Wordology, Called on the Carpet

To be called 'on the carpet', i.e. for reprimand by superior, is likely an early 1900's, American colloquial, from one's uncarpeted work area to carpeted offices of one's superior.

During the early 1700s it also referred to a cloth (carpet) covering a conference table and therefore came to mean "under consideration or discussion." In 19th-century America, however, carpet meant "floor covering," and the expression, first recorded in 1902, alluded to being called before or reprimanded by a person rich or powerful enough to have a carpet.

Happy Friday

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

To be truly happy, practice compassion while having a Happy Friday!

Picnics and Barbecues

Just about all the ingredients to make a perfect ‘All-American’ picnic come from German origins.

There is the hot dog, wiener, or a Frankfurter; a pork sausage that originated in 13th century Germany. We also cannot forget the Brats or Bratwurst and Knackwurst, both great grilled. All of these washed down with a chilled beer, while not originating in Germany, was certainly made popular there many years ago.

Ketchup was developed by Heinz, and Mayonnaise, developed by Hellman, both German immigrants. Some of those items are based off earlier recipes (Ancient Rome: ketchup; France: mayonnaise) but the favorites eaten today are definitely German.

Then, of course, there is the Potato Salad. There are many different versions to this dish, one of the most popular variations is the traditional German potato salad.

Smallest Park in the World

The smallest park in the world is Mill Ends Park in Portland, Oregon. It is 452 square inches or barely two feet across and not quite suitable for a barbecue. The nearby Forest Park is 60 million times as big.

Mill Ends started in 1948, when Oregon Journal journalist Dick Fagan noticed a forgotten hole outside his office on Front Street. He planted flowers and began to write a weekly column about goings-on there.

When Fagan died in 1969, Portland took up the tradition and dedicated Mill Ends as an official city park in 1976. Sometimes it has a swimming pool for butterflies, with diving board, a miniature Ferris wheel, and statues. It hosts snail races, weddings, and regular rose plantings.

A Long Rhode Island

Speaking of small, it is the smallest state with the longest name. The official name, used on all state documents, is “Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

Remembering Elvis

Elvis Presley died at age 42 in August 1977. Thousands lined the streets of Presley’s hometown on the day of his funeral. The nation, the music world, and fans from around the world were in shock over his passing. Even to this day, some say that Elvis didn’t die, he just wanted to get away from it all.

The sales numbers may seem small compared to a few of today's musicians, but then many have come and gone without fanfare and few remained on top for 25 years. The number of hits remains large as Elvis had an 107 hits on the pop music charts. His first hit was Heartbreak Hotel in 1956 and his last was Guitar Man, after his death in 1981. Presley had 28 gold records, 12 number one songs and 38 top-ten hits.

What's in a Name, Jacuzzi

The seven Jacuzzi brothers emigrated from Italy to California in the early 1900s. In California, they began developing innovations for the big new craze: the airplane. Their biggest hit was the creation of the first plane with an enclosed cabin, which the US Postal Service bought to deliver mail.

According to legend, their mother was worried about her sons’ safety and eventually convinced the brothers to change jobs. They started concentrating on hydraulic pumps for irrigation and hospital use. In the late 1940s, Candido Jacuzzi’s young son Kenneth started suffering from arthritis. He received hydrotherapy at a hospital, but his father decided his son needed to have access to it at home as well. He filed a patent for his invention, but it wasn’t until another relative, Roy joined the business years later that they started selling their Jacuzzi tubs to the public. Well, that is just about the hot and cold of it.

Smarter Pills

The Food and Drug Administration has just approved a device that is integrated into pills and let’s doctors know when patients take their medicine and when they don’t.

The device, made by Proteus Digital Health, is a silicon chip about the size of a sand particle. With no battery and no sensor, it is powered by the body itself. The chip contains small amounts of copper and magnesium. After being ingested the chip will interact with digestive juices to produce a voltage that can be read from the surface of the skin through a detector patch, which then sends a signal via mobile phone to inform the doctor that the pill has been taken.

Sensors on the chip also detect heart rate and can estimate the patient’s amount of physical activity. It will allow doctors to better assess if a person is responding to a given dose, or if that dose needs to be adjusted.

It has been in clinical trials since 2009, but currently the FDA has only approved the chip for placebo pills, which were used in trials showing the chip to be safe and highly accurate. Proteus hopes to gain approval to use the digestible chip with other medicines. Andrew Thompson, chief executive of Proteus, says the chip has already been tested with treatments for tuberculosis, mental health, heart failure, hypertension, and diabetes.

The company is currently working with makers of metformin, a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes and the most commonly prescribed drug in the world. The company also plans on adding a wireless glucose meter to their device so that dosage amount and frequency can be correlated with changes in blood glucose levels.

To Bee or Not to Bee

It is not exactly clear where the word derives from, but “bee” as in “spelling bee” means a gathering or get together.  One early case referred to a “spinning bee”, where people would gather to protest purchasing goods from Britain due to the high taxes on those items. Other gatherings that were commonly labeled with “bee” were: apple bee, logging bee, quilting bee, barn bee, hanging bee, sewing bee, and corn husking bee. 

Any competition or work gathering, with a specific task in mind, tended to get the “bee” label added on the end.  With many of these bees being tedious work events, it was also customary to serve refreshments and provide entertainment at the end of the task.

Wordology, Aluminum

Aluminum is the older term, while aluminium was created later by the British to make it sound more like the other elements. Here is a timeline:

1808: Sir Humphrey Davy isolates the metal for the first time. He calls it alumium
1812: Sir Humphrey decides to change the spelling of his element: he renames it to aluminum (the term adopted in the United States)
1812: British scientists dislike the new name and change it to aluminium to match the other classic sounding elements, such as Magnesium, Helium, Potassium, etc.

That's my symposium on aluminum. - Incidentally, the Greek symposium was originally a drinking party and forum for men of good family to debate, plot, boast, or simply to revel with others.

Happy Friday

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present.

I do not dwell in the past or dream of the future, I am concentrating on having a Happy Friday!

Soft Drink Facts

Soft Drink refers to nearly all beverages that do not contain significant amounts of alcohol as hard drinks do.

The term soft drink is typically used mostly for flavored carbonated beverages and that is because of advertising. Flavored carbonated beverage makers were having a difficult time creating national advertisements due what people call their product varies from place to place.

In parts of the United States and Canada, flavored carbonated beverages are referred to as “pop”; in other parts “soda”; in yet other parts “coke”; and there are a variety of other names commonly used as well. In England these drinks are called fizzy drinks and in Ireland called minerals.

Since beverage makers can’t refer to their product in the generic sense in national or international advertisements due to the varied terms, they have chosen the term soft drink to be more or less a universal term for flavored carbonated beverages.

First US Government Building

This should come as no surprise. Construction started with the laying of the cornerstone in the first building to be used solely as a US Government building. The U.S. Mint in Philadelphia was built in 1792.

Bird Poop

Today I learned why bird poop is usually white vs. other animal and human poop. Birds do not urinate. While their kidneys extract nitrogenous waste it is not expelled in the urea as ours (and many other animals) does. It is excreted in the form of uric acid, which has low solubility and, when combined with other waste comes out like white paste. Other colors from various fruits, etc., do not change as they pass through the system, so they come out the color of the fruit ingested. Some vegans seem to pass green due to the excess green vegetables and iron in the body.

In order to fly efficiently, birds, especially smaller birds need to eliminate waste often. A budgie may excrete 40 to 50 times in a day, whereas a macaw may only go 15 or 20 times.”

Since birds only have one opening, it is used for sex, waste elimination, and dropping eggs.

The word poop comes from the Middle English word poupen or or latin puppis, and it originally meant fart it acquired its current meaning around 1900.