Monkey Day

December 14 is officially Monkey Day. Decided to let you know this week so you have time to prepare for this officious occasion of all things monkey business.

This is a day devoted to bananas, ape culture, and general monkeying around. Founded by a cartoonist and student at Michigan State University, Casey Sorrow unpeeled Pandora’s Banana when he jotted “Monkey Day” on a friend’s calendar. It was subsequently promoted in Sorrow’s controversial school newspaper cartoon “Fetus-X”, and by other cartoonists, and now its a sort of phenomenon. Hallmark recognizes it and it is celebrated by monkey-centric costume parties, the consumption of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey, and by just becoming concerned with what’s going on in the world of monkeys.

Animal Sounds

Here are some interesting animal tidbits. You can tell a turtle’s gender by the noise it makes. Males grunt and females hiss. Pigs exhibit more than 20 vocalizations for various circumstances. Houseflies always hum in the key of F. Male ostriches can roar like lions. Giraffes have no vocal cords and humpback whales create the loudest sound of any living creature.

Wordology; College - University

In the US a college and university are essentially the same thing. They are both institutions which give degrees. In commonwealth nations the terms are more distinct. A college can be a school affiliated with a university – the college prepares the student for the degree and the university with which it is affiliated gives the degree.

Another way to describe the difference in the US is a college offers a collection of degrees in one specific area while a university is a collection of colleges. When you go to a university you are going to be graduating from one of their colleges, such as the business college. A Community College is different from both in that it cannot grant a bachelor's degree.

Some “colleges” in the UK are really secondary schools. One famous example is Eton College, where students typically enter at age 13. In Australia and New Zealand, “college” means high school.

Save Bananas

I usually buy some fairly green and some not so green so they do not all ripen at the same time. Here is another method. Take a piece of cling wrap about the size of your fist and wrap it tightly around the crown.

Each time you remove a banana remove and replace the cling wrap. If done correctly this method should give you another few days before your bananas are too ripe to enjoy. Seems it reduces the ethylene which ripens the fruit faster. It it doesn't work, there is always banana bread.

Give the Cold Shoulder

This is a rude way of telling someone they are not welcome. In medieval England, it was regarded as a polite gesture. After a feast, the host would let his guests know it was time to leave by giving them a cold piece of meat from the shoulder of beef, mutton, or pork. Even though it now seems rude, the meaning lingers that it is time to go.

How Big is the Internet

Some experts say that the Internet is growing by an exabyte of data every day. To put that in perspective, an exabyte equals 250 million DVDs.

After an exabyte comes a zettabyte, which equals 1,000 exabytes. In 2011, no single data center could hold a zettabyte of information.

By 2016, Cisco predicts that data centers will be sending more 1.3 zettabytes across the Internet every year. That's the equivalent of sending all movies ever made across the Internet every 3 minutes.

The National Security Agency is building a $2 billion data center in Utah that will be the world's first to store a store a yottabyte of data. That's 1,000 zettabytes or 1 million exabytes (or 1 million billion gigabytes).

Over half of Americans have watched TV streamed from the Internet.

Dissolving Tooth Myth

Here is another common myth debunked. The most popular Coke myth is that if you were to leave a tooth in a cup of coke overnight by morning the tooth would be completely dissolved. Like most of the other legends involving the popular drink this is totally untrue.

Clean Houses Cause Allergies

Here is another one of those studies that makes me wonder. It contends that children who grow up in hygienic households develop more allergies, eczema, and other disorders that result from a depressed antibody response. Scientists have theorized that children from middle class and affluent families have weaker immune systems because they live in cleaner homes.

Besides increases in medicated and vaccinated children in the past 20 years, the number of children with allergies has also doubled, with the sharpest increase among the middle classes.

Their study examined 8,306 patients, 776 of which had some form of reaction to peanuts, and the findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology.

Lead study author, allergist Dr Sandy Yip, said, ‘Overall household income is only associated with peanut sensitization in children aged one to nine years. This may indicate that development of peanut sensitization at a young age is related to affluence, but those developed later in life are not.’ Am not sure of the relationship between dust bunnies and peanuts, but why take chances. Was going to clean my house today, but think it might be healthier if I wait a few weeks.

Eating Corn

Here is a nonsense ten second way to eat corn. The video is 22 seconds long. A great way to start your day laughing. LINK

Secure Message Isn't

This week I received an email from mailsafe.keybank.com that was titled: "You have received a secure message." It had an attachment and the message said to download the attachment and read it. It also gave a 888 number to call if I had questions. I looked it up and found it was a cell phone number in India.

Many infections to computers come from this type of spam. If you see something that you suspect, the best thing to do is delete the message. Never open an attachment.

Happy Friday

Side-trips are occasionally great fun, often educational, and sometimes invaluable.

I am having a great fun trip enjoying another educational and invaluable Happy Friday!

New Monkey Species

This monkey was discovered in 2012 in the mountains of Myanmar (Burma) by a group of scientists who were originally participating in surveys on gibbons.

Its nose is upturned to such an extent that it actually sneezes when it rains. Local hunters say that ‘Rhinopithecus strykeri’ can be seen on rainy days with its head down between its knees to avoid inhaling water.

Caught Red Handed

This means to be caught doing something wrong. It originated because of a law. If someone butchered an animal that did not belong to him, he had to be caught with the animal’s blood on his hands to be convicted.

More Uses for Marshmallows

Stash a few marshmallows in a box of brown sugar or the sugar bowl to prevent the sugar from hardening or clumping.

Make ice cream cones less messy by sticking a few marshmallows in the bottom of the cone to prevent the ice cream from leaking out.

Eat three or four marshmallows to sooth a sore throat. Apparently, the gelatin is very helpful when it comes to relieving irritation and soothing pain in your throat.