Trivia & Miscellaneous

[Daniel E.]

The Elusive Story of the Bread-and-Butter Pickle Sandwich

One of the first recorded uses of the phrase “bread and butter pickles” can be traced back to 1923, when Omar and Cora Fanning of Illinois registered for a trademark (since expired) on the logo for their family pickles. According to a 1996 issue of the Feingold News, “Mrs. Fanning worked out an agreement with a local grocer, who gave her groceries—including bread ‘n butter—in exchange for the pickles.”

 

[Daniel E.]

Why Do People in the UK Drive on the Left Side of the Road?

The answer may surprise you.

www.mentalfloss.com

Just why do Brits drive on the opposite side of the road from most other countries?

The practice far predates cars, according to The Telegraph. In fact, it goes back to the Middle Ages. In ye olden days, when traveling down a highway put you at risk of being attacked or robbed, traveling on the left was a matter of safety. Since most people were (and still are) right-handed, passing on the left meant leaving your sword-hand free to take on any challengers. Whether on foot, horseback, or in a carriage, you needed to be able to whip out your lance, sword, pitchfork, or staff in response to a threat—and quickly.

 

[Daniel E.]

Why Are People Getting Worse at “The Price Is Right”?

The typical guess is much worse today than it was in the 1970s. It could be because people don't really need to keep track of prices anymore.

getpocket.com

There are 50 times as many products at a grocery store than 80 years ago.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

They're not necessarily new food items though. Today's grocery "superstores" sell housewares, clothing, hardware... you name it and they've got it.

 

[Daniel E.]

Shocking, even for greedy Amazon:

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ilhan Omar Call on OSHA to release Amazon’s injury records

In the wake of Reveal’s investigation, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ilhan Omar say producing the data “should be quick and easy.”

revealnews.org

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Wow.

1. Even the lowest rates at 4 per 100 workers getting serious injuries is really bad.

2. Why the big disparities in differenty regions though, I wonder?

 

[Daniel E.]

I don't know, but one pamphlet for Amazon workers stated that a single employee may lift a total of up to 20,000 pounds in a single shift (more than 30 pounds per minute for a 10-hour shift).

 

[David Baxter PhD]

Wow.

 

[gooblax]

Those numbers are disgusting. We used to have our company's lost time due to injury statistic communicated on a fairly routine basis but with all the changes I hadn't seen it in a couple of years so I had to go digging. I found it for international parts of the company including our parent company division (which includes our statistics), but it's reported based on a number per million hours worked rather than employee numbers. So I can't make a direct comparison, nor can I publish what our figure is on the internet... But it seems a lot better than those Amazon figures.

We do have a discrepancy between different parts of the business too which is interesting, but I'd have to go digging into reasons (eg. maybe one division does a lot more painting than another as part of production, which means different hazchem exposure rates).

 

[Daniel E.]

The Corporation (2003 film) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Corporation is a 2003 Canadian documentary film written by University of British Columbia law professor Joel Bakan, and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. The documentary examines the modern-day corporation. Bakan wrote the book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, during the filming of the documentary.

A sequel film, The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel, was released in 2020.

 

[Daniel E.]

United States Camel Corps - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The United States Camel Corps was a mid-19th-century experiment by the United States Army in using camels as pack animals in the Southwestern United States. While the camels proved to be hardy and well suited to travel through the region, the Army declined to adopt them for military use. The Civil War interfered with the experiment and it was eventually abandoned; the animals were sold at auction.

 

[Daniel E.]

'WE ALL QUIT': Local Burger King sign goes viral

The Burger King sign near 59th and Havelock is creating some buzz.

www.klkntv.com

 

[Daniel E.]

Joey Green's Wacky Uses

Clean a toilet with Coca-Cola? Shave with Jif Peanut Butter? Mousse your hair with Jell-O? Polish furniture with Spam? Best-selling author Joey Green shares hundreds of wacky uses for brand-name products.

www.wackyuses.com

Canada Dry was the first major soft drink company to put soft drinks in cans (1953) and introduce sugar-free drinks (1964).

 

[Daniel E.]

Neanderthal extinction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Neanderthal tools:

 

[Daniel E.]

Göbekli Tepe - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Daniel E.]

“Emperor Huang Di, around 2600 BC, one of his ministers, Cang Jie, decided that the footprints left in the dirt by various bird species constituted a small set of easily recognizable shapes—and he used them to create the first Chinese characters.”

― Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention

 

[Daniel E.]

Why don't we remember being babies?

The inability to remember your first few years of life is called infantile amnesia. But why does it happen?

www.livescience.com

Virtually nobody has memories from very early childhood but it's not because we don't retain information as young children. Rather, it may be because at that age, our brains don't yet function in a way that bundles information into the complex neural patterns that we know as memories.

It's clear that young children do remember facts in the moment such as who their parents are, or that one must say "please" before mom will give you candy. This is called "semantic memory."

Until sometime between the ages two and four, however, children lack "episodic memory" -- memory regarding the details of a specific event. Such memories are stored in several parts of the brain's surface, or "cortex."

Episodic memory may be unnecessarily complex at a time when a child is just learning how the world works.

 

[David Baxter PhD]

The way memories are stored in the brain changes in the first few years if life.

Adult memories are stored in long term memory as semantic memory - a system of filing and retrieving based on meaning (tags) that organize memories and link them to other related memories.

Young children store memories sort of like a video, similar to short term memory in adults.

One theory of dreaming in adults is that it represents at least part of the transition to permanent or long term memory. The brain is sifting through recent memories stored in short term memory and trying to find links or tags to related items already in long term. That's why dreams often seem rather bizarre in their content, where you can hop around through time and people can pop in and out of your dreams seemingly for no logical reasons.

 

[Daniel E.]

Animal Consciousness: Some Philosophical, Methodological, and Evolutionary Problems1

Abstract. No consensus exists concerning the mechanisms, distribution, or adaptive significance of consciousness. Agreement on any one of these issues woul

academic.oup.com

Spontaneous utterances during sleep rarely exceed one or two words. More complex sentences or even conversations sometimes occur during the lighter stages of sleep (stage 1 non-REM sleep) at the beginning and end of the sleep cycle (Arkin, 1978), but these are uncommon and not associated with sleepwalking. In short, unconscious humans, like animals and very young children, are as a rule incapable of any verbal behavior beyond what Bickerton (1990) calls protolanguage: short, grammar-free utterances in which signs are used with referential meaning but syntax is absent.

 

[Daniel E.]

Best Horror Movies of 2020, Ranked

2020 horror movies ranked by Tomatometer!

editorial.rottentomatoes.com