Canadian Mountain Dew

I have a new Canadian coworker and I have been learning a ton about our neighbor to the north (unless you're reading this from Detroit, where Canada is your neighbor due south).

Apparently Canada used to have a law banning the sale of caffeinated clear sodas. Actually, the Canadian government didn't allow the sale of artificially-added caffeine in any foods. Therefore, only the naturally occurring caffeine in coffee, chocolate, tea, and dark-colored cola-drinks (since the kola plant has caffeine) was legal.

Many clear sodas in the United States don't have caffeine anyway - Sprite, 7-Up, Ginger Ale - so that may not seem that odd. Then you remember the most caffeinated soda is... Mountain Dew, right? Yep, Canadian Mountain Dew = caffeine-free. (!!!)

In 2002, Pepsi Co did come up with a caffeinated version, called "Dew Fuel", just for sale in Canada, but it wasn't sold as soft drink, it was marketed as "health drink". It went out of production in 2007.

Nice try.

Luckily for Canadians, the law changed in 2012, and now natural caffeine can be added to soft drinks, thus restoring Mountain Dew to its intended glory.

So if you were driving through Canada any time before 2012 and grabbed a Mountain Dew through a drive-thru or at a store, you probably didn't know that you weren't getting the caffeine you desired. Maybe all the sugar made up for it?

To read current Canadian guidelines on caffeine: click here!

What Does English Sound Like To A Non-English Speaker?

Do you ever wonder how (American) English sounds to a non-native? Does it sound romantic? Harsh? Awkward? Does it have a natural flow?

As a person who understands the language, it's hard to separate the language sounds from the meaning of the words being said. So the second you try to just hear to the sounds, it's easy to get distracted and start listening.

Maybe these videos will help shed some light on this mystery?

In 1972, an Italian singer, Adriano Celentano, wrote a song full of gibberish (in any language), but has enough American-sounding syllables to pass as an "English" song. It's called "Prisencolinensinainciusol":

I've only listened to it once and it's already in my head.

Similarly, a pair of London filmmakers, brian & karl, made a short film called "Skwerl" in 2011, where a couple has some pretty convincing English conversations... all while not really saying anything:

And then there is this, where a Finnish woman imitates all sorts of accents (via huffingtonpost):

(American English at 1:12)

Feeling like your ears can relate more to our international friends'? Eh illy cope to dew!

Test AA Batteries Without Equipment!

This is great - I tried it and it worked!

You can watch the video for more details, but here are the basics of the method:

1. Take the battery and hold it about an inch over a hard surface with the negative (-) end down.

2. Drop it.

3. If it bounces, it's bad. If it lands on edge or falls flat, it's good.

How Do You Pronounce "Worcestershire Sauce"?

Just as I thought: you definitely have to ignore a couple of letters to pronounce this correctly. :)

She does a better pronouncing it, but for those on a time crunch, it's approximately:

"wus-ste-shure"

Get Rid Of Sticky Labels!

My friend told me recently that anytime she needs to peel up something sticky (in that case, she was removing a peel-and-stick tile floor), she blasts it with a hairdryer first.

Today, I tried it with some product labels that have been stuck to my garbage cans for months and it worked! Easy peasy. Chemical- and liquid-free!

Works on stickers, too (in case someone in your household likes putting them everywhere...). :)

This was confirmed by apartmenttherapy.com. For their article: click here!

What Does A Dog's Tail Wag Mean?

As more scientists study dog behavior, the more they find that a wagging tail means more to a dog than "I'm happy". The dog's tail can provide a lot of insight into the dog's emotional state, both positive and negative.

Dogs in general are more sensitive to movement than they are to colors or shapes, so they communicate with each other mainly with body movement. Many dogs have distinct tails - whether bushy, white-tipped, or very long - and this may be for the purpose of having their tails more visible to other dogs. Research shows most dogs don't wag their tails when alone because there's no need.

Of course, there are different dog "dialects" based on tail shape, natural tail height, and breed, but here are some general tail meanings:

*

What Does The Tail's Position Mean?

Straight & Horizontal: Attentive & Alert
Angled Upwards: Dominant & Threatening
Middle: Relaxed
Lowered: Submissive, Worried, or Sick
Tucked Under Body: Scared

*

What Does The Wagging Type Mean?

Speed: The faster the tail wags, the more excited the dog is
Width of Wag/Sweep: The wider the wag, the more positive the dog is

Wag With A Right*-Bias: Relaxed
Wag With A Left*-Bias: Anxious
*Right & Left from the dog's perspective

Narrow, Slow Wag: Tentative, Curious
Broad Wag: Friendly, Pleased
Medium-Height, Slow Wag: Insecure
Quick "Vibrating" Wag: Ready To Act/Attack/Run
Circular Wag: Extremely Excited

Of course, there are many more combinations, but hopefully this has shed some light on your dog's behavior. If you see a dog moving its tail and are still unsure of whether s/he is excited by you or threatened by you, look for other body clues, such as a tense torso or relaxed ears to get a clue into what the dog may be feeling.

[Sources: Psychology Today, QuickandDirtyTips.com, Animal Planet]

How Pinball Became Legal Again

Did you know that pinball was illegal in major US cities from 1942 until 1976?

Early pinball machines didn't have flippers, so the player would bump and shake the machine itself to try to affect the ball's fall.  If the ball went into the right slot, the player could win free games, which some bars would redeem for cash. The game was, by and large, a game of chance and could have a cash prize, so it was considered "gambling". In the early 1940s, the United States was cracking down on gambling machines of all sorts. And lawmakers started to believe that pinball was mafia-run scam.

New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia wrote in a Supreme Court affidavit that the machines robbed the "pockets of schoolchildren in the form of nickels and dimes given them as lunch money". And then he outlawed the game in NYC. Police and politicians raided bars and bowling alleys smashing machines, arresting their owners, and throwing the machine's remains in the river, as public display of "morality". Many other cities followed with their own bans.

Through this time, the major pinball manufacturers continued to make games, since they were still legal for home use. During this time, the pinball companies improved the game, inventing flippers and incorporating multiple electronics into the playfield.

Then comes the best part of the story!

The Amusement & Music Operators Association lobbied to get a meeting with the City Council in a Manhattan courtroom to plead their case to get the ban overturned in May of 1976. They brought in a writer named Roger Sharpe to prove to the Council that pinball was no longer a game of chance. He was out to prove that it was undoubtedly a game of skill.

With the Council watching, Sharpe called his shot. He said that he could hit his next shot through the middle lane. He pulled the plunger, hit the ball with a flipper, and sure enough it went through the middle lane! City Council overturned the ban on the spot!

Some places still had illegal pinball on their books for years, but not many places followed through on enforcement. It was only within the past couple of years, for example, that Nashville, Tennessee, eliminated its ban on under-18-year-olds playing or standing within 10 feet of a pinball machine. It's still technically illegal on Sundays in Ocean City, Nevada.

Next time you throw a couple of quarters into a pinball machine while you're waiting for your friends at the bar, you can not only appreciate it's rich history, but you can be assured that it IS winnable! :)

[Sources: Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo]

How To "Tone Down" Raw Onions

Are you like me, where you love raw onions on your salads and sandwiches, but sometimes they can taste a bit too tangy?

Lifehacker posted a simple solution - one I have been using successfully! All you have to do is place your chopped onions in a strainer and pour boiling water over them. This will take away some of their intense flavor without "cooking" them, so they are still crunchy and taste like raw onions!

Use Chalk To Combat Musty Clothes

Are your clothes in your closet starting to smell musty? WonderHowTo.com suggests hanging a bundle of chalk in your closet to soak up the extra humidity in the air and keep your clothes smelling fresh! I imagine it probably also works well in drawers.

To see a bigger picture of this chart with 7 other amazing uses for chalk, click here!

Words That Should Exist In English 4

I love being concise (although you probably wouldn't know it from speaking with me!), so welcome to my 4th entry with short words in other languages that have amazingly specific meanings!

Reader's Digest thankfully found these for me in the book The Meaning of Tingo by Adam Jacot de Boinod.

Zhaghzhagh (Persian): The chattering of teeth from cold or from rage.

Yuputka (Ulwa): The phantom sensation of something crawling under your skin.

Cotisuelto (Caribbean Spanish): One who wears how shirttail outside of his trousers.

Pana Po'o (Hawaiian): To scratch your head in order to help you remember something.

Here's an example short sentence to help you all incorporate these into your daily speech:

"When the cotisuelto felt a yuputka, he pana po'oed to figure out why, but noticing he had zhaghzhagh, too, he figured he was just cold."

:)

If you liked those - you should pick up the book. It's apparently jam-packed with character-saving words like these.

Why Do We Celebrate July 4th With Fireworks?

This actually dates back to the day before the Declaration of Independence was signed!

According to slate.com:

Why do we commemorate Independence Day by setting off thousands of small explosions? 

Because John Adams wanted us to. Before the Declaration of Independence was even signed, he envisioned fireworks as a part of the festivities. In a letter to Abigail Adams on July 3, 1776, he wrote that the occasion should be commemorated "with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” The first commemorative Independence Day fireworks were set off on July 4, 1777. The Pennsylvania Evening Post wrote that in Philadelphia, “The evening was closed with the ring of bells, and at night there was a grand exhibition of fireworks (which began and concluded with thirteen rockets) on the Commons, and the city was beautifully illuminated.”

Not a bad thing to add to your great legacy, John Adams!

Why Do Our Fingers Get Pruney In Water?

Reader's Digest answered that for us in their May 2013's issue:

Did You Know... WhyWe Get Pruney Fingers In Water? 

Thank your primate ancestors for those wrinkly digits in your bath. Pruney fingers provided a better grip for wet objects, so they may have evolved to give humans an advantage in gathering food in the rain, British researchers at Newcastle University reported in the journal Biology Letters. The scientists, who studied how quickly participants could move wet versus dry marbles, found that people with dimpled fingertips were about 12 percent quicker at moving wet objects, according to the New York Times.

Want to learn more? Click here! for a related article in Scientific American.

What Do The Laundry Symbols Mean?

Sometimes my clothing tags don't have the laundry/care instructions written out -- they just have symbols -- and I am left guessing what they mean. Not anymore! Thankfully, Primer Magazine recently posted a handy chart explaining them all. And now I am sharing it with you. :)

For the entire article about how to care for your clothes correctly (and for a bigger chart!): click here!

Why Does The Pope Change His Name?

The world welcomed Pope Francis as the new leader of the Catholic Church last week. Wonder why he didn't just go by his given name and become Pope Jorge Mario?

Well, the Catholic church does not force the pope to take on a new name with the new role; it's a choice by the pope himself. Several hundred years ago, Pope Marcellus II actually kept his name. The pope chooses a new name as a way of symbolizing his mission as pope. Popes in the past have picked saints names or former popes' names whose priorities and desires are similar to theirs.

Before the 6th Century, popes were known by their given names. The first pope to change his name was Pope John II, originally named Mercurius, in 533 AD. He decided to have his name be associated with his predecessor Pope John I, as opposed to the pagan god Mercury. As leader of the Catholic Church, who could blame him? :)

It's thought that Pope Francis picked his name to be linked to Saint Francis of Assisi, a kind and beloved saint, who was known for renouncing the riches of this world to live in poverty. In Argentina, Pope Francis is said to have lived a humble and simple lifestyle full of compassion for the poor, and that is how he will likely live out his papacy. He wants to be a pope who is close to the people.

Some suggest that he also wanted to evoke the memory of Saint Francis Xavier, the Jesuit missionary, since Pope Francis is the first Jesuit pope.

The now-retired Pope Benedict XVI chose that name to link himself with Pope Benedict XV, who led the church with a steady hand through World War I. As it turned out, Pope Benedict XVI was also like his namesake in that they both reigned for about 8 years.

Once Father Jorge & Cardinal Bergoglio, now Pope Francis!

[sources: latimes, wikipedia, npr] 

What's Gonna Happen To English??

I heard the following segment on Michigan Radio this morning. It gives a couple of new examples of the elasticity of the American English language and how popular work usage, not grammatical rules or language origins, tend to shape the meanings of words.

To hear the original podcast: Click Here.

This time on "That's What They Say," host Rina Miller and University of Michigan Professor Anne Curzan discuss the colloquial "gonna" and "wanna," and how these words are not just mispronunciations of their original verbs, but are developing their own distinct meanings.

"If you think about the verb 'go' as a main verb, it has directionality to it. So I could say 'I'm going to swim,' which would imply some kind of direction," explains Curzan. "But if I say 'I'm gonna swim,' that means at some point in the future, I'm gonna swim."

Curzan says that this evolution of the meaning of the verbs is due to the lack of definitive future-tense construction in the English language.

"Interestingly in English, some people would say that we don't have future-tense because we only have one tense marker, which is 'ed' for the past-tense. To talk about the future, we use these little auxiliary verbs like 'will,' which also used to be a main verb. Now 'go' is becoming an auxiliary verb. So this is now one of the ways we talk about the future," Curzan says.

"Wanna," says Curzan, is also developing a new auxiliary verb meaning.

"If you say something like, 'You're gonna wanna take a left up there,' it doesn't probably mean that you actually want to take a left; it's a piece of advice. I'm advising you to take a left. It's developed into an auxiliary that has an advice meaning component to it," says Curzan.

This "grammaticalization" of content words into grammatical constructions is fairly common in today's English.

"We hear this happening with 'hafta,' which is replacing 'must.' Some people say 'suposta,' as in 'I'm suposta do that,' Curzan says.

Guess if you wanna change the language, all you hafta do is popularize new phrases or slang. Maybe one day there won't be any more rules left!

Which Fresh Vegetables Last The Longest?

If you're like me, you may buy fresh veggies and fruits with the best of intentions, just to forget about them and find them weeks later, rotting in the crisper drawer.

My own onions, taking matters into their own hands after being ignored for a while.

Thankfully, OrganicGardening.com compiled a list of the top 11 longest-lasting types of produce and how to keep them fresh. Here's the rundown (click on the address link to see more details and tips):

1. Apples: they can last for weeks sealed in a bag in the crisper drawer of your fridge.

2. Beets: remove the stems and they can last 2-4 months in your fridge.

3. Cabbage: they can last up to 2 months wrapped in plastic in the fridge.

4. Carrots: keep them as dry as possible by putting paper towel in their bag, and they can last several weeks to a couple of months.

5. Celeriac: as long as you keep it moist (or wrapped to preserve its own moisture) and in the fridge, it will last a couple of weeks, even after being cut.

6. Garlic: it will last the longest in a dark kitchen cabinet or in a brown paper bag in the fridge.

7. Onions: keep in a cool, dark location in a mesh bag and they can last for up to a month or longer.

8. Potatoes: they will last usually between 2-4 months in a cool, dark location, like in a basement cabinet.

9. Winter Radishes: remove the greens and store them like you would carrots and they'll last for about a month.

10. Winter Squash (Pumpkins, Butternut, etc): these can last for 2-6 months when kept in a dark place.

11. Rutabagas: store them as you would celeriac and they'll last several weeks.

Of course, as the website also recommends, you can also opt for frozen veggies, which are frozen within hours of being picked (so they are always fresh!) and will never go bad. :)

Huey Lewis's "Back To The Future" Cameo!

I might just be the last person alive in the 1980s to learn this!

But do you remember that pivotol scene in Back To The Future, where Marty's band, The Pinheads, is trying out for their school's Battle of The Bands? And they are doing a great cover of Huey Lewis & The News' "The Power of Love"? And the stiff nerdy adult judges stop them to say "it's just too darn loud"?

In case you need a reminder!

As it turns out, the judge with the megaphone is Huey Lewis, my brother informed me on Christmas day! What's a fun ironic part for him.

That movie is brilliant. :)

Original Titles For Classic Novels

Sometimes authors go through several novel names before landing on one. Below are some examples of title "first drafts" of books whose names have become part of our culture.

Doesn't have the same ring to it, does it?

1. The Strike by Ayn Rand

(Atlas Shrugged)

2. The High-Bouncing Lover by F. Scott Fitzgerald

(The Great Gatsby)

3. Atticus by Harper Lee

(To Kill A Mockingbird)

4. The Last Man In Europe by George Orwell

(1984)

5. Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway

(The Sun Also Rises)

6. First Impressions by Jane Austin

(Pride and Prejudice)

7. Catch-11 by Joseph Heller

(Catch-22)

8. Mistress Mary by Frances Hodgson Burnett

(The Secret Garden)

I would imagine some of our slang would have been much different if some of these titles ended up getting published. Would we call a no-win situation a "Catch-11", you think? :)

[source]

Your Left Side Is Likely Your "Good Side"

Straight from September's issue of Reader's Digest:

Your "good" side is more science than pose. Scientists at Wake Forest University showed research subjects photographs of 20 male and female faces taken from opposite angles. The participants uniformly found the left side of the faces more appealing than the right. 

Since the brain's right hemisphere is better at signaling emotion than the left - and controls the left side of the face - facial expressions tend to be stronger on the left. 

Perhaps that's why iconic paintings like Vermeer's Girl With The Pearl Earring lead with the left side.

Which photo of Angelina do you think looks better? 

Science says the one on the right!

Lions And Ligers And Liligers, Oh My!

I just learned today that not only do "ligers" (half-lion and half-tigers) exist, but now so do the babies of lions and ligers: "liligers".

This little girl was born in a zoo in Siberia, and is thought to be the first liliger in existence. It's the first one in captivity at least. She's too cute! And she has a pretty great name.



And if that's not cute enough, she's being raised by a common domestic cat, since her mother stopped producing milk. Can you imagine her cuddling with her adopted cat-mama? My heart just exploded. :)

source: abcnews.com