"Daylight Saving" Not "Daylight Savings"

    

     It’s “daylight saving time”, not “daylight savings time”. “Daylight saving time” uses the present participle “saving” as an adjective, as in “labor saving device”.
     Daylight saving time was first used during WWI to conserve fuel. The theory was that by adding an hour of sunlight to people’s normal “awake time”, it would cut down on the nations need for artificial light. This may have actually been effective then, but because of our vastly different energy usage today (only 3.5 percent of our energy usage today goes towards lighting), it has generally been shown that the effect on energy usage is negligible; though it has been shown to be a profitable thing for many stores, particularly those that sell product related to outdoor leisure activities.

Bonus Factoids:

• Ben Franklin often gets credit for being the “genius” who came up with daylight saving time. Interestingly though, the letter he proposed something like what we now call daylight saving time and which was eventually published in 1784 under the title, An Economical Project, was actually a witty satire meant to entertain some of his friends, not to be taken seriously on any account. It’s quite humorous, click here to give it a read (scroll down a bit for the start). In it, he also proposes taxing people who have shutters on their windows, rationing candles, and waking people as soon as the sun comes up by ringing church bells and firing cannons. With Franklin’s humor though, he probably would find it hilarious that many countries in the world eventually decided it was an idea that made sense. Although it’s quite clear he’s joking around in this paper, he was known for putting more subtle jokes in many of his other papers that only the most astute would recognize. He was so famous for this that when they were deciding who should write the Declaration of Independence, they chose Jefferson over the significantly more qualified and respected Franklin, as they feared Franklin would embed subtle humor in it that wouldn’t be recognized until it was too late to change¹.
• The modern day version of DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson in 1895.
• The credit though for the modern day DST system is often incorrectly given to William Willett who independently thought up and lobbied for DST in 1905. He was riding through London one day in the early morning and noticed that a good portion of London’s population slept through several hours of the sunlit summer days. Willet lobbied for DST until his death in 1915. Ironically, it was one year later in 1916 that certain European countries began adopting DST.
• Daylight saving time once single handedly thwarted a terrorist attack, causing the would-be terrorists to blow themselves up instead of other people. What happened was, in September 1999, the West Bank was on daylight saving time while Israel was on standard time; West Bank terrorists prepared bombs set on timers and smuggled them to their associates in Israel. As a result, the bombs exploded one hour sooner than the terrorists in Israel thought they would, resulting three terrorists dying instead of the two busloads of people who were the intended targets.

Source: MisconceptionJunction.com

Pittsburgh Steeler's player's hair insured for $1,000,000

     Troy Polamalu's hair is as iconic as he is. As such, the Troy Polamalu hair style must be protected, so Troy Polamalu hair responsibility now falls on Head & Shoulders. The company has been attached to the Steelers' safety for two years, as his unique style makes him an ideal spokesman. However, his locks are so long that they can be damaged on the field, especially since it's legal to grab them during play. Therefore, Polamalu's hairstyle is the first in sports history to get its own insurance policy.

     Procter & Gamble, which owns Head & Shoulders, got Lloyd's of London to draft a policy on football's most famous mane. It was taken out for $1 million, according to a statement yesterday. However, their investment was probably secure before this policy was made.

     The Troy Polamalu hairstyle has been growing for 10 years, as the Steelers' star has left it alone in honor of his Samoan ancestors. Given how that look has become his trademark -- and hasn't stood in the way of winning two Super Bowl rings -- he has no reason to take it off now.

     However, it is still vulnerable on the field, just like any other body part. Since Troy Polamalu's hair sticks out so much, players are allowed to grab it in order to bring him down. The Chiefs' Larry Johnson did just that in 2006, although the locks stayed where they were.

     It seems unlikely that a player can grab those locks hard enough to pull some off or ruin the style. But anything can happen in football, and since Head & Shoulders is tied to the Troy Polamalu hair image, they are not taking any chances.

     Still, this policy is the least of his concerns, as he has to worry about the rest of his body. Injuries interrupted his season last year, and provided a huge hole in the Steelers' defense. In order to return to the playoffs and make another Super Bowl run, the Steelers need all of Polamalu to return and be healthy again.

     If the Troy Polamalu hair insurance policy makes him feel more secure in that goal, then the Steelers will not protest. He is on track to start the regular season on time, but Pittsburgh needs him to finish it on time as well.

Turkey Doesn’t Make You Drowsy

     Now that Halloween’s done, on to Thanksgiving.  Seems fitting then to start November off with one of the more popular Thanksgiving related myths.  That being that, in fact, turkey does not make you drowsy after you eat it.
     Now to be clear, turkey does contain tryptophan. Tryptophan is an amino acid which the human body doesn’t naturally produce, but is essential to proper body function and, thus, must be acquired from food. The reason tryptophan is tied to drowsiness is that it is used by your body to create serotonin. Serotonin, among other things, acts as a calming agent in the brain and plays a key role in sleep. So with turkey containing tryptophan, one would logically say it would make you sleepy after you eat it… except, this isn’t actually the case.
     So, why not? Primarily because of how we eat turkey and more importantly how the body deals with tryptophan. If you tend to eat turkey on a completely empty stomach and don’t eat anything else but a little turkey, then there’s a very small chance that the tryptophan in the turkey will make you a little drowsy right after you eat it. Add it to a sandwich or have it with some mash potatoes or really pretty much any other food eaten at the same time or just eat it on a non-empty stomach and it won’t be the turkey that is making you drowsy if you feel drowsy after.
     It turns out, tryptophan needs to not only be taken on an empty stomach to have any instant effect, but also with little to no other amino acids or protein present in order to make you drowsy after you eat something that contains it. Given that there is a lot of protein in turkey and other amino acids, even if you are a bit malnourished, you are not likely to get drowsy from the tryptophan after you eat turkey, though it will increase your body’s store of the tryptophan.
     What’s going on here is that when there are a lot of amino acids around, this causes competition among the amino acids as far as crossing the blood-brain barrier. Tryptophan is a particularly bulky amino acid so it ends up being at the back of the line, so to speak, and will generally stay there until those other amino acids are gone or, at the least, until quite a lot of them are gone so the ratio of tryptophan to those other amino acids is drastically increased.
     So why do you get drowsy after, say, eating turkey on Thanksgiving or the like? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but primarily because, with your holiday meal, you likely just crammed a couple days worth of food into your body in the span of an hour or so, possibly with some alcohol, which is a central nervous system depressant that has a mild sedative effect. Also, with a full stomach, your body directs blood away from your central nervous system and other organ systems to help with your digestive system. More than anything, this is probably causing most of the drowsiness after a large turkey dinner, such as on Thanksgiving or Christmas or the like.
     The “drowsy” effect is even more noticeable when your food contains quite a bit of various fats, which take a lot of energy to digest, and carbohydrates. Carbohydrates in particular release insulin. This results in a lot various amino acids being more or less swept out of your blood, being absorbed into your muscle cells, and thus the tryptophan to other amino acid ratio increases quite a bit, giving the tryptophan a better shot of crossing the blood-brain barrier and raising your serotonin levels.
     Now there is typically always a nice store of tryptophan in your body at any given time due to the fact that it is not only prevalent in turkey, but also higher levels than in turkey per ounce can be found in chicken, beef, pork, cheese, chicken eggs (which contain nearly four times as much tryptophan per ounce over turkey), sunflower seeds, and many types of fish; it also is found, in lesser or similar amounts as in turkey, in milk, beans, sesame seeds, lamb, wheat flour, chocolate, white rice, oatmeal, potatoes, and bananas, among a lot of other foods. So your body is typically stocked full of tryptophan most of the time and eating some turkey isn’t going to significantly change your body’s store, though it will add some.
     So, if you want to point to a specific food that can make you quite drowsy, it would be things high in carbohydrates such as pasta, mashed potatoes, breads, and the like; these not only cause your body to direct more blood towards your abdomen and away from other organ systems, which will make you drowsy, but also result in some of the tryptophan hanging out in your body to actually get a chance to make it passed the blood-brain barrier to eventually produce some serotonin.

Dropping a Penny from the Top of the Empire State Building Isn’t Dangerous

     You’ve probably heard people say how if you drop a penny off the top of the Empire State Building, it will accelerate to such a speed that if it struck someone, it would kill them. This simply isn’t true at all, not by a long shot. The worst that would happen if you dropped a penny from this height is that it would sting a bit when it hit them.  In most cases, it wouldn’t even do that.  In fact, even if you dropped it from an airplane flying at 35,000 feet, it still wouldn’t do any real damage to the person it hit.
So let’s talk specifics.  The Empire State Building is about 1250 feet tall.  If there were no air resistance on the penny as it fell, that would mean it would reach a maximum velocity of around 190-ish miles per hour when it hit the ground, taking just shy of 9 second to do so.  That might sound really fast, but fortunately, it’s still not fast enough to kill someone.
     Somewhat surprisingly, that still likely wouldn’t be fast enough to penetrate a person’s skin, especially if it hit the flat side down, instead of the edge.  For reference, a relatively low-”powered” bullet (.22 caliber), which is about equivalent in mass to a penny, is shot out with an initial speed of around 600 miles per hour.  That obviously will penetrate your skin at close range, but it’s because the surface area that strikes your skin is much smaller. A penny, even at that speed, wouldn’t cause that much damage as demonstrated by Myth Busters when they shot a penny at over 700 mph at a gel “skull”.  The penny wasn’t even able to penetrate the gel at all at that speed, which was over three times the speed a penny would reach falling from the top of the Empire State Building with no air resistance.
     So what about in real life where there is air resistance?  That’s a little harder to calculate because a penny is going to be greatly affected by the wind.  The updraft next to the Empire State Building can even be sufficient to make it so the penny won’t ever reach the ground near the Empire State Building, rather being caught in the swells and flying about until it is free from them.
Let’s move away from a place that has such an updraft and windy environment.  What would the terminal velocity be then?  It turns out, pennies have a pretty low terminal velocity (just a bit faster than a ping-pong ball, which has a terminal velocity of around 20-ish mph).  In open air, with no real updraft or breeze, a penny’s terminal velocity is going to be around 30-50 miles per hour.  If there is a good wind, even without an updraft, that’s going to drop significantly.
     You can even test this near your home because a penny will reach its terminal velocity in only about 50 feet.  Find someplace where you can drop a penny 50 feet down and have someone waiting at the bottom to catch it (or time it to determine the velocity).  They’ll have a really hard time catching it, due to the fact that it will spin and flutter about like a knuckle-ball, particularly if it’s breezy out.  But if you do manage to hit them, I suspect they won’t complain.  Indeed, as you can read in one of my sources, someone conducted this very experiment, dropping some pennies from a height sufficient for it to reach its terminal velocity (they chose a couple hundred feet, which was more than sufficient) and trying to catch them.  One of the pennies hit a person in the chin and it didn’t even sting, it just felt like a bug had hit them.  Several other pennies hit them on various places on their bodies and weren’t really felt much at all through their clothes.
If you’ve got a decent throwing arm, a less nice way to test this out without even leaving the comfort of your own home, which I in no way recommend for legal reasons, is simply to take a penny and attempt to chuck it at someone standing near you.  If you’ve got a good arm at all, it’s going to reach much higher than its terminal velocity (assuming you stand close to them so it doesn’t have a chance to slow down) and you might even be able to get it to hit with the edge pointing forward for maximum speed and stinging power, which is something that isn’t likely dropped from a high height.  They’ll probably not be too happy with you, but even if it hits their bare skin, it’s only going to sting a bit.   Just tell them it’s !!!FOR SCIENCE!!! and try not hit them in the eye.  That would hurt even if you had a weak throwing arm.
     Of course, given all this, one shouldn’t take away from this that it is safe to drop all light objects from high heights.  It really has a lot to do with surface area to weight ratio and how aerodynamic the thing is.  Pennies will flutter about and are greatly affected by the wind.  Something like a decently weighted metal fountain pen, on the other hand, could cause serious damage if dropped from a high height.  It’s aerodynamically shaped and has a nice pointy end.  An object like that reaching even just a hundred miles an hour can easily puncture skin and much worse.  Heck, even bullets shot straight up in the air have been shown to be quite dangerous by the time they get back to the ground (not all bullets, but many).  Many of these aren’t much larger, mass wise, than a penny, just shaped right for traveling through the air.

Bonus Factoid:

• As stated, a penny’s terminal velocity is going to be around 30-50 mph.  For reference, the terminal velocity of a sky diver is going to be around 130-ish mph (like all these examples, that varies depending on a lot of factors, but that’s a good ballpark number).  Speaking of ballparks, the terminal velocity of a baseball is around 100 mph; for a tennis ball it’s around 60 mph; a ping pong ball is going to be around 20 miles per hour; and a raindrop is going to be around 15 mph.

The Men Behind the Masks

by Ethan Trex

Chewbacca, Sloth, and Big Bird are all iconic roles, but could you pick any of the actors who played them out of a lineup? Probably not. Let’s take a look at the unheralded men behind the mask, under the makeup, or in the suit for a handful of memorable roles in movies and TV shows.

1. John Matuszak as Sloth

A generation of kids grew up cheering for Matuszak as Lotney “Sloth” Fratelli in The Goonies, but they probably didn’t know that just a few years earlier “Tooz” had heard the cheers of thousands of Oakland Raiders fans. Before he ever became an actor, Matuszak was a heck of a football player; as a 6’8”, 280-pound defensive end he was even the first overall pick in the 1973 NFL Draft.

Matuszak won two Super Bowl rings with the Raiders before retiring after the 1981 season, but he’s most remembered for his madcap personality. “Tooz” would throw back a “breakfast of champions” that consisted of vodka and Valium, brawl with teammates and coaches, and generally wreak havoc on and off the field. No wonder Sports Illustrated named him one of the NFL’s top five bad boys of all time in 2005.

2. Kevin Peter Hall as Harry and the Predator

The late Kevin Peter Hall had quite a bit of range once he got inside a suit. He could play a gentle giant like the Bigfoot Harry in Harry and the Hendersons, or he could kick some butt as a bloodthirsty alien like he did in the first two Predator movies. The 7’2” Hall had previously excelled as a basketball player for George Washington University, and he also had a recurring role on the NBC sitcom 227. The gig on 227 proved to be particularly fruitful for the former Predator; he married star Alaina Reed, who had previously risen to fame as Olivia on Sesame Street.

3. Warwick Davis as Wicket W. Warrick

Movie buffs probably recognize Davis as the title character in Willow and the Leprechaun series, but they might not have known that he broke into acting as an Ewok. When George Lucas was casting Return of the Jedi he put out a series of radio ads looking for people under four feet tall to play the Ewoks. Davis’ grandmother heard the spot and took Davis, who was 2’11” and a rabid Star Wars fan, to audition. After Lucas’s original choice to play Wicket fell ill, Davis nabbed the role of lead Ewok and launched a successful film career.

Interestingly, Davis was only 17 years old when he played the title role in Willow. Although he had to take lessons in sword fighting and horseback riding to prepare for the fantasy film, Davis later said that the toughest part of the role was learning how to act like a parent to his infant co-star. He said on the DVD commentary, “I had to learn parenting skills, which taught me how to hold a baby correctly, how to feed a baby, and worst of all, how to change a nappy, or diaper.”

4. Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca

Like the much shorter Davis, Mayhew found his way into films thanks to George Lucas. When Lucas was first casting the Star Wars series, he wanted English bodybuilder David Prowse to play Chewbacca. Prowse wasn’t interested in being a Wookiee, though; he asked to be the man in the Darth Vader suit. Lucas agreed and in turn asked 7’3” hospital worker Mayhew to play Chewie.

An anecdote from the production of The Empire Strikes Back accentuates just how indispensable these costumed actors can be. Mayhew fell ill during one day of filming, and since the producers didn’t want to lose a whole day of work, they put another very tall actor in the Chewie suit. After all, it’s just a suit, right? Turns out it’s not that simple. Mayhew had crafted all of Chewbacca’s mannerisms and his gait based on careful observations of large animals, but the stand-in couldn’t match them. The shots just didn’t look like the real Chewbacca. Eventually Lucas scrapped all of the footage of the impostor Chewie and reshot it with Mayhew in the suit.

5. Caroll Spinney as Big Bird

Spinney has been the man behind Sesame Street’s most iconic resident since the show’s first episode aired in 1969. Although Big Bird is 8’2”, Spinney isn’t as towering as many of the other actors on this list; he’s only 5’10”. Spinney has played Big Bird in the White House for a number of Presidents (his only complaint from these gigs is that Nancy Reagan was rude), and he’s also played another signature Sesame Street role: Oscar the Grouch.

6. Bolaji Badejo as the Alien

Bolaji Badejo was just a Nigerian design student when Ridley Scott put him into millions of audience members’ nightmares in Alien. Scott wanted his extraterrestrial monster to look like no human could possibly be inside the costume, so he sought out an actor who was extremely tall and impossibly lanky. Badejo fit the bill. At 7’2” and incredibly thin, Badejo brought his unique body type to the terrifying role, then never appeared in another film.

7. Dick Durock as Swamp Thing

If not for an NFL trade, we may never have seen Swamp Thing as we know him. Former Marine Dick Durock was living in Pittsburgh with his older sister and her husband, Pittsburgh Steelers tackle Frank Varrichione, when four-time Pro Bowler Varrichione found himself traded to the Los Angeles Rams in 1961.

The trade worked out well for the Rams – Varrichione made another Pro Bowl with the team – but it panned out even better for Durock. He followed his family to Los Angeles and began working out in a gym frequented by a number of stuntmen. Eventually he became a stuntman himself, and in 1982 he took on the role of Swamp Thing for the first of two movies and then 71 episodes of the subsequent television series.

Misconception Junction Presents.....

[Source: Misconception Junction]

Consumer Pays Off $14,330 In 20 Months With Our Tips

     Stuck in a $14,300 debt hole, reader Trixare4kids was able to dig herself out using tips she learned about on Consumerist.com. Let's learn how she attacked her personal finances and learned to live frugally, and did it all in 20 months.
     She writes: "This morning I made my very last payment on $14,300 in credit card debt and a personal line of credit for a home improvement project that was completed a few years ago. I paid it off over the last 20 months thanks to applying some of the stuff I learned at consumerist.com. It was tough. It took discipline, but I did it!
     Instead of making a bunch of changes at once, I did things a little over time. It looked something like this. It's maybe not in the order that makes the most sense to a financial planner or in the order that someone else would do things; I just know that it worked for me.

MONTH 1: NEGOTIATING BETTER CREDIT CARDS RATES:
     I called every single credit card company and tried to negotiate for a lower rate. I was successful with a lot of them. In once case the rate went from 14% to 7.99%. If they would not lower the interest rate, I politely thanked them and then transferred those balances onto lower rate cards. I canceled each card as it was paid off.

MONTH 2: GO CASH-ONLY:
     I cut up every single card except one for emergencies. I actually put my remaining credit card in a big plastic cup full of water and stuck it in the freezer. That way, I'd really have to work at it to get that card. Cash only was the rule. If I did not have the cash, I did not need it. It's still in the freezer 20 months later.

MONTH 3: START DEBT-SNOWBALL:
     It really works. I first heard about this method on consumerist and set myself up to pay off the lowest balances first. I used an Excel spreadsheet I downloaded here. I liked this one because it was easy to add extra one-time payments. I know that it would probably save me more money to pay off the higher interest rates first, but it was very, very satisfying to get stuff paid and DONE with. I cannot even begin to explain how highly motivating it was to finally pay something off. It was worth whatever little amount extra it cost me extra to pay the smallest balances off first. It makes for that good "light at the end of the tunnel" feeling. I also set up automatic payments on payday through the online bill pay to make this a seamless process. For the first couple of months, I just started off with just $50 extra because that's all I could afford. Once I started living more frugally, I applied more to the snowball.
     Make extra payments to the snowball. They really do help, no matter how small. Every single extra penny that came my way went toward paying down the debt. At the end of the month, if I had anything left over in any of the budget categories, I immediately applied that as an extra payment. The nice thing about online bill pay is that it's just so easy to make as many payments as you want. Sometimes it was $100, sometimes it was $10 or even $3 one month, but every little bit helps. I purchased a printer that was almost free after rebate and applied the rebate to the debt. I did a few side jobs helping a caterer do some prep work; I sold some books on half.com, cleaned out my garage and made $300 from a yard sale, grandma sent me money for my birthday and Christmas, you get the idea. The point is, every single extra penny went right to the debt.

MONTH 4: SET UP BUDGET:
     I made a budget and figured out where exactly my money was going.

MONTH 5: CUT BACK EXPENSES:
     I figured out what I could cut back on or go without. Not only did I figure out what I was giving up would save me I also diligently applied that amount to the snowball. It also really helps to figure out what something is costing you per year. I had no idea I was spending $600 a year just on manicures!

Here's what I gave up:
Cable TV. Got a cheap netflix plan and a roku player instead. Savings: $17/month, $204 a year
Land line phone. Savings: $27/month, $324/year
Gardener. Savings: $40/month, $480/year
Got slower DSL. Savings: $10/month, $120/year
Manicures. Did my own. Savings: $50/month, $600/year
Public Radio Membership. Sorry KQED and KALW, but I have to come first right now. I'll continue to support you later. Savings: $11/month, $132/year
Gym Membership. Savings: $30/month, $360/year
Lunches at work. Savings: $120 month, $1440/year
Starbucks. Savings: $60/month, $720/year

Total extra towards snowball: $365/month, $4,380/year.
Just like that.

MONTH 6:
     I worked on cutting my spending in other ways.
I am an avid reader and I realized one of my biggest expenditures was new books. I gave up my Amazon habit and switched to the library. My local library allows you to browse the catalog online and request books be sent to the branch of your choice. I work 2 blocks from a branch so I just picked up things there. I also used paperbackswap.com, bookmooch.com and swaptree.com to give books I no longer wanted and in return get books I wanted. It only cost me the price of shipping books to other users via media mail. I saved unknown hundreds and hundreds of dollars by making this simple switch.
     For example, in September, I spent $36 on postage to send out used books, books that would otherwise just be sitting around and in return I received about $300 worth of books had I bought them new at retail price. For those who are into DVDs and CDs, swapadvd.com and swapacd.com are also awesome sites. (Other than being a member, I'm not affiliated with any of those sites)
     I stopped buying anything new. If I really, really needed something, I would ask first on freecycle http://www.freecycle.org/ and search craigslist for used items for sale. For example, my hairdryer stopped working about 6 months ago. Instead of running out to buy a new one, I posted an "Item Wanted" listing on the yahoo group and had a new and FREE hair dryer within 24 hours.

Food Budget: I ate the kind of things I normally eat; I just made some simple substitutions. I ate at home instead of eating out. I brought my lunch to work instead of eating out, but I did let myself eat out on Payday Friday. I used coupons and only bought very small amounts of perishable items so there was no waste. I stocked up on items like toilet paper when there was a really good sale, but was careful not to buy too many perishables. Nothing went to waste. I gave up paper towels and used rags instead. I shopped at the grocery outlet instead of Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck)
     Instead of buying new clothes (except for bras, panties and socks) I shopped for things at thrift and consignment stores.
     I know it sounds like I gave a lot of stuff up, but I don't see it that way - I kept thinking about what I was GETTING instead, which is freedom from debt. I still gave myself a small budget for entertainment and frugal dining out once in awhile, and please, nothing could induce me to give up my hairdresser!
You'd be surprised how much you can actually do for FREE if you just look around.
Free Theatre: Lots of theatres need volunteer ushers. You work in the theatre for an hour or so before the show, maybe stuffing envelopes or something. You help seat people before the show and then you get to see the show for free. You often get good seats too. I saw 3 or 4 free show a month this way. You often have to wear black slacks or skirt and a white shirt, but that's a small price to pay for free theatre.

Artist's receptions: You get to mingle and talk with people, see some (hopefully) lovely and interesting art, plus get fed wine and cheese.
I also used squidlist to find cheap and free things to do.

HOW IT FEELS
     I was disciplined and determined and I did it! Thank you consumerist! As of today I am debt free (except for my thankfully low fixed-rate mortgage) and I feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my mind. My spirit feels lighter. I am FREE. I am doing a happy dance! My plan is to continue to live frugally and start building up a savings now. I will never, ever be in that much debt again. I never want to feel the stress an anxiety of owing so much.
     Oh yeah, all during this time, I also put just $40 per month away into a savings account (ING) which I set up as an automatic $20 deduction every payday. I now have $800 to spend guilt-free and after 20 months I'm ready for a vacation. So, as my prize for getting debt free, I just booked a $295 flight to Cancun a bit later in October. I really deserve this vacation for a job well done and best of all? It's NOT going on a credit card.

originally posted on consumerist.com