Bacardi Bats

Bacardi Limited is the largest privately held, family-owned spirits company in the world. It has a portfolio of more than 200 brands and labels. Rum drinkers have likely noticed the bat symbol on Bacardi products.

The Bacardi brothers purchased their first distillery in Cuba which had a tin roof and fruit bats lived in the rafters. Bats in Cuba are considered a symbol of good health, good fortune, and family unity. That is why it is used as the symbol.

When you see Ron Barcardi, it is not the owner's name, ron means rum in Spanish.

Color Me Green

The word ghre-, meaning "to grow," is another root which endured the centuries. Grhe- gave us many modern words meaning "green," including English green, German grün, and Icelandic grænn, as well as the English words grow, grass, and graze.

Green Traffic Light means go.
Only one national flag is a solid color: the green flag of Libya.
Ancient Egyptians colored the floors of their temples green.
In ancient Greece, green symbolized victory.
In the highlands of Scotland, people wore green as a mark of honor.
Green is the national color of Ireland.
A “greenback” is slang for a US dollar bill.
Lean green is slang for a dollar.
Saying “all systems are green,” means everything is in order.
The green room of a concert hall or theater is where performers relax before going onstage.
The “green-eyed monster” is jealousy.
A greenhorn is inexperienced, a newcomer, or unsophisticated person.
Green is youthful.
Being “green around the gills” means looking pale and sickly.
“Green with envy” means full of envy or jealousy.
A person with a “green thumb” is good at making plants grow.
Al Green is a great singer.
Green Day group has 13 million viewers of this video
A green, or common, is a town park.
Green is a healing color, the color of nature.

WD-40 Uses

If you have tea stains on your counter tops, just spray a little on a damp sponge or cloth then wipe.
Remove marker and crayon marks by spraying it on upholstered furniture (spray on inconspicuous place first to make sure it does not leave a mark of its own).
Spraying a little WD-40 on a zipper then moving it up and down will help lubricate.
Prevent wasps nests tend to build in eaves, so a few sprays in those areas will prevent them.
Also, in early spring, spray into weep holes in bricks to prevent ant, bees, and other little critters.
Spray a bit into your hands to degrease, rub them together, and wash with soap and water.

Nuts to Food Allergies

Food allergies are less common in underdeveloped countries. Proponents of the hygiene hypothesis say that the relatively low incidence of childhood infections in developed countries contributes to an increased incidence of allergic diseases.

Harvard Medical School asserts that recent increases in peanut allergies, and the measures taken in response, show elements of mass psychogenic illness - hysterical reactions grossly out of proportion to the level of danger.

Only 150 people (children and adults) die each year in the US from all food allergies combined. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially documents 13 deaths (including six adults) due to peanuts between 1996 and 2006. Peanuts are legumes, not true nuts.

Four percent of adults and four percent of children have food allergies. Less than one percent (0.6) of people in the US have a peanut allergy. In France, the rate of peanut allergy is between .3 percent and .75 percent, Denmark is .2 to .4 percent; and Israel about .04 percent.

The exact cause of someone developing a peanut allergy is unknown.

Smelling the aroma of peanuts cannot cause an allergic reaction.

Highly refined peanut oil is purified, refined, bleached, and deodorized, which removes the allergic proteins from the oil.

A recent study showed 26.6% of children with a peanut or tree nut allergy outgrew their allergies, at an average age of 5.4 years old. Black children were less likely to outgrow their allergy than white children and boys were more likely to outgrow their allergy than girls.

The American Academy of Pediatrics used to instruct parents to avoid peanut use until their kids reached age 3, but that has been rescinded. A British study has found that consuming peanuts in infancy lowers the risk that a child will develop peanut allergies.

Headlines most often ignore that people who are allergic to peanuts are also often allergic to one or more tree nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans, cashews, pistachios, etc.).

A new study shows increased peanut consumption by pregnant mothers who were not nut allergic was associated with lower risk of peanut allergy in their offspring.

Spiders on Drugs

 Interesting view of spider webs after spiders were given different drugs.

Origins of Popcorn

The Aztecs who inadvertently introduced popcorn to the world as a result of the Spanish invasion. When Columbus first interacted with the Arawak tribe, he was given a popcorn corsage. Believed to be a key component in the foundation of their empire, popcorn played a large role in Aztec culture. It was often made into necklaces or headdresses, and it was commonly used to decorate religious statues. One Aztec ritual involved throwing a whole ear of un-popped popcorn into a fire as a sacrifice to the gods. They referred to the kernels which came out as 'hailstones'.

Some archaeologists believe that popcorn was actually the first form of corn ever cultivated, with evidence of its existence dating to the Anasazi tribe of Utah, who arose around 350 B.C. Using seed selection, an agricultural process to determine the healthiest future crop, Native Americans are thought to have developed the crop almost 5,000 years ago.

Free Friday Smile

No words needed

Happy Friday

How many more grand paintings, marvelous tunes, inspired writings, etc., would the world have if not for the snooze button.

If you use the snooze button, there is less time to celebrate a Happy Friday!

National Hamburger Month

May is national hamburger month and it is also Barbecue month.

The term hamburger originally derives from Hamburg, Germany, from which many people emigrated to the United States. Hamburger, in the German language, is the demonym of Hamburg. Similar to frankfurter and wiener, names for other meat-based foods, being demonyms of the cities of Frankfurt and Vienna (Wien), respectively. A hamburger is typically made with ground beef. White Castle traces the origin of the hamburger to Hamburg, Germany with its invention by Otto Kuase. Many others have claimed to be the first in the US to make hamburgers.

The term "burger" is generic and may refer to sandwiches that have ground meat, chicken, fish, or vegetarian fillings other than a beef patty, but share the characteristic round bun. Other "burgers" are usually referred to as "chicken burgers", "fish burgers", etc.  Some fast food places more accurately call them "chicken sandwiches", "fish sandwiches", etc. An infinite number of fillings and toppings can be found in many locations around the block and around the world.

A veggie burger, garden burger, or tofu burger uses a meat substitute such as tofu, TVP, wheat gluten, beans, grains, or an assortment of vegetables, ground up and mashed into patties. This really stretches the definition of 'burger'.

Another variety of hamburger is the slider, which is a very small hamburger patty served on an equally small bun. This is the kind of hamburger has been popularized by White Castle. The name comes from their size (and sometimes greasiness) and are considered to slide down your throat in one or two bites.

A cheeseburger is a hamburger accompanied with melted cheese. The term itself is a portmanteau of the words "cheese" and "hamburger." The cheese is usually sliced, then added a short time before the hamburger finishes cooking, to allow it to melt.

In the US Upper Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, burgers are often made with a buttered bun, butter as one of the ingredients of the patty, or with a pat of butter on top of the burger patty, and called a "Butter Burger."

In Alberta, Canada a kubie burger is a hamburger made with a pressed Ukrainian garlic sausage, kubasa.
In Toronto the local eatery Dangerous Dan's Diner offers the Colossal Colon Clogger, 24oz burger served with a quarter pound of cheese, a quarter pound of bacon, and 2 fried eggs.

A slugburger is a traditional southern delicacy found in northeast Mississippi, US. It is a patty made from a mixture of meat or pork and an inexpensive extender such as soybeans and deep fried in canola oil.

My favorite is the Bacon Cheese Bomb, a cheeseburger with cheese inside the meat patty rather than on top. A thick chunk of sharp cheddar cheese is surrounded by the meat, which is a mixture of ground beef mixed half and half with finely chopped bacon. The smoky bacony flavor with a molten core of cheese within the patty is ooey gooey heavenly bacony food for the gods.

Twelve Pizza Facts

Ancient Greeks and Egyptians covered flat-breads with toppings and are considered the real originators of the tasty dish.

Modern Pizza originated in 1738 in Naples, Italy when people covered focaccia (Italian bread with olive oil and herbs) with tomatoes. Cheese was added as a topping about a hundred years later.

Frozen pizzas were introduced during the 1950s.

The first online pizza purchase was from Pizza Hut in 1994.

Ninety-three percent of Americans eat pizza at least once a month.

Saturday night is the biggest night of the week for eating pizza worldwide.

More pizza is consumed during the week of the Super Bowl than any other time of the year.

In 2001, Pizza Hut paid the Russians one million US dollars to deliver a six inch pizza to the international space station.

Thin crust pizza remains the most popular crust across the world. More than 61 percent of all pizza orders are for thin crust.

Some popular pizza toppings in Japan are squid and Mayo Jaga (mayonnaise, potato, and bacon)

The world's largest pizza was constructed in Italy in 2012 in Italy. It contained 19,800 pounds of flour, 10,000 pounds of tomato sauce, 8,800 pounds of mozzarella cheese, 1,488 pounds of margarine, 551 pounds of rock salt, 220 pounds of lettuce and 55 pounds of vinegar"; it weighed in at 51,257 pounds, and took 48 hours to cook. (According to the World Record Academy)

Over five billion pizzas are sold worldwide each year.

Netflix Facts and Numbers

What is better with pizza than a movie? Netflix was founded in 1997 in Scotts Valley, California by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings, who previously had worked together. Randolph was a co-founder of a computer mail order company and later was employed by Borland International as vice-president of marketing. Hastings, once a math teacher, had founded Pure Software, which he had recently sold for $700 million. Hastings invested $2.5 million in start up cash for Netflix.

The idea of Netflix came to Hastings when he was forced to pay $40 in overdue fines after returning a rented movie well past its due date.

The Netflix website was launched on August 29, 1997 with only 30 employees and 925 works available for rent and brought a more traditional, online pay-per-rental model (late fees applied). The company offers unlimited vacation time for salaried workers and allows employees to take any amount of their paychecks in stock options.

Netflix introduced the monthly subscription concept in September 1999, and then dropped the single-rental model in 2000. Since that time the company has built its reputation on the business model of flat-fee unlimited rentals without due dates, late fees, shipping and handling fees, or per title rental fees.

Netflix was offered to Blockbuster for $50 million in 2000, but Blockbuster declined.

In 2005, Netflix shipped 1 million DVDs every day.

In February 2007, the company delivered its billionth DVD and began to move away from its original core business model of mailing DVDs by introducing video-on-demand via the Internet.

By 2010, Netflix's streaming business had grown to 14 million subscribers and shifted from the fastest-growing customer of the United States Postal Service's first-class mail service to the largest source of Internet traffic in North America. In November of that year it began offering a standalone streaming service separate from DVD rentals. It launched internationally in 2011.

On January 26, 2012, the company announced it had 24.4 million US subscribers.

Disney and Marvel TV said they will provide Netflix with live action series, beginning in 2015, featuring Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage, leading up to a miniseries about the Defenders.

Netflix signed an agreement in 2014 with a US Cable company to offer it as a channel on the TV lineup. Users can click on the channel, like any other channel, and have all the Netflix options.

Telling Time

It occurred to me that telling time in sixty second and sixty minute intervals seemed odd, so I looked it up. In the early second millennium B.C., the Babylonians invented their number system, and its influence still affects us to this day. Because of a limited amount of symbols (they only had two, along with their indicator for zero), they had to innovate, creating a system where one column indicated multiples of 1, one column indicated multiples of 60, and one column indicated multiples of 3,600. The columns were separated by a small space.

Once they had their number system in place, the Babylonians began applying it to various aspects of their life, such as the number of degrees in a circle and the number of days in a year. Since their system was much easier to calculate and divide, the Babylonian numbers reigned supreme over those of other nations, remaining the favored system for astronomers up to the 16th century. Eventually, thanks to its divisibility, the base-60 system was applied to the concept of time, giving us the number of minutes in an hour and the number of seconds in a minute.

Bluetooth Symbol

Have you ever wondered how the bluetooth symbol was developed? Look at the top line on your smart phone to see it.

It comes from the Nordic runes for the letters GH and B for Harald 'Bluetooth'  Gormson, the king of Denmark and Norway back in the nine hundreds, who turned the Danes to Christianity. The name suggests he had a dark or blue tooth.

Color Me Red

The Proto-Indo-European word for red, reudh, remained largely unchanged for thousands of years, showing up in English red, Spanish rojo, French rouge, German rot, Icelandic rauðr, and Welsh rhudd. Not only did it lead to these words for the color itself, it also led to red-related English words like ruby, rust, and rubeola.

For the ancient Romans, a red flag was a signal for battle.
Because of its visibility, stop signs, stoplights, brake lights, and fire equipment are all painted red.
The ancient Egyptians considered themselves a red race and painted their bodies with red dye for emphasis.
In Russia, red means beautiful. The Bolsheviks used a red flag as their symbol when they overthrew the tsar in 1917. That is how red became the color of communism.
In India, red is the symbol for a soldier.
In South Africa, red is the color of mourning.
In China, red is the color of good luck and is used as a holiday and wedding color. Chinese babies are given their names at a red-egg ceremony.
Superstitious people think red frightens the devil.
A “red-letter day” is one of special importance and good fortune.
In Greece, eggs are dyed red for good luck at Easter time.
To “paint the town red” is to celebrate.
Red is the color most commonly found in national flags.
In the English War of the Roses, red was the color of the House of Lancaster, which defeated the House of York, symbolized by the color white.
The “Redshirts” were the soldiers of the Italian leader Garibaldi, who unified modern Italy in the nineteenth century.
Red is a song by Taylor Swift
To “see red” is to be angry. A “red herring” is a distraction, which takes attention away from the real issue. A “red eye” is an overnight airplane flight. If a business is “in the red,” it is losing money.