Period poverty: Scotland moves a step closer to making sanitary products free for all - "If passed, the Period Products Bill would make Scotland the first country in the world to provide period products – including tampons and sanitary pads – for all women for free... womens’ groups criticised supermarkets for displaying anti-shoplifting messages on shelves of sanitary products."
When do men get free condoms? At least there's a public health justification for that
Good luck with independence at this rate - without the English to pay for the silliest social programmes...
Facts about Groundhogs Other Than Their Poor Meteorology - Scientific American - "groundhogs are a type of marmot. So you can accurately say, “Hey, the marmot saw its shadow.” You could also refer to them as woodchucks, whistle-pigs or land beavers, depending on where you’re from. The name whistle-pig comes from the high-pitched whistle that groundhogs emit to warn the rest of a colony about danger. And contrary to what you might think, the name woodchuck has nothing to do with wood. It’s derived from the Algonquian name for the animal, wuchak. A big enough groundhog could nevertheless chuck some wood...
When it comes to accurately predicting the weather, the famous Punxsutawney Phil has been correct only around 36 percent of the time since 1969. That’s according to an analysis by meteorologists from Weather Underground. You’d have a higher rate of accuracy by simply flipping a coin. But nobody’s gonna come to Punxsutawney to watch a coin flip."
Having an Albatross around Your Boat - Scientific American - "Researchers attached data loggers to the backs of 169 albatrosses in the Southern and Indian oceans. The devices weighed only an ounce and a half, but they included a GPS—which enabled them to detect the presence and intensity of radar signals emanating from boats. That information was then transmitted by satellite, so the researchers could track the location of the birds—and thus the radar-emitting boats—in real time.The scientists then cross-checked that data against the known locations of boats, gleaned from a system boats use to declare themselves, called the Automatic Identification System. And discrepancies appeared frequently.More than a third of the times the birds’ loggers’ detected radar signals, and therefore a boat, no such boat appeared in the official log—meaning that the vehicles had likely switched off their Automatic Identification Systems—something the researchers say probably happens in illegal fishing operations."
Espresso May Be Better when Ground Coarser - Scientific American - "researchers who applied their skills in materials science and modeling to brewing espresso have made a grounds-breaking discovery: contrary to popular belief, using fewer beans and a coarser grind will give you a more consistent shot"
Fight-or-Flight Nerves Make Mice Go Gray - Scientific American - "They say that Marie Antoinette’s hair turned white the night before she lost her head to the guillotine. But can stress really have such a dramatic effect on hair color? A new study in mice concludes that it can and credits overactive nerves with stripping the color from the animals’ locks—and possibly ours."
David Schwartz's answer to Do saltwater rivers exist? - Quora - "If you look around you will find waterways labeled bitter/sour/salt in one language or another. This usually signifies waterways that contain a large amount of dissolved salt in them due to passage through a salt bearing mineral upthrust or the watershed that feeds it passing through such a mass. In other cases this will happen due to a salty hot spring is bringing dissolved minerals to the surface and then flowing from there as a salt creek and then to some river where they dilute to more normal levels. Though this means you sometimes find salt marshes and pools well inland and have fascinating mini biomes.As a result of this input mechanism the salt content is very high for the amount of water present, a high percentage by quantity to put it another way. Which produces a salty water way until it runs into the ocean or another water way and dilutes."
Computers Confirm Beethoven's Influence - Scientific American - "Beethoven is a giant of classical music. And the most influential, too—at least, when it comes to piano compositions. That’s according to a study in the journal EPJ Data Science. [Doheum Park, Juhan Nam and Juyong Park, Novelty and influence of creative works, and quantifying patterns of advances based on probabilistic references networks]If you’re wondering how data analysis could determine something as intangible as cultural influence, it’s worth remembering this:“The great thing about music: it’s the most mathematical of the art forms we actually can deal with. A lot of it is symbolic; it’s temporal. The music is written in symbols that are connected in time.”... Park and his colleagues collected 900 piano compositions by 19 composers spanning the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods, from 1700 to 1910. Then they used that mathematical quality to their advantage by dividing each composition into what they called “code words,” a group of simultaneously played notes—in other words, a chord. They then compared each chord to the chord or note that came after it ... which allowed them to determine how creative composers were at coming up with novel transitions.The composer with top marks for novelty? Rachmaninoff. But when the researchers looked at those chord transitions across all 19 composers, it was Beethoven who was most heavily borrowed from—meaning, at least among the composers in this analysis, his influence loomed the largest.Their study comes with a couple caveats. Again, the researchers only considered piano compositions in this work—not orchestral works. And by only studying chord transitions, their conclusions wouldn’t capture artists who were influential in other ways. “It’s well understood that Mozart’s contribution to music comes from the musical forms that he devised. That was not very well captured by our modeling.”"
"What's in a name?" asks Aaron Copland - "“The first thing I said to Martha when I saw her was, ‘What have you called the ballet?’ She replied, ‘Appalachian Spring.’ ‘What a pretty title. Where did you get it?’ I asked, and Martha said, ‘Well, actually it’s from a poem by Hart Crane.’ I asked, ‘Does the poem have anything to do with your ballet?’ ‘No,’ said Martha. ‘I just liked the title.’”Understandably, Copland said he was always amused when people said, "Oh Mr. Copland, I can just see the Appalachian Mountains when I hear your music!""
Haydn's "real" Miracle Symphony - ""When Haydn entered to conduct the symphony, the curious audience left their seats and crowded towards the orchestra the better to see the famous Haydn. The seats in the middle of the floor were thus empty, and hardly anyone was there when the theater's great chandelier crashed down and broke into bits, throwing the numerous gathering into great consternation.As soon as the first moment of fright was over and those who had pressed forward could think of the danger they had luckily escaped and find words to express it, several persons uttered the state of their feelings with loud cries of 'Miracle!' 'Miracle.'"And thus, one of Haydn's symphonies, his symphony No. 96 in D Major, came to be called "The Miracle" Symphony. It's a nice story, but it actually occurred just before the first performance of Haydn's Symphony No. 102 in B-flat. Somehow or another the nickname got stuck to one of Haydn's earlier London Symphonies, and simply refused to become "unstuck."In his book, "The Symphony: A Listener's Guide," musicologist Michael Steinberg suggests an elegant solution: He still lists Haydn's Symphony No. 96 as "The Miracle" but give the Symphony No. 102 a new nick-name: "The REAL Miracle.""
Canada's Calling Podcast | Keep Exploring - "Episode 4 – Nova Scotia:
‘We've always had fairly good relationships with the Scottish and Irish people. Because they had a common trait to us. They were also persecuted by the English. And for the most part, they were all Catholics too. So that facilitated communications. So we've always had Scottish and Irish culture as part of our own, but we've retained our own old songs and even so, so in our gatherings, it's not uncommon to have somebody sing an old lament, an old French tune, and follow that with a jig on the fiddle, but we retain our old folk songs nonetheless’"
Canada's Calling Podcast | Keep Exploring - "Episode 9 – Ontario:
What was created was peameal bacon. Have you had that before? Peameal bacon is something that often people outside of Toronto do not know. And yet no one in Toronto realizes it's from the city. But it's like really a ubiquitous food, where you'll see it in every breakfast. Not everyone will, close to every breakfast restaurant. And it's like very popular in this city. Do you know what other things are from Toronto? Because this is something a lot of people don't know, Hawaiian pizza. It's a,it's a really interesting one because Hawaiian pizza really talks to like, no, it's not from Toronto. It's from like near Windsor. But it was, it was created in a Greek restaurant that also served a mixture of Canadian, Greek and Chinese food. It was three brothers who ran it and they decided they were really inspired by Chinese cooking. So they tried to do that mixture of sweet and savory. And then they called it Hawaiian, because the canned pineapples they were using, were canned in Hawaii. So the pineapples weren’t going there. There's really no connection to Hawaii. Other than it had like an exotic name, and it felt like an exotic piece and they put him on it because, to, you know, appeal to Canadian tastes so it's sort of a local delicacy and the butter tart is like a southern Ontario...
The great Patty Wars of 1985. So, early February in 1985, a bunch of government inspectors from an organization called... Corporate and Consumer Affairs, which was the, the branch of government that was, that would go around to make sure that the things that people were selling, were actually the things that they advertised. And they went to these patty restaurants, every patty restaurant, and they said, you say that you're selling patties, but actually this is not the government definition of a patty. They said the patty is the thing that goes between you know, hamburger bun one and hamburger bun two. And of course, and so they they actually threatened every single patty place with a $5,000 fine... So Michael Chong goes to the media, and he says, you know, this is outrageous, that people who come into our shops know what they're getting when they ask for a beef patty, they don't think we're gonna give them a hamburger, you know, and the media thinks it's funny as well. And so they, they have a lot of articles start coming out of it. And what ends up happening is that this is a period of time right before Prime Minister of Canada… was set to meet with... the Prime Minister of Jamaica. And just a coincidence, but there actually ends up being a protest outside the Canadian Embassy in Jamaica, as they say the Canadian government is trying to wash away Jamaican culture. So this is how this kind of balloons into a bigger issue. And it culminates with a lot of people coming down... a lot of politicians start coming down to Golden Patty, which was then the Patty King and start eating patties on camera. [The Prime Minister] himself. comes down to Golden Patty, eats a patty. And then behind the scenes, he tells his party to, you know, deal with it. And they come to an agreement. I've heard a few different conflicting agreements. One was that it was completely dropped. One is that they agree that you can't call them beef patties anymore. You have to call them Jamaican patties, but they won't press him. Whenever happens, it's ignored, because you'll see right behind me, beef, vegetable, chicken patties. And it was a, it was a ridiculous issue to begin with… this is like a very global meal. You know the Filo crust. This is based on the Cornish pasty crust that was brought to Jamaica with British colonials. The actual spices often used in it, things like curry powder, tumeric to color it. This is brought by Indian indentured servants as is the spicing inside the patty itself. And then you have things like allspice and Scotch bonnet, which were based on indigenous Arawak people's recipes and the actual jerk comes from the Arawak people. They would make jerky out of wild boar and they would, you know, one of the ways they would keep it was string it out, also Scotch bonnet because you know spicy peppers are preservatives as well"
