Author Archive
Some People Believe Running an Electric Fan in a Closed Room Can Kill You
By Chad Upton | Editor
In South Korea, it is a commonly held belief that an electric fan can cause death if it is blowing on you overnight in a closed room.
To prevent “fan death”, the Korean government’s Consumer Protection Board urges everyone to leave a door or window open and use the oscillate function or a timer that automatically shuts the fan off. They also list fan death as one of the top five fatal summer accidents.
The exact origin of this phenomenon is not known for sure, although it allegedly emerged in the 1970s. Some people believe the Korean government may have created this ideology in an effort to save energy during the energy crisis. Oh, and fan death is not limited to just fans, it also includes air conditioners.
South Korean media outlets credit fans and air conditioners for deaths too. In fact, between 2003 and 2005, some 20 deaths were reported to Korea’s Consumer Injury Surveillance System.
Many experts in South Korea firmly believe in fan death, including respected doctors and scientists. South Koreans don’t always agree on why fans can cause death but the following theories are often cited. (more…)
Goodbye means “God Be With Ye”
By Chad Upton | Editor
Many words we use today are twisted versions of words used long ago. In fact, we can often watch words get twisted in our own lifetime. Technology is having a huge impact on the way we use language and will shape words we know into words that we don’t recognize. Thanks to technology, this transformation will be visible for future generations to study.
Thanks to the written word, we can study the evolution of the words we know as normal. Goodbye is a very common word, but it’s actually a contraction — it was a whole sentence 500 years ago. The first written usage of goodbye is from a 1573 letter written Gabriel Harvey. “To requite your [gallon] of godbwyes, I regive you a pottle of howdyes.”
Today, saying “bye” has the same basic meaning as “goodbye” since we’ve completely lost the original meaning of the phrase. Really, we’re just saying “be with ye” which doesn’t really make any sense. Etymologists believe a similar situation lead to “good” replacing “god” in that phrase too, people lost the sense of where the phrase came from and what its original meaning was so there was nothing to shape the way it was said.
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photo: knegtel (cc)
sources: TheFreeDictionary.com, Dictionary.com, Etymonline.com
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Sleeping Your Best is All About Timing
By Chad Upton | Editor
Sleep can make you more happy, alert, motivated, and productive. If you’re healthy, it’s fairly straightforward to get these benefits from sleep if you know a little bit about your sleep cycles.
First, imagine if washing machines didn’t have timers and you had to guess when they finished their last cycle. If you stopped it too soon, your clothes would still be soapy; if you stopped it too late then it would start all over again. That would be a disaster; nobody would put up with that. Yet, that’s exactly what most people do with their sleep cycles.
You sleep in cycles. Each cycle usually lasts 90 – 110 minutes. It’s called a cycle because your brain and body go through a number of different stages and then it starts all over again. The stages can be divided in different ways, but two of the most common divisions are REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM.
The non-REM “deep sleep” phase is longer during the cycles earlier in the night and tend to get shorter during the later cycles. The REM phase is the opposite. Vivid dreams generally occur during REM sleep, so you tend to dream more as you get closer to your wakeup time.
Most of us get up at about the same time every day. Sometimes, you feel well rested; other times you feel like you barely slept at all. This wide variance can be caused by waking up in the middle of your sleep cycle rather than close to the end. (more…)
Where the Phrase “Jumped the Shark” Comes From
By Chad Upton | Editor
Someone who has always been a good friend to me is my buddy Rick. He is always good for new ideas and he happens to be a TV fanatic.
Two seasons after LOST started, Rick knew I’d love the show. He ran down the plot summary from the first two seasons over lunch and I was hooked before I even saw the show. Another time, he was telling me about a show he liked but was unhappy because it had “jumped the shark.” I wasn’t familiar with the phrase so he explained it to me.
In 1977, during the the fifth season of the TV series Happy Days, the character Fonzie was water skiing and literally jumped over a shark. You can see it in this clip:
The show had been extremely popular, but this stunt was a pivotal point which marked a steady downturn in the quality of the show. It was a grave departure from the stories in previous seasons and seemed to indicate that the writers had run out of ideas.
These days, the phrase is generally used to indicate that something is past its prime or has reached a point that is the beginning of an end.
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Photo: Bill Ward (cc)
Sources: Rick … and wikipedia (Jumping the Shark)
Shirt Tags are Moving to the Bottom Left Seam
By Chad Upton | Editor
Most shirts used to have an irritating tag inside the back of the neckline. Some tags were particularly jagged and became increasingly torturous throughout the day.
The tags are useful because they displayed the shirt size, fabric type and care instructions. But, the shirt size is the only one that really needs to be there since it’s a convenient place to look when you’re browsing the rack for your size.
Thankfully, many shirt makers have started screen printing the size on the inside of the neckline. In those cases, the protruding tags are often moved to a more comfortable position — on the inside of the left seam near the bottom of the shirt. Not all garments have a side seam of course, but you will frequently find the tag there when they do.
I bring this to your attention not for superfluous trivia, but rather for a “landmark” you can find when you’re getting dressed in the dark. You may not want to turn the light on when your roommate or spouse is still sleeping, but you still want your clothes on correctly.
So far, this has held true for men and womens shirts, sweaters etc. Although I haven’t found any yet, there will likely be exceptions.
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It’s Normal For Half Your Nose to Always Feel Blocked
By Chad Upton | Editor
You probably don’t think about it much, but if you did, you’d notice that it often feels like one nostril or the other is always plugged. That’s completely normal for about 70% of adults.
Assuming you’re healthy, your “plugged” nostril actually allows a tiny amount of air through and your other nostril handles the rest. After an average of 2.5 hours, the cycle will shift and use the alternate nostril as the primary source of air. The following scan shows one nasal passage mostly blocked and the other mostly open.
For a long time, Eastern medicine has had theories about the purpose of this cycle and a number of exercises that involve moving air through a specific nostril. On the other hand, Western scientists didn’t come up with a physiological purpose for this phenomena until more recently.
Research indicates that the high/low flow approach in the two nostrils optimizes your sense of smell. As you’ve probably discovered first hand, or shall we say finger, the inside of your nose is lined with mucus. This mucus continues deep inside your nasal passage and is very important; it acts as a barrier and helps protect your brain from infection. But, it also means that something you smell has to be absorbed by the mucus before you can smell it. (more…)
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The HOLLYWOOD Sign Originally Said HOLLYWOODLAND
By Chad Upton | Editor
The HOLLYWOOD sign in Los Angeles, California needs little introduction.
Although it is often associated with movies and television it was originally erected in 1923 as an advertisement for a new housing development named Hollywoodland. It originally cost $21,000 to build the 50-foot high letters on Mount Lee, including the four thousand 20 watt bulbs that illuminated them.
The letters quickly became a symbol of the movie industry. Ironically, actress Peg Entwistle became famous when she climbed a workman’s ladder to the top of the “H” and allegedly jumped to her death in 1932. She was apparently unhappy about her failure as an actress. It’s true, she was not well known — it took two days for police to identify who she was, and only then because her uncle contacted them to see if it could be her.
In 1944, the housing developers transferred ownership of some land, including the Hollywoodland sign, to the City of Los Angeles. By 1949, the sign was in grave disrepair. As the city was demolishing it, public outcry turned the demolition into a refurbishing project, during which time it was shortened to HOLLYWOOD. The letters were shortened too, now standing 45 feet tall, instead of the original 50. More residents could identify with HOLLYWOOD since that was the name of the city from 1903 to 1910 and remains the name of the district today.
The 1949 sign was built from sheet metal and wood, which fared well considering its materials, but was falling apart by 1978. At this time, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce began a campaign to replace the sign with a more permanent version. Nine generous donors including, Hugh Hefner; Warner Brothers Records and Alice Cooper, each paid $27,700 to reconstruct a letter. In 2009, Hugh Hefner saved the sign again when he donated $1 million to The Trust for Public Land, an organization formed to protect the area from further real estate development.
Decades of temporary alterations to the sign began in 1976, some authorized and some not. A few of the more famous modifications include: HOLLYWEED, HOLYWOOD, GO NAVY, CALTECH, OLLYWOOD, OIL WAR, PEROTWOOD, GO UCLA, SAVE THE PEAK, JOLLYGOOD. To prevent further unauthorized modifications, the LAPD installed a motion detector alarm system in 2000.
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Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid (cc)
Sources: Wikipedia (Hollywood Sign, Peg Entwistle), Film Bug, Beachwood Canyon
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China Has Travelling Execution Units
By Chad Upton | Editor
Although it looks like a rockstar tour bus, this is one of at least 40 mobile execution vehicles that China uses for capital punishment. Just like a blood bank bus or MRI trailer brings a scarce resource to a remote community, death vans tour the Chinese countryside executing criminals.
Whether you agree with capital punishment or not, China is good at it. They should be, they do it more than all other countries combined. The question is: do they do it ethically?
China doesn’t disclose how many executions it performs each year, but Amnesty International estimates at least 1718 were conducted in 2008. Another group believes the number could be as high as 4,000 per year now and 8,000 when it was at its peak. (more…)
The Dropped Call Rules
By Chad Upton | Editor
No matter which mobile phone carrier you use, you’ll eventually drop a call with somebody. Even if you don’t have a cellphone, you still have to deal with dropped calls when you’re talking with people who do.
Sometimes you both try to call each other at the same time and get each other’s voicemail. Other times, you try to call the other person and they’re still talking away, oblivious to the fact that the call was dropped.
Rule #1: Whoever initiated the call, initiates the call back after a dropped call.
To some, this rule is obvious. But, it needs to be stated to remove any confusion and prevent the double voicemail dilemma.
Rule #2: Whoever was listening when the call was dropped, remembers the last sentence the other person said.
This is less obvious, but since the listener is the only one who knows exactly when the call was dropped; they need to remember the last sentence or at least the topic — this may be the same person who needs to call the other person back.
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Photo: addicted eyes (cc)
A Third Type of Cell In Your Retina Regulates Circadian Rhythm
By Chad Upton | Editor
You probably learned about rods and cones in high school biology class. These retinal cells allow our brains to process light so we can see. But, there is a third type of cell that most people don’t know about: photosensitive ganglion cells.
They don’t have a cool name like Rods and Cones, but what they lack in name they make up for in swagger. Much like rods and cones, they send light information to the brain. Instead of using this information to “see”, the brain uses it to synchronize your body’s circadian rhythm to the 24-hour light/dark cycle of this planet. These “lion” cells are the original atomic clock.
They’re also used to control the pupillary light reflex. When you doctor, or local police officer, shines a bright light in your eyes, these cells are used to close your irises to limit the bright light hitting your retinas. Additionally, they help regulate melatonin — the hormone that controls several biological functions, including sleep.
Most research indicates that the ganglion cells are sensitive to light in the spectrum between 460 and 484 nm, or “blue” light which is prevalent in the visible spectrum of sunlight. Basically, this is why you get sleepy when it gets dark and why you start to “wake up” when it gets light outside.
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Photo: bigbluemeanie (cc)
Sources: nature.com, wikipedia (pupillary light reflex, photoreceptor cell, photosensitive ganglion cells, melatonin)
