Happy Friday

Laughter is the sharpest weapon in the arsenal.

It is the swiftest tool to open a closed mind, especially on a Happy Friday!

Yuca vs. Yucca

Yuca – pronounced yoo-cuh – is the root portion of a cassava plant. It is often prepared and eaten like sweet potatoes.

Yucca - pronounced yuhk-a  - is an ornamental plant. Yuccas are spiky flowered plants common in Southern and Western parts of the US, including Florida, New Mexico, and California.  The stems, leaf bases, flowers, emerging stalks as well as the fruit of most types of yucca are edible. 

Wordology, Mukbang

South Korea video trend is known as “mukbang,” and it has spread to the US and around the globe on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

Japanese mukbang entertainer Yuka Kinoshita has 5.34 million subscribers on YouTube. She is shown in different videos eating various foods, such as one hundred Chicken McNuggets, 62 hamburgers, 3 large pizzas, 10 pounds of cereal, 6.6 pounds of noodles. She is thin, 5' 2" tall, and weighs 95 pounds.

The trend has grown into a worldwide sensation and often involves massive consumption of foods in nauseating quantities. Hosts will often prepare or buy a meal, sit down and eat it as part of a live stream, watched by hundreds of thousands of fans. Many times, the whole purpose is to see the mukbang host take in multiple servings.

The trend is social and interactive. According to some, watching a person eat while possibly having a meal at the same time and perhaps the same meal that they are watching a mukbang entertainer consume on the screen fills certain longings in a modern society with less personal interaction. Social media gets scarier every day.

Movie Trailer Colors

There are three colors preceding each movie trailer, red, yellow, and green. These colors show up as the background for movie rating cards. The rating for the film itself shows up in text, but the rating for the preview shows up in text and indicated by the background color of the rating card splash screen. The specific regulations surrounding what can be shown in the preview for each of these rating cards are set by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), though the rules are not publicly made available.
The most common is the green rating card.  Before April of 2009, a green background meant that the preview was approved for all audiences.  Since April of 2009, the MPAA now states that the green card is for “appropriate audiences”.  This basically means it is appropriate for audiences in theaters, taking into account what movie the audience is about to watch.

A yellow rating card indicates the preview is for age-appropriate internet viewers and is used on internet trailers only.

The red rating card indicates that content in the preview is only appropriate for mature audiences. These previews can only be shown in theaters where the movie about to be watched is R-rated, NC-17-rated, or unrated.

Theatrical trailers must be less than two minutes and 30 seconds, as mandated by the Motion Picture Association of America.  The MPAA gives each movie studio one exception to this a year where they are allowed to show a trailer that is longer than 2 minutes and 30 seconds.

Scary Thought

Ninety percent of US media (TV, radio, news) is owned by six corporations.

Magnetic Particle Imaging

MPI was first presented during 2005 and began to come into its own by 2012. So far, only a handful of prototype small-animal MPI scanners have been constructed worldwide. It has the potential to revolutionize the biomedical imaging field. The new tracer imaging modality is gaining significant interest from NMR and MRI researchers. MPI employs the same superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) contrast agents that are sometimes used for MR angiography and are often used for MRI cell tracking studies.

These SPIOs are much safer for humans than iodine or gadolinium. SPIOs in MPI generate positive, bright blood contrast. With this ideal contrast, even prototype MPI scanners can already achieve fast, high-sensitivity, and high-contrast angiograms with millimeter-scale resolutions.

While the physics of MPI differ substantially from MRI, it employs hardware and imaging concepts that are familiar to MRI researchers, such as magnetic excitation and detection, pulse sequences, and relaxation effects.

MPI shows great potential for an exciting array of applications, including stem cell tracking and inflammation imaging in vivo, first-pass contrast studies to diagnose or stage cancer.

Irish Rovers

The Irish Rovers have had strings of fun Irish songs for many years. Here is a musical interlude of 'Wasn't That a Party' to help you get up, tap your feet, and appreciate your Happy Friday just a bit more. LINK

More Satellites

Last month I wrote about a handful of companies adding satellites for new internet and TV broadband services. LINK

Elon Musk is at it again. SpaceX has just filed for permission to add 30,000 more satellites to the 12,000 already approved. The company has deployed a few of the first 12,000 already and plans to have more deployed by the end of 2019.

There are strict international rules for deployment size, weight, height of orbit, wave length for transmitting signals, etc. Nonetheless, many "experts" (fearmongers) have complained that space is cluttered with too many satellites already and worry about accidents as they might bump into each other.

To add perspective, as of January 2019, about 8,950 satellites were placed into Earth orbit since 1957. About 5,000 of those were still in space, according to the European Space Agency. Only about 1,950 of those are still functioning.

As of 2019 here are 276 million cars and trucks on the roads in the United States alone. There are over 1.4 billion cars, trucks, and buses around the world. Neither figure includes off road vehicles. Since space is infinitely larger than earth, it seems unlikely mankind will be able to fill it up any time soon.

Happy Friday

Beauty may fade, but happiness endures.
I never fade from a Happy Friday!

Spam Amazon Invoice

There is another new spam. I received two identical invoices from what appeared to be Amazon with a price I did not recognize (clue 1). They were sent about half hour apart to an email that I do not use for Amazon (clue 2). There was no item description (clue3 ). It was from ar2-amazon@uni-bielefeld.de, weird email (clue 4). Tried to get me to open up PDF invoice (clue 5). The major number of spams ask to open a PDF, or other attachment. Always bad, as that is where they can take over your computer.
Checked Amazon and indeed, no items with that charge (clue 6).

I googled the email and the suffix was from a German college (clue 7).
Immediately deleted. Caveat Emptor!

More - One new scam tactic uses your bank's real phone number to encourage you to surrender your PIN. It starts with the scammers calling your phone claiming to be your bank. They explain that someone has attempted to use your card in a faraway location. When you tell them it was not you, they will claim to block the transaction and ask for your member number. They can use this number to reset your bank account password and trigger a verification code text that is sent to your cellphone, so you believe it is real.

Interesting Movie Facts

The dinosaur noises in the "Jurassic Park" movie were made from recordings of tortoise sex.

The word "mafia" is never mentioned in the film version of The Godfather, because the actual mafia demanded it.
The Horse Head used in the movie "The Godfather" was real.

The budget for the Movie "Titanic" was higher than the cost of the Titanic itself.

Movie theater popcorn costs more per ounce than filet mignon in the US.

A 2-hour movie plus 5 minutes of previews uses 2.1 miles (3.4 km) of 35mm film.

Kobe vs. Wagyu

Kobe must be born and processed in the Hyogo prefecture. Hyogo's capital city is Kobe, hence the name. Only nine restaurants in the entire US serve real Kobe beef. Kobe is a variety of Wagyu.

Wagyu is a Japanese breed that can be raised anywhere. Wagyu, loosely translated, means “Japanese cattle”. In the US, purebred Wagyu are crossed with traditional beef cattle breeds to create American Wagyu Beef. It must be at least 46.875% Wagyu DNA.


Every Kobe steak is Wagyu, but not all Wagyu steaks are Kobe.

BMI Facts

Seems to me that if the majority, 71.6% are overweight according to the arbitrary BMI number, then the number needs to be updated to reflect the new norm. According to BMI, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rock are obese.

Percent of adults aged 20 and over with overweight, including obesity: 71.6% (2015-2016) - latest from National Center for Health Statistics

The overall prevalence of obesity was higher among black and Hispanic adults than among non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic Asian adults.


Obesity is defined as the BMI was calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared, rounded to one decimal place. Obesity in adults was defined as a BMI of greater than or equal to 30.

English Phrase Origins

The first recorded use of 'by hook or by crook' is from the fourteenth century. In medieval times, the peasantry was not allowed to cut down trees, but they were permitted to gather firewood from loose or dead branches using a hook (bill-hook) or a crook (a staff with a curved end like those used by shepherds). Some peasants exceeded the strict use of these tools, and so the term has evolved into its current usage, meaning to achieve something by whatever means possible.

The word 'deadline' was originally used literally. During the Civil War, prisoners at one camp were confined to a pen and surrounded by a “deadline”; so called because if a prisoner crossed it, he would be shot dead. Now it is a synonym for “due date” or “time limit,”

Chicago’s nickname was coined by 19th-century journalists who were referring to the fact that its residents were “windbags” and “full of hot air.”