate itself from Sweden.
(Photo from Wikipedia)

Still, Nobel could have chosen to give the task to some Swedish governing body.

There is a lot of speculation about why he chosen the Norwegian Parliament, the chief possibility being that the Storting was the first legislative body to vote in favor of the international peace movement.

But that's only speculation. Again, no one knows for sure why he put Norway in charge of this piece of the prize.

Exactly how much money does a Nobel winner receive?

His will doesn't stipulate a specific amount. It did say that whatever was left over after various family members and servants received relatively modest amounts should go to the prize.

That worked out to over 31 million Swedish kronor (SEK). In today's dollars, that's $249 million.

What Swedish kronor, or crowns, look like
(Image from Visit Sweden)

But the money Nobel left to the Prizes was also supposed to be invested in order to continue funding the prize. So the amount available would change from one year to the next. How much should the Prize winners be awarded going forward?

That amount was settled on by the Nobel Foundation, which was formed in order to figure out the particulars of how the will should be executed. It's sort of like after Congress makes a law, a whole lot of regulations get written after the fact to govern the details. The statutes that were written by the Foundation are what deal with the particulars of the money and pretty much everything else.

As to the amount of money awarded, the statutes say, "the amount of a prize thus awarded shall under no circumstances be less than sixty percent of that portion of the annual yield of the fund that shall be available for the prize award."

You can see the complete table of award amounts given each year and what that translates to in 2010 SEK. But I'll give you some of the highlights.

In 1901, the first year when Prizes were awarded, the amount awarded to each laureate was SEK 150,782. That's roughly $1.2 million in 2010 dollars.

The lowest amount awarded was in 1923: SEK 114,935.

In 1963 they apparently decided to give out round numbers. That year, each prize winner received SEK 265,000 (2010 $394,022. Apparently 1963 SEK were worth much less than 1901 SEK).

In 2001, the prize amount was increased to SEK 10 million. That was the year that SEK were at their most valuable; the prize money awarded converts to 2010 $1.7 million.

The award currently remains SEK 10 million.

Which means they need to have 6 x SEK 10 million (why 6 instead of 5, I'll get to in a moment) available to award. And if I understand the will and its statutes correctly, the SEK 60 million would be just the interest. And only 60% of it, at that.

That's a big pot of money they're drawing from. Which leads me to my next point:

Isn't there another prize for Economics?

Yes, there is. This one was established long after Alfred Nobel's will, in 1968.

It was set up by the Sveriges Riksbank, Sweden's national bank. The bank made a donation to the Nobel Foundation in celebration of the bank's 300th anniversary. That donation formed the basis of the first Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

The Nobel people don't say this, but I suspect that the Swedish national bank made gobs of money from handling that Foundation pool of cash. Their donation to establish the prize probably constituted a pretty minor amount compared to what the bank earned over the decades. I bet it was really a way of saying thank you for letting us handle all that money for so many years.

I don't know much about investing, but anybody who manages to hang onto $249 million for over 100 years, through two World Wars and a Great Depression and a global recession, and to make that amount increase substantially, I'd say they're doing a pretty good job.

This is what it looks like when they award you the Nobel Prize.
(Photo from eiffel.ps.uci.edu)

Don't the laureates get something else besides money?

Yes, they also each receive a diploma and a medal.

The diplomas are designed differently each year, and for each laureate. In recent years, they have had an artistically designed cover with the text of the diploma in hand-made calligraphy. I'd show you an example here but I can't because they're all copyrighted by the Nobel Foundation. But this diploma awarded to Gerardus 't Hooft for Physics in 1999 is a pretty cool-looking one.

The medals, on the other hand, have had the same design since 1902. The front of the medals all look the same.

The front of the medal bears Alfred Nobel in profile with his birth and death dates, NAT-MDCCC XXXIII OB-MDCCC XCVI, which means born 1833, died 1896.
(Photo from Nobelprize.org)

The medals awarded in Sweden have this inscription on the back: Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes ("Let us improve life through science and art" --Virgil, The Aeneid).

The back of the Peace medal reads: Pro pace et fraternitate gentium ("For the peace and fraternity of all nations"). The Economics medal has no quotation on the back.

Here are some other facts about Nobel's life that I think are must have been significant or that reveal more of that strange contradiction between dynamite manufacturer and peace activist.

The year Alfred was born, 1833, his father went bankrupt.

When Alfred was 20, two important things happened. Alfred had already founded his first company. But the Crimean War erupted, the Russian military canceled a bunch of orders, and Alfred's company went bankrupt.

That same year, Alfred's father Immanuel was presented at the Russian court where he was awarded Tsar Nikolai's Imperial Gold Medal "for diligence and creative skill in Russian industry."

The Crimean War hit Alfred's father hard, too. Six years after receiving his prestigious award, Immanuel went bankrupt -- for the second time.

In 1864 when Alfred was 31, his brother Emil and several other people were killed while trying to develop nitroglycerine into a workable explosive. The city of Stockholm where the explosion occurred forbade further nitroglycerine production within the city limits. Nobel moved his lab to a barge on a lake and continued working.

A plant of Alfred Nobel's at Krümmel in Germany blew up, twice. Both times it was rebuilt larger than before. The ground around the plant was rich in diatomaceous earth, which turned out to be a key component in stabilizing nitroglycerine in the more controllable form of dynamite.

Alfred Nobel. A riddle wrapped in an enigma
(Photo from the History of Economic Thought)

You say I am a riddle – it may be
For all of us are riddles unexplained.
Begun in pain, in deeper torture ended,
This breathing clay what business has it here?
Some petty wants to chain us to the Earth,
Some lofty thoughts to lift us to the spheres,
And cheat us with that semblance of a soul
To dream of Immortality
--Alfred Nobel, age 18

One last thing: the Prizes are awarded on December 10, which is the anniversary of Alfred's death.

Sources
All my sources are from the Official site of the Nobel Prize
It's a huge site, with lots of information buried within links within links. Here are some of the pages I found most useful.
Timeline of Alfred Nobel's life
Alfred Nobel - His Life and Work
Alfred Nobel on War and Peace
Alfred Nobel and His Interest in Literature
Alfred Nobel - St. Petersburg
Short Facts about the Prizes
Nobel Prize Facts
Table of Nobel Prize Amounts
Full text of Alfred Nobel's Will
Statutes governing the Prizes
About the Nobel Foundation
Then there's also this: "Cancer kills Nobel physician before he hears of Prize," Reuters, October 3, 2011

Apple #548B: White Caterpillars, part II

2011-10-03T02:02:00.003-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an entry about some caterpillars I encountered in the woods. Since I do occasionally get things wrong, especially where plant and animal identification is concerned, I posted my photos along with my best guesses of what the caterpillars were and invited feedback.

I got no responses.

Nobody told me I had guessed right, but nobody said I'd got it wrong, either. So I'm going with my best guess.

Now allow me to officially introduce to you the caterpillar of the American dagger moth, and the caterpillar of the Hickory tussock moth, respectively.

American Dagger Moth

American dagger moth caterpillar
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

This is the caterpillar of the American dagger moth (Acronicta americana).

This caterpillar ranges in color from yellow to white.

All varieties have those dense fuzzy hairs (setae) all over the body and long spiky things (lashes) that stick up higher than the setae. On this caterpillar, the lashes are on segments 1, 3, and 8.

Most of the caterpillars that are very hairy or fuzzy-looking like this are in some way unpleasant or even painful to the touch. Touching the hairs (setae) of this one can give you a reaction from a minor irritation to an allergic rash.

These freddies live East of the Rockies, primarily in woodlands and forests, especially ones that are swampy.

They like to eat the leaves of deciduous trees of typical hardwoods like ash, elm, maple, oak, hickory, walnut, and willow

Caterpillars are out from June through October

They're in the cocoon during the winter.

In April, the moths come out and fly around until September.

The adult moths look far less exciting than their caterpillar, or larvae, version.

American dagger moth in its adult form
(Photo by Cindy Mead at Red Planet)

Now for white caterpillar number two.

Hickory Tussock Moth

Hickory tussock moth caterpillar
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

My best guess is that this is the caterpillar of the Hickory tussock moth. The reason I'm not 100% confident is that hickory tussock moth caterpillars have black or a mix of white and black lashes. This one has only white lashes.

But it does have the black bands across the top of its abdomen and the white fuzzy setae. So I'm going with Hickory tussock moth (Lophocampa caryae).

These are one of several types of tussock moths caterpillars. "Tussock" refers to the way the setae get clumped together in groups, or tussocks.

I find it interesting that the common name of the species refers to something distinctive about the caterpillar rather than the moth. I think that's because the caterpillars look way more exciting than the adult moths do.

Another type of tussock moth that you might be more familiar with is the gypsy moth.

Asian gypsy moth caterpillar -- another tussock moth caterpillar
(Photo from the Agricultural Experiment Station Archives at the Global Invasive Species Database)

Gypsy moths are native to Europe and Asia. They were introduced to the US in the 1860s and, without a natural predator, have been on a tear through our trees ever since.

In the Eastern part of the US alone, European gypsy moths (which have a shorter range than the Asian gypsy moths) defoliate an average of 4 million acres each year.

As a relative of the gypsy moth, the Hickory tussock moth can also defoliate entire trees, but they tend not to be quite as damaging in the long run.

This is probably because they're native to the states, so they have some natural predators: lizards, frogs, wasps, and some types of birds.

True to their name, the Hickory Tussock moth caterpillars like to feed on the leaves of hickory trees.

That's only in the south, though. In the north, they like to eat the leaves of beech and oak and other nut trees.

For reasons which entomologists can only guess, there are an especially high number of these out and about this year.

Caterpillars wander about in the fall, eating as much as they can and looking for a good spot to make their cocoon. The moths come out in July.

The adult hickory tussock moth. Doesn't look much like its caterpillar version, does it?
(Photo from What's That Bug?)

Some people have been passing around emails about VENOMOUS black and white caterpillars with all sorts of WARNINGS in the messages.

The caterpillars to which they're referring are these, the Hickory tussock moth caterpillars.

It's probably not as dire as those messages would have you believe, but it's true, touching one of these with your bare skin can be painful. That's because the hairs do contain a very small amount of venom. Most likely you'll get a stinging sensation and maybe you'll even develop a poison ivy-like rash.

Another view of the hickory tussock caterpillar. Noli me tangere!
(Photo from Old Dominion Wildlife)

It can be unpleasant enough, though, that entomologists say you don't even want to come in contact with the hairs that might have fallen off the caterpillar. They suggest wearing gloves while cleaning up dead leaves in your yard.

If you do get stung, wash thoroughly with soap and water to get rid of any lingering venom.

Spines might even get stuck in your skin. If that's the case, use a piece of Scotch tape to pull out some of the broken spines.

You may even want to use an ice pack because you may experience swelling.

If you're having allergic reactions that are especially severe, or if you've been stung in the eye, see a doctor immediately.

The caterpillar of another type of tussock moth, the White-Banded tussock moth. Crrrazy-looking, isn't it? This one is venomous, too.
(Photo from Henderson State University)

Related posts: White caterpillars, part I, Woolly Bear caterpillars

Sources
Bug Guide, Species Acronicta americana - American dagger moth
Paklinks, Science & Nature forum, Stinging Caterpillars: Cute, Fuzzy ... but Itchy
Diana Bowley, Entomologists: Beware of Hickory Tussock caterpillar, Bangor Daily News, August 30, 2011
USGS, Caterpillars of Eastern Forests, Hickory Tussock moth (Lophocampa caryae)
Global Invasive Species Database, Lymantia dispar (Asian gypsy moth)
Ask the Exterminator, Hickory Tussock Moth
Butterflies and Moths of North America, Lophocampa caryae

Apple #549: Losing Your Voice

2011-09-25T21:34:00.006-04:00

So I went to a really great concert this week. Whoo, that was good. I sang along with just about every song, and since so many people were there and the whole thing was generally loud and huge and a whole lot of fun, I was singing more loudly than I realized. When the concert was over, the lights came up and everyone was leaving and talking at more normal volume levels, and that's when I discovered that my voice was hoarse and cracking. The next morning when I woke up, I tried to speak but no sound came out except a whisper.

That lasted only a couple of hours. But I'm a bit proud of this, I have to say. That's the first time I ever lost my voice because I was so into a concert, I was singing and yelling and whooping like mad.

Dave swears a lot in this. That's the way he is.

But of course I had to know more about losing your voice.

The medical term for losing your voice is laryngitis.

I had always thought of laryngitis as something official and medically serious that happened in connection with some sort of illness. Duh me. It's far more general than that. Any time you lose your voice, regardless of the reason, it's laryngitis.

You lose your voice because the vocal cords in your voice box, or larynx, become inflamed. The word "laryngitis" literally means "larynx, swollen."

As this diagram shows, your larynx is at the top of your trachea, or wind pipe. It's not connected up with your esophagus but sits next to it.
(Image from HowsHealth)

From the top down, the larynx looks rather like a vagina. So you may be rather startled by these images, but relax. It's just the larynx.

This is the best image I found of what laryngitis looks like compared to vocal cords that are healthy. The vocal cords turn red and swell up.
(Diagram from emedicinehealth)

Here's a video that shows how the larynx and vocal cords works, and what happens to them when you get laryngitis. (I'd embed it here but that's not allowed.)

Of course after I looked at pictures of laryngitis and watched that video, I wanted to know more about how the larynx / vocal cords work in general. So I've got a couple visuals for you as part of that detour.

This seems counter-intuitive to me, but when the vocal cords are open, that means you're breathing and not making any sound through your trachea. When they're closed, that means you're talking or singing.
(Diagram from vocal clinic)

Finally, because I'm fascinated by the whole vocal cord (or vocal fold) thing in general, here's a video of a woman's larynx in action as she breathes and then sings. There's a spot in the middle where all the action stops, but after that, you can see what her vocal folds like like as she sings the National Anthem. It's pretty amazing that such sound comes out from such a little thing.

Okay. Now back to the more specific topic of laryngitis.

By the way, you don't have to lose your voice entirely to have laryngitis. Hoarseness alone can be an indicator of laryngitis.

All kinds of things can cause you to lose your voice:

Overusing your voice, like I did
Cold or flu (this is the most common cause)
Acid reflux
Irritation from smoke or other harsh fumes, or due to allergies

By the way, I think someone ought to study Dave Grohl's larynx. He screams like a madman for hours, night after night, and he seems to be completely unaffected.

For most people in most situations, the swelling in the larynx subsides after a few days.

If the laryngitis lasts longer than two weeks, then it's time to go see the doctor. You may have a viral or a bacterial infection, or some other situation going on that requires further treatment.

But if you've lost your voice for relatively minor reasons and you're about as irritated by it as the vocal cords are themselves, here are some tips.

What Not to Do

Losing your voice is common enough that a there a lot of suggestions out there for home remedies. Many of them don't do anything or they may even make the situation worse.

Lemon -- People often recommend drinking hot tea with lemon, or warm water with lemon, or sucking on lemon lozenges. Lemon is an acid. Acids irritate things, including vocal cords. Acids also contribute to acid reflux, which is the most common cause of chronic laryngitis. If you've lost your voice, avoid lemons and lemon juice.

Hot tea -- This is another acid. Even the much-lauded green tea. Not a good idea for an inflamed larynx.

Acids in general -- Lots of foods out there are acidic, and it's a good idea to avoid these if you've lost your voice. Some other acids to avoid are any citrus fruits, tomatoes, and -- sob -- chocolate.

Hot toddies -- for those of you younger than 109, a toddy is a warm alcoholic beverage. Some people recommend warm whiskey with lemon (as to the lemon, see above), or warm brandy or rum for laryngitis. Alcohol is a desiccant. That means it will dehydrate you. Anything inflamed will get worse if you take the moisture away. So alcohol is the opposite of what your inflamed larynx wants.

Whispering -- Since you can't speak in your normal way, you may be tempted to whisper. But whispering actually puts extra stress on the vocal cords. You're effectively constricting the vocal folds, holding them back out of the way while allowing sound to pass through them. This keeps them from rubbing together, and it dries them out. As we know, dry vocal folds are unhappy vocal folds. So whispering may actually make your vocal cords take longer to heal.

Clearing your throat -- Like whispering, clearing your throat puts added stress and vibration on your already inflamed, sore vocal cords. You may be tempted to do it as a way to make the hoarseness go away. But it will only hurt, not help.

What Makes No Difference

Slippery elm -- this is one of those botanicals that people have recommended for years to treat sore throats or laryngitis. It's essentially gooey, and people think the gooiness helps coat and soothe the throat. But there is so far no scientific evidence that shows this helps at all. There's no evidence that shows it hurts, either. So it's a placebo.

What Does Help

Drink lots of water -- yes, I know, you hear this so often it's boring. But it's true. Good old water is plain good for you. Inflammation is often caused by or characterized by not enough moisture. So an inflamed larynx will be helped and soothed the most by giving it all the nice, soothing, life-giving moisture you can: water. As an added bonus, if there's anything floating around in there like smoke or bacteria or some other irritant, the water will help flush that out.

Use a humidifier -- a humidifier or a vaporizer are other good ways of getting more of that soothing, life-restoring moisture to the larynx. If your laryngitis is due to a cold, the extra humidity will help break up the stuffiness in your sinuses.

Stop smoking -- you need to do this anyway for all sorts of reasons. You'll also want to avoid second-hand smoke too.

Don't speak -- your vocal cords are tired. They've been overstrained, or overloaded by some external badness like a cold or an allergen or smoke. They need to rest. Don't speak. Let them sleep.

Take Helen's advice.

Sources
WebMD, Laryngitis
Mayo Clinic, Laryngitis
ABC News Cold and Flu Coverage, Losing Your Voice: 5 Myths for Remedies
Vox Daily, Vox Health: The Dangers of Whispering for Your Voice
Anahad O'Connor, The Claim: Whispering Can Be Hazardous to Your Voice, The New York Times, February 7, 2011

Apple #548A: White Caterpillars, part I

2011-09-19T00:40:00.009-04:00

I'm terrible at plant and animal identification. When I manage to find a description that comes close to fitting the plant or animal in question, there are nearly always one or two features that differ slightly from the description. Does this mean the description I've found is for a different species entirely, or does this mean I'm looking at a lesser-known variant?

Recently, I came across two very fuzzy white caterpillars. I took pictures of them, thinking I would identify them later. But of course that's a more difficult task than I expected.

One of the caterpillars I'm reasonably sure I've identified correctly. I'm pretty sure this is the caterpillar of the American dagger moth (Acronicta americana).

American dagger moth caterpillar, I think. I almost stepped on this one.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

This freddy can be yellow or white, but most of the pictures online are of the yellow version. So that was one thing that gave me trouble.

It also looks a whole lot like another kind of caterpillar, which I'll get to in a moment. First, some terminology.

The dense fuzzy hairs on the caterpillar are called setae. The caterpillar pictured above has white setae.

The long spiky things that stick up farther than the setae are called lashes. This particular caterpillar has black lashes. One of the tools of identification that entomologists uses is to note on which abdominal segment the lashes appear. In this case, the black lashes are on segments 1 and 3 and 8. The lashes on segments 1 and 3 are paired, but there is only a single black lash on the 8th segment.

These details about the color of the setae and the lashes and the placement of the lashes all match up with descriptions of the American dagger moth, so that's why I'm pretty confident I've got the right name for this dude. Or dudette, as the case may be.

The other one has me stumped.

Hickory tussock moth -- but a variant with white lashes?
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

When I was searching on phrases like "white fuzzy caterpillar black spikes" to identify the previous caterpillar, I kept getting hits for the Hickory tussock moth (Lophocampa caryae). But the one above doesn't have black bands on its abdomen, so I ruled out this species for that caterpillar.

This freddy, however, does have those black bands or spots on its abdomen. It also has thick white setae like the Hickory tussock moth does. It has lashes on what look like maybe the first and seventh segments. But the Hickory tussock moth's lashes are black. This dude's lashes are white.

I can't find a description of any species of caterpillar that has white setae, black spots, and white lashes. So I'm very tempted to say it's a variant version of the Hickory tussock moth caterpillar.

For sure a Hickory tussock moth caterpillar.
(Photo by Brookhaven National Lab)

I've got a couple other tricks up my sleeve to try to identify this freddy. But in the meantime, I thought I'd call on the power of the internet. Does anyone out there know for sure what species of moth caterpillar this is?

Once I've got them both identified with a fairly strong level of certainty, I'll tell you some facts about the life and times of these caterpillars. Here's a teaser: if my identifications are correct, these dudes have some caterpillar-sized amounts of venom in those lashes. So if you touch them, you'll feel a sting like from a mosquito bite or you may get an itchy rash like from poison ivy.

Good thing I didn't actually step on that first one, eh?

Here's the follow-up entry

Apple #547: Cotton Balls

2011-09-12T01:52:00.004-04:00

I've lately taken to polishing my toenails. When I want to change the polish color, I rely heavily on our good friend, the cotton ball. A fairly genius little invention.

Cotton balls are so soft and fluffy and nice.
(Photo from Just for Life)

Cotton balls are uniquely good at absorbing liquids. They're used in medicine to treat wounds as well as in cosmetics for applying make-up and other liquids.

Some cotton balls are not actually made of 100% cotton but are made of synthetic fibers in part or entirely. Those cotton ball pretenders won't absorb whatever liquid you want to put on it nearly as well as 100% cotton. Other types of fibers will also tear and break apart much more quickly.

One bale of cotton can make 680,000 cotton balls.

You can use cotton balls as miniature air fresheners. Just plain cotton balls in the refrigerator has the same smell-absorbing effect as baking soda. And if you have small spots of mildew in your bathroom, soak a cotton ball or two in bleach, wedge the cotton ball against the mildew spot, and let it sit there for a few hours. When you come back, the mildew will be gone.

If you're having trouble starting a fire, soak a cotton ball in melted Vaseline (or any petroleum jelly). The petroleum jelly acts like an accelerant and the cotton ball acts like a super-packed wick. The fire will last a pretty long time, people say.

That looks like someone dropped their marshmallow into the fire, but no, that's a cotton ball soaked in Vaseline, used to start the fire.
(Photo from Off Grid Survival)

Despite all their fluffiness and niceness, there is a phobia of cotton balls. It's not very common, but some people do have it. They cannot bear to touch cotton balls. Something about the texture of them, or the sound when they're being ripped apart, gives people the shivers to such an extent, they won't go near them.

This phobia is known as Sidonglobophobia or Bambakophobia. It sounds like I'm making this up, especially after that one entry I did about the fear of being watched by a duck (which is a made-up phobia). But this one is for real. Apparently Michael Jackson is one of the few people who had it.

Here's more cotton ball weirdness: there is a diet that involves eating cotton balls. It's an insane diet because it can cause major digestive problems, to say the least. But people have done it. The idea is to eat cotton balls before your meal so that the fiber in the cotton makes you feel full and you eat less. Some people soak the cotton balls in something like orange juice to make them palatable at least. But this only makes me sigh. There are no shortcuts, people. Not even via cotton balls.

Yes, it's true, Marlon Brando put cotton balls in his cheeks when he played the Godfather.

Cotton balls played a crucial role in this scene.
(Photo from Celebrity Picnic)

Peter Sellers spoofed this to great effect in Revenge of the Pink Panther. As a master of disguises, you kneauw, he disguised himself as a rotund exaggerated version of the Godfather, complete with cotton balls in his cheeks. Except he started choking on them in front of the bad guys. When one of them clapped him on the back, the cotton balls flew out of his mouth.

Artist Zimoun created an art installation featuring 138 cotton balls. He put each one on in its own cardboard box, attached each to a motorized stick, and rolled them back and forth over the cardboard, and recorded the sound. It's surprisingly loud.

You can make tons of crafty things yourself out of cotton balls. Here is a sheep made out of cotton balls and a toilet paper tube.

Instructions for making this cotton ball sheep and all sorts of other cotton ball crafts at Artists Helping Children.

Here's another picture of cotton balls because I just couldn't resist. They're so round and soft and friendly. I definitely do not have Sidonglobophobia.
(Photo from Daily Glow)

Sources
Cotton Catchment Communities, Cotton Fun Facts
Cotton Incorporated, Personal Products: What Are They Made Of?
Fear and Phobias.uk, Phobia and Fear of Cotton Balls
Phobia Fear Release, Comments for Fear of Touching Cotton Balls
Clean Your Home, Cotton Balls Cleaning Secrets
ScoutmasterCG.com, Vaseline and Cotton Fire Ball starter
Neatorama, 10 Craziest Diets in History
Everyday Health, Outrageous Diet Fads
Flixster, Marlon Brando Best Movies and Characters

Apple #546: Piggy Banks

2011-09-09T18:19:00.004-04:00

I was in Target the other day and I saw a whole shelf of piggy banks on sale. I wondered, why do we put our money in pigs? Is it because money is associated with greed, which is in turn associated with gluttony, and our best representative of gluttony is the pig?

Time for the Apple Lady to find out.

Piggy banks on sale at Target
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

One site I found suggested that, just as farmers feed piglets all sorts of scraps until they are ready for slaughter, which in turns give the farmer a lot of food, so too we feed our little banks with scraps of money (change) until that builds into a great big nest egg.

I've mixed my metaphorical farm animals. But you understand my point.

That's a nice little story, but most sources agree, the reason we put our money into ceramic pigs has nothing to do with the animal itself. It is, in fact, another instance of etymology at work. (That's word origins, not bugs.)

Long, long ago, back in the Middle Ages when the English that people spoke was very different from the English that we speak today, people made pots and jars and various pottery items from a particular orange clay. Their word for that clay was "pygg."

I post this image with a high degree of skepticism. There is no information about this image apart from the caption you can see on the photo. It was posted on Photobucket by Imaginary Rofler, which sounds like the name of someone into playing practical jokes. But we can at least say this is someone's approximation of what a pygg jar might have looked like once upon a time. Though probably in real life, pygg jars didn't quite look like this. The piggy bank on the right does seem to have come from the National Museum of Indonesia, though.

It's thought, by the way, that at that time, the y sound was pronounced like a short u, so that word probably sounded more like "pug."

At some point or other, some enterprising person dedicated one of their pygg-clay jars to be a receptacle for coins.

Pretty soon, everybody was doing it. Putting their change willy-nilly into their pygg jars, saving money all over the place. Dang kids.

Over the centuries, the way people spoke their English changed a lot. But that habit of tossing spare change into a jar did not go away. Thus, though people still kept tossing their spare change into the same receptacle, they started to change the way they pronounced said receptacle. Instead of pronouncing it like pug, pretty soon they were pronouncing it like pig.

Eventually, they also changed the way they spelled the word. They cahnged the y to an i and dropped the extra g. I'm also thinking that the phrase "piggy jar" was easier to say than "pig jar." And that -ggy ending looks more like the original "pygg" spelling, too.

The word "bank" showed up around the same time that "pygg" did. The word did mean a financial institution, but that meaning was a bit more open-air, if you will. It literally referred to a money-lender's table.

It wasn't until around the 1700s that the word "bank" became a verb. So this is just a guess, but I'm thinking that it was probably around the same time that people switched from calling their spare-change jars "pygg jars" to "piggy banks."

When piggy banks began to be manufactured on a wider scale, initially there was no hole in the bottom where you could retrieve your cash. If you wanted to get anything back out of the pig, you had to break the thing open.

Uh-oh. Someone raided the piggy bank.
(Photo from Boston Catholic Insider)

For a while, piggy banks were pretty much ubiquitous. But people are saying that these days, they're a dying breed, as children are given savings accounts rather than ceramic toys as a place to keep their money, and as inflation has chipped away at the buying power of loose change.

For those of you looking for a whimisical or decorative spare-change jar, here are a few piggy bank options for you:

This is a nice friendly-looking piggy bank.
(Photo from Wikipedia)

Piggy bank from South Africa, with polka-dots.
(Photo from topnotch car rental)

This one looks like it might be made out of wood.
(Photo from Tom in Philly at BartCopE)

These are piggy banks made out of clay with no opening on the bottom, but they're made in the present day. You can buy one for $20. Which I think is kind of funny.
(Photo and banks available from Posie Row)

Sitting-up sailor-like piggy bank, available from Piggy Banks of America. They boast that they have the widest selection of piggy banks in the world, they allow you to choose whether you want a hole with a stopper in the bottom or not, but they don't say how much their piggy banks cost.
(Photo from Piggy Banks of America)

I also find it funny that these piggy banks were marked down.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Sources
The Straight Dope, What's the Origin of the Piggy Bank?
Consumer Watch, Insider Reports, Piggy Banks - A Short History
The Corner Stork, The History of the Piggy Bank
About.com, Inventors, Piggy Bank
The Great Idea Finder, Did you ever wonder why it's called a piggy bank?
Piggy Bank World, History of the Piggy Bank
Online Etymology Dictionary, bank

Apple #545: Pansies

2011-09-02T14:21:00.008-04:00

You thought I'd forgotten all about my Shakespeare-themed posts, didn't you? Not so! I have another one for you.

I have some greeting cards that I bought a long time ago. They illustrate lines from Shakespeare plays.

This card is my favorite. I like the colors, and how she's peeking out from behind that fan.

The line on the card above is taken from The Winter's Tale. Perdita is saying she wishes she had some flowers to make "like a bank for love to lie on and play on." She wishes she had these flowers:

daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, — a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and
The crown-imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one. — O, these I lack,
To make you garlands

This card isn't bad, though the dress made of daisies isn't very flattering.

The line on this card and the next both come from Hamlet, specifically, the scene when Ophelia has gone around the bend and is handing out flowers to people.

Of course, as in all of Shakespeare's plays, anybody who is going mad or is a fool or is otherwise speaking gibberish is actually saying intelligent or secretly wise things. So it is with Ophelia; her lunatic ramblings in fact make sense.

This card may be my least favorite. The pansy-cap on her head and the way she's leaning on her hand makes it look like she's wearing an ice pack and has a headache. It's always seemed to me that sending this card would be like wishing a cold or a flu or a hangover on someone, so I don't think I've ever sent one of these.

Even though I'm not a fan of the illustration on the card about pansies, I'm taking pansies as my subject today. Because I happen to remember from the etymology class (that's word origins, not bugs) which I took long ago in college that pansy comes from the French pensee, which in turn goes back to the Latin penseo which means "to think."

So Ophelia is etymologically correct when she says, "There's pansies, that's for thoughts."

So what are a few other things to know about pansies?

Pansies are sometimes considered a type of violet. They're in the genus viola, and some people do call pansies violas. But violas are also a type of flower, and they're slightly different than pansies.

Pansies like cool temperatures. They do best in early spring or in fall. So now is a perfect time to be talking about them!

Pansy blossoms have one of the widest color ranges of any annual. They can be anywhere on the spectrum from deep reds and purples to pale apricot and lavender to white.

A bevy of pansies, in all sorts of colors.
(Photo from Carlene Reinhart)

The blooms take one of three patterns.

They can be a plain color, nothing in the center. Sometimes these are referred to as "clear" pansies.
(Photo from The Gardening Experts)

The second type of pansy has black lines radiating out from the center. This one in particular is the Cheeky-faced Blue Pansy.
(Photo from mooseyscountrygarden.com)

The third and probably the best-known type has a shape in the center that resembles a face.
(Photo from Fairway Lawns Blog)

It's said that the shape in the center resembling a face is the reason the flower was named after thoughts. That, plus the fact that when the wind blows, the flowers nod, so it looks like they're actively thinking.

I have to say, I don't really see a face. If anything, they look to me like stick-figure bodies with their heads squashed down where their necks should be. But centuries of people have said they look like faces so, okay, faces it is!

Some people saw the pansy blossom as being heart-shaped. So they thought it would be good for curing broken hearts, and the flower was used as an ingredient in love potions.

Pansies are used as love potions in another of Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was pansy juice that Oberon and Puck put on various people's eyes to make them fall in love with the first creature they saw. In Titania's case, she fell in love with an ass.

Titania Sleeps, by Frank Cowper, 1928. That might be a pansy next to her head, or maybe it's a rose, hard to tell.
(Image from Art Decoblog)

Pansy flowers are, by the way, edible. So no worries about those love potions being poisonous.

Still others thought the three major petals was reminiscent of the Holy Trinity, so these folks sometimes referred to the flower as herb trinity.

The flower has had all sorts of other common names:

Johnny jump-ups
Monkey faces
Peeping Toms
Three faces in a hood
Tickle-my-fancy
Kiss-her-in-the-pantry
Heartsease

One German legend says that pansies used to have a tremendous fragrance. Their scent was so beguiling, people came from miles around to smell it. In doing so, they trampled all the grass around it, which the nearby cattle needed for food. The pansies saw how the cows were suffering, so they prayed to God to help the cows. So God took away the pansies' fragrance and gave them beautiful faces instead.

I could see thinking a that red pansy like this might be the source of a love potion.
(Photo from Baer Home Design)

"Pansy" is also derogatory slang for an effeminate homosexual man, or a weak person.

A, insults are never nice. B, I tried to find out why this flower, of all flowers, got chosen for this meaning. No luck. The most I could discover was that the slang meaning's first recorded use was in 1929.

In an ironic contrast, J.K. Rowling named one of her toughest, meanest female characters Pansy Parkinson.

A deep purple Bingo pansy. No wimpiness here.
(Photo and seeds available from Thompson & Morgan)

Caring for the Flowers

Pansies like the cold so much, there is even one variety called the icicle pansy that doesn't mind the snow.

Though they like the air to be cool, pansies love the sun. They won't do well in the shade.

Pansies do actually have a fragrance, although it's often so delicate, it's hard to detect. The fragrance will be most noticeable at dawn or dusk.

If your pansies have bloomed in the spring, and if you've been able to keep them protected from the heat, when it gets cool in the fall, they might bloom again.

They're annuals, but they don't come back as vibrantly in subsequent years, so most people change the plants each year.

Don't plant pansies in the same bed for more than three years in a row.

I think these look really cool. They're called Jolly Jokers. They're hybrids and they won all sorts of awards in 1990.
(Photo and seeds available from greenfingers.com)

In the 1880s, pansies were described as "the most popular of all flowers grown from seed."

But because pansies are so particular about temperature, they can be tricky to start from seed. So if you want to plant them, you'll have the best luck if you choose plants that are already growing.

They like to be watered regularly and fed fertilizer monthly.

If the plants are "leggy," or they have lots of stems, they're getting too much shade.

If the edges of the leaves turn brown, they've probably had too much water.

Slugs and aphids like pansies, too, so be on the look-out for those.

Georgia O'Keeffe's black pansy.
(Image posted by Bob Swain on Picasaweb)

Lots of variety from a little flower.

About the cards:
The label on the back of the box says they're Caspari Note Cards, Flowers from Shakespeare's Garden. But I checked and I couldn't find anybody who sells these exact cards. I'm not surprised; I bought them a long time ago. But here is Caspari's web page where they sell other note cards. Those are more contemporary than the ones I've posted here. Alternatively, Amazon sells a few other Caspari note cards that are more similar in style to mine.

Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary, pansy
Nancy O'Donnell, Pretty pansies, the world's favorite, have a long history, Albany Times Union, April 20, 2005
Texas A&M AgriLIFE Extension, Pansy
West Virginia University Extension Service, Pansies
Marie Iannotti, About.com, Pansies - Growing a Cool Weather Favorite
Flower for You, Pansy
Angelfire, Meanings & Legends of Flowers, P

Apple #544: Cummerbunds

2011-08-28T23:58:00.003-04:00

Simply put, what the heck are cummerbunds for? I know a lot of men find them annoying and pretty useless.

(And yes, that's spelled correctly. A lot of people pronounce the word "cumberbund," but that's incorrect. The word is "cummerbund.")

Cummerbund, front and back
(Photo from fashionmanifesto)

Cast your mind back to the days when the British were in control of India. This would be in the 1850s. Back home, it's the heyday of Victorian England. Lots of stuffiness, etiquette, and above all, lots of clothing.

In India, however, it's freakin' hot. Formal dinnerwear that one would normally wear back home in England is black-tie dress: double-breasted jacket, black tie, waistcoat (a.k.a. vest), trousers -- all that is simply way too much clothing to wear in India.

So the British officers hit upon an alternate solution. They noticed that Indian men wore a sort of sash thing around their waists when they dressed formally, and they looked quite dashing when they did so. The British men imitated them and substituted the sash for the waistcoat.

British officer in India wearing the sash typically worn by Indian men.
(Photo from The Ohio State University Press)

The Indian sash was called, in Persian, a "kamarband." Kamar means "waist," and band means "to enclose." So it's a garment that encloses or wraps around the waist.

Side note: in India today, a "kamarband" (or kamarbandh or tagdi) refers more commonly to a jeweled belt that Indian women wear to their wedding or some other formal occasion.

This woman is wearing her kamarband above her waist. She's also wearing a kamarband saree, which has a decorative border at the top of the part that wraps around her waist.
(Photo from ras_kattaria on Photobucket)

All right, back to India in the 1850s.

Not only did the British officers start wearing the kamarbands, they also took to wearing them with a great many folds, or pleats in it. The pleats were worn facing up; that is, so that the open part of the pleats faced upward.

Wearing the pleats facing upward turned the sash into a kind of utilitarian version of the waistcoat. The waistcoat often came equipped with pockets. The sash had none. But worn folded into many pleats, the sash suddenly became a useful receptacle for ticket stubs, receipts, and other little necessaries.

This is pretty terrible -- heads of cotton depicted on both the necktie and the cummerbund -- but at least the cummerbund is shown with the pleats up. I had a lot of trouble finding a photo with the pleats up, so apparently people are wearing them pleats down these days. But traditionally, cummerbunds were worn pleats up.
(Photo from Southern Proper)

Some people have since noted that the pleats facing upward have the added benefit of catching any stray crumbs that may fall while you're eating your oh-so-fancy and delectable dinner. But that was not the original intent.

Finally, the sash could be tightened in such a way as to act as a male corset, tightening that wine-assisted waistline.

Now, today's cummerbunds probably don't do a whole lot to contribute to a slimming appearance. Some men wear colorful or flashy cummerbunds, but drawing attention to a body part typically makes it look larger.

The classical approach to wearing cummerbunds is as follows:

If at all possible, the cummerbund should be made of silk. Makes a difference over polyester, appearance-wise. It also won't be as hot.

In terms of colors, the cummerbund should not match the tie.

For black-tie formal-wear, the cummerbund should be in one of the classic colors: black, midnight blue, maroon, or red.

So for black tie formalwear, your trousers will be black and your tie will be black too. If your cummerbund isn't supposed to match the tie, then it had better be some other color than black. So thank goodness for the options of midnight blue, maroon, or red. But wouldn't those other colors draw attention to ye olde waistline?

Here, the cummerbund and bow tie match, but the cummerbund is wine-colored, close to the originally recommended darker colors for cummerbunds. You still notice the color, but it's not so garish it pokes your eyes out (see below).
(Photo from Jbellendir.com)

If it's summer time and your jacket is white, the cummerbund will often match the jacket. (I've seen photos of white jackets with black trousers and black cummerbund, and that seems to work, too.)

All this said, many tuxedos worn to proms and weddings have cummerbunds that match the neckties.

In fact, I found zero photos of men wearing suits with cummerbunds where the cummerbund was a different color than the necktie. So I guess that rule about cummerbund colors is so classic, nobody follows it anymore.

Generally speaking, however, the matching garish tie and cummerbund doesn't do a man many favors.

See? Your eye goes straight to that garish yellow and orange thing on his waist. Thus his waist, which really isn't that big, seems much more prominent.
(Photo from Wikipedia)

This guy has the misfortune of ranking high on the doofus scale, but that matching bright blue cummerbund and tie aren't helping him any.
(Photo and cummerbund available from wellpromo.com)

Brad's necktie and cummerbund are in matching plaid, which seems about right for him. Dammit, Janet.
(Photo from Columbia's Closet)

This beats just about everything I've seen. These are camouflage-colored skull and crossbone cummerbunds worn, not with bow ties, but with neckties. No wonder that kid on the right looks like he wants to strangle somebody.
(Photo from Santana Formal Accessories)

Oh dear. Where did he come from?
(Photo from dammitwheeler.com)

All right, if those are the nos, what are some yeses?

In this photo, sans jacket, it's easier to see how a dark cummerbund can make you look thinner.
(Photo from The modern gentleman)

Black and white. Clean lines.
(Photo from Moss Hire)

Yes, the black tie and black cummerbund are about as traditional as it gets, maybe to the point of yawnsville for many people. But what I like about it is that it allows the eye to go first to the face, which is the part of the human anatomy I find to be the most fascinating of all.
(Photo from Jbellendir.com)

Sources
Bows 'N Ties, The History of the Cummerbund, October 11, 2010
WiseGeek, What is a Cummerbund?
Fine Tuxedos, Tuxedo Cummerbunds: What are They?
Shopbeat, Freaky Fashion Friday: The Cummerbund

Apple #543: Bathing for Soldiers

2011-08-21T15:20:00.018-04:00

I was out walking yesterday and it was pretty hot out and I was glad I could go home and take a shower. I started thinking about people for whom that wouldn't be such an easy thing, and I found myself wondering, how do soldiers bathe.

I know that, when soldiers are on the march or in the midst of battle, they don't really get the chance to do wash. But surely after a while you'd get royally stinky and uncomfortable, so what do you do? Do you try to clean yourself somehow or do you just stay stinky and live with it? And are bathing conditions for soldiers better now than they used to be? I'm guessing from the pictures I've seen of soldiers in Afghanistan, it is easier to get a bath in today's US Army than it once was. But I'm still curious.

This question got me reading various narratives from soldiers who lived and fought through all sorts of wars. I could summarize what I found and just give you the facts, ma'am, but what turned out to be the most interesting part of researching this question was reading various people's accounts of their situation. So I'll give you both -- the highlights and the commentary.

US WWII soldiers bathing in the Mediterranean. This fairly chaotic scene is probably about what bathing facilities amounted to for most soldiers throughout the centuries.
(Photo from Moments with Clyde)

By the way, if you want to see lots of pictures of naked men, type "soldiers bathing" or "soldiers showering" into a Google search. Ai yi. I tried to keep the nudity at reasonable levels here. Naked is, after all, how people take showers and baths. But I didn't want to overwhelm you with a lot of bare bottoms either.

First of all, bathing is pretty important to the health of an army.

One example of how illness can debilitate an army is that when Rommel was in the midst of his campaign at El Alamein in North Africa during World War II, he was seriously hamstrung because, not only were his troops slowly starving for supplies, but also none of his best generals were available. They'd all been evacuated due to illness of the dysentery kind. Rommel wound up losing that battle, and that loss in turn led to the German surrender in North Africa.

Keeping yourself and your clothes clean can also help keep away the lice, which were pretty common among soldiers for centuries, but super-annoying nonetheless.

Lots of time and energy was spent on trying to "delouse" the troops because lice could also be disease-carriers, turning an annoyance into a potential troop-decimator.

But while you're in the field, either marching or fighting, you don't really get a chance to bathe. So soldiers have been encouraged, in various ways throughout the years, to keep themselves as clean as possible on the fly.

Here are instructions from the US Calvary Association in 1914 about how to bathe in the field:

Besides bathing the feet the men should bathe their whole bodies frequently. Anyone familiar with our "regulars" on the march and who has seen them break for the water to bathe as soon as possible after a day's march knows that it requires no order to get this done. But sometimes we must camp where there is no water available for bathing. Men should at least wash the crotch with a wet towel, especially if there is a tendency to chafe. Talcum powder should be used in such cases.

Now here are instructions from 2011 to soldiers in the US Army deployed in cold, mountainous regions. Not that much different. Sucks that they can't even use alcohol wipes.

Soldiers should wash their entire body weekly (at a minimum). If bathing facilities are not available, Soldiers can wash with two canteen cups of water, using half for soap and washing and half for rinsing. Soldiers should clean feet, crotch, and armpits daily. They should also clean their teeth daily.

It is important that Soldiers do not use alcohol-based wipes (commonly known as baby wipes) in the field. These wipes contain alcohol that conforms to the same temperature as the ambient air. If Soldiers use these products in an environment where the temperature is below freezing, then they risk contact frostbite, especially if the temperature is below 0 °F.

It's hard to tell but it looks like this soldier is shaving using snow he's melted in his helmet.
(Photo from militaryphotos.net)

One of the reasons it can be difficult to bathe while in the field is because water may not be available.

Apparently, the British during World War I were known for their attention to providing clean water to their troops. Also note the technique by which soldiers washed themselves, given the limited water supply.

The water supply of Northern France was dangerous and scanty. A corps of chemists and inspectors established the status of all wells and sources of supply before troops could use the water. Carts provided for hauling water were handled by men trained for the work and all water hauled received a proper sterilizing treatment usually with chloride of lime. Bathing, washing and delousing facilities commensurate with the fuel and water supply were diligently and ingeniously operated.

Cases were observed where water supply was so short that it was necessary to save waste water, treat it chemically, settle it, and use it over again. It took some time for our troops to adjust themselves to these conditions, but eventually, when the necessity arose, a man could wash face and hands, shave and rinse his tooth brush in a half canteen cup of water.

Canadian soldiers shaving at a WWI training camp in Valcartier, Québec, 1914.
(Photo from the National Film Board of Canada)

Just because soldiers can't bathe doesn't mean they don't want to. In fact, account after account describes how soldiers take any chance they can get to bathe, and they relish it.

One Infantryman who fought in the Battle of the Bulge in December and January 1944 was transported with his company to the rear of the lines for showers, food, and rest. On the way, his truck hit a mine and he was blown up to the roof of truck and fell back to the truck bed flat on his back. Because it was January and so cold, he had on six layers of clothing. Beneath the enormous hole in his overcoat and subsequently smaller holes in each layer was just a small trickle of blood on his back. He was asked if he wanted to go to an aid station, but he said no, he wanted a shower. He had to go to the back of the line, and he didn't get to the showers in time. He didn't get another shower until the end of the war.

If an army camps near a body of water, chances are, the soldiers will make a beeline for it as a place where they can wash.

During the Civil War, the Massachusetts volunteer infantry camped along the James River. Officers reported that "several hundreds" of enlisted men were bathing in the river "at all hours of the day and in large numbers. So many of them were bathing all the time that the order was given that the enlisted men were not allowed to bathe during daylight.

Even after this order was given, two officers sneaked off to wash in the river. But the place where the went happened to be in front of the cottage where the General had made his quarters. He waited until they had stripped and then he had the Sergeant of the Guard arrest them and bring them naked to his quarters. By this time, other soldiers had found out what was happening, so several of them watched, laughing, as the two young officers were brought naked to the General. He told them, "If you choose to bathe naked and expect to be recognized as officers, pray have your shoulder-straps buttoned on to you. Go to your quarters."

Union soldiers bathing in the North Anna River near the Richmond & Fredericksburg Railroad, May 1864.
(Photo from the Library of Congress. Brenda Hamilton on Flickr claims that this image is copyright-protected, but it's in the public domain.)

At the end of World War II, in May 1945, one infantryman remembers this bathing experience that occurred after the Germans had surrendered a few days earlier:

Mac McAuliffe recalls that on or about May 8 or 9 Company M, 347th Infantry,which was located near Jägersgrün and Tannenbergsthal, also had pitched their tents on a hillside nearby. Mac remembers that he and several other members of Company M decided to go for a swim in a pond on the other side of the hill. Arriving at the pond, they were surprised to hear a number of German soldiers signing "Lillie Marlene"--that great song of the war equally loved by American as well as German soldiers--while bathing and washing up on other side of the pond. Mac stated "I cut the legs off my 'long johns' that I was still wearing and used my 'johns' for trunks. We then dove into the pond and thrashed about reveling in the warmth of the spring day. The German soldiers, who were bathing approximately 20 yards away on the other side of the pond, paid no attention to us and WE paid no attention to them ... the weather was great. The water was fine and refreshing and, best of all, the war was over ... for both the Germans and ourselves ...

German soldiers bathing themselves and their horses in a lake during WWII.
(Photo from Miss Magnolia Thunderpussy)

In fact, sometimes the officers counted on a nearby body of water to be the primary bathing source for their troops. For the British during World War I in Brest,

Facilities for bathing and washing clothes were absolutely lacking, and such results as were accomplished in this area developed from the use of streams. Units not engaged in freight handling were taking practice marches, bathing and washing clothes in way-side streams.

A similar situation was also the case during the Spanish American War at Fort Macon, North Carolina:

The regiment remained at Fort Macon from July 19 to September 14, where it was well drilled and disciplined. The sanitary conditions of the camp was most excellent, there rarely being a case of sickness among the men. The bathing facilities could not be surpassed. The camp was within two hundred yards of a fine beach.

WWII US soldiers bathing in the Pacific Ocean during a break in the fighting on Saipan, Japan.
(Photo by Peter Stackpole, originally printed in Life magazine. Art print available for $49.99 from art.com)

But for the most part, soldiers have to wait until they're away from the front lines to bathe.

During World War II in the Pacific, the rifle companies followed this practice of trading "on" and "off" time:

Two rifle companies fight and advance for 48 hours, then the two rear companies move forward to relieve them in place. The two fatigued companies move to the rear to eat hot chow, "use" toilet paper, receive medical care for minor injuries, hopefully get a few beers, then sleep. The next day its more hot chow, weapons cleaning, bathing and more sleep.

Here is one Infantryman's recollection of his regiment's arrival at Guadalcanal.

One of the first things we were able to do when we landed on the Canal was to take a bath in Lunga River to wash off the salt water... (Our baths aboard ship were with salt water as the ship could not carry enough fresh water for bathing purposes.) While the men of Co. F, 2nd Bn., 35th Inf. were taking their baths, a Photographer from Life Magazine took their pictures it appeared in a copy of Life the 1st or 2nd week of Feb. on their cover. We were then deployed to Bloody Ridge until the rest of the Div. arrived in late Dec. 1942.

I tried to find the photos he mentions, but apparently Life doesn't have that issue up on their website. But I did find a few others from Guadalcanal in 1942, including this one:

Original caption: Exhausted US Marines sprawl all over beaches waiting for the landing craft which will take them off the island following four months of fighting the Japanese.
(Photo from Life magazine)

Over in Europe, another infantryman remembers the few days' rest that his division got during the Battle of the Bulge. This was the end of January, so it had been nearly two months since he'd last had chance to bathe:

While the generals regrouped the divisions and planned the next operations, the combat troops rested and cleaned their equipment. There was also an opportunity to clean ourselves, and I was able to take a hot bath, my first since early December.

Another Infantryman who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, this time from the 345th Regiment, remembers the days after fighting in the Saar River basin in December 1944:

The 345th Regiment lost more men in the Saar in ten days, then three-plus weeks in the "Battle of the Bulge."

[When we were pulled out,] We climbed onto big flatbed stake-bodied trucks. You had to sit or lie down and cover up with a blanket. As a result of stress and lack of sanitation, everyone had diarrhea. Every time the trucks stopped, we bolted to the side of the road, pants down. After a long, cold, miserable ride, we arrived on the outskirts of Rheims. The 87th Division was SHAEF Reserve, the only organized force between the German advance and Paris. We had showers, a change of clothing, and were issued worn galoshes. We thought the men encountered at the showers were part of elite troops. They were Quartermaster personnel wearing new shoe pacs.

Again, from World War II, another Infantryman fighting in the Po valley in Italy remembers a four-day rest period in October 1944. His division was moved to "assembly areas" near a small town called Vergiano.

Our soldiers spent their time wisely. They took hot showers at the 34th Division Bathing Unit and Clothing exchange, donned fresh underclothes and uniforms, secured badly needed haircuts, cleaned their equipment, caught up on their correspondence to loved ones at home, ate hot food regularly, refreshed their minds by reading, enjoyed motion pictures and band concerts, and embraced every opportunity to rest and relax in anticipation of their imminent return to combat.

Makeshift showers for Japanese soldiers in the South Pacific during WWII.
(Photo from WWII: Through the Letters of My Ojichan)

But sometimes even the facilities behind the lines are sub-optimal.

During the Spanish-American War in the 1890s, the US military did a kind of survey of its troops to see what their hygiene practices were like. They noted that in the Fourth New Jersey Volunteer Infantry, they were sometimes bathing in the ocean, sometimes bathing in the mess hall:

During the warm season the men were required to bathe between 3 and 4 pm in the ocean. After it got too cold for ocean bathing a large mess hall was set up with bath tubs in one end thereof, and all of the men returning from guard duty were required to bathe under the direct supervision of an officer.

The fact that they used the same building for eating as well as bathing probably accounts for the spread of disease, specifically, typhoid fever.

But using the mess hall for bathing wasn't that uncommon in those times. In 1868 at Fort Wallace, Kansas, where the soldiers pretty much built the thing from the ground up at the direction of their officers, they had a similar arrangement:

The soldiers at the fort suffered additional discomforts because few of the company barracks had washrooms and the facilities for bathing were inadequate. On the northeast end of the building used as a [combined] mess, kitchen, and quarters for the laundresses was a washroom for the enlisted men. Here, the roof leaked, the sewer was plugged, and no wash tubs or heating facilities existed. In the winter the washing of hands and faces was difficult, and bathing was entirely out of the question. Thus, due to lack of proper facilities, the cold weather produced negligence in the personal habits of the men. In fact, personal cleanliness became so lax the post surgeon complained to the commanding officer who in turn ordered all sergeants to superintend a weekly scrubbing of each soldier.

By World War II, behind-the-lines facilities for bathing and washing had improved, but there was still a catch-as-catch-can approach:

The quartermaster bath and laundry units that were assigned to support the 80th would set up operations somewhere in our area. A few men at a time would be trucked to the bath and laundry point. There, each soldier would turn in the clothing he was wearing, keeping only his weapons, helmet, boots, and personal belongings. After a hot shower he would be issued clean clothing. His dirty uniform would then be laundered and reissued to someone else. Often the fit of the "new" uniforms was somewhat bizarre, particularly if a soldier was unusually big or small, but we made the best of such things by swapping clothing with one another. It was such a pleasure to get a hot shower and have clean clothing that no one complained.

Original caption: An Afghan national police officer showers and washes his uniform at the same time at a police substation in Kandahar. May 26 2010
(Photo from the Los Angeles Times)

Today, US troops in Afghanistan still need to go behind the lines to get their showers. But the facilities behind the lines are practically plush by comparison:

[near Kabul is] a forward operating base equipped with a large, clean dining facility offering very good quality and selection; permanent barracks with round-the-clock hot showers; and a recreation area with daily access to phone and Internet.

The interior of a Containerized Housing Unit (CHU) which is where many US soldiers lived while in Iraq. Each CHU has a door, window, top vent, power cabling, and air conditioner for summer heat. Each living space in a CHU has a bed, end table, and wall locker. Sometimes soldiers get refrigerators and TVs. Some have a shower and toilet between the rooms.
(Photo from Army Mom Strong)

Complicating the shower situation today is the fact that some of the soldiers and officers are women.

The fact that women and men require different bathing facilities has posed some new problems for the military. Here is how one Company in Afghanistan dealt with the situation:

an Army regulation states that female soldiers must be provided with showers every few days. That was a problem during Charlie Company’s first few months in Afghanistan, because the spartan outpost lacked running water. Male soldiers often went weeks without bathing, but company leaders had to ensure that [female Pfcs] Conger and Redinbaugh made it back to a bigger base so they could wash up. The women usually could find seats on supply convoys already headed to the bigger base. But the company occasionally had to send four-truck convoys out on the rough drive because Minard had to comply with the hygiene rule for the women. The drive takes up to an hour, and each trip carries the risk of a truck being blown up. “So rules like that really would have to change,” Minard said.

Temporary shower and shaving set-up not in Afghanistan but here in the United States. This is in North Dakota during the flooding of the Sheyenne River. The temporary shower and shave unit set by the National Guard was connected to a septic tank system.
(Photo by Sgt. First Class David Dobbs, North Dakota National Guard, on dvidshub)

Regardless of what war you're fighting in or whether you're male or female, it's simply a reality of being a soldier that you might not get to bathe until after the war.

Here's what one soldier recalls about his long-awaited shower in France, just after World War I had ended:

On the afternoon of November 11th, the 308th [infantry] celebrated the occasion with suitable solemnity. It took its first real bath since the beginning of the Argonne. True, only one minute was allowed under the steaming showers, scarcely time to wash off the soap beneath a tantalizing trickle, and then the cry of "Into the drying room with you! Make way for the next lot!" Scarcely a wash. Certainly only the hyperbole of enthusiastic exaggeration could call it a bath. Still what little water there was certainly possessed the blessed qualities of warmth and wetness--and the War was over!

Sources
Bradley W. Hudson, Field sanitation teams, preventive medicine measures key during deployments, Infantry Magazine, Nov-Dec 2008
History Learning Site, The Battle of El Alamein
John Frank Morrison, US Cavalry Association, Training Infantry, 1914, page 107
J.F. Oakleaf, Notes on the Operations of the 108th Infantry Overseas, April 13, 1921
William H. Osborne, The History of the Twenty-Ninth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in the Late War of the Rebellion, 1877, page 85
Tom Stafford, 87th Infantry Division Legacy Association, The Mass Surrender of German Troops to the 347th Infantry Regiment on May 6, 1945
Spanish-American War Centennial Website, William R. Navey, A Brief History of the 3rd North Carolina Volunteer Infantry
G2mil, The Infantry Square
35th Infantry Regiment Association, Frank L. Marks, "Getting Ready, Destination Unknown," Cacti Regiment, 2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 1942
Turner Publishing Company, Battle of the Bulge, 1995, page 80
87th Infantry Division Legacy Association, Richard C. Manchester, K Company, 345th Regiment, Communications Section, WWII Memoirs - Part 2
34th Infantry Division Association, History 133rd Infantry 34th Infantry Division from 1 October 1944 to 31 October 1944, inclusive
US Army Surgeon General's Office, Report on the origin and spread of typhoid fever in U.S. military camps during the Spanish War of 1898, volume 1, 1904, page 434
Santa Fe Trail Research Site, Fort Wallace, Kansas, 1865-1882
Mark Larson, Lattes and Hot Showers in Afghanistan, The New York Times, July 15, 2010
Tony Leys, Female soldiers say they're up for battle, ArmyTimes, April 24, 2011
L. Wardlaw Miles, History of the 308th Infantry, Chapter 9 Last Days in France

Apple #542: Bachman-Turner Overdrive

2011-08-14T16:06:00.005-04:00

Anyone else hear "Michelle Bachmann" and think "Bachman-Turner Overdrive?"

Honestly, I couldn't tell you what songs they did. I'm sure I know the songs, but if I heard them I wouldn't be able to identify Bachman-Turner Overdrive as the artist. So let's find out about the band.

The front man in Bachman-Turner Overdrive is Randy Bachman, originally from The Guess Who.

Bachman is Canadian (Winnipeg) and so were the rest of The Guess Who.

They had a bunch of hits. American Woman. No Time. These Eyes.

Somewhere in there, Bachman converted to Mormonism. After that, he and the rest of the Guess Who didn't get along so well. So he left.

After some solo work and teaming up with a couple other people briefly, he formed another band called Brave Belt. That included Chad Allan from The Guess Who and Bachman's brother Robbie on drums.

Allan left to get married and go to school, and a couple other guys joined: another brother Tim Bachman, and Fred Turner, who was recommended by Neil Young and was also Canadian.

They named this band Bachman-Turner and added the word "Overdrive" after Tim's trucker magazine which was called Overdrive. Thus Bachman-Turner Overdrive was born.

They didn't have much success until their second album which was released in 1973, and then Takin' Care of Business hit the big time.

In 1974, their next album included You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, which was distinguished by the stuttering ("b-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen n-n-n-nothin' yet"), and which was a huge hit.

This is weird. The song You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet originally appeared on the album called Not Fragile. Maybe this is the cover of a single, not the full LP. But besides that, they spelled the name wrong. It's supposed to be Bachman with one n, not two.
(Photo from nostalgia and retrospection)

Randy had written the song years earlier in imitation of his brother Gary, who apparently stuttered. Gary said he always liked the song but he had no idea it had anything to do with him until he read about it in his brother's autobiography.

Randy originally submitted a non-stuttering version to the label, but they rejected it.

The Stuttering Foundation recently named it the greatest rock song featuring stuttering lyrics. They chose it over Bennie and the Jets by Elton John, Changes by David Bowie, and My Generation by The Who because only You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet hit number one and was about a real person.

After 1974, the band started going through what would become typical: one guy would leave, another join. One guy leaves, another joins, and the name changes only slightly. Rinse and repeat.

Randy wanted the band to go more country-rock. Fred Turner wanted it to sound heavier. The two disagreed and eventually, in 1977, Randy left.

After Randy's departure, the band changed their name to BTO.

The minus-Randy BTO version of the band released two albums, Rock n Roll Nights and Street Action. Neither one did very well.

Album cover of Rock n Roll Nights. Screams success, doesn't it?

I'd tell you some of the song names from those two albums (Amelia Earhart, Rock n Roll Hell, You're Gonna Miss Me, Takes a Lot of People), but I doubt you'd recognize them.

In 1983, they reunited as Bachman-Turner Overdrive, mostly touring as the opening act for Van Halen. They recorded a studio album and a couple of live albums.

The late 80s version, or the "new BTO." Robbie's not in the band and Randy's not pictured here. Of the Bachmans, only Tim.
(Photo from allpar.com)

Since then, there have been a lot of lawsuits and even more confusion over the name. The lawsuits have to do whether the band could call themselves BTO and they've had to pay lots of money to keep using it.

Many fans shorten Bachman-Turner Overdrive to BTO, even though they're supposed to be different bands. Or the bands have been slightly different versions with a few different people, who often play songs that the original Bachman-Turner Overdrive released in the 1970s.

So, yeah, it's probably better just to talk about their glory days. Hey, remember that song, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet? That's a good song to sing along to when it comes on the radio, isn't it?

I met a devil woman, she took my heart away
She said I had it comin' to me, but I wanted it that way
I think that any love is good lovin'
And so I took what I could get, mmm
Oooh, oooh, she looked at me with big brown eyes
And said

You ain't seen nothin' yet
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet
Here's something that you never gonna forget
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet

Turns out, this entry has nothing to do with Michelle Bachmann after all. Her eyes are blue!

Sources
allpar.com, Driving Music: Bachman-Turner Overdrive
allmusic.com, Bachman-Tuner Overdrive biography
Aldo Santin, "Stuttering Foundation salutes BTO hit You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet," Winnipeg Free Press, August 8, 2011

Apple #541: Yawning and Stretching and Hearing

2011-08-12T12:41:00.005-04:00

The other day, my friend Jehoshaphat came to talk to me when I was in the middle of something. The interruption made me yawn and stretch my arms above my head. I don't know why that happens, by the way, but when I'm tired that does seem to be a necessary transition when switching my attention from one thing to another.

This is the kind of yawn & stretch I'm talking about.
(Photo from Bio Break)

Anyway, he was trying to tell me something while I was yawning and stretching. I said, "Wait a second, I couldn't hear anything just then. Say that again?"

Instead of repeating what he'd just asked me, he said, "Now that's a Daily Apple right there. How come you can't hear anything while you're yawning and stretching?"

Jehoshaphat, here is that Daily Apple.

I couldn't find any one source that explained this exactly, but my theory is that the reason you can't hear while yawning and stretching is two-fold.

First, when you yawn, your Eustachian tube opens.

Like how you're on an airplane and the pressure in your ear builds up, so you yawn. That opens your Eustachian tube, the pressure is equalized, and you can hear again. (Blausen Med on About.com has a really helpful video about this process.)

Sound normally enters the ear through the ear canal and the ear drum. The Eustachian tube beneath the middle ear opens and closes to regulate air pressure in the middle ear.
(Diagram from WebMD)

When you yawn under regular circumstances, there's no issue related to pressure imbalance, so it's not pressure difficulties that are obstructing your hearing. It's the opening of the Eustachian tube itself.

The top of the Eustachian tube opens into the middle ear. But the bottom end of the Eustachian tube leads to the pharynx, or the back of the throat. So when the Eustachian tube opens, you get input coming into the middle ear from two sources: from the ear canal and off the eardrum as usual, but also up from the pharynx. Having that other opening into the middle ear reduces the middle ear's ability to amplify sound and everything takes on a hollow, echoing sound.

Lots of stuff on this diagram, but I'm including it only to show you that the Eustachian tube connects to the pharynx. There are surprisingly few diagrams that depict this very well.
(Diagram from James on the CPAP forum)

Another thing that happens when the Eustachian tube is open is that you have less of a buffer blocking out the internal sounds from your body.

People who suffer from a rare condition called a Patulous Eustachian Tube have their Eustachian tubes open all the time. They have trouble hearing because, with the tubes open, the sounds of their own body are a lot louder: the sound of their own breathing, the sound of their own voice, even the sound of their blood flow. It can be so unbearable, they can suffer from depression and even thoughts of suicide.

Fortunately, when we yawn, the Eustachian tube is open only briefly, so it's only temporary and not a persistent condition. But to summarize, yawning makes the sounds of our interior workings get a bit louder.

I also noticed, though, that this can happen even if there's no yawning involved. Sometimes if I only stretch -- no yawn, just my arms above my head and stretch mainly my torso and my neck and my arms -- I experience the same thing. A deep, rushing rumbling begins in my ears and gets louder as the stretch extends. Once I drop my arms and the stretch stops, the noise in my ears stops and I can hear again.

This is where the second part of the process comes in, and this is my theory. I'll take you through my logic step by step.

Yawning increases blood flow to the brain.

Stretching increases blood flow, even more than yawning.

All kinds of huge arteries run up the neck, right along the ears.

Arteries in the head and neck, sending blood up past the ears to the brain.
(Image from The Home Cyclopedia of Health and Medicine)

When you stretch, especially if the stretch involves the neck, a lot more blood than usual rushes up those arteries, right next to your ears.

So I think that when you stretch, your hearing gets blocked out because what's happening is exactly what it feels and sounds like: tons more blood than usual is rushing past your ears and all you can hear is that.

Yawning and stretching like this, she really wouldn't hear a thing.
(Photo from dailybooth)

So, putting it all together, when you yawn and stretch, you're opening the Eustachian tube which increases your ear's sensitivity to internal sound to begin with. Stretching increases the blood flow and thus the noise of the blood rushing past your ears. With the Eustachian tubes open, all that blood rushing past sounds extra-loud, and you can't hear anything else.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Sources
Science Ray, Why Can't We Hear Well When We Are Yawning?
CafeMom, Why can't your hear when you yawn or stretch?
Blausen Med, About.com, How Does Ear Pressure Work?
Mark C. Loury, MD, Eustachian Tube Patency
Finding a Solution for Patulous Eustachian Tube
Gallup & Gallup, Yawning as a Brain Cooling Mechanism, Evolutionary Psychology, 2007. 5(1): 92-101

Apple #540: Kosher

2011-08-07T13:05:00.005-04:00

A friend of mine got a box of that new Smurfs cereal the other day. I was looking at the nutrition information and the box in general when I noticed the Kosher symbol on the box. I said, "At least it's kosher."

My friend laughed and said, "Of course it is. There's no meat in there."

I said, "I think kosher is about more than just meat. I think it's actually kind of complicated."

He was skeptical, but since I couldn't remember any details, I couldn't bolster my argument further. So it was time to call on the Apple Lady. (Who is me, yes, but just go with it for the sake of the phrase.)

Kosher, or Kashrut, is a series of dietary laws as indicated by the Torah (to us Gentiles, that's the first five books of the Bible). These laws are supposed to be kept year-round.

Kosher does cover many more foods than just meat. A lot more.

Kosher laws can be broken down into two main categories: foods you can and can't eat, and how the food you can eat must be prepared.

Foods You Can and Can't Eat

You can eat the meat, milk, and eggs of some animals but not of others.

Land animals are kosher if they have split hooves and chew their cud. Both of these things must be true.
--Examples of kosher animals are cows, sheep, goats, various types of deer, and bison.
--Animals that don't meet this criteria include pigs, rabbits, squirrels, dogs, cats, horses, camels, etc.

The rules covering birds are fairly complex, but basically you can't eat predatory or scavenger birds.
--Birds you can eat include chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and pigeons.
--Birds that are restricted include hawks, crows, vultures, etc.

This is a sheet of stickers of kosher animals. A helpful way to remember which meat and poultry are kosher.
(Photo and 10-pack of sticker sheets from And Thou Shalt Read)

Fish and seafood must have fins and scales.
--Tuna, salmon, pike, flounder, carp, and herring are all kosher seafood.
--Shellfish, lobster, catfish, sturgeon, and all water mammals are not kosher.

No reptiles, amphibians, or worms are kosher.

No insects, except for four types of locusts, are kosher. This last law is one of the things that makes food preparation complicated.

From all of the above kosher animals except fish, no blood can be eaten. This is another law that affects food preparation.

Wine or grape juices made by Gentiles are not to be eaten.
--Long ago, lots of non-Jews used wine as sacrificial offerings to their gods. The Jews wanted nothing to do with this idolatry, so to be sure they had no part in it, they didn't want to drink any wine or even grape juice that had been made for pagan purposes.
--Whole grapes are OK
--Any fruit juice flavored with grape juice may not be OK; it must be certified kosher.
--Baking powder is made with cream of tartar, which is a by-produce of wine-making. Baking powder therefore must be certified kosher.
--Beer flavored with fruity grape products must be certified kosher.

Most people think of Manischewitz as the only kosher wine. But there are lots of kosher wines. Here are just a few.
(Photo from Cornichon.org)

How Food Must be Prepared

Animals and birds that are kosher have to be slaughtered in specific ways.
--They have to have been slaughtered; they can't have died of natural causes or have been killed be another animal.
--The slaughter must be done using a very sharp blade with no nicks, and the animal must be killed with one quick, deep stroke of the knife across the throat. This is to ensure that the death is as humane as possible.
--If there are any signs of disease, the animal cannot be eaten.
--The animal must also be inspected for "flaws in the organs." Flaws may include adhesions or punctures in the lungs, or adhesions or holes in the stomach. If the animal has these or other flaws, the animal cannot be eaten.

The shochet, or butcher, checking the knife in between each slaughter, or shechita. It's hard to see here, but the knife is flat and broad and rectangular.
(Photo from Pidyon, which has photos of the entire shechita process)

Since no blood can be eaten (this doesn't apply to fish), the blood must be removed from the meat.
--Most of the animal's blood drains out with the quick knife-stroke to the neck.
--Still there may be some blood left. The best way to remove the rest is either to broil, soak, or salt the meat. This has to be done within 72 hours of the slaughter.
--No blood also means that blood spots in eggs are not to be eaten.

The sciatic nerve and its adjoining blood vessels are also not to be eaten.
--It takes a lot of time and effort to remove these, so usually the entire hind quarters of the animal are removed and sold to non-kosher butchers.

The fat surrounding the vital organs and the liver may not be eaten.

Because of all the rules surrounding the slaughter of animals, in rural communities, the rabbi and the butcher are often the same person.

Anything Kosher that Touches Non-Kosher Becomes Non-Kosher

This is another rule that falls within food preparation, but it gets so pervasive, I thought it deserved its own heading.

Once you've got your kosher meat slaughtered and butchered appropriately, you then must make sure that meat and dairy are to be kept separate.
--Fish and dairy together are OK (e.g., lox and cream cheese bagels are OK). Red meat and dairy or poultry and dairy together are not.
--This means they can't be on the same plate at the same time, nor can they be prepared using the same utensils or pans.
--Dishes used to prepare each must be washed in separate dishwashers, and sponges or towels used to clean the dishes must be kept separate.
--You should also ensure that all the meat and its fats are removed from your mouth before eating dairy.
--You can do this by rinsing your mouth, eating a neutral food like bread in between, or else by waiting three to six hours in between.

Setting up your kitchen so that it's in compliance with the laws of kosher, including the separation of meat and dairy, can be an extremely involved, extensive process. For a list of things to do to make this happen, see Chabad.org's page on Koshering Your Kitchen.

Because separating meat and dairy becomes so extensive that it affects pretty much everything in the kitchen and in the laundry, food and utensils are often labeled to indicate to which they belong:
--fleishik = meat
--milchik = dairy
--parve or pareve = neutral

In general, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and grains are parve.

Various ways of labeling a food parve.
(Images from Anagrammer)

Parve becomes a pretty important indication.
--It means the food is neither meat nor dairy, so you can eat it between the two and allow yourself to eat one within 3-6 hours of the other.
--It also means that this neutral food has been handled in a way that it's within the laws of kosher. That is, it hasn't touched a non-kosher food and thus become out of bounds.

Fruits and vegetables seem like they'd automatically be kosher/parve, but bugs like fruits and vegetables too, and remember, all insects (except for 4 types of locusts) are not kosher.
--Fruits and vegetables therefore must be inspected for bugs and carefully cleaned prior to eating.

With modern, processed foods, you've got people making foods in huge batches in huge kitchens with utensils that could have touched all sorts of non-kosher foods, or situations in which meat and dairy products could have been prepared using the same equipment. So lots of ingredients that you might not think of as affected by the laws of kosher actually can become questionable, if not problematic.
--Shortenings and oils. Are they animal or vegetable? Are they produced in a plant that does both? If so, are the utensils for animal and vegetable oils kept separate?
--Emulsifiers. These may also be animal or vegetable and the same questions apply. They're named as polysorbates or glycerides or sorbitans, most often the things on a label that you can't pronounce. They're in all sorts of processed foods, from margarine to doughnuts to cake mixes to ice cream to peanut butter to breakfast cereals (ahem) to candies.
--Flavorings. Sure, the label says "all-natural." But is it animal or vegetable? How was it prepared? Same questions apply.

The fact that this rice-based cereal has a kosher symbol on the box actually means a lot. A great deal of thought and effort and inspection is behind that certification.
(Photo by Joshua Coughlin at Flickr. He says this is the 80s version of the cereal, but it's not. It's the 2011 version.)

In sum, these laws are quite extensive. I'm sure I haven't even captured all of them here. The ramifications of the rules extend throughout kitchens and the laundry. With modern food manufacturing and processing methods, it's nearly impossible to know if a food has been prepared according to kosher standards.

There are companies whose sole purpose is to send kosher investigators to food manufacturers to inspect their methods and utensils to determine whether the laws of kosher are being upheld or not. If a manufacturer's product line passes the inspection, these companies then certify the company's product with the kosher or parve labels. This is done on a product-by-product basis.

The K in the circle is the most widely-known symbol for kosher food. But there are all sorts of symbols that indicate kosher certification.
(Image from Burton 2 at MIT)

Many of these rules turn out to be beneficial to your health, for one reason or another. Some non-Jews choose kosher-labeled packages because to them, that's an indicator that the food was made according to procedures that are healthy and clean. But the sites I consulted about this were very careful to say that health and cleanliness are not the primary reasons why Jews keep kosher. They do it because the Torah says to.

Sources
Judaism 101, Kashrut: Jewish Dietary Laws
Chabad.org, Kosher, Kosher Basics and multiple subsequent pages
Orthodox Union, How do I know it's Kosher?

Apple #539: Owls

2011-08-01T00:31:00.008-04:00

It is high time I talked about owls.

Growing up, I never saw a single owl in the wild. I saw maybe one in a zoo. When I was in college walking through campus, my housemate who was knowledgeable about such things grabbed my arm, pointed at some big bird flying overhead and said, "Do you know what that is?! That's a snowy owl! Do you know how rare those things are?" I didn't. I also didn't really get a very good look at it.

Then about five years ago, I saw an owl. For real. It was a little one with yellow eyes, standing in the middle of a busy road across from a high school. Some kids were trying to shoo it out of the road with their skateboards so that it wouldn't get hit by a car, but boy, that owl looked MAD. I was in my car waiting to turn onto that road, and at one point, the owl swiveled its head and aimed its bright yellow super-angry eyes right at me. Whoo, that was intense.

Since then, I've seen four other owls, two of them in the past week.

Some people are freaked out by owls. I happen to think they're really cool.
(Photo from Just Bird)

Worldwide, there are 215 species of owls. Only 19 live in North America. (There are 2 others but they've each been seen only twice ever.)

Michigan and Ohio are tied for the highest number of owl species: 12.

Believe it or not, there is an owl in this picture. It's a barred owl, and you can see it blurrily in the distance. This picture was taken in mid March when the buds are just barely beginning to show. It was late afternoon, and I remember being surprised to see an owl in the daytime.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Owls can't really rotate their heads 360 degrees. They can turn them 270 degrees, though, which is pretty dang far. They can do this courtesy of their 14 neck vertebrae. Humans, by comparison, have only 7.

The visible "ear tufts" don't actually have much to do with hearing. Owls' ears are actually located underneath their feathers on either side of the head, just below the eyes.

The fact that their ears are under their feathers does not impair their hearing. On the contrary, their hearing is superb. Some owls can hear sounds so tiny and distant, they can detect prey moving beneath the snow.

What an owl's actual ear looks like. In this photo of this Northern Saw-whet Owl, you can see the black beak of the owl and, in the shadow of her middle finger, where the eye is. That will help you get a sense of where on the owl's head the ear is located.
(Photo from ohio birds and biodiversity)

The other weird thing about owl ears is that they're asymmetrical. The ear on one side is higher than the other. Since the sound arrives at each ear at slightly different times, the owl is able to pinpoint the source of the sound much more accurately.
(Diagram from Tucson Citizen)

As you may recall from the entry about birds in the rain, the way a lot of branch-perching birds' feet work is that their toe and leg muscles are at rest in the branch-clutching position. The same is true for owl feet.

Their toes, equipped with very large and sturdy talons, are at rest in a clutching position, which makes it much easier for them to latch onto and pick up prey. Where we would have to clench our hands very hard to hang onto a small animal, owls really aren't clenching that hard at all. That's simply what their feet do when they're resting.

Talons of a Great Horned Owl. They have three forward-facing "toes" and one back-facing toe, kind of like a thumb, which together make a very effective claw. The feathers hanging down over the toes help the owl "feel" the prey as they get close.
(Photo from Jim Williams at the StarTribune)
(There's an even more impressive photo of talons in the Owls of Ohio PDF)

Owls' eyes are relatively enormous. In some species, they represent 5% of the bird's total mass. The fact that their eyes are so large is one of the reasons they're able to see so well at night. Think: if you want to take a photo in low light, you have to open the aperture very wide. An owl's eyes are like very wide-open apertures.

Owls do most of their hunting at night, but not always. They may also hunt at dawn or at dusk. Snowy owls, who live so far north there are days when it doesn't get dark, hunt during the day.

People often say that owls fly soundlessly or silently. The last two owls I've seen, both in flight, weren't perfectly soundless, but they were pretty close. It's a little disturbing to see a bird that huge take off from a branch and fly through close leaves and branches and make barely a sound.

The reason owls are so quiet in flight is because of the way their feathers are made. The leading edge of their primary flight feathers have comb-like or fringe-like extensions called "flutings" or "fimbriae." The flutings break the air turbulence that rushes over the wing into smaller groups which effectively shifts the sound of the wing beats to a higher frequency that is harder for most animals to hear. See a close-up of the comb edge of an owl feather here.

Owls also don't weigh very much for their size. This means they don't have to flap their wings as much as other large birds would, which also keeps their flight quieter.

It's not that hard to hear owls call, on the other hand, if you know where and when to listen. Find someplace rural, free of other ambient noises. Go on a windless evening. Your chances will be best in early winter through spring, which is when owls are nesting and most likely to call to each other.

Female owls have higher-pitched voices than male owls. If you hear two owls calling back and forth, the higher-pitched is a female, the lower-pitched is a male.

Since many owls commandeer the nests of other birds, most other birds don't like owls. If you see a bunch of crows "mobbing" something and all of them are cawing and going after something, it may be an owl in the center of the mob that they're trying to chase off. Smaller birds like chickadees and nuthatches will do the same thing.

Some Common Species of Owls

Barn owls

Barn owls with their apple-peel faces, maybe getting their polygamy on
(Photo from Just Bird)

Their faces look to me like peeled apples.
Other people say they are "monkey-faced" or have a "heart-shaped face"
No ear tufts
Almost entirely nocturnal
They eat mice and voles
They like grasslands, marshes, and meadows, areas which are often converted into farmland
They do like to nest in barns
Barn owls are polygamous

Barred owls

This is a barred owl in early May. I was surprised to see an owl out and about during the day time, but apparently this is not so uncommon. This owl sat and stared at me while I took picture after picture. I took about 10 pictures, and this owl kept an eagle eye (har har) the entire time. But it didn't fly away.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

Named for the variegated-colored feathers across their chests which look like bars
Are the only other species besides barn owls that have dark eyes
Like to live in forests near ravines or swamplands
They like to eat mice and voles but also occasionally amphibians or fish
They're very vocal, especially shortly after nightfall
Their most recognizable call sounds like who cooks for you

Here's a better picture of a barred owl. You can really see the bars, or variegations in color.
(Photo from Birds242)

Screech owls

Eastern screech owl
(Photo by Angela Bartels at the San Antonio Audubon Society)

Generally smaller with prominent ear tufts
Eyes have large yellow irises with dark pupils
Eastern variety lives in the US as far west as the Rockies
West of the Rockies, they're the Western Screech Owl
Whiskered Screech Owls live in Central America, Arizona, and New Mexico
They may be gray, red, or brown
They like to live in areas with scattered trees, a mix of open woods and fields, and nearby streams
They eat all kinds of things -- other small birds, amphibians, bugs, crayfish, minnows, even catfish
They don't actually screech; vocalizations are more like whistles

Great Horned Owl

Female Great Horned Owl. A guy named Alek took all sorts of pictures of the Great Horned Owls who built a nest near their house.
(Photo by Alek Komarnitsky)

One of the largest species of owl
Weighs about 3 pounds, but 22 inches long and with a wingspan of 44 inches
Prominent ear tufts
Females are larger than males
Because they're so large, they can capture rather large animals.
Mostly they eat rabbits, but they also eat muskrats, woodchucks, rats, ducks, pheasants, reptiles, and occasionally they will capture house cats.
They are one of the few predators that will eat skunks
If you smell a strong skunk odor and it seems to be coming from the air, if you follow the scent, it will probably lead you to a Great Horned Owl's nest in a tree where it has taken its dinner.
They like to nest in large cemeteries, especially near the top of large conifer trees. They also like tall trees cottonwoods or sycamores alongside streams or marshes.

One way to spot a Great Horned Owl nest is to look for the ear tufts sticking up
(Photo by Alek Komarnitsky)

Snowy Owl

Snowy owl, looking regal, its black markings visible
(Photo by Richard Jackson, at Paul Asimow's snowy owl page)

Made famous by Harry Potter's Hedwig
Snowy owls are about the same size as Great Horned Owls, though females are even larger
White with a few black markings
Young snowy owls can be almost all black though their faces will be all white
No ear tufts
As you might expect, they're most commonly seen in the winter
They like rocky walls next to big, open landscapes
Large groups of snowy owls have been spotted near airports or harbors
Their favorite food is lemmings. They'll also eat ducks, seagulls, rats, or voles

Here's a snowy owl in flight. Those legs are huge!
(Photo from Animal Wildlife)

In many cultures, owls symbolize wisdom. In Greek mythology, Athena, the goddess of wisdom, was so impressed by the owl's large eyes and solemn appearance, she chose the owl as her favorite. (The fact that owls lived in the Acropolis in huge numbers probably had something to do with it, too.) More recently, people connect the owls' nocturnal behavior with the scholars' late-night studiousness.

Athena was rarely depicted with an owl, but here is a (later) bronze statue of Athena and her owl. Athena might be my favorite of the Greek goddesses. She was bad-ass.
(Photo from GoddessGift.net)

Sources
Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Wildlife, Owls of Ohio
West Virginia University Cooperative Extension, Night Birds -- Owls
Deane Lewis, The Owl Pages, Owl Feathers and Flight, Owls in Mythology and Culture
Tucson Citizen, Western Screech Owl, a feisty little raptor, September 24, 2010