Labyrinth vs. Maze

 A maze is a complex branching puzzle that includes choices of path and direction, may have multiple entrances and exits, and dead ends. Mazes can be constructed with varying levels of difficulty and complexity.

A labyrinth has only a single non-branching path, which leads to the center then back out the same way, with only one entry/exit point.

Happy Friday

To be draped in happiness is to dress for kings.

Dress well, especially on a Royal Happy Friday!

Good Egg vs. Bad Egg

Most foods are easy to determine if they are good or bad by smell, touch, color, etc. Eggs are not so obvious. However there is a quick and easy way to tell if eggs are good or bad. Fill a cup or bowl with cold water and place eggs in. If they sink to the bottom and lay flat on their sides, they are very fresh. If they are a few weeks old, but still good to eat, they will stand on one end at the bottom of the bowl. If they float to the surface, they are no longer fresh enough to eat. Incidentally, those that stand up are best for hard boiling. The extra air in the older eggs will help the peel come off easier after hard boiling.

Wordology, Lake vs. Pond

A pond is shallow enough that light penetrates all the way to the bottom. Although there is no set size for either, most geographers agree that when a body of freshwater is bigger than 12 acres, it is a lake. Smaller than that, it is a pond.

Rats and Monkeys Laugh

It may sound strange, but several scientists have elicited "tickle-induced vocalizations" from primates. Penny Paterson, president of the Gorilla Foundation says that Koko, the gorilla famous for her sign language abilities, even had a special "ho, ho," for visitors she liked. And rats apparently have very ticklish necks. When Bowling Green State University scientist Jaak Panksepp and his graduate students tickled baby rats' napes, the rodents emitted high-frequency chirps that Panksepp interpreted as laughter.

Robert Levinson, psychology professor at the University of California Berkeley, invited couples into his lab and asked each partner to discuss something that irritated him or her about the other partner. The couples who tackled the stressful situation with laughter not only felt better in the moment, but had higher levels of relationship satisfaction and stayed together longer than couples who did not crack a smile.

When you see people laughing, you just can't help but smile. That is because your brain makes it nearly impossible not to. That is the result of research from the lab of Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist at University College London. When she monitored subjects' brains while she played laughing sounds, she found that the premotor cortical region of the brain, which prepares the muscles in the face to move, was activated.

Incidentally, 10 to 15 minutes of laughing a day can burn up to 40 calories, according to a Vanderbilt University study. Researchers determined that the increase in heart rate and oxygen consumption during these funny moments boosted the burn.

Pardon my Tartle

We have all been there: You run into someone and you go to introduce them to whoever you are with and you can't remember their name.


There happens to be a Scottish term for this awkward hesitation. So if you (unfortunately) ever find yourself in that situation you can say, "Pardon my tartle!"

Free Photos

Access a million high-quality photos, for free. Graphic designers and artists are constantly on the hunt for high quality images, but few of the biggest stock photo platforms are free to use.

That is what makes Unsplash different. Unlike competitors, Unsplash’s library is made up of 100% community contributions.

Reddit

Reddit has now surpassed Facebook and is now the third-most-popular internet destination for users in the United States, according to rankings published by Amazon subsidiary Alexa, a website that tracks and analyzes web traffic. Despite its recent controversial site redesign, this means that Reddit now trails only Google and YouTube, but ranks ahead of Facebook and Amazon.

While Reddit still does not attract the same amount of traffic as Google or YouTube, the good news for the site is that users spend more time browsing the site, averaging 15 minutes and 10 seconds every day, The Next Web reported. Reddit also outranks the top five sites on the list with more daily page views per visitors. Rounding out the top 10 sites are Wikipedia, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay, and Netflix.

Man Made Fruit

The tangelo is a man-made hybrid of the tangerine and the pomelo. In fact, that is where the tangelo got its name. However, it is common for people to confuse the tangelo with the tangerine, mandarin, and orange.

To add to the confusion, there are different varieties of tangelos and all are not necessarily created from tangerines and pomelos. One common variant, the Minneola tangelo, is a hybrid of the tangerine and Duncan grapefruit. Another variant was created by crossing a mandarin with a pomelo, which technically makes it an orange.

The tangelo is believed to have first appeared in the forests of Southeast Asia 3,500 years ago when insects cross-pollinated the mandarin with a fruit that is closely related to the grapefruit. However, today’s tangelos are the result of a selective breeding program that started in the 1800s.

At the forefront of the tangelo project was the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which created the popular Minneola tangelo sold across the United States. The USDA released the seeds of the Minneola tangelo in 1931. It is named after the city of Minneola, Florida.

Unclaimed Luggage

Over 99.9% of domestic airline’s checked bags are picked up at the carousel. After airlines conduct an extensive three month tracing process there are still a small percentage of bags left unclaimed.
Unclaimed Baggage buys orphaned bags and gives them a second life by selling, donating, and recycling their contents.
Unclaimed Baggage has purchasing agreements for unclaimed items with all domestic airlines and other travel and transportation companies. With five decades of experience processing large volumes of one-of-a-kind items, we maximize each item’s potential for a second life.

Fun and unusual finds, including amazing jewelry at good prices LINK.

Sealioning

This is a common, subtle harassment which consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while feigning ignorance, sincerity, and politeness. It may take the form bad-faith invitations to engage in debate, often trying to incite in order to play victim. It may take the form of "incessant, bad-faith invitations to engage in debate."

The troll feigns ignorance and politeness, so that if the target is provoked into making an angry response, the troll can then act as the aggrieved party.

Happy Friday

"Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for." ~Joseph Addison

I always enjoy a threefer, especially on a Happy Friday!

Wordology, Ultracrepidarianism

It is the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one's knowledge. We all know people who have knowledge in one thing or another and attempt to translate that to things they have little no knowledge about.

The term ultracrepidarian was first publicly recorded in 1819 by the essayist William Hazlitt in an open Letter to William Gifford, the editor of the Quarterly Review, "You have been well called an Ultra-Crepidarian critic."

It may come from a famous Greek artist, to a shoemaker who presumed to criticize his painting. It can be taken to mean that a shoemaker ought not to judge beyond his own soles. Critics should only comment on things they know something about. The saying remains popular in several languages, as in a cobbler should stick to his shoes.

Herbs vs. Spices

Herbs and spices all come from plants, they do not all come from the same parts of plants. Herbs are the leaves of a plant—things like parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, and others.

A seasoning harvested from any other part of the plant—including the roots, bark, seeds, rhizomes, bulbs, buds, etc.—is considered a spice. Cinnamon sticks are really bits of bark from trees in the Cinnamomum genus, while cloves are dried flower buds from the clove tree.
Some plants boast an herb and a spice. The leaves of the Coriandrum sativum plant are widely known as cilantro, which is definitely an herb. The seeds usually called coriander, are a spice, but cilantro and coriander are both common names for the whole plant, and cilantro is just the Spanish word for coriander. Dill is another example. Dill weed refers to dill leaves (the herb), while dill seed, which is actually not a seed, but the tiny, brown fruit of the dill plant is a spice.

According to Merriam-Webster, the botanical definition of herb is “a seed-producing annual, biennial, or perennial that does not develop persistent woody tissue, but dies down at the end of the growing season.” Botanically speaking, herbs are whole plants that do not have wooden parts like trees and bushes. The entire cumin plant, for instance, whose seeds are ground into a spice, is technically an herb.