It turns out that migrating birds can reach some astounding heights.

Normally, birds tend to fly around somewhere near the level of the engines on Chesley Sullenberger’s Airbus 320. Some birds,  like vultures and other predatory animals can rise to 10,000 feet or so to scan the area for any dehydrated cowboys crawling desperately along the ground next to cattle skulls after the bad guys foolishly left him for dead.

During migration, so birds can reach altitudes of 20,000 feet or more – even higher if large obstacles like mountain ranges are in their flight path. Fortunately, their bids lungs are much better at mammal lungs at pulling oxygen from thinner air, which is unfortunate because the thought of a flock of geese wearing little oxygen masks makes me giggly.

“What the fuck is in all of those cars?”

A simple question that, while shouted DIRECTLY INTO MY EAR, DANIEL,  is one I’ve found myself shouting into my own in ear in my mind. My mind’s ear.

So what does a typical train carry? What the HELL is in all of those cars? When is it going to end? I should have swung around the gates when I could have. Shit.

So here’s the breakdown of what the fuck is taking so long according to the American Association of Railroads:

• 44%   Coal
• 10%   Chemicals & allied products
• 8.6%  Farm Products¹
• 6.6%  Non-Metallic Minerals
• 5.9%  Misc. mixed shipments
• 5.9%  Food & kindred products²
• 3.9%  Metallic Ores
• 2.4%  Metals & products
• 2.3%  Waste & scrap materials
• 2.3%  Petroleum & coke³
• 2.2%  Stone, clay & glass products
• 1.7%  Pulp, paper & allied products
• 1.3%  Lumber & wood products
• 1.2% Motor vehicles & equipmunk
• 1.7% All other commodities†
• A statistically insignificant amount of harmonicas, handkerchief bundles tied to sticks, and hobo bones.

² Food, and food’s extended family.

³ It’s likely that ‘coke’ is simply a Petroleum industry term for ‘cocaine’, not Coca-Cola like YOU were thinking.

† Made ya’ look.

I was never really good at Pig Latin. And by good I mean ‘gave a shit’.

I was surprised that after a ton of googling research, I wasn’t much closer to finding the answer to the origin of Igpay Atinlay. Versions of the annoying game played by annoying little kids, predate shakespeare, and vary from region to region.

There are a few references to ‘pig latin’ in 19th century magazines, but (confusingly) these references are probably to ‘Dog Latin’ which is a bit more cerebral ancestor of Pig Latin.  John Hailman states in his book “Thomas Jefferson on Wine’ that a bachelor Jefferson wrote letters to his friends in pig latin, but it is more likely to be, again, Dog Latin. Later on he would write love letters to his slave baby mommas to keep his correspondance secretive and as “quite a dandy goof”.

Consensus seems to be that the version of Pig Latin we know today, was born sometime in the 20th century. In 1919 Columbia records released an album with Arthur Fields singing “Pig Latin Love”. The Subtitle “I-Yay Ove-Lay oo-yay earie-day” indicates that this is the modern form of Pig Latin we recognize today. I was able to scrounge up a photograph of the 1919 sheet music on eBay. Below the Pig Latin subtitle is the translation, “(I love you dearie)”, suggesting that perhaps this form of Pig Latin hadn’t taken root among the general public yet.

Whatever the true origin, my best guess is that the breeding ground for modern Pig Latin was the American schoolyard, where it remains to this day.

Please, if you have any more information, I’d love to piece this together. I believe this overlooked bit of history could land you and I the Nobel Prize, or at the very least the highly coveted Nobel Participation Ribbon.

Most folks know there are a two of different types of Smoke Detectors available in your local hardware store:

Optical

This type of detector contains a light emitter, most likely an infrared LED, a lens that turns the source into a beam, and a light sensor that sits at an angle across from the beam. During normal conditions, the light in the beam shines in front of the detector (nearly perpendicular). When smoke enters the chamber, light bounces off the smoke particles and into the photo sensor, triggering the alarm.

Optical sensors are good at detecting smoldering fires, which produce a lot of smoke, but apparently do not react as quickly to rapidly building fires – they still provide adequate warning, however.

Ionizing

Second are the Ionizing smoke detectors. These contain a small amount of a Americium-241, a radioactive isotope found in nuclear waste with a half-life of 432 years. As the ²⁴¹Am decays, “The radiation passes through an ionization chamber, an air-filled space between two electrodes, and permits a small, constant current between the electrodes. Any smoke that enters the chamber absorbs the alpha particles, which reduces the ionization and interrupts this current, setting off the alarm.”

It should be noted that 99% of the radiation emitted is Alpha radiation which due to it’s low penetrative power, is stopped by the plastic housing of the detector.

Ionizing smoke detectors can detect smaller particles than the Photo-detection types, but also are more prone to false alarms (leading people to turn them off)

Dual Function

For what it’s worth, you’re best bet is to get a detector that uses both type of technology to tell you that you burned dinner.

If you say “Who framed Roger Rabbit”, then you are definitely a part of my generation. And a fart-knocker. PSYCH!

This one is a little hard to pin down, as the history of idioms and life’s little pop-culture-what-nots tend to be.

So I’m going to suss this out for all of us. You’re probably thinking “who would waste their time on this?”, to which I would say: “don’t you have some spreadsheets to do before you leave today?”

1. The tune (minus words) was first used in an 1899 Charles Hale song called  ”At a Darktown Cakewalk. I found a version of that song playing on a 17″ Stella Console Grand Music Box (video below) –  so that means at around 1900s this song would be permeating public places in and homes in America through dinking twinky little sounds.

2. Further in 1914 ‘words in rhythm’ showed up in a jaunty little diddy in In 1914, Jimmy Monaco’s “Bum Diddle-De-Um Bum That’s It!” Fuck people were starved for entertainment, but this is getting us to the level of exposure needed to really stay with the general public.

3. Which leads me to 1928 and Steamboat Willy: that famous, ‘first mickey mouse (even though it was the third) cartoon’ we’ve all seen that featured him whistlin’ up a storm up in that tiny wheel house, just turning the shit out of that wheel. That is until a what-may-be-a-racist-looking-character-or-not-its-kinda-hard-to-tell-in-these-old-timey-cartoons, forces Steamboat Willy to work below deck with a bird that gives him lip. He job is to hoist a cow-that’s-too-skinny-for-the-harnesses-they-have-brought-for-him from the dock to the boat with the crane. Hijinx ensue, but this situation is ultimately resolved with a girth-adjusting bale of hay. At some point a goat ingests the sheet music for Turkey in the Straw, along with some sort of stringed instrument, turning himself into a music box. Steamboat, never hatin’on a chance to bust open his skilz, begins an epic musical interlude, switching from playing from drums to a cat, then to a duck, then to set of piglets nursing at a large sow. Never a man to stifle his creative freedom, Steamboat picks the sow up, flips her over so the piglets fall off, and kicks the little bastard who would like to continue to nurse, sending a shower of weird black stars everywhere. He then flips the sow over on her back, and through a combination of squeezing her  like an accordion and pressing her 6 highly engorged teets in different patterns, coaxes a nice toned snort from the terrified animal. Steamboat Willy is a musical bad ass, whose versatility as a multi-instrumentalist is unmatched. He finishes up with drum solo inside of a cow’s mouth. It is HERE, at the end of the song that Steamboat pauses then comically knocks out the notes on the cow’s teeth and tongue the Shave and a Haircut melody and rhythm. This would be of first of many occurrences in countless cartoons, turning the bit into a (in)famous comedy trope. That was 1928.

Now I know you’re thinking, “WTF? There was more to that cartoon than just that scene of him  whistlin’ up a storm up in that tiny wheel house just turning the shit out of that wheel?”. Yes and it’s in the rest of that  7m : 45s movie – of which you know 8 seconds – that we see a perfect example of the knock that would have been seen by the general public in move houses across the nation.

4.In 1939, Dan Shapiro, Lestor Lee and Milton Berle released “Shave and a Haircut – Shampoo” which featured the melody. This is probably where the ‘lyrics’ had come from nearly 40 years after the tune melody itself.

5. Shortly after, the Three Stooges begin to use it heavily as a knock, and might have originated the ‘two bits’ portion.  At that point it would start to show up everywhere.

From here there are stories of pow’s using it in WWII and after to identify each other in prisoner camps as it was solely an American pop culture reference that an impostor couldn’t complete.

Then that weird guy who got steamrollered tried to kill Roger Rabbit with it. Full fuckin’ circle.

I love this video. Take note, if you’re going to explain something that’s complex, start at the most simple version you can and work your way up. Your audience will love you for it AND and think you’re fucking brilliant. Use of Tinker Toys is always a plus.

Let’s define our terms: a satellite can mean anything in orbit around another celestial body. There are natural ones (like the moon) and artificial ones like communication satellites, the International Space Station, stuff leftover from launches, and probably a couple of Russian Cosmonauts from the 50s and 60s.

Of all of the shit orbiting the earth:

• 500 of the total objects are working satellites.
• 19,000 objects are greater than the size of a basketball.
• Roughly 5,000 objects are between 1 and 10 cm.
• A number exceeding tens of millions are less than a cm.
• 1 is the Sun, if you’re one of those people.

Since the 1930s eggs have been the primary vehicle to produce vaccines – Viruses are injected into a fertile eggs and allowed to turn that incredible edible ovam into a swinging orgy of pure evil for 3 days. Viruses don’t actually have sex in the traditional sense, opting instead to inject their DNA into a host cell which, come to think of it, sounds a lot like sex. After viruses definitely have sex, they they are extracted,  killed, and eaten with toast points.

While the number varies based on demand, around 600 million eggs are used each year in vaccine production. It takes one to two eggs to produce a single dose of  flu vaccine.

Since the start of the blog a few weeks ago, I have received a number of questions from readers. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Some were great and some should have been submitted to google rather than to my contact form.

Then came Sam B. – Sam sent a question that is just begging to be answered. So here it is, in the first installment of ‘You guys answer each other’s questions because I have shit to do’. I won’t be able to illustrate these, opting instead to  scribble something horrible on whatever piece of paper is within reach at the time.

Sam has just turned forty – “not that we care” –  and I’m sure is having a midlife crisis. This has lead him to question life, his purpose on earth, his knees that never creaked before but now sound like someone digging through a bag of Doritos every time he stands up,  and this gem:

Hi -

I just turned forty – not that you care – but it made me think: how far have I traveled since I was born? I can figure out how far the Earth has moved around the sun, but that’s basically going around in a circle. What I want to know is how far has our galaxy traveled through space? Essentially, If I were to make a grid and mark where the Earth was in the Universe on the day I was born, and where it is now, how much distance would that be?

So yeah, weird things happen to your brain when you turn 40.

Thanks for any help,

SB

How is that for a question? I fucking love this guy! I know for a fact that some incredibly smart people read this blog. This should be calculable, and I can’t wait to see it. Let’s help Sam not feel so bad for never backpacking through Europe like he always wanted to.

I’ll preface by saying I’ve already thought of every easy beaver joke (oh… except that one), so don’t even think about it.

The common misconception is that beavers actually live in the dams they create. They do not. They live in lodges built in the middle or edges of the deep ponds their dams create. Beavers access these lodges underneath the water – the deeper the water, the better the protection and isolation for predators. Damming a smallish stream simply creates a nice deep pool in which to build your beaver fortress.

Some other interesting Beaver Facts:

• “With the exception of man, beavers manipulate [and affect] their environment more than any other species.”
• Beavers were the first to harness hydro-power by utilizing pine-cone turbines
• If you were a female beaver, you’d know very well the phallic symbolism of a beaver dam. That’s where we get the common phrase, ‘Hung like a beaver’
• Beavers wearing little hard hats is ADORABLE.

For those with Netflix, there’s a sweet little documentary on Instant called ‘Beavers: Imax’. It’s only 30 mins or so in length.