No. 273 - Hypnagogia

Yesterday on my Facebook wall I posted: Several of my FB friends this morning mentioned taking naps. I haven't had a nap since 1982.

One of my friends replied, "Salvador Dali had an unusual napping technique--maybe something you can use for your blog" with a link to an article.

I did not have a chance to read the article yesterday, but I did today.

I learned that hypnagogia is a term used to describe the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep (i.e. the onset of sleep). Mental phenomena that occur during this "threshold consciousness" phase include lucid dreaming, hallucinations, out of body experiences and sleep paralysis. Such transitions are usually brief, but can be extended by sleep disturbance or deliberate induction, for example during meditation.

The article mentioned some notable historical figures that made use of hypnagogic imagery, including Beethoven, Thomas Edison and Sir Isaac Newton. Wikipedia cited that Edgar Allen Poe wrote of the "fancies" he experienced "only when I am on the brink of sleep, with the consciousness that I am so."

The article also mentioned that the person perhaps most successful at harnessing the creative energy was Salvador Dali, the prominent Spanish surrealist painter. It described the interesting technique Dali used as follows:

Sitting in the warm sun after a full lunch and feeling somewhat somnolent, Dali would place a metal mixing bowl in his lap and hold a large spoon loosely in his hands which he folded over his chest. As he fell asleep and relaxed, the spoon would fall from his grasp into the bowl and wake him up. He would reset the arrangement continuously and thus float along-not quite asleep and not quite awake-while his imagination would churn out the images that we find so fascinating, evocative, and inexplicable when they appear in his work.

I recall several times waking in the middle of the night with an interesting thought or idea. And I've even considered writing it down. But then I think to myself that it made so much sense there's no way I could forget it. So I go back to sleep and wake in the morning with no recollection of it. Perhaps I was in a hypnagogic state right before waking up.

This sounds like something worth experimenting with, maybe even blogging about in 2011.

No. 272 - Boardwalk Empire

I was listening to an interview on the radio this morning with Terence Winter, creator of a new HBO series called Boardwalk Empire.

I learned that the show is set in Atlantic City, New Jersey, during the Prohibition era and that it was adapted from the novel, Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City by Nelson Johnson. The series debuted this month.

I also learned that Terence Winter is an Emmy Award-winning screenwriter, television and film producer most famous for his work on The Sopranos.

What I found most fascinating about the interview was Terence's back-story. Whenever I have the opportunity, I tell students (especially those in college) that they should do everything possible to put themselves in a position to stand-out among other candidates applying for a job. This would certainly include making sure they do one or more internships while in school. After getting their first job, I advise them to be the best employee, again going above and beyond, to make sure that they are an asset to the company.

I heard in the interview that Terence went to school to be a lawyer and after two years of hating his job in New York City, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a screenwriting career. But he got stuck in a Catch-22 situation. He was told to get any work he needed an agent, and agents wouldn't take him on as a client unless he had previous work experience. Eventually he found a list of agents that were taking new clients and he recognized the name of a guy he went to law school with. He called but the guy said he wasn't a real agent and had no clients. So Terence worked a deal with the guy to open an agency under this guy's name, with a mailing address, and a voice mail box. Terence would do all the work and this guy would get 10% of any work he got, as the agent's fee. The guy agreed. Terence then became not only the screenwriter, and the agent, but the messenger too, delivering his scripts around town. It worked. His career blossomed from there.

This is exactly what I mean by going above and beyond. Jobs will not just appear, especially in today's economy. People need to get creative. This guy certainly went above and beyond and it seems to have paid off for him.

No. 271 - Gertie the Dinosaur

Our local historic theatre hosted its first TEDx event. TED (Technology Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading." Since June 2006, the talks have been offered for free viewing online through TED.com. TEDx is a program that enables schools, businesses, libraries or just groups of friends to enjoy a TED-like experience with TEDx events they independently organize, design and host.

I was unable to attend the event but understand it was a great success. In a review I read today, a guy said the event "represented the best twenty bucks I can remember spending." He described a few of the presentations including this:

One of the hosts named Rives performed a hilarious routine with an iPad depicting his 'talking hand' talking and singing with him in a modern version of Windsor McCay's 'Gertie the Dinosaur'.

I learned that Gertie the Dinosaur was a 1914 animated short film. It was not the first animated film, but is was the first important animated cartoon and the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality. Gertie the Dinosaur was originally created to be used in Windsor McCay's vaudeville performances.

In the performance, McCay would stand on stage in front of a projection screen, dressed in a tuxedo and wielding a whip. He would call Gertie, who appeared from behind some rocks. He then instructed her to perform various tricks, similar to a circus act. He would appear to toss a prop apple to her -- McCay palmed the apple while Gertie caught an animated copy of it. Gertie was also seen to swallow a large rock, play with a Mastodon, and drink an entire lake dry. At one point, McCay would scold Gertie for misbehaving, at which she would begin to cry. For the finale, McCay disappeared behind the screen just as a cartoon version of him climbed onto Gertie's head and rode off.

No. 270 - Contact Juggling

I wasn't really feeling like myself yesterday. Hence the partial philosophical post. The feeling carried over until today when I posted on my Facebook that I was "in a funk. Someone please teach me something new because I've apparently lost my ability to learn."

I got some great responses and appreciate the enthusiasm of my friends. The one that stuck out for me though was the post that said, "Go for contact juggling. It makes me happy!"

I especially liked this response because it may have been meant as a combination post -- teaching me something new as well as breaking the funk with an enjoyable activity.

I learned that contact juggling is a form of object manipulation that focuses on the movement of objects such as balls in contact with the body. Although often used with "toss" juggling, it typically involves the rolling of one or more balls on the hands and arms to create visual illusions without releasing the props into the air.

I was showing my kids a YouTube video similar to this one and told them that it was what I learned today. They both said, "That's a fushigi ball!" So I googled it.

At Fushigiball.com it says that "FUSHIGI is a brand new, dynamically designed ball used in the mysterious art of contact juggling. With FUSHIGI the operator exploits the reflective properties of a sphere through specific hand and body isolations and movements that are designed to give the appearance that the FUSHIGI sphere is moving on its own or even floating. Using FUSHIGI is an incredible, therapeutic form of relaxation."

I asked the kids how they knew that. They said it's always shown on TV commercials. So nothing new for the kids today. Just me :)

No. 269 - Cookie Dough Ice Cream

I'm at another point in this blog where I'm questioning why I'm doing this.  

Why do we do most of the things we do?

I think it comes down to one thing -- we do things to keep from being bored. We develop all sorts of ways to kill time. Sporting events, television, arts, literature, music. The list goes on and on. I guess that's the sign of a developed society. We have all this extra time on our hands after hunting and gathering and building shelter. I suppose we even have friends and get married and have kids for the same reason. It can get awful boring all by yourself, so we share the boredom with others.

A lot of the time we are successful and keep ourselves busy enough. In less than 100 posts this blog will be history and I'll turn my attention in another direction, in search of yet other ways to not be bored.

I really didn't feel like posting anything new today. Then my son came in the room and I asked what he was doing. He said he just ate cookie dough ice cream. That's as good as anything, right?

I learned that chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream originated in 1984 at the Ben and Jerry's Burlington Scoop Shop from an anonymous suggestion on their flavor suggestion board. It took until 1991 before the flavor was introduced to the public in pint-sized containers.

No. 268 - Pogos

We have some super friends visiting from Canada for a few days. Today we drove to South Philadelphia to get cheese steaks at Pat's King of Steaks. On the way there we hit terrible traffic. We were all very hungry at that point and one of our friends, jokingly, said we should have grabbed a couple "pogos" at the gas station for the ride. I asked what the heck those were.

I learned that in Canada, corn dogs may be referred to as "pogo sticks" or "pogos", after a popular brand name.

No. 267 - Project 10 to the 100th

I learned back in Post No. 236 that the Khan Academy has a mission to provide a world-class education to anyone, anywhere, free. After hearing about the Khan Academy, I "liked" them on Facebook. Today I read the following post: "Khan Academy awarded $2 million from Google as part of 10^100 project: http://www.project10tothe100.com/".

I learned that Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th") was a call for ideas to change the world, in the hope of helping as many people as possible. Google committed $10 million to fund up to five ideas selected by their advisory board. The other four companies receiving funding were FIRST, Public Resource.Org, Shweeb and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences.

No. 266 - Mabon

Yesterday evening an e-mail titled "Something to learn?" arrived in my inbox. It was from my wife and included the following text: What is Mabon?

Since I already learned and posted something for the day, and since I knew that today would be particularly busy, I saved the e-mail.

Today my wife sent me a follow-up to that e-mail titled "Here is what the post was that lead me to give you Mabon to learn". It was a post from one of her Facebook friends: Happy and Blessed Mabon, all!

I learned that Mabon (pronounced MAY-bun) is related to Beltane, the subject of Post No. 119, and Midsummer, the subject of Post No. 206. That is, all three appear on the Wheel of the Year, which is a Wiccan and Neopagan term for the annual cycle of the Earth's seasons. It consists of eight festivals, spaced at approximately even intervals throughout the year.

Mabon is the holiday that celebrates the fall equinox, the time when day (light) is equal to night (dark), and the balance that is created between them. It is a ritual of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and a recognition of the need to share them during the winter months. It's a time for personal reflection, to think about the meaning of balance and the idea of harvest in life. It's also a time when people can consider how they are reaping what they have sowed in the months and years before. Mabon is a time to appreciate the turning of the year towards the dark. Fall equinox is a celebration of the local harvest and of the harvests in the home.

In the northern hemisphere the fall equinox occurs anywhere from September 21 to 24. In 2010, the fall equinox occurred yesterday.

No. 265 - A Message to Garcia

I finished reading Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, the subject of Post No. 197, several weeks ago. And then I started to read it again. To be more precise, I keep it with me to read when I'm stuck in traffic. The writing is so good, that it calms me from the frustration that back-to-school traffic can bring. On page 55 today I read:

Dr. McCausland found a chance to have what he called "a word" with me, the gist of which was that I might become queer if I did not attempt to balance my theoretical knowledge with the kind of common sense that could be learned from--well, for instance, from himself. He hinted that I might become like Elbert Hubbard if I continued in my present course. Elbert Hubbard was a notoriously queer American who thought that work could be a pleasure.

In my first reading of the book, I didn't know who Elbert Hubbard was, but passed over it. Who has time to stop and research everything they don't know?

Today I learned that Elbert Hubbard was an American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher who was best known for an essay he wrote called A Message to Garcia.

The essay celebrates the initiative of a soldier who is assigned and accomplishes a daunting mission. He asks no questions, makes no objections, requests no help, but accomplishes the task. In less than 1,500 words Hubbard captures the essence of what being responsible is all about. The essay counsels the reader to apply this attitude to his own life as an avenue to success.

A Message to Garcia was first published in a magazine in 1899 but was quickly reprinted as a book, which has sold over 40 million copies, and has been made into two movies. It also became a well-known allusion in American popular and business culture until the middle of the twentieth century. "To take a message to Garcia" was supposedly a popular American slang expression for taking on a supremely difficult task.

In a foreword written in 1913, Hubbard said that A Message To Garcia "was written one evening after supper, in a single hour."

No. 264 - Atlatl

I knew immediately when I read this Facebook post that I found my topic for the day:

Of all the ancient inventions the one that perplexes me the most is the ATLATL. I mean, how does a primitive human being with no understanding of physics or aerodynamics come up with something like that?

"Something like what?" I asked myself. An ATLATL? He even capitalized it to draw my attention to it.

I learned that an atlatl (pronounced AT-latal) is a spear-throwing tool that uses leverage to achieve greater velocity. It consists of a shaft with a cup in which the butt of the dart, or spear, rests. It is held near the end farthest from the cup, and the dart is thrown by the action of the upper arm and wrist. An atlatl can achieve speeds of over 60 mph and has a range of more than 300 feet, although it is most accurate within 60 feet.

The atlatl preceded the bow and arrow and marked a key innovation in the development of human hunting. The earliest known example is a 15,000 year-old atlatl made of reindeer antler and found in France.

It has been suggested by archeologists that the device was a social equalizer in that it required skill rather than muscle power alone. Thus women and children would have been able to participate in hunting.

Here is a one-minute video demonstrating the use of the atlatl.

No. 263 - Mangia

I received a couple of envelopes in the mail recently from my Dad. They contained newspaper clippings of things he thought I would find interesting. In one envelope, along with three or four other clippings, was an article about an Italian restaurant which recently opened by a guy who shares our same last name. In the other envelope was different article about the same restaurant.

It was called Mangia (pronounced MON-jah). I thought it was a pretty unique name for a restaurant. Apparently not. If you Google the word you get page after page of Italian eateries with the same name. So much for unique.

I learned that mangia is the Italian verb meaning "to eat."

Similar to Spanish I know very few words in Italian. Did I mention that I took Latin in high school? My great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Italy. I suppose he knew what mangia meant. Maybe my grandfather knew too. I'll have to ask my Dad. This fourth generation Italian did not.

No. 262 - Mr. Jefferson's University

Yesterday my kids asked me if they could do "school" on the weekend. Apparently they can't get enough. And they wanted me to be their teacher. Yeah!

I called my lesson "art history." I taught them about the current American flag as well as the flag used back in 1776. We talked about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They drew pictures of each flag. Hence, the art part. We talked about the thirteen stripes on the flag, and the thirteen stars and stripes on the 1776 flag, representing the thirteen original colonies. They loved it.

Today they wanted to do school again. I told them that today we would learn about Thomas Jefferson. I searched the internet for some facts about Jefferson. I found a great website that gave me everything I needed. It was called Biographies for Kids. The site says:

These stories of presidents, inventors, educators, scientists, business men and women etc. are presented to inspire the student. Each story features 8 free printables!

The materials were fantastic. I read them the study sheet, which was a one-page summary biography. We learned that when Thomas Jefferson was young he was taught by his father. The kids took a 20-question multiple choice test based on what they heard me read. They loved it. And I loved being their teacher.

The kids weren't the only ones to learn something new today. I learned that Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virgina, which is sometimes referred to as Mr. Jefferson's University. The materials informed us that Jefferson designed the buildings, chose the library books, and hired the teachers. The school opened in 1825 with 40 students.

No. 261- Quarry

I recently began reading 33 A.D. by David McAfee, the subject of Post No. 215. So far, so good. My Kindle tells me that I'm about 23% of the way through it. At location 1219 - that's how the Kindle defines what page you are on for some reason - I read:

Privately, Taras marveled at the man's ability to traverse the roads and then the scrubland in complete silence. Not once along the way had Taras heard a single crunch of gravel or broken twig. Very few indeed were the people who could tread so lightly; it was not an easy skill to learn. It had taken Taras the better part of a decade to learn it himself. That his quarry showed signs of being similarly well trained was both obvious and unsettling.

The beauty of the Kindle is its built-in dictionary. I placed the cursor on the word "quarry." The dictionary's first definition was "a place, typically a large, deep pit, from which stone or other materials are or have been extracted." Yep. That's the one I knew. The second definition was "an animal pursued by a hunter, hound, predatory mammal, or bird of prey" and also "a thing or person that is chased or sought." I never heard it used that way before.

No. 260 - Lithotomy

Have you ever set a  goal, perhaps even one that you've added to your bucket list, the subject of Post No. 90, and then did everything necessary to accomplish that goal, and then fail to say a simple phrase like "don't cut the back," and have to start all over again?

I've been getting my hair cut by the same guy, mentioned in Post No. 113, for about a dozen years. Up until about a year ago, it was always the same routine. Short hair. Then I decided to grow it longer. Because, why not? So today I go in for a trim, we chat, I like the length, maybe a little off the sides, yada, yada, yada, he finishes and he hands me a mirror, and asks how I like it.

I looked at him and said, "You cut the back." Just like that. Monotone. No inflection. "You cut the back." So now I'm back to where I was six months ago. I guess that's why we have bucket lists, eh?

Anyway he recommended a new book to me. At least I think it's the one he mentioned. I seem to have forgotten because, quite frankly, I can't believe he cut the back. But hey, it's only hair, right?

Anyway, as I recall, it was Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. More than 75% of the 400+ reviews on Amazon give it 5-stars. But this is the same guy who highly recommended The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Post No. 206 will tell you how much I liked that one. And...he cut the back. But serious, I'm over it.

I learned that "cutting for stone" comes from the Hippocratic Oath: "I will not cut for stone, even for the patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art."

I then learned that lithotomy is the surgical removal of a stone - as in kidney stone - from the urinary tract. Lithotomy comes from the Greek words "lithos" meaning stone and "tomos" meaning cut. Therefore, the Hippocratic Oath contained a clear warning for physicians against the "cutting" of patients to remove kidney stones. This was an act that was better left to surgeons, who were distinct from physicians at the time the Oath was written.

No. 259 - LowestCostColleges.com

I read a blog post today that directed me to this video. I watched it because I have read many articles by Gary North and respect his opinion. In the video he posits that one can obtain a bachelor's degree from an accredited university for less than $15,000. Total. Not each year for four years.

This topic interests me because I believe we are in a higher education bubble, and when it bursts it is going to be ugly.

I learned about his website called LowestCostColleges.com. A link to the video is there and so is a manual he wrote titled America's Lowest Cost Colleges: How You Can Earn an Accredited Degree for Pennies on the Dollar. They are both free. He is not selling anything, although the website does have a cheap infomercial look to it.

I like what he writes in the preface of the manual:

Let’s get one thing clear before we begin. This manual is not about getting a good education. It is about getting an accredited degree, cheap.

If you want a good education – a great education – you can get it without spending anything except time and enough gasoline money to drive to the local public library and back. If you cannot afford the money, ride a bike.

He summarizes in the video seven ways to reduce the cost of college by up to 90%:

#1 Night School - This first one does not make a lot of sense to me. Although community college would be less expensive, Gary says that the biggest cost of college for most is being out of the job market. So if you take night classes you can still have a full-time job. That alone doesn't reduce the cost of the classes. But it would mean that you're making money to afford it without going into debt, which is also a plus.

#2 Dual Credit - You can attend college courses while in high school that qualify for joint high school and college credit.

#3 Quiz Out - You are able to take tests - called CLEP exams - which Gary says would allow you to quiz out of your first two years of college.

#4 Daytime Community College - This one also would be related to #1 in that the money saved is likely by attending a community college instead of a high-priced university. He says that you may actually get access to better teachers at the community college level, especially during your freshman and sophomore years.

#5 Distance Learning - He says there are 4,000 accredited universities in the U.S. and 1,000 of them offer distance learning, which use the internet or postal service instead of a campus. He says you have to look carefully but he knows of one state university that charges $69,000 for a degree on campus, and offers the same degree via distance learning for $12,000.

#6 Life Experience Courses - He says that you can convert stuff that you've learned through life experiences into college credits at dozens of universities.

#7 In State Residency - This is one that most folks know about, but don't always take full advantage of. Gary explains that a person could establish state residency six to twelve months in advance of enrolling, get a job to pay for lodging and food, and study for CLEP exams after work to quiz out of two years of courses in one year "if you hustle." Then you apply to the university and enter as a junior.

No. 258 - Turtle Island

For the last week or two, while channel surfing in the morning on XM Radio, I have stumbled upon the audiobook reading of The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert on Book Radio.

The story was about a man, Eustace Conroy, who at the age of 17 moved out of his parents' house so that he could live in a tipi in the woods. The portions of the book that I heard involved Eustace walking the Appalachian Trail, going to college (during which I think he lived in a tipi), and talk about buying a piece of land called "Turtle Island."

Again this morning I heard Turtle Island mentioned.

I learned that Eustace Conroy (born Eustace Robinson Conroy IV) is the owner of the 1000-acre Turtle Island Preserve near Boone, North Carolina. In the "About Turtle Island" section of the website, it had this to say:

Our programs are full of lifestyle practices of earlier people from our great grandparent's time and back into prehistory. We orient to the basic foundation of where things come from and where things go. We plant and harvest in our gardens, milk goats, make butter, soap, bowls, spoons and tools of all size and description. We hunt and gather wild foods and medicines and natural resources abounding in our huge natural preserve. We cook on a fire, gathering our own wood.

In the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the website, it had this to say:

"Why is it called Turtle Island?"
It is named after the Native American legend that a great turtle rose up out of the waters after the world was flooded and made the decision to support life's creatures on it's back. American Indians call the earth "turtle island" and so we call our tract of land "Turtle Island Preserve" for we are an earth preserve. In the figurative sense, we are an island of wilderness in a sea of development and destruction.

And I particularly like what they say on the homepage: We are more about doing it than talking about it.

I also learned that Turtle Island Preserve is featured in a National Geographic book by Pam Grout called The 100 Best Vacations to Enrich Your Life.

No. 257 - How Children Fail

I read an interesting article today titled, The Deschooling and Unschooling Movement Is Growing.

It began by defining what "unschooling" is:

Unschooling takes children out of schools, but, unlike a lot of home-school approaches, it doesn't import the classroom into the home. It does away altogether with educational clutter such as curricula and grades.

Unschoolers maintain that a child's learning should be curiosity-driven rather than dictated by teachers and textbooks, and that forcing kids to adhere to curricula quashes their natural inclination to explore and ask questions.

I wrote back in Post No. 159 that "I'm going to have to get my kids to tell me what story to write before they get too old...and lose their creativity." What I meant by that is that humans are naturally creative. We see that creativity in kids, before it is taught out of them, mainly in school.

From this article, I learned about a book called How Children Fail by John Holt, which was published in 1964. Holt suggested that smart children struggle “because they are afraid, bored, and confused. They are afraid, above all else, of failing, of disappointing or displeasing the many anxious adults around them, whose limitless hopes and expectations for them hang over their heads like a cloud."

Holt hits my theory right on the head. Kids are afraid of getting questions wrong in class, of being laughed at by their peers, of failing. So instead they conform. They tend to ask less questions. They forget to ask why. They become less interested, and less creative.

Is unschooling the answer? I don't know. The time commitment of one or both parents would need to be substantial. And conventional schooling provides much needed socialization skills. In the meantime we should encourage our kids to learn outside the classroom, to provide an environment which fosters creative thinking, and most importantly, to never stop asking why.

No. 256 - Judith Leiber

I learned from this article in the WSJ today that Judith Leiber is a designer of luxury handbags.

What caught my attention was the description in the title of the article about a $3,500 purse. What fascinates me are not the people who would spend that amount of money on a purse, but how someone "convinced" them to spend that amount of money on a purse. We all know that the materials to make it do not justify the price. So how did she do it?

Judith Leiber has an interesting back-story. She was a Jew who escaped the Holocaust when her father was able to obtain a safe passage for her to Switzerland. After the war, she began making handbags at home and then at a friend's small factory. She met and married an American soldier and immigrated to the United States in 1948.

So you're a Holocaust survivor, a handbag maker and you recently arrived in the United States. What do you do? Well as the article says, "In 1953, she designed a glittering pink purse for First Lady Mamie Eisenhower to wear at Dwight Eisenhower's inaugural ball."

And she didn't stop there. Every First Lady since then has carried a Judith Leiber bag to her husband's inauguration. Except Michelle Obama, who didn't.

I suppose the handbags were exquisite enough that the women didn't just pitch them in the trash. Apparently each bag can take up to seven days to fabricate and can cost from $700 to $7,000. And they look a lot like Christmas, I mean Hanukkah, ornaments.

No. 255 - Arroyo

Today I will finish the epic journey as depicted in The Passage by Justin Cronin, which I first mentioned in Post No. 159. It was a highly enjoyable novel and I will eagerly anticipate the second installment of this trilogy, which is supposed to come out in 2012.

I read the following sentence on page 742:

They were in a broad, empty valley, and had taken shelter for the night beneath a bridge over a dry arroyo.

Using word association I figured it was some type of body of water, but beyond that I didn't exactly know the meaning or significance of the word. This is probably a gimme for anyone who lives in the southwestern United States. The setting in the book was "in Arizona, near the Utah border."

I learned that an arroyo, also called a wash, is usually a dry creek bed that temporarily fills after a heavy rain. Arroyos can be natural or man-made. The term usually applies to a mountainous desert environment. In many rural communities, arroyos are the principal roads, and in many urban communities they are important multi-use trails for recreation, pedestrian and equestrian travel.

Encyclopedia Britannica had this entry for arroyo: "a dry channel lying in a semiarid or desert area and subject to flash flooding during seasonal or irregular rainstorms. Such transitory streams, rivers, or creeks are noted for their gullying effects and especially for their rapid rates of erosion, transportation, and deposition."

No. 254 - Counterfactual Thinking

In the Olympics there are gold, silver, and bronze medal winners. Who is the least happy? I'll come back to that in a moment.

Today I received this note from a friend: Here's one for your 365 blog "counterfactual thinking".

I turned to my five-year old and asked what he knew about counterfactual thinking. He responded, "I don't know, Dad. You're on your own."

I learned that counterfactual thinking is a term of psychology that describes the tendency people have to imagine alternatives to reality. Humans are predisposed to think about how things could have turned out differently if only and also to imagine what if.

It's that shoulda-woulda-coulda moment when we lament our choices or paths not taken. I should have invested in Yahoo. I should have become a doctor instead of a lawyer. I should have asked that girl to go out on a date.

Apparently there are positive outcomes from counterfactual thinking. I suppose if you think enough about the alternatives from not asking that girl on a date, one might work up the courage next time to ask her. If one broods over a speeding ticket that they would not have gotten if they were not speeding then, perhaps, next time they won't speed.

Now back to the Olympic medal question. According to a 1995 Cornell University study called When Less Is More: Counterfactual Thinking and Satisfaction Among Olympic Medalists, it was determined that the least happy medalist was the winner of the silver medal. He inevitably second guessed what he "could have" done differently to win the gold. The bronze medal winner, on the other hand, was just happy to have won a medal at all.

Often life is not so much what happens to us, but how we respond, and what we make of the hand that has been dealt to us.

You've likely heard the saying: "If life hands you lemons, make lemonade." I recently heard this fun twist on it: "If life hands you lemons, demand tequila and salt!" Now that's the spirit.

No. 253 - Carrageenan

Last night while getting ready for bed, my daughter and I had the following conversation:

She: Do you know how ice cream is made?

Me: How is it made?

She: Wait. Did you learn something already today?

Me: Yes. I learned something for my blog today.

She: O.K. Then I'll wait until the morning to tell you.

How cute!

So this morning she remembered and asked me if I knew that seaweed was used to make ice cream. I told her that I did not but would check it out.

I learned that an ingredient extracted from seaweed called carrageenan (pronounced carra-GEE-nan) is used in most ice creams to thicken it and to keep the water from forming ice when it sits in the freezer.

Carrageenan comes from red seaweed that makes its home on the rocky shores of both Europe and North America. The seaweed is first harvested and then dried. The carrageenan in the seaweed is extracted through immersion in hot water. After a purification process, the carrageenan is ground into a powder. This powder is then blended into the other ingredients to make the ice cream. Less than one teaspoon of the seaweed extract is used in a half-gallon sized carton of ice cream.

No. 252 - W.O.W.

Three of the last four posts have come from things I learned from Facebook friends. So today I thought I would ask my Facebook friends a question, and perhaps learn something new.

I posted: How many 80s bands can you name that begin with "W"?

Responses included the usual suspects (at least for me): Winger, Warrant, Whitesnake and White Lion.

There were a couple that I had thought about, but were lesser well-known: W.A.S.P. and Wall of Voodoo.

There were a few I had not readily thought about: Wang Chung, WHAM! and Warlock.

And there were ones that I didn't even know were bands: Whiplash, Was Not Was, When in Rome, The Wallflowers and The Waitresses.

By the way, Weezer and White Stripes were both formed in the 1990s and I'm not accepting Traveling Wilburys as an answer.

There was one response that caught my attention: W.O.W. -- Wendy O. Williams. It vaguely rang a bell but I couldn't recall anything about her.

I learned that Wendy Orlean Williams, better known as Wendy O. Williams, was the lead singer for the Plasmatics, an American punk band, as well as a solo artist. Her stage theatrics included blowing up equipment, near nudity and chain-sawing guitars. She often sported a Mohawk haircut.

In 1984, she released the "W.O.W." album. It was produced by Gene Simmons and KISS band members Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, Eric Carr and Vinnie Vincent performed on it.

Williams died in 1998 at age 48 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a wooded area near her home. She left a suicide note which included the following:

"I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me, much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm."

No. 251 - Homophones

This morning a Facebook friend posted, "Was learning cursive really necessary?" 

Another Facebook friend replied, "YES it is. It changes the way your brain works, and makes you think about words differently. When the letters are connected the word is a whole. Kids can't write, they can't spell, they don't think. Is spelling counter-intuitive as well since we now have spell check?"

I chimed in with, "I wish that more people would actually use spell check."

She replied, "I wish more people actually knew how to spell. I rely on it now because my spelling is awful post accident but what I see/saw with students is appalling. And don't even get me started on homophones/homonyms."

And right then I knew what I was going to learn today. Because I could not recall what the heck homophones and homonyms were.

I learned, or probably in this case, re-learned, that homonyms are words that share the same pronunciation and the same spelling but have different meanings, such as fair (county fair) and fair (reasonable).

Homophones are words that share the same pronunciation and have different meanings, but could have the same or different spellings, such as  pear (fruit) and pair (couple). So homophones that are spelled the same are also homonyms.

I'm not sure what practical purpose is served by knowing these technical differences unless, of course, you're an English teacher and need to explain them to your students. Perhaps that's why I quickly forgot them back in grade school and, undoubtedly, will quickly forget them soon after this post.

No. 250 - Cincinnati Chili

A Facebook friend posted a link to a Wikipedia entry for a type of chili that I had never heard of.

I learned that Cincinnati chili is a regional style of chili characterized by the way the meat is cooked - it has a thinner consistency - and the use of unusual ingredients such as cinnamon, chocolate or cocoa, allspice, and Worcestershire. It is commonly served over spaghetti or as a hot dog sauce.

This unique version, which has developed a cult-like popularity around the Cincinnati, Ohio area, was created in 1922 by Tom Kiradjieff, a Macedonian immigrant. Tom and his brother, John, opened a small Greek restaurant called the Empress. The restaurant did poorly until Tom started offering a chili made with Middle Eastern spices, which could be served in a variety of ways. He called it his "spaghetti chili" and it is typically served with oyster crackers.

If you're ever in the Cincinnati area you'll need to know how to order spaghetti chili:

• two-way: spaghetti and chili
• three-way: spaghetti, chili, and shredded cheese
• four-way: spaghetti, chili, shredded cheese, and either diced onions or beans
• five-way: spaghetti, chili, shredded cheese, diced onions, and beans

No. 249 - Saranac

Last week I had dinner with a friend who told me that each night he enjoys a different beer typically bought from a local supermarket called Wegmans. He would make notes for himself on what he liked, or didn't like, about each beer. I told him he should start a blog about that.

I was thinking of that conversation while standing in the beer section of Wegmans today. I typically drink just one flavor of beer - Yuengling Lager. I recently bought some of the just-released Sly Fox Oktoberfest, the subject of Post No. 214, which was very good. As I was browsing the enormous selection a particular box of beers caught my attention. It was called "12 Beers a Falling" by Saranac. It contained two bottles of six different beers, including Oktoberfest, Pumpkin Ale, India Pale Ale, Irish Red Ale and two others.

I didn't know much about Saranac, like where it was even brewed. So I googled it in the store. I read this about the meaning of Saranac:

Saranac. The word conjures up visions of clear lakes, open skies and breathtaking mountains. To the native people of our land, the Iroquois, the word means "Cluster of Stars." They lived with the beauty and serenity that was inherent to the lake and surrounding area. We borrow that name in the spirit with which it was created. We brew our Saranac line of beers from the pure water that flows from the Adirondacks and the grains that grow in its unspoiled soil. 

That was enough for me.

I later learned that Saranac was founded in 1888 by Francis Xavier Matt, or F.X. as he liked to be called. F.X. was a German-born immigrant, just like David G. Jüngling, who later changed his last name to Yuengling.

No. 248 - Personius Maximus

Today a Facebook friend posted "Personius Maximus Kona Coffee with breakfast this morning. mmmm." I figured he was joking since his last name is Personius. Funny. Personius the Greatest. I replied that "I enjoyed some Ethiopian Harrar," the subject of Post No. 246.

I later looked it up and, sure enough, there is such a coffee known at Personius Maximus although it appears to be extremely rare as a Google search returned just two entries in the entire web-o-sphere.

The one site selling the coffee for $38.00 per pound had this to say:

This Kona is medium bodied with floral undertones. It has excellent high notes and a full nose. As always, it is freshly roasted to a medium roast, preserving all of the varietal characteristics Kona is known for. The owner of the 'Personius Maximus' Estate, Jerry Personius is as passionate about his coffee as we are. We truly believe this to be the finest coffee in the world!

I also learned that Kona coffee is the market name for coffee cultivated on the slopes of Hualalai and Mauna Loa in the North and South Kona Districts of the Big Island of Hawaii. This coffee has developed a reputation that has made it one of the most expensive and sought-after coffees in the world. Only coffee from the Kona Districts can be legally described as "Kona." The unique Kona weather pattern of sunny mornings, cloud cover or rain in the afternoons, little wind and mild nights combined with porous, mineral rich volcanic soil, creates favorable coffee growing conditions.

No. 247 - Tamales

Today for lunch we ate at a Guatemalan restaurant. The food was fantastic - fresh and spicy. After we ordered my wife told me that on Saturdays they supposedly made fresh tamales. I asked what they were. She said: You don't know what a tamale is? I guessed it was some type of pepper. My wife had a pattern earlier in the year of asking me questions for which the answer involved a pepper. Refer to Post No. 25 on pimentos and Post No. 102 on scotch bonnets.

I learned that a tamale is a traditional Latin American dish made of dough, which is steamed or boiled in a corn husk or a banana leaf wrapper, which is discarded before eating. Tamales can be filled with meats, cheeses, vegetables, chilies (perhaps even pimentos or scotch bonnets) or other ingredients according to taste, and both the filling and the cooking liquid may be seasoned.

Tamales originated in Mesoamerica as early as 5,000 to 8,000 B.C. Aztec and Maya civilizations used tamales as a portable food, often to support their armies but also for hunters and travelers. Tamales are said to have been as ubiquitous and varied as the sandwich is today.

No. 246 - Harrar

My second shipment of the "world's rarest" coffees recently arrived in the mail. The first came from Papua New Guinea, as noted in Post No. 126. To get me this one, someone "journeyed to the eastern mountain valleys of Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, for robust, full-bodied Harrar, one of the world's most prized beans."

I brewed my first cup this morning. 

The packaging on the coffee read: Grown on small family farms, this rare coffee is harvested from high mountain valleys in the exceptionally fertile Harrar region of Ethiopia. Harrar is considered a "wild coffee" because the beans are dried in the coffee fruit, giving them a full-bodied richness with soft tones of dark chocolate, cinnamon and cardamom.

I learned that Harrar (or Harar) is an eastern city in Ethiopia that is not only known for its coffee but for a wall that completely encircles the city, including its 82 mosques and 122,000 inhabitants.

The wall, called Jugol, is over 2 miles long and over 16 feet high. It was erected in the sixteenth century and was made with locally quarried stone, held together with mud, and reinforced with stout juniper planks. You can enter the city through any of its five gates, a number supposed to symbolize the Five Pillars of Islam.

No. 245 - Kiuic

Almost half the day passed without me apparently learning anything new. Then I remembered that I was carrying with me an envelope that arrived in the mail yesterday from my dad. He often sends me articles from newspapers that he thinks would interest me. I flipped through the newspaper clippings and stopped on one from USA Today titled So long, said the Maya.

I learned that Kiuic (pronounced kee-week) is a biological reserve and former Maya city located in the Puuc (hilly) region of the Yucatan. Kiuic means "gathering place" in Mayan. Some believe that the area could eventually reveal the secrets of the Maya collapse, for it holds material evidence for a massive exodus around a thousand years ago. Its jungle surroundings were thought to have been empty of human history until 2009, when a national archaeological team uncovered two pyramids and nine palaces.

Imagine that. Even with all of today's sophisticated satellite technology (like Google Maps where you can see people walking on the street) no one knew that two pyramids and nine palaces sat in a jungle until just last year.

No. 244 - Drinking the Flavor Aid

This morning I was listening to a program on PRX Public Radio about "the Jonestown massacre."

I learned that on November 18, 1978, 912 followers of American cult leader Jim Jones, founder of the Peoples Temple, a quasi-religious organization, died in a remote South American jungle compound called "Jonestown" in British Guyana. Some members were shot, others were forced to drink poison, but most willingly participated in what Jones said was an act of "revolutionary suicide." 

The tragedy at Jonestown resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster, prior to the events of September 11, 2001.

This event was responsible for coining the term "Drinking the Kool-Aid." This phrase is used to describe someone who becomes a firm believer in something and accepts an argument or philosophy wholeheartedly or blindly.

Almost all of the followers of Jones that died that day were given a deadly concoction of a purple drink mixed with cyanide, sedatives, and tranquilizers. Evidence gathered at the Jonestown site after the incident indicated that rather than Kool-Aid, a similar powdered drink called Flavor Aid was used in the massacre.