What's in a Name, M&Ms

Forrest Mars, Sr., the founder of the Mars Company, got the idea for the confection in the 1930s during the Spanish Civil War when he saw soldiers eating chocolate pellets with a hard shell of tempered chocolate surrounding the inside, preventing the candies from melting.

Mars received a patent for his own process on March 3, 1941. One M was for Forrest E. Mars Sr., and one for Bruce Murrie, the son of Hershey's Chocolate president William F. R. Murrie. Murrie had 20 percent interest in the product. The arrangement allowed the candies to be made with Hershey chocolate which had control of the rationed chocolate. During the war, the candies were exclusively sold to the military. Mars bought out Murrie after the war, but kept the name. Murrie was also the guy who came up with the Mr. Goodbar (chocolate with peanuts) idea.

You can special order M&Ms with a saying or name on them from its web site. I did this for a birthday present. It is a bit pricey, but much fun, especially for children to see their own name on the little goodies.

Feed When They Are Hungry

Here is another example of stupid research headlines. It says if you feed your baby when he or she is hungry, he or she will be smarter. I suppose that means as opposed to letting them scream until it is dinnertime.

According to a study published March 18 2012, babies who are fed on demand perform better academically than those who are fed on a schedule.

Using data from more than 10,000 children, researchers found that demand-fed babies scored four to five points higher on IQ tests at age eight. Demand-feeding also was associated with higher scores in school tests at ages five, seven, eleven and fourteen, according to the study published in the European Journal of Public Health.

And now the disclaimer - However, the researchers, from the University of Essex and the University of Oxford, urged caution in interpreting the findings. "At this stage, we must be very cautious about claiming a causal link between feeding patterns and IQ ... more research is needed to understand the processes involved." So, the bottom line is that we should be cautious about believing the results.

Happy Friday

Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.


It is not a small thing that I have great ambitions for a Happy Friday!

What's in a Name, Jose Cuervo

Jose Antonio de Cuervo received a land grant in 1758 from the King of Spain to start an agave farm in the Jalisco region of Mexico.

Jose used his agave plants to make mescal, a popular Mexican liquor. In 1795, King Carlos IV gave the land grant to Cuervo’s descendant Jose Maria Guadalupe de Cuervo and granted the Cuervo family the first license to commercially make tequila.

The family started packaging it in individual bottles in 1880, and in 1900 the tequila started using the brand name Jose Cuervo. The brand is still under the leadership of the original Jose Cuervo’s family. Juan-Domingo Beckmann is the sixth generation of Cuervo ancestors to run the company.

New Personal Robot

Coming in May, this thing is sure to be a hit. It is rumored to actually be affordable, for some. Helpful around the house. May not be completely affordable to everyone, right now. Kind of like the expensive HD TV when it first came out.

You saw it here first.

Rosemary Makes You Smart

Rosemary is one of many traditional medicinal plants that yield essential oils.

The Brain, Performance and Nutrition Research Centre at Northumbria University, UK designed an experiment to investigate the pharmacology of one of rosemary's main chemical components.

The investigators tested cognitive performance and mood in 20 subjects, who were exposed to varying levels of the rosemary aroma. Using blood samples to detect the amount of 1,8-cineole participants had absorbed, the researchers applied speed and accuracy tests, and mood assessments, to judge the rosemary oil's affects.

Results indicated that concentration of 1,8-cineole in the blood is related to an individual's cognitive performance, with higher concentrations resulting in improved performance. Both speed and accuracy were improved. The oil did not appear to improve attention or alertness.

The same 1,8-cineole is also found in aromatic plants, such as eucalyptus, bay, wormwood, and sage.

Four Little Known Business Facts

Fifty percent of Domino's Pizza was once traded for a used VW Beetle.
The owner of Fedex once gambled his last five thousand dollars to win 32 thousand in Vegas to save the company.
SOS in SOS pads stands for 'save our saucepans' and was thought up by the owner's wife.
Ben and Jerry's was originally going to be a bagel company.

Enhancing Tomato Flavors

When cooking tomatoes, add a piece of the branch to really heighten the flavor. Also, when eating tomatoes, salt adds to the already natural acidity, try a pinch of sugar instead to really bring out the taste of the tomato.

How 7 Companies Chose Their Name

Pepsi is derived from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
Starbucks is named after Starbuck from the book Moby Dick.
Amazon is named after the Amazon, because Bezos wanted a name that began with A and the Amazon is the largest river in the world.
eBay was named because the original name Echo Bay was already taken as a dot com name.
Nike is named for the Greek goddess of victory.
Verizon is named after veritas (truth) and horizon.
Reebock is named after an African Antelope, Rhebok.

Better Bacon Book

The Better Bacon Book, which costs five dollars has been designed especially for the iPad and is an interactive book offers instructions on how to make your own bacon, build your own smoker, and find the best bacon to order.

It also has 31 interactive bacon recipes and 20 HD videos, 150 photos, and more tastiness than any human can handle at one time. Now we know why the iPad really sizzles. Disclaimer, I am not the author, although I wish I was.

Crooked Forest

The Crooked Forest is a grove of oddly shaped pine trees located outside the village of Nowe Czarnowo, in western Poland. The forest contains about 400 pine trees that grow with a 90 degree bend at the base of their trunks. All of the trees are bent northward and surrounded by a larger forest of straight-growing pine trees. The crooked trees were planted around 1930 when the area was inside the German province of Pomerania.

It is thought that the trees were formed with a human tool, but the method and motive for creating the grove is not currently known. It also appears that the trees were allowed to grow for seven to ten years before being held down and warped by a device.

The exact reason why the Germans would want to make crooked trees is unknown, but many people have speculated that they were going to be harvested for bent-wood furniture, the ribs of boat hulls, or yokes for ox-drawn plows.

Swiffer Fixer

If you use a Swiffer, you can save a bundle by using old kitchen towels instead of buying the Swiffer throw away sheets. You can wash and reuse the towels at no additional cost. Micro-weave towels really work great.

Uncle Sam

March 13 was Uncle Sam Day. On this day in 1852, the New York Lantern newspaper published an Uncle Sam cartoon for the first time from Frank Henry Bellew. Through the years, the caricature changed with Uncle Sam becoming symbolic of the U.S. Example of this symbolism were U.S. Army posters that portrayed Uncle Sam pointing and saying, “I want you!”

He always wore red, white, and blue with a hat of stars and he had stripes down both pant legs. How he became known as Uncle Sam has been lost, but one story was about a dock worker wondering what the words “From U.S.” meant on shipping crates.Someone said jokingly, “It is from your Uncle Sam.”

Happy Friday

Man is the only species who plants a crop he can’t eat, but still has to mow it every week.

I am planting the seeds and not cutting short my plan to have a Happy Friday!