– Scientists in Japan have discovered a way to make ice cream that melts very slowly. Researchers were attempting to create a fruit preservative when one of their efforts using strawberry extractions yielded polyphenol. The polyphenol was used as a topping on several desserts. When the new garnish was poured onto ice cream, the ice cream could sit without melting for more than an hour at room temperatures. The Kanazawa ice cream has been available since 2012 and is popular throughout much of Japan.
– One experienced track coach swears she has discovered an infallible cure for hiccups: Run or jog for ten minutes. I am pretty sure I cannot run for ten minutes. I’ll continue sipping water or watching the evening news to scare myself.
– The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an ugly floating collection of plastic containers and other wastes. One might care to look on the internet at photos of this mess. The floating mass was recently measured to cover 1,600,000 square miles of the North Pacific. For comparison, Texas is made up of fewer than 270,000 square miles. A Dutch company (The Ocean Cleanup) is experimenting with a vessel that uses sprawling floating screens to collect large volumes of buoyant debris. The intention is to efficiently remove and recycle significant portions of the Garbage Patch on a continuing basis. Here’s hoping.
– Origins of The Seven Deadly Sins list are a bit nebulous. The sins listed are: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. Several philosophies and religions include those components as tenets to avoid.
– Only one Oscar has ever won an Oscar. Oscar Hammerstein II won in 1942 and 1946.
– Stay with “your team.” A two-year study involving 230,000 patients in America has revealed that people who do not frequently (more than once every 24 months) change their professional health advisors experience approximately 12% fewer hospitalizations.
– In what is possibly a related report: A nurse on duty had written down what she understood to be an ER patient’s verbal explanation as to why he had experienced a mild seizure: “I had failed to take my prescribed peanut butterball.” It turns out he was saying “my prescribed phenobarbital.”
– Lightning strikes somewhere on earth an average of 8,000,000 times every 24 hours.
– When you undo knitted material, you tink. Tink is “knit” spelled backwards. Some say tinking can be laborious, tedious work. What do you tink? Well, eschew as many of The Seven Deadly Sins as you can this week – and ingest all peanut butterballs as prescribed. Have a great day.
James White is a retired mathematics teacher who enjoys sharing fascinating trivia. He can be reached at [email protected].
