Apple #83: Full Moons, Orange and Otherwise

ORANGE FULL MOON

Last night there was a full moon, and it looked orange. I asked the person standing next to me if he knew why the moon was orange. He thought a minute, and said no, he didn't. Maybe, he said, pointing to the orange shirt he was wearing, it was because of his shirt?

• It is the scattering of light by the earth's atmosphere that makes the moon appear orange, especially when it first rises.
  
• Early in the moon's ascent, it is still pretty close to the surface of the earth, from our vantage point. This means we have to "look" through a lot more of the atmosphere.
• The air molecules in the atmosphere scatter away the pieces of visible light that are blue, green, and purple. So when we look through a lot of the atmosphere toward the moon, which is white, we see it as yellow, orange, or red.
• Sometimes when the moon is directly overhead, it will still appear to be orange in color. This can be because there is a lot of dust or smoke or pollution in the air.
• Also, the Harvest Moon in the fall appears to be orange. This is for two reasons. First, during some months of the year, the atmosphere contains more dust particles than others. In the fall, many farmers are harvesting their crops, and there is also a lot of pollen floating around. Second, the moon also rises at a lower angle to the horizon in the fall. Thus, at the autumn equinox, you'll see a big fat orange moon, the Harvest Moon.

The Harvest Moon. Photo by Brian D. Buck

FULL MOON NAMES

This reference to the Harvest Moon reminds me, I've always liked the fact that each month's full moon has a different name, but I can never remember what they are, and I'd also like to know why they are so named. As it turns out, most of the names come from Native American tribes and refer to weather, growing, or hunting conditions at the time of the full moon.

• January: Wolf Moon
• Wolf packs, hungry, howl together in snowy January.
  
• February: Ice or Snow or Hunger Moon
• Heaviest snow or ice falls during this month. It's hard to hunt or find plants to eat, so this is also a hungry time of year.
  
• March: Worm or Crow or Full Sap or Lenten or Crust Moon
• With the first thaws, earthworm casts begin to appear in the soil, signaling the return of robins and the beginning of spring. The crows caw to signal the end of winter, the sap begins to run, and for Europeans, it's time to start fasting for Lent. Another name, the Crust Moon, referred to the fact that snows melt and freeze again at night, making a crust on top of it.
  
• April: Growing or Pink Moon
• The pink herb moss, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest spring wildflowers, appears at this time. It also signals the first plants beginning to grow.
• May: Hare or Flower or Corn Moon
• Flowers bloom abundantly at this time, rabbits are born, and it's time to plant corn.
  
• June: Mead or Strawberry or Rose Moon
• Time to harvest the strawberries, make the mead, and in Europe, pick the roses.
  
• July: Hay or Thunder or Buck Moon
• Buck deer begin pushing out new antlers, it's time to mow hay, and lots of thunderstorms happen in July.
  
• August: Corn or Sturgeon Moon
• In the Great Lakes, sturgeon are abundant and easy to catch, and it's time to pick the corn. Some tribes also called this the Full Red Moon, which would make sense, given that some things are being harvested in August.
  
• September: Harvest Moon
• This moon may actually be in October some years, as it appears closest to the autumnal equinox. Often, farmers are working at the harvest until late at night at this time of year, and the moon appears to be orange because of all the dust and pollen they work up.
  
• October: Blood or Hunter's Moon
• After the harvest, the deer and fox and other animals are fattened and easier to spot, and it is time to hunt. Blood runs from the animals hunted, but also perhaps the moon still appears red in the sky.
  
• November: Snow or Beaver Moon
• This is the time of the first snow, and time to set the beaver traps before the swamps freeze, to ensure a warm supply of furs for winter. The beavers themselves are also preparing for winter.
  
• December: Cold Moon
• Nights are getting longer, and colder, and it's just plain cold.
  

One moon fact I never really thought about before: though the time of the full moon's appearance may differ, everyone in the world will see the same full moon on the same evening.

Sources
Keith Cooley, Keith's Moon Page, "The Orange Moon" This is an extremely cool site, by the way. You can see what the phase of the moon was on any day of the year going back to 1800. You can find out what your weight would be on the moon. Find out when the next blue moon will be. Learn about eclipses, moon landings, the tides, and how the moon determines when Easter falls.

University Corporation for Atmospheric Research - Windows to the Universe - Quickie Questions - Moon Madness

Farmer's Almanac, Full Moon Names and Their Meanings

Apple #82: Hush Puppies

There's a Long John Silver's near my house. I don't like fish very much, and especially not fried fish, but often when I drive by, I wonder, "What the heck is a hush puppy?"

• Hush puppies are balls of corn meal, seasoned with garlic, onion, and spices, and then fried. Often they are served with fried fish, but not necessarily.
  

• Supposedly this dish originates from the Southern US, but really they are a variation on a much older dish, fritters, which were made by the ancient Greeks and Romans.

• Fritters were flour mixed with milk, eggs, spices, and honey, and then deep fried. This simple and tasty dish was passed down through the generations, and eventually one variation became hush puppies.
  

• The term "hush puppies" seems to have appeared around 1915. One story of how these things got their name is that when people were about to cook their meal, the dogs got all excited and started barking. To quiet the dogs, people tossed them the balls of corn meal, saying, "Hush, puppies!" This sounds a little too cute to be true, but that's the story most people tell.

• Another story about their name is that in the South there was a salamander, often called a "water puppy," that people used to catch and deep fry with cornmeal dough in stick shapes. The fried water puppy was then called a "hush puppy" because they were considered a lowly and poor thing to eat, something you wouldn't want anybody to know you were feeding your family.

• There's also a brand of shoe called Hush Puppies. The guy who made these shoes in 1958 heard the story about hush puppies the food, and how they were used to quiet barking dogs. He thought of the phrase "my dogs are barking" that people use to describe tired or sore feet and decided that Huhs Puppies would be a great name for his shoes that soothed your feet.

The hush puppies are the little round fried things on the left, between the dishes of cole slaw
(You can order this from Skippers)



This is Jason, the basset hound that became the mascot for Hush Puppies brand shoes

Sources
Lynne Olver, editor, Food Timeline
Food Facts & Trivia, Hush Puppies
Welcome to Hush Puppies, History of Hush Puppies
Jason's Hush Puppies Scrapbook

Apple #81: Tears II

TEARS, PART II

I was going to add on to the previous entry, but I've found enough other interesting facts from the book I purchased that it seemed an additional entry is in order.


Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears
by Tom Lutz


To recap, my question was, why when we feel sad or otherwise extremely emotional, is it our body's response to cry? Why not some other physiological response, such as sneezing, for example, or hiccuping? In reading a book by Tom Lutz called Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears, I came across several interesting facts about tears, but not the answer to my question. But tonight, I found the passage where he addresses my question.

• Several researchers have suggested that tears help to eliminate toxins or other chemicals that build up in times of stress. One study of emotional tears versus reflex tears found that the emotional tears had 20 to 25 percent more protein than reflex tears.

• Another study found four times as much potassium in emotional tears than plasma, and 30 times the manganese in blood. This last finding may be significant because high concentrations of manganese have been found, upon autopsy, in the brains of people who had chronic depression.

• Yet another study found that emotional tears have high concetrations of a particular hormone that is an especially accurate indicator of stress.

• The upshot of all these studies is that people think that tears are a way to remove toxins from the body, and once a person has finished crying, the tears have eliminated enough toxins to return the body to equilibrium.

• Lutz points out, however, that there is a problem with this theory in that much of the tears that our eyes produce do not exit the body but rather drain back into it, through the puncta or duct in the corner of the eye. This duct in turn drains into another duct that leads to the nose. So really, compared to other methods such as sweating or urinating by which the body removes toxins, crying isn't that great at expelling something from the body.

• While Lutz doubts that toxin removal is entirely the reason for crying, he doesn't offer an alternative possibility. So it looks like this theory is the best we have to go on for now, but it's probably not the whole answer.

• In the meantime, here are a few other interesting facts:

• The average American adult cries for about five minutes at a time, about three or four times a month. That's an average of men and women together. In general, women cry more often than men; one study found that women averaged 64 crying episodes per year, while men cried only 17 times per year, or 4 times less often.

• Paradoxically, women suffer more frequently than men from various conditions and diseases which result in dry eye, or inadequate production of basal tears. In the majority of conditions, the lack of tears is caused by not enough of a hormone called androgen, which is a typically "male" hormone. This is why many women suffer from dry eye especially during lactation, because they are producing less androgen.

• However, men can also suffer from dry eye if their bodies produce too much testosterone. Those hormones. They win either way, whichever sex you are.

• As we age, the large gland responsible for most of our tears, a.k.a. the lacrimal gland, shrinks. By age 65, the body makes 40 percent fewer tears than it did at age 20, and by age 80, the gland makes 70 percent fewer tears. To compensate for less continual moisture from basal tears, the various glands around the eye produce more reflex tears. This is why older people seem to have watery eyes a lot of the time.

• At the other end of the spectrum, babies cry a lot. Studies suggest that babies normally cry anywhere from half an hour to two hours each day (can you imagine crying for even half an hour each day?). Anything over two hours a day is generally considered excessive, and attributable most times to colic. Everybody assumes that colic comes from some kind of digestive disorder that's making babies unhappy, but nobody really knows what's the problem. Poor things.

Source
Tom Lutz, Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears, W.W. Norton & Company, 1999

Apple #80: Tears

TEARS

Every once in a while it occurs to me to wonder, why when we feel sad, is it important to our bodies to cry? That is, what physiological good do tears do? How come our bodies make tears in response to sorrow, instead of something else, like tingling hands or sneezing or something like that? I wasn't sure I'd find an answer to this, but then today, lo and behold, I spotted a book called Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears, by Tom Lutz. In it is a chapter on the biology of tears. Reading it, I am amazed and thrilled by what I'm learning.


Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears
by Tom Lutz

• Tears are made up of three major parts: water, various oils to keep them from evaporating too quickly, and a layer of mucin, essentially a lubricant. They also contain hormones and proteins.

• There are also three kinds of tears, each for its own function. The kinds of tears don't just appear given different circumstances, they are also different from each other chemically. The three types are:

• Basal tears - this is the moisture present in your eyes all the time. These tears keep everything lubricated, and, since the surface of the eye is actually irregular and wrinkled and even pocked in places, they help smooth out the surface and make it possible for us to see without distortion.

• Reflex tears - these are the tears your eyes make in response to some physical stimulus, such as smoke in your eyes, or fresh-cut onions, or pepper.

• Emotional tears - these are produced in response to strong emotion, like sadness or fear or even sweet joy.

• Surrounding the eye are all types of glands that are involved in the production of the three types of tears. The largest gland, the lacrimal gland, is just above the eye and below the brow bone. This one goes to work big-time when your eye wants to make reflex or emotional tears.

• In the pink part in the corner of your eye is a little duct called the puncta. It is through this duct that the basal tears drain regularly. The puncta can only handle a little bit of moisture at a time. This is why we're not all walking around with tears streaming down our faces on a regular basis. But when we cry, or when we get our eye poked pretty good, the glands make way more moisture than the puncta can handle, and the tears overflow and spill out of the eye. This is why, when somebody starts crying, you see the tears "well up" as people like to say, but then if the person is able to check the emotion, the tears seem to disappear. Really, they just drain out through the puncta.

Obviously, there's a lot more in this book than I've paraphrased here. I'm still reading through the chapter (currently, he's discussing which comes first, emotions or the physical response. If you think about it, it's not always absolutely certain which triggers which.). I'm hoping to find what benefit emotional tears give to your body. As soon as I discover the answer -- and it may be that the answer is "nobody knows yet" -- I will report it to you here. So don't cry, I'll be back!

Source
Tom Lutz, Crying: A Natural and Cultural History of Tears, W.W. Norton & Company, 1999

Apple #79: Shark Ray

SHARK RAY

Starting this month, the Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky will open its shark ray exhibit -- the only shark ray on display in the Western Hemisphere.


This shark ray looks a lot like the one at the Newport Aquarium
Photo from the Underwater Times

• Shark rays are quite rare. They live in the Indo-Pacific oceans, especially in waters around Australia and Taiwan.

• They are rays, with gills on the underbelly, but with the more powerful body of a shark.

• They have horn-like ridges on their back, and large spiracles (breathing holes) just behind their eyes.

• Shark rays do not pose a threat to humans. They use their flat, "pavement-like teeth" to crush and eat crabs and other shellfish.

• Sweet Pea, pictured above, weighs forty pounds and is about four feet long. Shark rays can grow to be nine feet long.

• Sweet Pea was caught in a trap in Taiwan and was eventually acquired to live at the aquarium, in hopes of studying and helping to support conservation of this rare species.

• Shark rays are in a family which also includes guitarfishes. (I'm going to have to find out about those, too, someday.)

Sources
Newport Aquarium press release, "First shark ray in America tests the water at Newport Aquarium," June 8, 2005
Australian Museum Fish Site, Find a Fish, Shark Ray
American Museum of Natural History, Seminars on Science, "Sharks and Rays: Myth and Reality," Week 4, Nostrils of Shark Ray
Shark Ray Jaw, FossilsOnline.com

Apple #78: Pastrami

Today, a friend told me this: "Did you know that pastrami is a process? And that any meat can be pastramied?" I HAD to know more.


That's pastrami on the right, brisket on the left. Pastrami has the tell-tale blackened spices on the outside.
(Photo from Off the Broiler)

• Pastrami = smoked corned beef. Corned beef is from a brisket, usually beef. A brisket is two pieces of meat separated by a layer of fat. The brisket is soaked in a salt brine, along with some sugar and other spices like garlic, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and coriander. This gives you the corned beef part.


• Corn is not involved at all, by the way. That word actually refers to a phrase, that one should use salt the size of a kernel of wheat, which in British parlance is "corn."
  


• After the brisket soaks for 1 to 3 weeks, then it is put either into a smokehouse or into a home smoker, for about 45 minutes per pound. Comparatively speaking, it doesn't take long to smoke because the soaking process has already tenderized the meat. Once it reaches the essential internal temperature of 165 degrees, you have pastrami.


• You can make pastrami using turkey, or ham, or salmon, or venison. You can also make a vegetarian pastrami using seitan, which is protein-rich wheat gluten.

This is short ribs that has been pastramied. Or, pastrami made with short ribs.

(Photo and recipe from inuyaki)

• Once you have pastrami, you can make reuben sandwiches. If you want to get hungry for a reuben, look here.
  

Sources
Howstuffworks, "What exactly is pastrami?"
Ask Yahoo, "What is pastrami?"
About.com, Derrick Riches, "Pastrami: Yes, you can make your own at home."

Apple #77: Mallard Ducks

MALLARD DUCKS

The other morning, I saw a male mallard duck sitting in a parking lot, in an empty parking space. I pulled up near it, to the space where I wanted to park, and the duck did not move. He eyed my car with some suspicion, but he did not even stand up. I thought he might have been hurt, or perhaps just holding the parking space for someone, but after quacking softly to himself for a while, eventually he stood up, flip-flapped his duck feet a ways away from me, and then took off, flying high over the buildings.


These ducks are from Fergus Falls, Minnesota

• Mallards are the most common duck in the United States and Europe. They have the largest breeding range of any bird in North America.

• Mallards live near water, in areas throughout North America and Europe, where the climate is not too severe.

• In the winter, they migrate as far south as the Tropic of Cancer, and also to Africa, as far as South Africa.

• Taxonomists recognize seven races of mallards.

• The males are called "drakes" and the females are called "hens."

• Mallards are among the most vocal of all waterfowl. The hen makes a variety of quacking noises, and the drake's quacking has a higher, reedier pitch. During mating season, he also makes a single or double-noted whistle.

• They eat seeds from all kinds of plants, especially from trees that grow alongside water, but they will also eat corn, wheat, and barley. In addition to seeds, they eat snails, insects, small fish, tadpoles, fish eggs, and frogs. They may travel up to 25 miles to find food.

• Their method of dunking their heads under water to eat has earned them the nickname "dabbling ducks."

These ducks are from Scotland

• After the drake and hen mate, the hen lays her eggs and the drake takes off. At this time, she forms a group with other drakes, and they all guard the nest while she lays one egg a day, from 9 to 13 days.

• The eggs are gray-green and are incubated for about 28 days. The ducklings all hatch within 24 hours of each other, mostly during the day. Hatching typically occurs between late April and early June.

• If a predator (possum, skunk, raccoon, crow, snake, fox, largemouth bass, or snapping turtle) destroys her clutch, the hen may lay another the same summer.

• The ducklings are led to water soon after they are born. In general they mature quickly, sometimes mating as young as 12 months old.

• Later in the summer, the ducks move to larger waters, where the drakes molt and then court the females. Once they've paired off, the ducks eat like crazy in preparation for the fall migration. After the winter spent in warmer climates, the ducks return north to nest.

• In the wild, mallards can live from 7 to 9 years.

• Most domesticated ducks, the kind that people buy as pets especially in the springtime, are descendants of the mallard. Also, many domesticated ducks have interbred with wild ducks, so that it is now difficult to find a pure, wild mallard.

Here are some mallards in downtown Branson, Missouri


Sources
Ducks of the World, page by Maurice Houston Field, Curator of the Waterfowl and Chenoa, University of Tennessee
BBC Science & Nature Wildfacts pages, the Mallard
Chuck Fergus, Pennsylvania Game Commission, Mallard Ducks
Ducks Unlimited Canada, The Life Story of the Mallard
Christyan's page on the Mallard Duck, Warner Elementary School

Apple #76: Epsom Salts

EPSOM SALTS

I got a sliver in my palm, and somebody suggested I soak my hand in warm water and Epsom salts. I haven't seen Epsom salts much at all in recent years. In fact, the last time I really remember seeing them in action was when my brother once upon a time stepped on a rusty nail while crossing a baseball diamond barefoot, and the nail went just about through his foot. Afterwards, he soaked his foot in a big pan of milky-looking water while my mom quietly had a conniption fit in the background.

Anyway, the recent mention of Epsom salts got me wondering, what are they exactly?

• Chemically speaking, Epsom salts are hydrated magnesium sulfate.
• This compound occurs naturally, dissolved in sea water, and also in mineral waters, especially those from Epsom, England (where the salts get their name), and in a few other mineral springs in Europe.
• Soaking in warm water and Epsom salts supposedly draws toxins -- and splinters -- from your body, reduces swelling, relaxes muscles, and soothes the nervous system. However, if you have high blood pressure, or heart or kidney problems, it is recommended that you don't soak in Epsom salts.
  
• You can also use them as an exfoliant -- a way to scrub off the old skin cells -- or in a compress to take the sting out of insect bites.
• You can use them to make your hair less oily, to make your own hair spray, or, when mixed with conditioner, as a hair volumizer.
  
• Amazingly enough to me, Epsom salts can be ingested, and used as laxatives! All that stuff like Metamucil, Ex-Lax, Dulcolax, Correctal, all that stuff is technically Epsom salts. Or I guess, magnesium sulfate in one form or another.
  
• You can also use the salts, I think in the form of an injection, to inhibit contractions in premature labor, and to reduce the effect of poisons that have been swallowed (especially when combined with potassium iodide, they can help eliminate lead from the system). They are used to help lung function in people with asthma, and they are becoming an increasingly popular way to treat heart palpitations, especially ones that result from overdoses of antidepressants.
• Outside of medicine, Epsom salts are used to stiffen and give cotton fabrics more weight, and as a fixing agent in fabric dyeing.
  
• In agriculture, they are used for topdressing (covering or fertilizing) clover hay.
• You can also use Epsom salts in your garden, to help fertilize your vegetables or your lawn.

Epsom salts in crystal form

Epsom salts from the drug store


EPSOM SALTS ADDENDUM

So, that sliver I had in my palm? I got some salts, dissolved them in warm water, and soaked my hand until the water turned cool. The sliver hadn't moved a bit. So much for drawing out splinters, or even softening the skin enough that the splinter would be easily accessible.

I got it out the best way I know, poking the skin away very carefully with a needle, until I could push it out with the needle's tip. Then I poured hydrogen peroxide on the spot. Done.

Sources
Ask Yahoo, What are the medicinal benefits of soaking in epsom salts?
Care2.com, 13 Wonderful Ways to Use Epsom Salts
Drugs.com, Epsom salts drug information
CureZone, What are Epsom salts?
1911 Love to Know Encyclopedia, Epsom salts
There's also the Epsom Salt Industry Council, but this website didn't work when I checked it.

Apple #75: Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches

I've recently been eating these more often, when I get up too late in the morning to have a real breakfast, so I make a PB&J because it's quick, and eat it in the car on the way to work. I'm struck anew, how tasty this combination is, and how filling. It makes me marvel, "Whoever thought this up was a genius!"

I figured that I wouldn't be able to find the name of one particular person who made the first Pt. But. & Jel. a reality. But what I didn't count on was realizing just how many other inventions had to come first, in order for the PB&J to come into being.


(Photo of PB&J sandwich from boston.com)

• The sandwich: John Montagu, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, is widely credited with inventing this. In fact, he did not invent it, but rather made it popular. One day while at the gambling table in 1763, he ordered that slices of meat be brought to him between slices of bread, so that he could eat and still continue gambling for 24 hours without stopping.

• The bread: The first mechanical bread slicer was patented in 1927, but the sliced loaves were unappealing to customers and didn't sell, until St. Louis baker Gustav Papendik (yes, that's his name) put the sliced loaves in cardboard trays for support within the wrapper. Then that sliced bread sold like hot cakes.

• The jelly: Jellies, in general, are old, old, old. European crusaders brought jellies home with them from the Middle East in 1000-1200 A.D. Before that, all anybody knows for sure is that cane sugar, which would have been necessary to make jelly, was available in Baghdad in 700 A.D. Who knows who came up with jelly in the first place.
  

• The peanut butter: No, it was not invented by George Washington Carver, who was doing peanut research in the early 1900's. Peanut butter was most likely invented by a St. Louis doctor (again, St. Louis!) whose name has since been lost to posterity. He got the idea that ground-up peanuts would make a cheap, easily digested, protein-rich food. He got a local merchant named George Bayle, Jr., to ground the peanuts for him. The first commercially-manufactured peanut butter was patented and sold by John Harvey Kellogg, of cereal fame.

• The peanut butter & jelly sandwich: Nobody knows who first put them all together. The only things people can say for sure are 1) The US military used PB&Js in their Army Rations during World War II. It is possible that GI's first came up with the combination, out of the elements given to them in their rations, and the military then formalized it into a sandwich. It is also possible that the military came up with it themselves, or got the idea from someplace else. 2) No advertising or any other public mention of PB&Js has been found before the 1940s.

I'm just now realizing how mysterious the PB&J actually is. Nobody knows, really, who made the first ever sandwich. Where was the first jelly made, no one knows that either, let alone who was its first architect. And what was the name of the doctor who came up with the idea of peanut butter? And could the US Department of Defense be behind the first peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or did they have some other mind working for them behind the scenes? No one can say for sure...

And remember the Amazing Mumford, who used to be on Sesame Street and whose magic phrase used to be, "A la peanut butter sandwiches?" He seems to have gotten mysteriously squeezed out by the Count von Count, who used to laugh "Ah! Ah! Ah!" when he finished counting something. He no longer does this because the People in Charge at Sesame Street thought this made him too scary for today's children -- or was it because he had triumphed over Mumford and no longer needed to celebrate his victory?



Sources
Smuckers, The History of Peanut Butter and Jelly
Suman Bandrapalli, "How a PB&J Came to Be," Christian Science Monitor, March 3, 1998
"What is the history of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" Ask Yahoo

Apple #74: Bocce

BOCCE

Thinking some more about my upcoming trip home for Memorial Day weekend, I remembered that my parents recently got a bocce set. We played a lot the last time I was there, and I think maybe we'll probably play again. Although, it might be raining, so maybe not. In any case, I suspected there might be some interesting tidbits to know about bocce.

• As I'm finding with so many delightful pastimes, nobody's really sure of the actual origins of this game. Some say it's as old as 5200 B.C., and first played in Egypt; some say it originated in Greece.
• The most reliable sources, however, say that it was for sure played during the Punic Wars, when Rome was battling Carthage in Africa, and which started in 264 B.C. The soldiers played when they were taking a break from fighting.
• The way they played back then -- much the same as it is played today -- was to throw a small "leader" stone (now called a "pallino") some distance away, and then to throw other larger stones at the leader. The stone coming closest to the leader would score. Teams had anywhere from 2 to 8 players, and the score to reach first ranged from 16 to 24.
• For a while, the game was banned, when the Holy Roman Emperor prohibited it in 1319 because it had become so popular, he thought that it might interfere with soldiers playing other sports "of a more military nature." (Although, really, how could you enforce this ban, when all you need to play is a handful of rocks?)
  
• Famous people known to have played bocce include Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci, Sir Francis Drake (who refused to begin a battle with the Spanish Armada until after he'd finished his bocce game), and George Washington.
• As more people played the sport, it changed slightly, especially as each European country adapted it. In France, it became known as boules. In Italy, it became bocce or boccia. In England, it became lawn bowling, which is the pre-cursor to what we in the US call "bowling."
  
• In bocce, the technique of throwing the larger balls toward the smaller pallino is called "bowling." In fact, the two-step run-up and the four-step run-up methods of bowling in bocce look very similar to the approaches that professional bowlers make.
• There are 4 variations of bocce, including Volo or Lyonnaise, Petanque, Lawn Bowls, and Punto Raffa. Each variation has slightly different rules, which vary especially on what should be done after one ball strikes another. What people in the US and Canada think of as bocce is the Punto Raffa variation. Most casual bocce players bowl outside, and this is known as free style.

Photo from Boccemon.com

• Bocce is also played inside, or court style, especially in tournaments. In court style of play, additional rules govern what happens if the pallino or the larger balls hit the back wall, and whether or not lofting the ball when in the center of the court should be allowed.
  
• You can also play on an open course, similarly to golf, using 16 pairs of flags to mark out a sequence of bocce target areas.
  
• In the United States, there are bocce clubs in California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Arizona, and Nevada. At least, these are the states where bocce clubs are registered with the US Bocce Federation. Other states may have clubs, as well.
• This year's US Bocce National tournament will be held June 18-25th at the spacious and well-appointed Palazzo di Bocce, in the auspicious Orion Township, Michigan, near the Palace of Auburn Hills, between Pontiac and Flint.

The Palazzo di Bocce:


Sources
United States Bocce Federation
Bocce Canada
Palazzo di Bocce

Apple #73: Color Blindness

Someone told me today that women cannot be color blind. In the physical sense, in the inability to see certain colors. This person told me that it's for genetic reasons that women cannot be color blind, but men can. I didn't remember learning this when I was taking high school science, so I looked it up.


Some typical tests for color blindness. If you have trouble seeing the numbers in these circles, you may be color blind. I'm not color blind, but the ones at the bottom are a little trickier than others, I must admit.
(Images by Vurdlak from Mighty Optical Illusions)

• What I was told was technically incorrect. Women can be color blind, but it is highly unlikely.

• Women's eggs, which contain two X chromosomes, 90% of the time carry the gene for color vision. Only 10% of the time will they carry the recessive gene for color blindness.
  

• About 45% of the time, the X chromosome in the male's sperm carries the dominant gene for color vision. That is, the male's sperm has a greater chance than the female's eggs of carrying the recessive gene for color blindness.

• Based on those various percentages, it works out so that 5% of the US population are color blind males, while only 0.5% of the US population are color blind females.
  

• While it is very rare for women to be color blind, it is possible. More often, if females are born with the recessive gene, they only carry it, but the color blindness is not expressed.

• There are many different kinds and degrees of color blindness, but they can essentially be grouped into three categories:
  

1. Red/Green, which is the inability to distinguish reds and greens
2. Blue/Yellow, which is much more rare
3. Truly color blind, and able to see only grays, but this is extremely rare.

• The most common color-deficiency is the difficulty or inability to see green.

• Physically, if a person is color blind, the cones or color-sensitive receptors in their retinas are somehow not working. The cones contain pigments which select for red, green, and blue light. In people who are color blind, the amount of pigment per cone may be reduced, or one or more of the cone types will simply be absent.

• Some problems that color blind people face include:

• Determining if meat is cooked all the way through, or if it is still red
• Interpreting color-coded weather maps
• Being able to see whether someone is getting sunburned
• Knowing whether a flashing traffic caution light is red or yellow, and how to proceed
• No interest at all in eating spinach or other dark-green vegetables, which appear to the color-blind eye as black or dark "like cow pat."

• If you want to see what any given web page would look like to a person who is color blind, go here to try it out.

This just in, as of September 2009: scientists have recently found a way to correct color blindness in monkeys. The researchers used a non-harmful virus to carry a gene that replaces the missing gene responsible for causing color blindness. The virus replicates and inserts the gene into the cells, and in about five months, the monkeys could see color. The researchers are hopeful that this treatment or one very like it could be used to correct color blindness or perhaps other visual defects in humans.


Sources
Wayne's Word, Color Blindness & Baldness in People
Toledo-Bend.com, About Color Blindness
Hidden Talents, Color Blindness
Katherine Harmon, "Loci Color: Gene Therapy Cures Color-Blindness in Adult Monkeys," Scientific American, September 16, 2009

Apple #72: Playing Cards

PLAYING CARDS

I'm going to see my parents for Memorial Day weekend, and it is very likely that we will play cards during my visit. Which got me thinking about cards, and wondering where they came from.

• The earliest playing cards are believed to have appeared in the 10th century, when the Chinese made dominoes out of paper and then made up new games with the shufflable dominoes. They had at least two suits, of bamboo sticks and circles, which are also used in Mah-Jong tiles.

• The next incarnation was in the Moslem world, especially near Egypt, when cups and swords were added to make four suits, and court cards were also added.

• The Europeans started importing cards in the late 1300's. At that time, cards were hand-painted, very expensive, and only the very wealthy could afford them. Somehow, though, the less enfranchised managed to get hold of playing cards as well, and their popularity spread. Soon, the process of printing using wood cuts was invented, and more cards were produced more quickly.

• The French were really the ones to change cards essentially to the way we recognize them today. While other countries had complex insignia for the four suits, the French's spades, clubs, diamonds, and hearts were simple shapes in single colors and easier to make. The English imported these cards like mad, and then they found their way to the colonies in America.

• To this day, playing cards in other countries in Europe retain some differences. For example, playing cards in Italy, Spain, Germany, and Switzerland have no queens. In Switzerland, the Deuce or Daus is the top card which has the letter "A" on it, as if it were an ace.

• In the 1800's, Americans began making cards of their own. Innovations included giving the court cards two heads, so that you didn't have to rotate the cards one particular way, varnishing the surfaces to make them slipperier for shuffling and longer-lasting, and rounding the corners which also helped them last longer and avoid tell-tale creases.

• Americans also invented the Joker. It was originally inscribed as the Best Bower (most powerful) card in Euchre. Euchre was sometimes called "Juker," and it is likely that the Best Bower card was also called the Juker card, which then evolved into the "Joker." By the 1880's, people were using a picture of a court jester or clown for the Joker card, as a way to add it to the court cards without upsetting the royal hierarchy, so to speak.

• Right about the time that cards were starting to get standardized, people made the court cards to represent actual monarchs. In some games, people actually referred to the cards by name:

• King of Spades: King David (Biblical)
• King of Diamonds: Julius Caesar
• King of Clubs: Alexander the Great
• King of Hearts: Charlemagne
• Queen of Spades: Pallas Athena (Greek)
• Queen of Diamonds: Rachel (Biblical)
• Queen of Clubs: called Argine, anagram for regina ("queen")
  
• Queen of Hearts: Judith, either from the Bible, or Charlemagne's daughter-in-law, Judith of Bavaria
  
• Jack of Spades: Hogier the Dane, one of Charlemagne's paladins, from the Song of Roland
  
• Jack of Diamonds: Hector of Troy, or sometimes Roland of France
• Jack of Clubs: Sir Lancelot
• Jack of Hearts: French warrior and companion to Joan of Arc, named Etienne de Vignoles, a.k.a. La Hire

How the Jack of Diamonds has changed over time:


Images of cards from D.J. McAdam's and David Madore's sites

Sources
United States Playing Card Company, A Brief History of Playing Cards
The International Playing-Card Society, History of Playing Cards
The World of Playing Cards
Nancy R. Fenn, "The Four Great Kings in the Card Deck,"Be My Astrologer
D.J. McAdam, The People on the Playing Cards
Andy's Playing Cards, The National Patterns
David Madore's site, Courts on Playing Cards

Apple #71: Brownies, Brownies, Brownies

BROWNIES

I got into a discussion the other day about how there are three different kinds of brownies. The person I was talking to had never heard of the third kind of brownie.

Brownie #1:
The kind you eat. Chocolaty good, yum.

Photo from My Home Cooking


Ingredients are simple: cocoa, butter, sugar, vanilla, salt, flour, and eggs. Melt the butter, mix it all up, put it in a greased dish and bake it at 325F for 35-40 minutes.

Brownie #2:
Before they become Girl Scouts, girls 6-8 can be Brownies. They're part of the Girl Scouts enterprise, though they're not officially Girl Scouts yet. Activities that Brownies might do together include going to a zoo and learning about caring for animals, planning an overnight birthday celebration, camping and making s'mores, learning to swim, and deciding how many cookies to sell to earn money for trips.

They get to wear the Brownie Girl Scout Pin and the World Trefoil Pin, to show they're "part of a worldwide movement."


These girls are modeling the official Brownie gear. In real life, most brownies wear the vest and the rest of their outfit is regular clothes.
Photo from Girl Scout Council of Greater Minneapolis


Brownie #3:
In the realm of the little people (fairies, goblins, gnomes, leprechauns, etc.), brownies are benevolent creatures. While leprechauns are associated with the Irish, brownies are associated with the Scottish.

Some people say they're invisible, and some say they're little men with brown skin and brown clothes. They come inside your house or barn and do things that are helpful. While you sleep, they'll do household chores, sweep the floors, secretly fix something that's broken, or other little do-gooding deeds like that. People say to be sure to treat a brownie well; reportedly, they like a little dish of cream left out for them, and maybe some cake. Or perhaps a brownie!


Drawing from Wellesley's Guide to Little People


Sources
My Home Cooking's favorite brownie recipe
Girl Scouts Central, Brownie Girl Scouts: Going Places, Making Friends
Girl Scouts Heart of Texas Council
Factmonster, Word Wise guide on Fairies
Evilscience.net, manual on Fairies
A Guide to Little People, Brownies
Wellesley's Guide to Little People

Apple #70: Gumby

At long last, here is the entry on Gumby.

• Gumby was a stop-animation green clay character with his very own cartoon TV show, which started in 1956 and ran through 1991. Gumby's sidekick was Pokey the horse. I never saw this show growing up, but tons of people did and they still hold a fond spot in their hearts for Gumby and Pokey.


• Here's one storyline from The Gumby Show, the first time when Gumby meets Pokey, more or less as described at Absolute Gumby:

  Gumby meets Pokey by saving him from an oncoming train as the Blockheads watch on, dumbfounded. Later, the two roll around ridiculously, laughing at each other's names. After a short encounter with a rattlesnake, Gumby takes the lost Pokey back to his ranch and receives a hundred ice cream cones as his reward, which he is forced to eat all at once. The cold ice cream makes Gumby lapse into a coma, and Pokey has to rush to his rescue.

• Gumby was made by a guy named Art Clokey, who grew up on his grandfather's farm 80 minutes north of Detroit in the 1930s. He used to play soldiers with a neighbor kid and when they ran out of soldiers, they made more out of clay.

• Clokey studied animation at the University of Southern California and was especially inspired and educated in film arts by an animation guru guy named Slavko Vorkapich.

• Clokey made his first clay animation film for Budweiser. They wanted a commercial that would show a cheeseburger being eaten, to suggest a cheeseburger is good to eat with a beer. The cheeseburger had Swiss cheese on it, and they used clay to animate bites disappearing from it.

• After this experience, Clokey had a two-week break, when he used clay to make abstract shapes and set them up on a piece of plywood and shot them in progressive positions, using the principles he'd learned from Vorkapich. That film was called Gumbasia.

• He called it "Gumbasia" after the word "gumbo," which people back on the farm used to describe roads that got really muddy after the rain. He combined "gumbo" plus "fantasia" and got "Gumbasia."

• A big-time producer, Daryl Zanuck, saw Gumbasia and asked if he could make that kind of animated film for television, for children to watch. Clokey said sure, Zanuck agreed to produce the show, and so Gumby was born.

• Clokey studied for a while to be an Episcopalian minister, and his storylines are strongly influenced by a lot of the theology he learned through that experience, and from growing up with his grandfather.

• Contrary to what some people have alleged, Clokey never smoked marijuana or took any psychedelics, and was in fact afraid to try any sort of recreational drug. The supposedly surreal quality of the show and the vivid colors of his characters came from his daydreams and imagination.

• Gumby had two other friends, Prickle and Goo. Prickle was a spiny yellow dinosaur, and Goo was a blue mermaid. Clokey once attended a psychologists' convention during which he heard Allen Watts speak, who was known as the Zen Philosopher of Sausalito.
  

• Watts told lots of jokes in between the speakers, and in one of these sessions, he said there were two kinds of people in the world, the prickly and the gooey. The prickly people are uptight, analytical and critical, while the gooey people are easygoing, friendly, and ready to move with the flow.
  

• So Clokey made characters that symbolized those two types, Prickle and Goo. Prickle tells Goo when he thinks she's doing things wrong. Goo can throw goo balls at people when she they deserve it.

Here are all the figures, from L to R, Prickle, Pokey, Gumby, Goo, and Minga the mermaid.
(Photo sourced from Action Figures on Sale, but it's really from Amazon, where you can buy the whole set of these guys for $22.95)

• Clokey also made the stop-animation show David and Goliath, in which a boy and his dog, Goliath, talk to each other and face various problems together and handle conflicts based on Christian teachings.

Here's Davey and Goliath, Vol. 1. I can just hear Goliath saying, "I don't know, Davey," in that slow, dumb voice.
(Available from Amazon for 94 cents. That's right, cheap-eroo.)

• By the way, the shape of Gumby's head probably has something to do with the shape of Art Clokey father's hair when he was growing up:

For more pictures of Gumby and his friends, go to the Image Archive at gumbyworld. For some short Quicktime video clips, try this page.


NEWS UPDATE: Art Clokey died today, January 9, 2010, at the age of 88.


Hey, Art, wherever you are, I hope you're having as much fun there as you are here.
(Photo from somewhere on the page of That One | EBD)


Sources
Gumbyworld
Absolute Gumby

Apple #69: Microwave Ovens II

MICROWAVE OVENS, part II

I've been doing some more reading because I really want to know if microwave ovens are screwing up my food or even my health in some way. My biggest question is about whether the action of heating food in a microwave damages the food to such a degree that your body can get no nutritional value from it, or if it even somehow renders the food hazardous to you.

What I've learned is that when a microwave heats food, it does so by changing the polarity of the molecules in the food billions of times per second. This results in changes to the molecules, changes that are called "structural isomerism." This means that the molecule keeps the same components, but everything in the molecule gets rearranged. When a molecule gets rearranged like this, it can have very different properties as a result, but not necessarily.

The websites that say microwaves are dangerous all say that the resulting structural isomerism is always bad, and that the food is therefore impaired in quality, sometimes drastically so. The scientific websites I've found don't really address this question directly.

The afraid-of-microwaves websites also keep telling the same anecdotes as evidence, over and over. I keep seeing the story about how one paper published in the 1980s said that microwaving breast milk changes the milk slightly. Exactly how the milk gets changed is where people get fuzzy on the details. There's also the story that gets told and retold of how in 1991 a nurse microwaved blood for a transfusion to warm it before injecting it into her patient, and the patient died. The actual cause of death was not linked directly to this microwaved transfusion; nonetheless, people paint this story in all kinds of dire language.

There's also the story of the Swiss scientist who published a paper warning of all kinds of potential, but mostly not yet measurable, dangers associated with microwaved foods. A Swiss trade association effectively barred him from publishing any more papers because he "interfered with commerce." This decision was later reversed and the doctor was given compensation. This story is told largely as a sign that the little guy, fighting against the big industry machine, was oppressed and that therefore his assertions must be correct. But nowhere does anyone citing the Swiss doctor's paper say that anyone else found data that corroborated what he said initially.

People keep telling these same stories, over and over. They also say things like, "Your mother was right to be suspicious of microwaves." They say microwaves produce radiation -- using "radiation" as a scary word, when all things with energy produce radiation, including us people.

I am not a scientist, and I don't have the means to conduct the kinds of experiments I would want to conduct to answer this question for myself definitively. I also don't have access to costly chemistry research papers that might answer my question. What I do have access to -- the public Internet -- is giving me some indications that lead me to my conclusion.

I am not impressed by the doom-sayers' techniques of citing the same anecdotes, referring to individual events that took place over a decade ago. I've seen other people use this tactic, about other topics, and it usually turns out that they're either 1) spreading gossip, 2) grossly underinformed about the facts or the science or the details behind the event, or 3) fear-mongering. I'm not accusing any of the sources I've cited of taking part in this kind of activity; I'm only saying their evidence looks a whole lot like the partial and uninformed evidence I've seen elsewhere in other circumstances.

So my take is this: I'm not going to fear my microwave, or throw it out, or try to convince others to do likewise. I'm probably not going to cook too many vegetables in it, however, but I don't really do that anyway. I mainly use it to heat up soup or some frozen doo-dad, which is not exactly high on the nutrition pyramid anyway. I already don't use it to cook all-out meals, and I don't plan to start doing so.

The upshot: I'm not going to change much about the way I use my microwave. But I sure did learn a heck of a lot about how it works.

Sources
"Radiation Ovens: The Proven Dangers of Microwaves," reprinted all over the place, available here through Lawgiver.Org
Chemguide, "Structural Isomerism" classroom guide
Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, "Coordination Compounds," (section 1.2.1) by Katharina M. Fromm, February 14, 2003

Apple #68: Microwave Ovens

MICROWAVE OVENS

Not long ago, a friend of mine said she hardly ever uses her microwave anymore because "microwaves destroy all the nutrients" in food. She said when she's tempted to use her microwave, she asks herself, "Do I want to get any nutritional value out of this?" and then uses her oven or stove instead.

This sounded to me like some kind of overly suspicious urban legend, but I couldn't get it out of my head, especially when I was about to microwave something. So I decided to check it out. What I found is that there are a lot of people who say that microwaves cause big problems in food. There are also a lot of other people -- scientists and people who love their microwave ovens -- who say, "Pah!"

• Microwaves use magnetrons, which use magentic and electrical fields to produce micro wavelength radiation. This radiation is what affects or "zaps" your food.
• The wave energy is constantly changing polarity, with every cycle of the wave. This happens billions of times in a second. Since the waves are bombarding your food like crazy, this is also making the molecules in your food change polarity just as rapidly. (For a graphic that helps explain this, see this page.)
  
• So the food molecules are flopping back and forth, billions of times per second. This creates all kinds of agitation and is what heats the food. According to those who don't like microwaves, it is also this agitation that breaks down the molecules, or sometimes deforms them, or may even tear them apart. They say this is how the structure of vitamins and enzymes in the food get destroyed.
• All heating processes break down the structure of food, but many people say that microwaves cause the most damage. Studies have been cited that say that between 90% and 97% of the nutrients get destroyed in the microwaving process.
• On the other hand, the FDA says that microwave ovens can be better than conventional cooking because they heat the food faster. If foods are heated slowly, or kept warm for long periods of time, they can lose nutritional value, so because a microwave works faster, it is therefore better. The FDA also says it's a lot harder to burn the food in a microwave, and you get much more even cooking.
  
• The Washington State Department of Health and other governmental/scientific overseeing organizations say it's simply not true that microwaves destroy the nutrients in food.
  
• In general, hard-core scientists dismiss people's worries about microwave ovens as coming from a lack of understanding about how microwaves work. Microwaves use non-ionizing radiation, which means it's not the kind of radiation like X-rays, which can cause chemical damage in molecules. Scientists say, because microwaves are non-ionizing (and because your microwave oven is lined with metal, which will make the rays bounce back into the oven), you don't have to worry about how close you stand to your microwave. You also don't have to worry about your food emitting psycho-crazy waves when you take it out of the microwave.
• One wrinkle in scientists' certainty, though, came in the late 1980's, when chemists started trying out the microwaves that they had been using to re-heat their food on their chemistry experiments. They discovered that processes that would otherwise take hours or even days could be completed in minutes in the microwave, and often without the heretofore necessary super-duper solvents.
• This started a branch of chemistry known as "microwave chemistry" because the scientists discovered that the microwaves produced unpredictable results. They also realized they didn't always understand why the microwaves were having the effects they were having.

I still have some questions, and the information I've found so far is contradictory enough, I want to keep looking into this further. More soon when I get something more definitive.

In the meantime, here's a really great site about all kinds of crazy things you can make happen in a microwave, like making ordinary tap water explode, or making a lit candle spew lightning, or even blowing up marshmallow Peeps.

Sources
Healing Daily, "Should you be concerned about cooking your food using a microwave oven?"
News Target commentary, "Microwaving your veggies destroys 97% of nutrients like antioxidants," date unknown
Marion Wild, "Are microwave ovens a source of danger?" reprinted at Cure Zone
Healing.com, Health chat, "Microwave Cooking -- Just Say No!"
US FDA, Performance Standards for Microwave and Radio Frequency Emitting Products, part 1030
Washington State Department of Health, Division of Environmental Health, Office of Radiation Protection, Microwave Oven Radiation
The Straight Dope, "Does microwaving kill nutrients in food? Is microwaving safe?" May 6, 2005
How Things Work, Virginia.edu, Microwave ovens
DoItYourself.com, Microwave Oven Repair and Care

Apple #67: Pool Tables

POOL TABLES

I shot pool tonight, for the first time in maybe two years. I did all right, especially for not having played in so long. The tables in the place where we were playing had red felt on them. The chalk for the cues was also red. It got me wondering, what difference does it make if the felt is red or green? Because I think I like green better.

• According to one site, "the color of the cloth is cosmetic." Unless, if you're color blind, you might really need the table to be covered in one color rather than another.
  
• The cloth is not actually made of felt, but in higher grade tables, it is a wool/nylon blend, about 80% wool and 20% nylon.
  
• Some tables are covered with 100% English wool, but those are usually snooker tables, which is more popular in England and elsewhere in Europe.
• The higher grade of cloth, the higher thread density, and the faster the ball will travel. Cloth can make a difference of up to 8% in speed.
• If you want someone to come recover your pool table for you, that will cost anywhere from $200 to $400.
• Some other notable tidbits: the slate slabs that make up the bed of the table need to be sealed to create a smooth playing surface. The material that works best to close the gaps is beeswax because it is pliable when melted, but hardens very well and will not stain the cloth or become brittle.
• If you need to move a pool table, take it apart completely first. This will prevent the slate from getting broken or anything from getting bent or warped.
  
• If you do crack the slate, there are slate patching kits available. But you don't want to crack the slate, if you can help it. The idea is to have a playing surface that is level and smooth. Since nothing else works as well as slate, you want to keep it unbroken.
• Minnesota Fats, by the way, apparently never really existed. There was one guy in real life who had lots of nicknames like "Chicago Fats" and "New York Fats," but he couldn't shoot pool all that well; he just liked to brag. After the movie The Hustler was released, he changed his name to Minnesota Fats and claimed to be the person on whom the role was based. Jackie Gleason, who played Minnesota Fats in the movie, didn't like him. He said he could beat the so-called Minnesota Fats if he played left-handed.
  

Sources
Frequently Asked Questions about Pool Tables, from The Factory Outlet
Frequently Asked Questions, from Best Billiard Supply
Egyptian Area Agency on Aging, Famous People, Local Stories pages on Minnesota Fats and The Hustler

Apple #66: Coral Reefs

CORAL REEFS

I saw a book today about reefs. I opened the book and there were spectacular photos of super-bright fish, crazy-shaped coral, and all kinds of spiny things. I've gone snorkeling a couple of times at some reefs in the Caribbean, and I think the whole thing is fascinating. You stick your head an inch underwater, and it's like you're suddenly Jacques Cousteau, in the middle of fantasyland.


Photo by Mary L. Frost

• A reef is made up of many coral polyps. A polyp is a tubular, saclike animal with a mouth surrounded by tentacles. It's hard to believe these things are animals, but they are. Like the fish that live among the reefs, the polyps can be many very bright colors.

• The tentacles are generally how the polyp gets food to its mouth. The tentacles may be short or long, or they may have venom-filled stingers on them called nematocysts which attack the prey and bring it to the coral's mouth.

• Polyps eat zooplankton, or very small fishes. Usually, they eat at night.

• Polyps also get much of their nutrition from coral algae. Also called zooxanthellae, the algae live on the coral and provide nutrition to it. The zooxanthellae need sunlight for photosynthesis, and this is why most coral only live in shallow water.

• Sometimes the coral will "bleach" or expel the coral algae, and when this happens, the coral have very little energy and will not reproduce, and they also lose their color. Coral are very sensitive to all kinds of environmental stressors such as pollution, changes in water temperature, UV radiation, and changes in the amount of salt in the water. Any of these stressors may trigger bleaching.

• As the polyps grow, they secrete skeletons made of calcium carbonate, something like bone. Other animals living around them bore into the skeletons and grind them up, making sediment. The sediment settles into the spaces around the polyps, and the algae and other minerals mix with the sediment and turn it into something like cement, which stabilizes the colony of coral.

• Almost all reef-building coral are what is called sessile animals, meaning they spend their entire adult lives rooted to a single spot on the sea floor.

• Coral polyps reproduce in lots of different ways, depending on the species. Some polyps are hermaphroditic, meaning they can fertilize themselves. Some are asexual, and "bud" offspring by pinching off parts of itself to plant it elsewhere nearby.

• My favorite method of coral reproduction, though, is called synchronous spawning. This is when all the polyps release a massive cloud of eggs and sperm into the water at the same time. Exactly when this happens depends on lunar cycles and tidal levels and water temperature and other factors, but still, somehow they all know when it's time to let 'em rip. The sloshing water mixes the eggs and sprem together and over a period of about four to ten days, the eggs get fertilized to form larvae, which settle to the sea floor and form polyps.

• There are approximately 6,000 species of reef-building corals. They provide shelter and food for all sorts of animals, including sponges, fungi,sea worms, sea urchins, jellyfish, oysters, clams, shrimp, crabs, turtles, parrot fish, clown fish, and hundreds of other kinds of fish.

Where you can find the major coral reefs in the world (Diagram from NOAA)


If you want to learn more about a specific type of coral, take a look at my entry on Sea Fans.

Sources
Seaworld Education Department's pages on Corals and Coral Reefs
University of the Virgin Islands Coral Reef Ecology page
Mary L. Frost's photo appeared in Brian Huse, "Communities Around the Globe Protect the Underwater World," Shared Oceans, Shared Future, April 2004
Diagram appeared in NOAA's What are Corals and Coral Reefs? article, which is part of its highly informative Coral Reef Information System.

Apple #65: Spring Fever

Yesterday, I told someone that I thought I might have spring fever. Do people still talk about spring fever? Is it even a real thing?

• Teachers seem to have the most to say about spring fever. Apparently, their students start going haywire in the springtime, and they want to understand why it happens and what to do about it. College students like to describe spring fever, too, as a way to explain why they're so distracted and have stopped caring about homework.

• The funny thing is, some people say it makes you languorous and sluggish, and other people say it makes you restless and jumpy. Or you might feel both ways, in sequence.

• Some people say that spring fever happens when there's a sudden warm spell after a long period of cold temperatures. Your body has to get rid of the extra heat, so your blood vessels dilate and your body works hard to do this. This gives you an "energetic" feeling, and makes you restless.

• Other people say that with the change in the amount of daylight, your body's sleeping patterns change. This lowers your body's supply of noradrenaline, which reduces your memory, attention span, alertness, and overall mental energy. Once your body adjusts to the seasonal change, you get a burst of mental as well as physical energy.

• Still others say spring fever is related to allergies. Because your body is working to fend off a lot of things that make you sneeze and that weren't a factor for several months, you may feel more light-headed or spacey, or tired, or silly.

• Changes in air pressure may also be the culprit. Some people say that can affect your mood. Since low air pressure is associated with storms, and it rains a lot in the springtime, you may be affected first by the drop in air pressure and second by the fact that it's raining out and you can't go run around outside like your body might be itching to do.

• Some student advisers say that with the warm weather, students start wearing fewer clothes, and co-eds are distracted by all the freshly revealed flesh. When the students emerge from the funk stage of spring fever and enter into the energetic stage, all those bare arms and legs make the students "ready for some lovin'."

Based on all these different descriptions of what spring fever is, and all the various explanations for it, I'm going to conclude that 1) nobody really knows what it is; and 2) everybody feels funky in the springtime.

Sources
Utah Education Network, weather trivia, What is spring fever?
Janet Frazier, "Spring and Summer Issues for School Employees," NCAE Safe and Healthy School Site
"Spring Fever: Welcome to silly season," Parenting Special Needs, About.com
"Spring Fever!" The Crusader, April 23, 2004, Holy Cross College
"Question: Why can't I concentrate when spring rolls around?" The Captain's Log, vol 36 issue 21, Christopher Newport University

Apple #64: Garbanzo Beans

The other day, I went out to dinner and someone I was with got a salad that had garbanzo beans in it. I haven't had garbanzo beans in quite a while, though I do like them. I was sort of envious of the garbanzo beans, and then I started wondering about them. Why are the also called "chick peas"? How do they grow? Where do they come from?

Growing them

• "Garbanzo beans" is what the Spanish call "chick peas." I suppose, since Spanish is not my first (or even second) language, I should call them "chick peas," but I like the word "garbanzo" better.

• Garbanzo beans are a legume, part of the pea family. They may be one of the oldest cultivated beans, known to have been grown as far back as 5400 B.C. Most garbanzo beans are beige, but they may also be red or brown or black.

• India is the main grower of garbanzo beans, accounting for 60% of world production in 2001. Turkey, Spain, Pakistan, and Algeria have traditionally been big garbanzo bean exporters, but recently Canada and Australia have also entered the picture.

• According to one person in the UK, you can take any old garbanzo beans you buy from the store and put them in a dish of water until they sprout. You have to change the water each day to keep it fresh. After they've sprouted, you can plant them and they'll grow into bushy plants that look kind of like ferns.

• They produce flowers, and then pods. Each pod has maybe 2-3 peas in them. Some people pick the pods while they're still green and then dry them; others wait until the pods dry on the vine before picking.

This is what fresh garbanzo beans look like, still in the pods.
(photo from Erin's Kitchen, a blog about eating in NY City)



This is what the beans look like dried.
(photo from Grains Canada)


Eating them

• One serving of garbanzo beans -- which is one cup, and come to think of it, that's a lot of the little guys -- gives you half of your day's supply of fiber. It also gives you a hefty 29% of the protein you need in a given day, and 26% of iron.

• I remember hearing, once upon a time, that garbanzo beans have a lot of fat in them. They do have 2% of your daily allotment of saturated fat, but I'm thinking, if it's a choice between garbanzo beans and cheese, for example, the garbanzo beans are probably the better option.

• Garbanzo beans are the main ingredient in hummus, which is a dip that's really good with warm pita bread, and also of falafel. One website says you can also use garbanzo beans as a substitute for coffee.
  

• Falafel are like meatballs, except made of garbanzo beans and fried. If you've never had it before, it may sound weird (I'm imagining the face my mother might make if I described this to her), but they're really tasty, especially if you serve them in a pita roll with yogurt sauce.

Falafel Recipe

• Ingredients:
• 8 oz dried chickpeas, or 8 oz. canned
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• 1 slice of white bread, soaked in some water
• 1/4 tsp cayenne
• 1 tsp coriander, ground
• 1 tsp cumin, ground
• 2 tsp parsley, finely chopped
• salt, to taste
• oil for frying

• If chickpeas are dried, soak overnight, then rinse and cook in fresh water for 1 to 1 1/2 hours until tender.

• Mash, do not blend, chickpeas until pureed.

• Squeeze water from the soaked bread and add to chickpeas along with all other ingredients, except oil. Knead until well-mixed.

• Let the mixture rest in the refrigerator for 1 to 2 hours, then roll between the palms to make firm balls about 1 inch in size. It helps if palms are wetted.

• Put oil in pan until about 1 inch deep, heat to 360 degrees F and fry the balls, a few at a time, until nicely brown all over. Takes about 2-3 minutes per ball.

• Drain on paper towel.

• Serve hot with lemon wedges or in pita with lettuce, tomato, and yogurt sauce.

Sources
Growing chickpea in the northern Great Plains, Montana State University Extension Service, 2002
How to grow chickpeas, the Gardener's Cooksite
Walton Feed's page on The Legumes. Lots of really interesting information here about beans in general.
101Cookbooks, March 19, 2005 page. Apparently, this woman is trying out recipes from her 101 cookbooks and posting the recipes she likes best. Some tasty-looking vegetarian dishes on this page.
Nutrition data for chickpeas. This nutrition data site is pretty cool. It gives a ton of information about each food item, including charts that make it easy to see what elements the food gives you a lot of, and also what other foods might be better substitutes. You can also change the serving size and see how the data changes. Really, this site rocks.
Falafel recipe from the epicentre