Eat your way to the bottom of almost any bag of popcorn, and there they are: the rock-hard, jaw-rattling unpopped kernels.
The nuisance kernels have kept many a dentist busy, but their days could be numbered: Scientists say they now know why some popcorn kernels resist popping into puffy white globes.
It’s long been known that popcorn kernels must have a precise moisture level in their starchy center – about 15 percent – to explode. But Purdue University researchers found the key to a kernel’s explosive success lies in the composition of its hull.
Unpopped kernels, it turns out, have leaky hulls that prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for them to pop and lack the optimal hull structure that allows most kernels to explode.
AP via The Albuquerque Tribune
Jay talking
• Electronics experts say that by 2009 people will be able to watch TV programs on their cell phones. So we are now exactly four years away from the largest car accident is history.
• Business news — U.S. Airways and America West are in talks to merge…to form one really crappy airline.
Jay Leno
Laptop theft
NewMexiKen hasn’t located any news on what happened to the UC Berkeley professor’s laptop thief, or even if he has been apprehended.
But for those unwilling or unable to watch the video, here’s a link to a transcript of what the professor said.
Destination America
Smithsonian Magazine stimulates a little wanderlust.
From Custer’s Little Bighorn battlefield, to Eudora Welty’s Mississippi garden, to an underwater wonderland in the Florida Keys—seven destinations to entice our ever-discerning readers
- Little Bighorn Reborn – Hardin, Montana
- One Writer’s Garden – Jackson, Mississippi
- A Road Less Traveled – Cape Cod, Massachusetts
- Healing Arts – Ojo Caliente, New Mexico
- Shore Bird – Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Footpath Atop the West – The Pacific Crest Trail
- Rapture of the Deep – Key Largo, Florida
I said go, go, go, little queenie
Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
Her Majesty is 79 today. Her name is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. She signs Elizabeth R.
John Muir …
was born on this date in 1838. The following is from the autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt (1913) and was found at the Sierra Club’s online John Muir Exhibit.
When I first visited California, it was my good fortune to see the “big trees,” the Sequoias, and then to travel down into the Yosemite, with John Muir. Of course of all people in the world he was the one with whom it was best worth while thus to see the Yosemite. He told me that when Emerson came to California he tried to get him to come out and camp with him, for that was the only way in which to see at their best the majesty and charm of the Sierras. But at the time Emerson was getting old and could not go.
John Muir met me with a couple of packers and two mules to carry our tent, bedding, and food for a three days’ trip. The first night was clear, and we lay down in the darkening aisles of the great Sequoia grove. The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry, rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived even by the fervor of the Middle Ages. Hermit thrushes sang beautifully in the evening, and again, with a burst of wonderful music, at dawn.
I was interested and a little surprised to find that, unlike John Burroughs, John Muir cared little for birds or bird songs, and knew little about them. The hermit-thrushes meant nothing to him, the trees and the flowers and the cliffs everything. The only birds he noticed or cared for were some that were very conspicuous, such as the water-ouzels always particular favorites of mine too. The second night we camped in a snow-storm, on the edge of the cañon walls, under the spreading limbs of a grove of mighty silver fir; and next day we went down into the wonderland of the valley itself. I shall always be glad that I was in the Yosemite with John Muir and in the Yellowstone with John Burroughs.
Isn’t the game hard enough without this?
The golf pros agree: You should size up the green closely, address the ball squarely and hold onto your club firmly.
Very firmly, if you’re playing golf in parts of the San Gabriel Valley.
A rash of golf club thefts at public courses there is leaving authorities frustrated and golfers downright furious.
On Friday, thieves even struck one course during a Los Angeles Police Department tournament and stole more than $2,500 worth of clubs from officers.
My god, what would he have done if he’d had a Chrysler Sebring?
MIAMI (Reuters) – Fed up with his troublesome car, a Florida man fired five rounds from a semi-automatic pistol into the hood of the 1994 Chrysler LeBaron.
“I’m putting my car out of its misery,” 64-year-old John McGivney said after the incident outside an apartment building in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea, according to a police report that listed the car as “deceased.”
McGivney surrendered to police, was jailed on a firearms charge on Friday and released on bond a day later. He told them the car had been giving him trouble for years.
Link via dangerousmeta!
Big mistake
It seems a student stole a laptop from a UC Berkeley biology professor. Here is a link to a video of the professor’s warnings to the thief. (This is a RealPlayer video file. Skip to 48:50 of the 52-minute file.)
It will take you a couple minutes to set this up and watch, but worth it as you can almost feel the terror that must have been welling-up within the culprit as the professor continued.
Link via BoingBoing
The Indians’ Own Story
Thomas Powers, who usually writes about foreign and military affairs and intelligence, has a first-rate piece of work on American Indian history in the April 7, 2005, issue of The New York Review of Books. The 5,548 word article may be read online for $3.00.
What makes Powers’ review essay so valuable is that it discusses American Indian history as it has been maintained — both in the recent and in the more distant past — by Indians.
What the old stories tell us is that Indian peoples lived on the edge, were dependent on animals and weather, respected cunning as much as courage, and at night around the fire invented a literature half about coping and half about mysteries, with lots of jokes.
A valuable and informative article. Highly recommended.
Powers also references this stunning online exhibit of Lakota winter counts.
The Howard Brothers: Ron and Ron’s brother
Red or green?
Gotta love Duke City Fix, a website whose first restaurant review is of the Frontier. Read the review and you’ll learn a lot about Albuquerque: Starting at the Top of the Bottom
Mistaken identity
“Along with his subtle and powerful intellect lies a spiritual, almost mystical side rooted in Bavaria.”
From the tease for an article in The New York Times.
NewMexiKen thought the article would be about me, but it’s about the new Pope.
Only a matter of when, not if
“People who are overweight but not obese have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight, federal researchers are reporting today.”
The lede in a report in The New York Times
Don’t we all have the same risk of death?
This is just his opinion
“The Big 5 of all time, musically, are probably Mozart, The Beatles, KC and the Sunshine Band, Beethoven and The Gap Band, though some could argue that Bach deserves to be in there somewhere. Maybe sub out Beethoven?”
NewMexiKen would include The Kingsmen.
Best line of the day, so far
“The USDA needs to publish a pyramid that just contains four words: STOP BEING A PIG.”
Joel Achenbach, who also has: “My brother’s great line, coming out of restaurant at the Old Faithful Inn, patting his belly: ‘I’m pretty sure they lost money on me at the buffet.'”
Smarter than the driver
Dan Neil reports on some intelligent new safety technology:
The new M45 is also equipped with Intelligent Cruise Control (ICC) — now fairly commonplace in luxury cars — that above certain speeds maintains a pre-set following distance with the help of radar or laser emitters in the car’s nose. When the car ahead slows down, you slow down.
In Albuquerque (and elsewhere) this feature comes with an optional “Road Rage” setting that allows you to program your car to speed up when the vehicle in front of you slows down.
Digital cameras
Walter Mossberg has his “annual guide to buying a digital camera.”
Key points:
- More megapixels don’t always mean better pictures.
- [I]gnore digital zoom completely when shopping for a camera.
- Be sure your camera has both an optical viewfinder and an LCD viewing screen.
Birthdays and stuff
Justice John Paul Stevens is 85 today. He went on the Court in 1975.
Actor George Takei is 68. That’s Mr. Sulu of Star Trek.
Ryan O’Neal, the actor who played the part of Al Gore in Love Story, is 64.
Coach Steve Spurrier is 60.
Six-time Oscar nominee and two-time winner Jessica Lange is 56.
And, of course, Ron Howard’s brother, Clint, is 46.
Dumbo, party of six, your table is ready
SEOUL (Reuters) – Six elephants escaped from a zoo and roamed around the South Korean capital Wednesday, briefly crashing their way into a restaurant before being rounded up, police and zoo officials said.
The elephants were on a parade led by mahouts outside their enclosure inside Seoul Children’s Grand Park in the east of the city when one was apparently startled and bolted, a zoo official said by telephone.
The five others followed “because they have the tendency to do that,” the official said.
NewMexiKen doesn’t know what elephants would order in a Korean restaurant, but in a Chinese place they should try the Kung Po Chicken.
Pope 1 Wizards 0
BERLIN (Reuters) – The writings of Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI Tuesday, went straight in at number one on Germany’s book charts Wednesday, toppling the latest Harry Potter.
The German version of online retailer Amazon showed Ratzinger’s books in the top four spots and seven titles in the top 10.
Ron Howard’s little brother
Clint is 46 today. He has appeared in many of his brother’s films — Cocoon and Apollo 13 come to mind, but most will remember Clint Howard as the 8-year-old kid in the TV series Gentle Ben. (Dennis Weaver was the dad.) Howard was also the voice of Roo in the Disney Winnie the Pooh films.
Since NewMexiKen first posted information about Clint Howard a year ago, the term “Ron Howard’s brother” (and variants) has been the most popular search term for people finding their way to the site.
Happy Birthday Clint.
Best line of the day, so far
“Ratzinger is best known for his years co-starring as the daft-but-lovable Cliff Clavin on the sitcom Cheers. In that role, he pontificated on a wide variety of subjects, which may have helped his career switch from character actor to infallible leader of the world’s Catholics.”
Sorry, I’m back at it
Changing the formatting that is; more bugs than the Soviet embassy. I’m self-taught and a slow learner.
Please bear with me while the font size and stuff changes before your very eyes.
New Pope more conservative than St. Paul
NewMexiKen sees a big comeback in the Friday fish and chip specials of my youth.