Sep 7, 2012

Hansel and Gretel

In the widely known version of Hansel and Gretel, we read of two little children who become lost in the forest, eventually finding their way to a gingerbread house which belongs to a wicked witch. The children end up enslaved for a time as the witch prepares them for eating. They figure their way out and throw the witch in a fire and escape.

In an earlier French version of this tale (called The Lost Children), instead of a witch we have a devil. Now the wicked old devil is tricked by the children (in much the same way as Hansel and Gretel) but he works it out and puts together a sawhorse to put one of the children on to bleed (that isn’t an error – he really does). The children pretend not to know how to get on the sawhorse so the devil’s wife demonstrates. While she is lying down the kids slash her throat and escape.

Sliced Bread Fact

Hansel and Gretel remind me of breadcrumbs and here is a crumb about sliced bread. Claude R. Wickard, the head of the War Foods Administration as well as the Secretary of Agriculture, got the idea to ban pre-sliced bread in America, which he did on January 18, 1943.

He said it was about conservation of resources, such as to conserve wax paper and secondary goals of conserving wheat and steel.

However, there was no shortage of wax paper at the time the ban was put in place. He also thought that by banning pre-sliced bread, the amount of bread consumed would go down and reduce the demand for flour and wheat, and thus, decrease prices of those products while increasing stockpiles of wheat. However, at the time of the ban, the US had already stockpiled over 1 billion bushels of wheat, which would be enough to meet the United States’ needs for about two years, even if no new wheat was harvested.

After a severe consumer backlash, the ban was rescinded three months later on March 8, 1943. Upon rescinding the ban, Wickard stated, “Our experience with the order, however, leads us to believe that the savings are not as much as we expected…”

Automatic Bread Slicer

As long as we are talking of bread slicing, The world’s first automatic bread slicer was invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder in Davenport, Iowa. He first built a prototype of his bread slicer in 1912. Unfortunately, his blueprints and machine were destroyed in a fire in 1917. It took him until 1927 to re-build the machine and produce a model ready to use in an actual bakery.

The first pre-sliced loaf of bread using his machine, was sold on July 7, 1928. A friend of Rohwedders installed a bread slicing machine  at the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri. Sliced bread sales skyrocketed.

Pre-sliced bread became a national hit thanks to Wonder Bread, then owned by Continental Baking, who began commercially producing the pre-sliced bread in 1930 using a modified version of Rohwedder’s machine. Crumb is a term bakers use to define the part of bread inside the crust. Unrelated, Jackie Gleason called his drinking buddies crumb bums.

The Weeping Woman

The picture below was painted by Pablo Picasso in 1937. The model used for this painting is Dora Maar. She was a French photographer, poet and painter. She was also Picasso’s mistress, from 1936 until 1944. They were introduced when she was 29 and Picasso was 54.

In the course of their relationship, Picasso said, “Dora, for me, was always a weeping woman… and it’s important, because women are suffering machines”. Picasso also referred to Dora as his “private muse.” She spent her last years alone, in a house near Paris that Picasso had given her.

Sep 6, 2012

Weird Tracks

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover does not have built-in GPS. The only way to track Curiosity's whereabouts and how far it has traveled is by following the six explorer's wheel marks.

For this reason, engineers put holes in Curiosity's treads so that every time the wheels turn, they leave a unique imprint on Mars. Orbiters photograph the print and scientists can determine how far the rover has moved.

The track pattern spells out "JPL" in Morse code through a series of "dots" and "dashes." JPL is an acronym for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the agency arm in charge of Curiosity.

Bacon Coffee

Starbucks subsidiary brand Seattle’s Best have combed state fairs across the country and are officially gearing up to release a bacon coffee drink.

The new flavor combines Level 5 Seattle’s Best Coffee, caramelized bacon, and subtle hints of pumpkin pie spice. It is a result of a country-wide search for the most “imaginative new coffee drink.”

The winner was Des Moines native Eileen Fannon, who calls her concoction the “How to Win a Guy with One Sip.” The key to America’s collective male heart is apparently coffee with a hint of bacon.

According to a Starbucks press release, Eileen “will have the chance to see her coffee drink featured in participating Seattle’s Best Coffee locations across north America.”

PS - The Texas State Fair has breaded, deep fried, bacon crusted cinnamon rolls this year, Yumm.

Tiffany and Company

The jewelry and silverware company was originally a stationer called Tiffany, Young, and Ellis when it started in 1837. In 1853 Tiffany switched its core business and began focusing on jewelry.

Sugar Cure

Healers in Africa have been putting crushed sugar cane on wounds for generations. A study was conducted testing sugar on patients with bed sores, leg ulcers and amputations before dressing the wounds.

Results showed sugar can reduce pain and kill bacteria that slow healing. Sugar is hygroscopic, meaning it naturally absorbs water which the bacteria need to survive. Sugar is also much cheaper than many antibiotics. Try giving that cut a sprinkle of sugar before putting on a band-aid.

Aug 31, 2012

Happy Friday

A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.

My circumstances move my attitude and my attitude moves my circumstances toward having a Happy Friday!

Touching Birds and Eggs Myth

Many of us have heard that handling a baby bird or bird egg will cause the parent birds to reject it.

Most birds have a very poor sense of smell, so they are unable to notice human scent on baby birds (even a skunk’s spray doesn’t seem to bother many types of birds). In most cases, even if the nest is destroyed by wind or other means, you could create a new one and put all the nestlings back in it and the parents wouldn’t care that their baby birds were in a different nest when they come back; so long as the new nest near where the old one was so they can find it.

Hoopoe

Ducks and Hoopoe will often poop on their own eggs with particularly smelly discharge to discourage predators from eating them.

Parking Tip

Since most of us have smart phones and usually do not carry pencils, pens, or paper - take a picture of the nearest sign where you parked so when you return, it will be easy to find your vehicle.

Whats in a Name, Union Station

Many towns have a Union Station. Some larger ones are in Chicago, Chattanooga, Cincinnati, Denver, El Paso, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Nashville, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., and many more.

Union stations or depots were constructed to consolidate rail traffic into a single terminal instead of having each railroad build a separate station and approach-track system. They formed a 'union', or coming together of railroad companies, facilities, and tracks.

The intent was to save money and hundreds of acres of valuable downtown real estate. It was and remains a success for achieving those goals. In addition, It is handy for travelers to have one place to go, regardless of final destination.

A railroad operating only a handful of trains per day through a town couldn't afford to build a fancy station, but several railroads sharing one facility could. Many Union Stations were impressive works of architecture that were preserved long after the trains that used them disappeared.

Sticking to Legend

According to legend, Scotch tape earned its name when a frustrated customer told a 3M scientist to “take it back to your Scotch bosses and tell them to put more adhesive on it.” Today, Scotch “Magic Tape” is manufactured in one place in the world: Hutchinson, Minn.

The Real Little Mermaid

In the Disney version, the film ends with Ariel the mermaid being changed into a human so she can marry Eric. They marry in a wonderful wedding attended by humans and merpeople.

In the original version by Hans Christian Andersen, the mermaid sees the Prince marry a princess and she despairs. She is offered a knife with which to stab the prince to death, but rather than do that she jumps into the sea and dies by turning to froth.

Andersen later modified the ending to make it more pleasant. In the new ending, instead of dying when turned to froth, she becomes a 'daughter of the air' waiting to go to heaven.