Is TV Real or Fake

TV shows are using green screens more than we realize and it has been going on for years. It is becoming difficult to know what is real and what is not. Here is a LINK to some of the tricks that popular TV shows use to make us believe the shows are shot on location when they are not.

Happy Friday

The most dramatic conflicts are perhaps, those that take place not between men but between a man and himself.

There is never a conflict when it comes to having a Happy Friday!

Tin Foil

Almost no one uses real tin foil these days. The stuff we all call “tin foil” is actually aluminum foil. Originally foil was made of tin, but it gave a tin flavor to whatever it touched. It was heavier than modern aluminum foil.

Aluminum foil began to surpass tin foil after World War II, but it had been available since 1910 when it was first produced by “Dr. Lauber, Neher & Cie.” a Swiss company. Its first use in the US was as a wrapper on Life Savers candy in 1913.
Tin foil was also used to fill cavities in teeth before the 20th century.

Another Food Myth Debunked

Never Use Wooden Cutting Boards with Meat. This comes from the thought that using a wooden cutting board will result in tiny scratches and cuts from your knife, and if you use that cutting board with meat, especially raw meat, that all those meat juices will settle into the tiny cuts in the board and cause germs. The solution proposed is to use plastic cutting boards, which can be dishwashed and sanitized, and therefore must be safer.

There is much research that disputes this myth. One of the most famous studies was conducted by Dean O. Cliver, Ph.D of the UC-Davis Food Safety Laboratory. His research points out that there is no significant antibacterial benefit from using a plastic cutting board over a wood one. He notes that even if you apply bacteria to a wooden cutting board, its natural properties cause the bacteria to pass through the top layer of the wood and settle inside, where they are very difficult to bring out unless you split the board open.

Although the bacteria that disappeared from the wood surfaces are found alive inside the wood for some time, they do not multiply and gradually die. They can be detected only by splitting or gouging the wood or by forcing water completely through from one surface to the other. If a sharp knife is used to cut into the work surfaces after used plastic or wood has been contaminated with bacteria and cleaned manually, more bacteria are recovered from a used plastic surface than from a used wood surface.

Dr. Cliver's study tested 10 different hardwoods and 4 different plastic polymers. It found, if you want a plastic cutting board, anti-bacterial property is no reason to buy one. If you want a wooden cutting board, bacterial infection should not scare you away.

Bottom line: It is more important that you properly clean and disinfect whatever board you buy, regardless of what it is made of. Cutting boards touted as being coated or made with anti-microbial chemicals or materials are mostly not.

Microsoft Suit

Microsoft threatened to sue a high school student named Mike Rowe for registering MikeRoweSoft.com. It claimed that it was copyright infringement because it sounded phonetically the same as Microsoft. The student was a part-time web designer and thought it would be funny to add Soft at the end of his name.

When Microsoft found out about the domain, it asked him to give up the domain and offered to give him $10 to cover the registration expenses. He counter offered with $10,000, because he was upset at Microsoft's offer. Microsoft accused him of being a cybersquatter.

The case resulted in a PR loss for Microsoft, as the media portrayed it negatively. In the end, Microsoft flew Mike to its headquarters, gave him training as a developer, and an Xbox in exchange for the domain.

Wordology Cryptomnesia

The emergence in the mind of previously learned information that is treated as a new, original idea is cryptomnesia. A fragment of a song or a line of poetry comes to you, for instance, that you think you have invented, until someone else informs you it was Seeger or Lennon. The act of remembering, without knowing that is what you are doing.

It was first used by the nineteenth-century psychologist Théodore Flournoy, who studied mediums, psychics, and others. The ability to generate vivid recollections of past lives under hypnotic regression is, perhaps facilitated by cryptomnesia. From Greek kryptos, “hidden,” + mnesia, “memory.”

Smile for Your Health

Researchers have found what we always knew. Smiling is good for you. A smile slows down your heart and reduces stress. These results follows research that proved the act of smiling can make you feel happier.

Other studies indicate even a polite smile may be beneficial. Frowning also may have a health effect. Preventing people from frowning, such as with the use of Botox can help alleviate depression, according to another study.

A study published in the journal Psychological Science found that people who smiled after engaging in stress-inducing tasks showed a greater reduction in heart rate than people who maintained a neutral facial expression. "We saw a steeper decline in heart rate and a faster physiological stress recovery when they were smiling, even though the participants were not aware they were making facial expressions," according to Sarah Pressman, co-author of the study and an assistant psychology professor at UC Irvine.

Pressman is currently researching how smiling affects certain stress hormones, such as cortisol, and oxytocin. "We've already seen it with heart rate; we are hoping to see it with these other stress levels in the body," she says.

Ten More Interesting Facts About Humans

1. The surface area of a human lung is equal to a tennis court.
2. Sneezes regularly exceed 100 mph.
3. Approximately 75% of human waste is made of water.
4. The average person expels flatulence 14 times each day.
   
5. Earwax production is necessary for good ear health. It protects the delicate inner ear from bacteria, fungus, and dirt. It also cleans and lubricates the ear canal.
6. Babies are always born with blue eyes. The melanin in a newborn’s eyes often needs time after birth to be fully deposited or to be darkened by exposure to ultraviolet light, revealing the baby’s true eye color.
7. Every human spent about half an hour as a single cell.
8. After eating too much, your hearing is less sharp.
9. Women are born and remain better smellers than men.
10. Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents.

Origin of the Coffee Break

Pan American Coffee Bureau's 1952 advertising campaign for making this widely acceptable.

According to Mark Pendergrast's book, Uncommon Grounds: the History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, PACB's $2 million dollar annual advertising budget created this daily routine:

The bureau launched a radio, newspaper and magazine campaign with the theme, 'Give Yourself a Coffee-Break--And Get What Coffee Gives to You.'  The bureau gave a name and official sanction to a practice that had begun during the war in defense plants, when time off for coffee gave workers a needed moment of relaxation along with a caffeine jolt. 

'Within a very short space,' Charles Lindsay, the manager of the bureau, wrote in late 1952, 'the coffee-break had been so thoroughly publicized that the phrase had become a part of our language."

After the campaign, 80% of polled firms introduced coffee breaks.