More Egg Facts

Since it is the day before International Bacon Day, thought it would be appropriate to discuss eggs. Hens lay eggs whether they have mated with a rooster or not. Eggs produced without help from a rooster will never become a chicken. These become our breakfast eggs.

A hen must mate with a rooster in order for her egg to contain both the male and female genetic material necessary to create an embryo inside the egg. An egg laid after mating may or may not become a chicken.

Chickens develop only from eggs that have been incubated (heated). When a fertile egg is incubated under precise, steady temperatures and humidity levels for 21 days, a chick may be developed.

A fertile egg that is never incubated will never contain an embryo and will never look like anything other than common breakfast food. In fact, we all likely have eaten fertilized eggs. There is no harm and we cannot tell the difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs, unless the fertilized eggs have been properly incubated. There is no difference in look, taste, or nutritional value between fertilized and unfertilized eggs. All foods, including eggs go well with bacon.

Email Tip

One way to reduce marketing emails is to create a filter. Filter for the word 'unsubscribe' in the body of the email and send the email directly to trash.

Wordology, Napkin

When eating bacon with your fingers, you need a napkin. The word comes from Middle English, borrowing the French nappe, a cloth covering for a table and adding kin, the diminutive suffix. The English word napkin means, “A usually square piece of cloth, paper, etc., used at a meal to wipe the fingers and lips and to protect the clothes”

That same “nappe,” led to the English “apron,” which was originally “napron.” Through a linguistic process the initial “n” of “napron” in the phrase “a napron” shifted and produced “an apron.”

The use of paper napkins is documented in ancient China, where paper was invented in the 2nd century BC. In Roman times, each guest supplied his own mappa and, on departure it was filled with delicacies leftover from the feast. German-speaking people were reputed to be such neat diners that they seldom used a napkin.

In the United Kingdom and Canada both terms, serviette and napkin, are used. In Australia, 'serviette' generally refers to the paper variety and napkin refers to the cloth variety.

There is no relation to taking a nap or snooze during the day, that 'nap' comes from the Old English word 'hnappian', meaning “to doze or sleep lightly.”

Interesting Thought

Think about it, the oldest person in the world was born with a completely different set of humans than now are alive.

Smart Cards Coming

Beginning in October 2015 in the US, liability for credit card fraud will sit with whichever entity, the issuer or the merchant is using the less secure equipment. A merchant would be penalized if it doesn't have the equipment to accept chip cards and suffers an unauthorized purchase with a card that had a chip in it. The bank would be liable if it doesn't issue chip cards and one of its customers makes an unauthorized transaction with a traditional card at a store that accepts chip cards. Finally the US is beginning to catch up to the many countries that have had this technology for years.

Salt Tips

If you do not use milk for a while, it goes bad. Add a pinch of salt to a gallon of milk to keep it from spoiling as fast.

Salt reduces bitterness. It is the sodium ion that interferes with the transduction mechanism of bitter taste. Add a pinch of salt to coffee grounds before brewing and it will reduce the bitter flavor. Add a small pinch of salt to tonic and it will reduce the bitterness.

Apples, pears, and potatoes dropped in cold, lightly salted water after they are peeled will not brown.

Salt can deodorize thermos bottles and jugs, decanters and other closed containers.

Sprinkle a little salt in the pan before frying fish to prevent sticking.

To prevent mold on cheese, wrap it in a cloth dampened with saltwater before refrigerating.

Spread salt between patio bricks, then sprinkle with water to kill and prevent weeds.

Super Computer TrueNorth

This month, August 2014, IBM unveiled "TrueNorth". It is the most advanced and powerful computer chip of its kind ever built. This neurosynaptic processor is the first to achieve one million individually programmable neurons, sixteen times more than the current largest neuromorphic chip. It is designed to mimic the structure of the human brain and is uniquely different from other computer architectures.

TrueNorth is the largest IBM chip ever fabricated, with 5.4 billion transistors at 28 nanometers (A human hair is approximately 80,000- 100,000 nanometers wide) and it consumes orders of magnitude less power than a typical modern processor. IBM hopes this combination of ultra-efficient power consumption and entirely new system architecture will allow computers to far more accurately emulate the brain.

TrueNorth is composed of 4,096 cores, with each of these modules integrating memory, computation and communication. The cores are able to continue operating when individual cores fail, similar to a biological system.

Free Hearing Test

Here is a site that offers a free minimal hearing test. Came across it while reading about free smartphone apps that are said to deter mosquitoes by putting out a high pitched sound from your phone that humans cannot hear. Further reading debunked those apps as useless.

Turn up your speakers. LINK

Labor Day

Labor Day is annually held on the first Monday of September in the US, Canada. The first Labor Day was celebrated in 1882. In many countries, it is celebrated around May 1 and called May Day. It was originally organized to celebrate various labor associations' contributions. It is a mostly day of rest in modern times.