Posts filed under ‘Demystified’
Military Tanks are Named after Water Tanks
By Chad Upton | Editor
Characterized by its large size, rugged capabilities and literally bulletproof exterior, the military tank is the reference standard for anything that embodies similar qualities.
That’s why it’s so interesting that the military tank is actually named after the water tank.
There’s no technical relationship between the two, the name actually stems from the top secret project that spawned the tank.
Whenever something needs to be kept secret, whether in the military or even consumer culture, code names are often assigned so subjects can be referenced without spilling any important information.
According to Churchill’s authoritative biography, the project was code named “water tank for Russia.”
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Sources: Wikipedia
Photo: Jason Trommetter (cc)
March Madness Teams are Paid for Performance
By Kaye Nemec
For the most part NCAA tournaments are money making events – for the NCAA. But the Division 1 Men’s Basketball Tournament is actually the only NCAA tournament that gives all of its revenue back to the schools that participate. Although millions of dollars in revenue from the BCS Football Championship are given back to the schools and conferences involved, it is important to note that the BCS Football championship is not an NCAA event. In fact, it is the only NCAA sport that does not have an annual NCAA sanctioned championship event.
Back to basketball. The T.V. contract for March Madness brings in billions of dollars and that money is divided up among the participating schools as follows:
1/6 of the money is given to the schools based on how many different sports they play.
- A division 1 school must play 14 sports in order to qualify for Div.1 status.
- They are given one share of money for each sport starting with 14.
1/3 of the money is given based on how many scholarships each school awards.
- 1 share for each of the first 50 scholarships.
- 2 shares for each of the next 50.
- 10 for each of the next 50.
- 20 for all scholarships after the first 150.
½ of the total money is divided among each of the participating conferences based on how well they each did in the previous six tournaments.
- 1 share for each team getting into the tournament.
- 1 share for each win outside of the Final Four.
In the past five tournaments, $409 million dollars were awarded to participating teams and conferences. The U.S. Secretary of Education and the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics is proposing a change in profit division to better reward academic accomplishment. Of the $409 million, 44 percent of that money was awarded to schools that are on track to graduate less than 50 percent of their players.
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Sources: Wikipedia, Knight Commission of Intercollegiate Athletics
Photo: Kevin H.
Blue Eyes Are Not Actually Blue
By Chad Upton | Editor
The most common eye color is brown and the least common is green. Eye color is determined by a number of genes, the actual number of which is unknown. Using six known genes, scientists can predict eye color from brown to blue with 90% accuracy.
The darkness of brown eyes is determined by the amount of melanin (pigment) in them. Blue eyes have little or no melanin, making them translucent; they only appear blue because of an optical illusion known as the Tyndall effect.
The color we perceive something to be is usually due to their pigment, but somethings appear colored for other reasons. Structural colors are one classification of colors that occur not because of their pigment but because of the way light interacts with the matter.
Without getting too technical, different colors of light have different wavelengths. When those waves pass through matter, they can be filtered or scattered in different ways. The Tyndall effect occurs when a light scattering particulate is suspended in a light transmitting medium and the size of the individual particulate is slightly below or near that of the visible spectrum of light.
Some things that appear to be colored due to optical effects are: blue jay and peacock feathers, mother of pearl, butterfly wings, beetle shells, bubbles, oil slicks and one we see every day: the sky.
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Photo: Jennifer Durfey (cc)
Sources: Wikipedia (Eye Color, Tyndall Effect, Color)
Brain Freeze is Triggered in the Sinuses
By Chad Upton | Editor
When I was a kid, the local 7-11 had 20 Slurpee flavors. Every Saturday, my brother Brett and I would bike there with a palm full of allowance and return with a belly full of food coloring. We didn’t know how lucky we were — I’ve never seen another convenience store with that many flavors. But, there was one thing we did know: BRAIN FREEZE.
While it’s frequently called brain freeze or ice-cream headache, this mind numbing pain is known as sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia in the medical community. Don’t even try to sound-it-out, even the British Medical Journal calls it ice-cream headache.
It happens to some people more easily than others and although your childhood imagination may disagree, your brain is not actually being frozen. The pain stems from a defense mechanism that is employed all over your body.
When it’s cold outside, your arms and legs usually cool down faster than your core because they generally have less insulation (fat) than your core. Because blood flows into your extremities and then back to your heart, the blood coming back will cool down your core. Your body protects itself from rapid cooling by constricting the veins in your extremeties, which reduces flow and slows the return of colder blood into your core.
This is a temporary reaction. After some time, the blood-vessels will expand to allow greater flow so these parts get proper blood flow again. This affect can be quite noticeable in the right conditions. If you’re outside for a while, you may find that your fingers are cold at first, but feel warm later. This is part of the reason they warm up. Also, redness in your cheeks is caused when the blood-vessels expand like this.
As you consume extremely cold food and beverages, the capillaries in your sinuses can rapidly constrict when cooled and expand when warmed. Pain receptors react to this by sending signals to your brain via the trigeminal nerve, the same nerve responsible for sensations in the face. This is why it can feel like the pain is coming from your forehead.
To get rid of a slushie stinger, some doctors suggest holding your tongue on the roof of your mouth to warm it up. Another tip, which you probably learned at a young age, eat slowly!
There is also a belief that you can only get brain freeze in warm environments, but that’s not true.
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Photo: Tom Magliery (cc)
Sources: Wikipedia, British Medical Journal, io9, about.com
Real Names of Celebrities
By Kaye Nemec
It appears as though no one is really who we think they are…
- Lady Gaga – Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta
- Pink – Alecia Beth Moore
- Tiger Woods – Eldrick Woods
- Alicia Keys – Alicia Augello Cook
- Jamie Foxx – Eric Bishop
- Portia Di Rossi – Amanda Rogers
- Hulk Hogan – Terry Gene Bollea
- Fergie – Stacey Ann Ferguson
- Jay-Z – Shawn Carter
- Elton John – Reginald Kenneth Dwight
- Meat Loaf – Marvin Lee Aday
- Larry King – Lawrence Ziegler
- Chuck Norris – Carlos Ray Norris
- Mr. T – Lawrence Tero
- LL Cool J (“Ladies Love Cool James”) – James Todd Smith III
- Stevie Wonder – Steveland Hardaway Judkins
- Jon Stewart – Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz
- Muhammad Ali – Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.
- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – Ferdinand Lewis “Lew” Alcindor, Jr
- Woody Allen – Allen Stewart Konigsberg
- Jennifer Aniston – Jennifer Linn Anastassakis
- Tony Bennett – Anthony Dominick Benedetto
- Judy Blume – Judy Sussman
- Lil Bow Wow – Shad Gregory Moss
- Garth Brooks – Troyal Garth Brooks
- Julia Child – Julia Carolyn McWilliams
- Eminem – Marshall Bruce Mathers III
- Whoopi Goldberg – Caryn Elaine Johnson
- Pee Wee Herman – Paul Reubenfeld
- Liberace – Wladziu Lee Valentino
- Ralph Lauren – Ralph Lipschitz
- Katy Perry – Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson
- Charlie Sheen – Carlos Irwin Estevez
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Sources: NBC Los Angeles , IMDb.com, MSN, Babynames.com
Secrets of the Red Carpet
By Chad Upton | Editor
The most famous red carpet was rolled out last night for the 83rd Annual Academy Awards. I find the red carpet fascinating, but it has nothing to do with what people are wearing.
While it looks like a random flow of people entering an award ceremony, it’s actually a well choreographed vehicle for publicity — publicity for the event itself and for the people and projects they are involved in.
I walked the red carpet at last year’s Webby Awards, where all of you helped me win a Webby for Broken Secrets. One thing that surprised me was the timing of the red carpet. While it looks like a casual flow of people entering the gala, it’s actually a regulated flow of people selected to pass by the cameras.
Not everyone who attends the event walks the red carpet. Usually, just the guest representing a project will walk the red carpet. Each guest walks at a scheduled time. These times are staggered to maintain an even flow of attendees moving along the press line.
In some cases, the event’s press liaison may provide the press with a list of red carpet attendees so they can decide who they want to interview and produce stories about. If you see someone with an attendee on the red carpet, it is likely their spouse or publicist. A publicist usually walks ahead of their client and decides which media outlets will do the next interviews with the person they represent.
Guests who do not walk the red carpet, escape the press circus by entering through another entrance.
The earliest known reference to “walking a red carpet” is from a play called Agamemnon (458 BC) by Aeschylus. When the hero returns from Troy, his chariot stops at a crimson path for him to walk on. So, like a god, his feet will never touch the earth again.
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Photo: Ian Muttoo (cc)
More Spent on Flowers at Christmas Than Valentine’s
By Chad Upton | Editor
According to aboutflowers.com, Valentine’s Day is tied for second place with Mother’s Day in most dollars spent on flowers. Surprisingly, Christmas and Hanukkah are tied for first.
It actually makes sense when you look at the breakdown of who is buying them and why.
For Christmas and Hanukkah, the majority of flowers are purchased for people’s own use (ie. decorating). For Valentine’s Day, only 9% are purchased for themselves and it’s not surprising that people spend more on themselves than other people.
If we just consider the people who buy Valentine’s Day flowers, these are some interesting stats:
- 23% of women purchase them for themselves
- 57% of men, purchase them for their spouse
- 25% of men, purchase them for their significant other
While I sometimes question the accuracy of these surveys, I was pretty confident in this data when I read this statistic: 0% of men purchase flowers for themselves for Valentine’s Day.
If you’re interested in the (brief) origin of Valentine’s Day, click here.
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Photo: Joel Bennett
Sources: About Flowers
The Banana Plant is an Herb
By Kaye Nemec
We’ve learned about the importance of fruits and veggies on the food pyramid since grade school. We’ve learned that carrots, peas and broccoli are vegetables and apples, pears and strawberries are fruits.
But most of us probably haven’t learned that the banana plant is an herb or that tomatoes, avocadoes, string beans, squash, eggplant, green pepper, okra, green beans, cucumbers and corn kernels are fruits.
Merriam-Webster defines an herb as “a seed-producing annual, biennial, or perennial that does not develop persistent woody tissue but dies down at the end of a growing season.”
Banana plants do not have the typical wood trunk that supports a tree. Its leaves twist and turn around each other to form a stem that can be 12 inches thick and can grow up to 40 feet tall. At the end of each harvest the plants die completely and grow again the next season. The bananas produced by the plant are the fruit of the herb.
A fruit is defined in the botanical world as the part of the plant that bears the seed – therefore putting tomatoes, cucumbers, avocados, green peppers and more in the fruit category.
In the legal world, however, vegetables as we know them remain as is – all fruit classifications thrown aside. In the 19th century the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that fruits and vegetables were to be classified according to how they are commonly consumed.
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Photo: Spacemonster
Sources: Merriam-Webster, OChef, Live Science, MyPyramid.gov
More US Money is Printed Than MONOPOLY Money
By Chad Upton | Editor
I was reading a recent story on cnbc.com and one “fact” seemed particularly unbelievable. It stated that each year, Parker Brothers prints more MONOPOLY money than the US government prints real currency. They even went so far as to say, “You can bet your little, old shoe that money fact is true!”
CNBC, I will take your bet.
In my attempt to track down the truth, I found that this myth is very wide spread. It’s not just CNBC, dozens of other sites make the same claim. I’m not sure where all of these sites got their info, but I like to go to the source.
The US bureau of Engraving and Printing is responsible for printing paper currency in the US. Their website has a page that details exactly how much currency has been printed each year since 1980. It’s very detailed and includes 4 years when $2 bills were printed, totaling about 500 million $2 bills printed since 1980.
Another interesting fact appears at the bottom of that page: 26 million currency notes are printed each day, with a face value of approximately $974 million. In fact, CNBC has this fact on their page too. Although, they quote it as per year rather than per day. I will give them a bit of credit here, the sentence is confusing and could be interpreted as “per year”, but a quick scan of the page can easily correct that interpretation. For example, more than 974 million $1 bills were printed in 2010. Even more $100 bills were printed. So, it can’t be a per year number.
In 2009, the US government printed a total of $2.1 trillion and in 2010 it was just over $2.0 trillion. That’s a lot of money and 95% of it replaces old money that is worn out.
Next, I tracked down how much money Parker Brothers, a subsidiary of Hasbro, has printed. They started making MONOPOLY in 1935. Until 1998, $15,140 worth of MONOPOLY money was included in each game; current editions include $20,580.
Hasbro states that 250 million copies of MONOPOLY have been sold since 1935 (in 103 Countries and 37 languages). They’ve sold an average of 3.3 million copies per year. If we use the current edition, that would mean they print $67.7 billion during an average year.
At $2 trillion per year, the US government prints much more money than Parker Brothers. In fact, a few years of US currency printing exceeds all 76 years of Parker Brothers printing.
On the other hand, the US mint produces 14-20 billion coins per year. They don’t give a breakdown of the denominations, so it’s impossible to calculate the exact dollar value. Perhaps this myth started as a comparison to the number of coins the US Mint makes each year.
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Sources: Hasbro.com (faq, corporate info), US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, US Mint, CNBC, Wikipedia (Monopoly)
The Calendar is Named After The Pope
By Chad Upton | Editor
Many different calendar systems exist, but the calendar used by most modern cultures is known as the Gregorian Calendar.
It may also be called the Western Calendar, Civil Calendar or the Christian Calendar. The names Gregorian and Christian Calendar are popular because it was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII.
He introduced it in 1582 and it was quickly adopted by a handful of countries. Most others jumped on the wagon over the following centuries. It was very similar to the Julian calendar, although it more accurately represented the lunar cycle and made the dates of Easter easier to calculate. This is the main reason it was preferred by Christians. The calendar is Christian centric in other ways too, after all, the years we count are relative to the traditional Incarnation of Jesus.
Interestingly, there are exactly 14 possible calendar configurations. That makes it easy to figure out if your birthday is on the weekend this year.
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Sources: Wikipedia
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