Trivia & Miscellaneous

[Daniel E.]

Mustatil - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Mustatils are prehistoric monuments made of sandstone walls which are found in northwest Saudi Arabia.

A mysterious cult that predates Stonehenge

Spread over a vast, remote landscape in north-western Saudi Arabia are millennia-old archaeological remains that could change our understanding of prehistory.

www.bbc.com

"The mustatil suggests large social networks, innovative architectural skills and vast exploration in prehistoric Arabia."

 

[Daniel E.]

RoboCop - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Filming took place almost entirely on location in Dallas,[10][45][48] with additional shooting on sets in Las Colinas, and in Pittsburgh.[8][45][49] Verhoeven wanted a modern filming location that looked like it was from the near future.[45] Detroit was dismissed because it had many low, featureless, and visually uninteresting buildings.[26][45] Neumeier said it was also a trade union town, making it more expensive to film there.[50] Detroit does make a brief appearance in stock footage shown during the film's opening.[16] Chicago was dismissed for aesthetic reasons, New York City for high costs, and California because, according to Davison, Orion wanted to distance themselves from the project.[26][45]

Dallas was chosen over Houston because it offered modern buildings as well as older, less-maintained areas where they could use explosives.[45] The filming schedule in Dallas was nine weeks, but it soon became clear it was going to take longer. Based on filmed footage, Orion approved extending the schedule and increasing the budget to $13.1 million.[32][44][51] The weather during filming fluctuated: the Dallas summer was often 90 °F (32 °C) to 115 °F (46 °C);[26][37][52] the weather in Pittsburgh was frigid.[10]


Dallas City Hall appears as the exterior of OCP's headquarters. Matte paintings were used to make it appear taller.

 

[Daniel E.]

Prehistoric Climate Change Repeatedly Channelled Human Migrations Across Arabia

www.shh.mpg.de

"While today the Nefud desert is a very arid region, deep hollows between the large sand dunes created places for small lakes to form during occasional increases in rainfall. As a result, the Nefud region was periodically transformed from one of the most uninhabitable parts of Southwest Asia into a lush grassland that provided opportunities for repeated population movements."

Palaeodeserts - Climate Change and Hominin Evolution in the Arabian Desert

www.palaeodeserts.com

"The Palaeodeserts Project is examining environmental change in the Arabian Desert over the last one million years. A multidisciplinary team of researchers is studying the effect of environmental change on early humans and animals that settled or passed through the Desert and how their responses determined whether they survived or died out."

 

[Daniel E.]

Clothing - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ralf Kittler, Manfred Kayser, and Mark Stoneking, anthropologists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, conducted a genetic analysis of human body lice that suggests clothing originated around 170,000 years ago. Body lice are an indicator of clothes-wearing, since most humans have sparse body hair, and lice thus require human clothing to maintain presence on their host. Their research suggests that the invention of clothing may have coincided with the northward migration of modern Homo sapiens away from the warm climate of Africa, thought to have begun between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. A second group of researchers using similar genetic methods estimate that clothing originated between 114,000 and 30,000 years ago.

 

[Daniel E.]

Reports of Homo erectus' laziness are 'moronic'

If you’re into ancient anthropology, you’ve probably seen a headline or two touting a new discovery about Homo erectus—that laziness may have done them in.

www.popsci.com

“It’s why Starbucks has a shop every couple blocks, because we can’t be bothered to go further to get our coffee,” Anton says. “It’s a really smart adaptive strategy to not only live within your resources, but also to balance your energy with your output. That’s potentially why the species survived for so long.”

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

A history of tooth-whitening

In 3000 B.C., people used something called chew sticks.

www.seattletimes.com

The practice of teeth-whitening began around 4,000 years ago with the ancient Egyptians, who created a whitening paste using ground pumice stone mixed in wine vinegar. White teeth were a mark of beauty and a sign of wealth.

 

[Daniel E.]

List of foods named after people - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Fettuccine Alfredo - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"This act of mixing the butter and cheese through the noodles becomes quite a ceremony when performed by Alfredo in his tiny restaurant in Rome. As busy as Alfredo is with other duties, he manages to be at each table when the waiter arrives with the platter of fettuccine to be mixed by him. As a violinist plays inspiring music, Alfredo performs the sacred ceremony with a fork and spoon of solid gold. Alfredo does not cook noodles. He does not make noodles. He achieves them."

— George Rector (1933)

 

[Daniel E.]

As Inflation Rages On, Retailers Turn to AI and Dynamic Pricing - Taking stock of retail tech

In this guest post, Matt Pavich from Revionics talks about how AI-driven dynamic pricing can help retailers combat market variables

www.computerweekly.com

"The ability to raise prices on items seen as less critical by shoppers is what funds retailers’ ability to keep prices steady – or even to lower prices – on high-visibility items, such as bread and bananas."

 

[Daniel E.]

John Stith Pemberton - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

John Stith Pemberton (July 8, 1831 – August 16, 1888) was an American pharmacist and Confederate States Army veteran who is best known as the inventor of Coca-Cola. In May 1886, he developed an early version of a beverage that would later become Coca-Cola, but sold his rights to the drink shortly before his death.

He suffered from a sabre wound sustained in April 1865, during the Battle of Columbus; his ensuing morphine addiction led him to experiment with various painkillers and toxins. In the end, this led to the recipe that later was adapted to make Coca-Cola...

He blended the base syrup with carbonated water by accident when trying to make another glassful of the beverage. Pemberton decided then to sell this as a fountain drink rather than a medicine. Frank Mason Robinson came up with the name "Coca-Cola" for the alliterative sound, which was popular among other wine medicines of the time. Although the name refers to the two main ingredients, because of controversy over its cocaine content, The Coca-Cola Company later said that the name was "meaningless but fanciful". Robinson hand wrote the Spencerian script on the bottles and ads. Pemberton made many health claims for his product, touting it as a "valuable brain tonic" that would cure headaches, relieve exhaustion, and calm nerves, and marketed it as "delicious, refreshing, pure joy, exhilarating", and "invigorating".

 

[Daniel E.]

Study finds Ivermectin is ‘not clinically useful’ against Covid

Drug has become a cause celebre in parts of the vaccine-skeptical American right

www.independent.co.uk

What is ivermectin? How a livestock dewormer became a rumored COVID-19 aid with bad side effects

‘There have been lots of cases of liver problems and liver failure, severe GI upset and even things like seizure and coma,’ says UCLA Health’s Dr. Dan Uslan.

connect.uclahealth.org

"It is painstaking scientific testing, not magical thinking, that reveals what works well."

Another unfortunate case of using "alternative" medicine instead of going with medical advice:

Doubting mainstream medicine, COVID patients find dangerous advice and pills online

A 75-year-old woman became enmeshed in conspiracy theories about COVID. After she got infected, she rejected effective treatments and sought out black market drugs instead.

www.npr.org

"For Americans like Stephanie who don't trust the medical establishment, there's a network of fringe medical doctors, natural healers and internet personalities ready to push unproven cures for COVID. And a shady black market where you can buy them. Stephanie was plugged into that alternative medical network, and doctors say it ultimately cost her life."

 

[Daniel E.]

An integrative model of new product evaluation: A systematic investigation of perceived novelty and product evaluation in the movie industry

The literature on perceived novelty and product evaluation has diverged into two disparate streams of research. The first stream builds on theories of curiosity and argues that the perceived novelty of a new product benefits product evaluation because ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Utilizing content analysis and big data approaches with a large sample of 49,835 reviews of 147 movies in the movie industry, we found that an evaluator’s perception of the novelty of a new movie benefited product evaluation but only when that perceived novelty was moderate; at higher levels of perceived novelty, the product evaluation decreased.

 

[Daniel E.]

History of Cancer

Explore a timeline of the history of cancer from 18th century BCE to 2011.

canceratlas.cancer.org

 

[Daniel E.]

Milton S. Hershey - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hershey Chocolate supplied the U.S. Armed Forces with chocolate bars during World War II. These bars were called Ration D Bars and Tropical Chocolate Bars. The Ration D Bar had very specific requirements from the army: It had to weigh 1 or 2 ounces (28 or 57 g); it had to resist melting at temperatures higher than 90 degrees, and it had to have an unpleasant-enough flavor to prevent the troops from developing cravings for them.

 

[Daniel E.]

4 Shower Products That Are Ruining Your Pipes, According to Plumbers

What to skip, what’s safe, and how to fix any problems that do pop up.

getpocket.com

Mulder recommends enzymatic drain cleaners if you are attempting to use a product to clean your drain pipes. “They are safe and ‘green’ because they contain bacteria or enzymes that eat the organic components of the clog to eliminate it,” he says. Boiling water and baking soda and vinegar mixes are two other gentle options for loosening up clogs.

 

[Daniel E.]

Odds of Winning Latest Mega Millions Prize? Math Professor Has Answers

What would you do with a billion dollars? That's what a lot of people are asking themselves with the current Mega Millions jackpot topping $1 billion. ...

news.syr.edu

Q: If someone is looking at the overall odds of winning this major prize, what are they?

A: The odds are one out of 302,575,350.

Q: What other astronomical odds can you compare a lottery win to?

A: From the web, I got that the odds of getting struck by lightning in a given year are about one out of one million. That is about 300 times more likely than winning the Mega Millions jackpot with one ticket. Of course, you can increase your odds by buying multiple tickets.

Here is another comparison: There are one billion different possible social security numbers. So, if you try to randomly guess someone’s social security number, your chances of getting it right with one guess are one out of one billion. That is about three times harder than winning the Mega Millions jackpot with one ticket.

 

[Daniel E.]

As inflation soars, how is AriZona iced tea still 99 cents?

Tall cans of AriZona iced tea have cost 99 cents since 1992. The family behind the company says it's committed to that price even as the prices of aluminum and corn syrup climb higher.

www.latimes.com

Vultaggio, a Brooklyn native with the accent to prove it, got the idea for the tea company when he was running his route as a beer distributor in Manhattan. He noticed that people were drinking Snapple, even though it was freezing outside. He decided to get into the iced tea business then and there.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Odds of Winning Latest Mega Millions Prize? Math Professor Has Answers

What would you do with a billion dollars? That's what a lot of people are asking themselves with the current Mega Millions jackpot topping $1 billion. ...

news.syr.edu

Q: If someone is looking at the overall odds of winning this major prize, what are they?

A: The odds are one out of 302,575,350.

Q: What other astronomical odds can you compare a lottery win to?

A: From the web, I got that the odds of getting struck by lightning in a given year are about one out of one million. That is about 300 times more likely than winning the Mega Millions jackpot with one ticket. Of course, you can increase your odds by buying multiple tickets.

Here is another comparison: There are one billion different possible social security numbers. So, if you try to randomly guess someone’s social security number, your chances of getting it right with one guess are one out of one billion. That is about three times harder than winning the Mega Millions jackpot with one ticket.

I always liked the description of lottery tickets as a tax on fools.

 

[Daniel E.]

What are the hardest adjustments to make when visiting Japan?

Graham D Brown's answer: Here are 10 adjustments to Japanese life you may find difficult... 1) TIPPING Don't do it (they'll stare at you blankly or give you the money back) - I actually prefer this one. For tippers, it might be hard adjusting to the fact that what it says on the menu is how...

qr.ae

"Wow, this is how Japanese kids see the world. For the first time I had to adjust to the idea that my country wasn't the center of the world, but somewhere out on the edges... that was a hard adjustment but a liberating experience."

 

[Daniel E.]

The Most Surveilled Place in America

“The idea is that if enough people get hurt, they’ll stop coming.”

www.theverge.com

...Border Patrol’s most powerful tool is not its fleet of drones and helicopters — it’s the desert itself. Since the mid-1990s, the agency has relied on a strategy called “prevention through deterrence” to reduce unauthorized border crossings. The idea is simple: if you put more manpower and surveillance technology in highly trafficked areas, including big border cities like Nogales, migrants will have no choice but to travel through “more hostile terrain, less suited for crossing and more suited for enforcement,” as Border Patrol’s 1994 strategic plan stated.

“Early on, they were like, ‘If we’re going to do this, people are going to get hurt,’” Jason De León, an anthropology professor at UCLA and author of The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail, told me. “But the idea is that if enough people get hurt, they’ll stop coming.”

...The Sonoran Desert isn’t an untouched wilderness. It’s a massive unmarked grave...

Nearly every person I met in southern Arizona told me they keep a few gallon jugs of water in their car, just in case they happen to come across a migrant in distress on the side of the road...