PokeWHAT?!

I've been told that I shouldn't even post this because everyone really does already know. But I must stay true to myself and this long-since-posted-on blog.

"Pokemon" is an abbreviation of "pocket monsters."

I guess I skipped a whole childhood phase.

Food translations - corn syrup

A few times I've seen a recipe with corn syrup in it, raised an eyebrow and chosen a different recipe. Corn syrup? Sounds bizarre.

I was just browsing Made With Pink's food blog though, and found a "Food Translation" chart. As it turns out, corn syrup is the US equivalent of our golden syrup.

Or so it says. But the more I thought about it the more that didn't seem right. I'm not hugely knowledgeable about sugars, but I always thought that golden syrup was derived from sugar cane, and I assume that corn syrup is derived from corn. Thus I went back to Google to dig a little deeper.

And as it turns out, according to Baking Bites, they are NOT the same thing. They're similar in colour, but golden syrup has a distinctive taste, whereas corn syrup is mild enough that it blends into other flavours, just adding some sweetness. However, the most useful snippet of information, which at the end of the day will aid me in my baking adventures:

The flavors are different, but the two products can be used interchangeably in cooking and baking because they have much the same properties.

If you're into baking, check out my new blog - Cakie's Home Baking. There's probably plenty of stuff over there that you already knew too.

He's no Madonna

Haven't you ever wondered if Dr. Oz has a first name? Well, he does. And it's Mehmet.

Despite what my husband thinks, Dr. Oz is a real life doctor. He works at New York Presbyterian Hospital, directing the Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program and performing over 100 heart surgeries a year. Not a bad effort considering he also tapes 2 shows a day 3 days a week.

He's been married for 26 years and has 4 children - Daphne, Arabella, Zoe and Oliver. Nice.

Back to basics

"Thank you" is not one word.

Two words. With a space between them. Always. Thank you.

The Vitamin C myth

I currently have a mild but annoying sneeze-provoking bout of the flu. At times like these I am more likely than usual to remember my less-than-daily dose of vitamin C supplement. When I'm not sick I usually only take it when I remember that it tastes like orange lollies.

Anyway, just about everyone seems to recommend vitamin C for avoiding/surviving a cold. But while wondering exactly how effective it really is I found this somewhat sad little snippet at webmd.com:

The average adult who suffers with a cold for 12 days a year would still suffer for 11 days a year if that person took a high dose of vitamin C every day during that year.

Which I suppose means that my sporadic little doses probably aren't doing anything at all, except feeding my sweet tooth and delivering, potentially, a little placebo effect.

Mayo Clinic reckons that if you develop a cold while taking vitamin C (ie. this probably does not apply to me or other casual users) you can expect about a 10% reduction in the duration of the cold (15% for children), but there are no significant benefits if you only start taking it after the onset of a cold.

The real winners with vitamin C are people in extreme circumstances. If you're a soldier in the sub-arctic, a skier or a marathon runner, you could use vitamin C to cut your risk of developing a cold by about 50%. Some people get all the perks.

Poppy seeds are evil

A friend of mine had a birthday yesterday, so I baked her a cake, which we consumed today. It was a lemon and poppy seed cake with drizzly icing, and it worked out quite well even though I'd never made it before :)

Last night I developed a nasty headache which made me feel nauseous and gross. Then again, this afternoon, I developed a nasty headache which made me feel nauseous and gross. Coincidence? Hmmm.

I'm well acquainted with the rumour that poppy seed consumption can give you a false positive on a drug test, but what I suddenly began to think about was this: poppy seeds make opium... opium is an opiate... morphine is an opiate... I am allergic to morphine. Well, I suffer an adverse reaction to it, which is close enough to allergic I'd say.

So, having employed the help of ibuprofen and a decent nap to numb the painful throbbing of my head, I got onto Google and consulted the very reputable sounding icanhasscience.com, which informed me that morphine is, in fact, derived from the poppy plant.

Apparently a standard oral does of morphine is between 10 and 30 mg. The concentration of morphine in poppy seeds varies widely, but if you ate about 40g of the most highly concentrated seeds you would ingest the equivalent of a 10 mg oral dose of morphine. So theoretically you have to eat a LOT for it to have any real effect. But the only part of the cake that I ate yesterday was some of the uncooked batter off the sides of the scraped bowl... yet it was still enough to give me a nasty headache?!

I started to doubt my own theory, but then found this comment by SciWo on the icanhasscience.com blog post:

I had adverse reactions to codeine and morphine prescribed after surgery, and I’ve noticed several times that poppyseed bread/bagels give me headaches.

So I guess it isn't just me.

My entire cake only contained 50g of poppy seeds, and I'm sure they weren't even high quality, so I guess I'm just ultra sensitive to morphine. There are other recipes out there that would have been far worse though. Like this one, with a whopping 128g of seeds. I feel sick just thinking about it >_<

Mace vs. pepper spray

"Mace" is not just a different name for pepper spray. Mace is actually tear gas. But it's confusing, because there's a pepper spray manufacturer in the US called Mace Security International.

The effects of pepper spray are really nasty, but one disadvantage is that it must be sprayed into someone's eyes or they have to inhale it directly for it to take effect. On the upside, it's more effective than mace when used on people under the influence of drugs or alcohol (because it doesn't depend on a pain response), and also wild animals.

In Queensland it's not legal (for civilians) to carry mace, pepper spray or capsicum spray.

Racecar

Racecar backwards spells racecar! I genuinely did not know that. And in case you think that's boring, how about this one? "Never odd or even."

Also, Kantong Butter Chicken sauce is not very buttery. It's missing something. (Possibly butter.)

Make your selection

I've seen ads on TV for iselect, a private health insurance comparison site, and thought it seemed like a decent idea to see all the options together if you're going to choose one. So I had a look. And realised that they don't list all the service providers around. What's the point in a one-stop-shop that doesn't have everything in it?

Memories

It's so long since I posted on my blog that I actually, literally, forgot where to find it. Let alone my username or password. Just as well my husband had me in his reading list, and technology expected me to forget how to log in all along. It was ready and waiting. Hello blog. I remember you now.

Coughing your way to fame

While trying to work on assessments recently I inexplicably had this song in my head. I hadn't heard it for a million years, but it just kept coming to mind anyway so I eventually gave in and listened to it. How's that for fossilizing a problem?

As an extension of my procrastination I looked up James Morrison's bio on the ever-reputable Wikipedia. Apparently his distinctively gravelly voice is not just down to his smoking habit - he suffered a really bad case of whooping cough as a baby. He was only given a 30% chance of survival and even then was expected to be pretty severely brain damaged.

Instead he just has a really great voice. High five for silver linings.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Reptiles sleep, but they don’t dream.

Birds sleep and dream a little.

All mammals dream during sleep.

Info from an article called "Who Needs Sleep?" by Kirsten Weir (Current Health 2, Oct 2005; 32, 2)

Iiiiiiiinternet

The Internet (capital "I") is the largest internet (with a small "i") in the world.

The Suit You Can Wash in the Shower

Looking for a way to save some time? How about getting a suit you can wash while you shower?

The Shower Clean Suit = "dawn of a revolution in business attire"?

Konaka Co. released this one in 2008 so I guess they're actually old news by now.

Suicide prevention

I recently read a very sad article on Japan Today about Japan's suicide rate. Last year, for the 12th consecutive year, over 30,000 people in Japan took their own lives, accounting for 3% of all deaths there. Russia is the only country with a higher suicide rate (and that thought makes me sad too, for the Russians).

After reading about that I heard a radio ad for Salvation Army suicide prevention training and I thought I'd look it up, then I checked out what Lifeline has too, and I came to the realisation that suicide really is no small problem here in Australia either.

According to a very recent Lifeline article suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians under the age of 44.

I had to read that a few times before it sunk in. Suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians under the age of 44.

Deaths from suicide are almost double road related deaths for men and women in Australia between the ages of 15 and 44. So every time you read in the newspaper about a young person killed on the road, there's almost two young people you don't read about who've taken their own lives.

Everyone has a role to play in suicide prevention. What's yours?

- You can do something about suicide prevention (women)

- You can do something about suicide prevention (men)

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. There is HOPE.

Catfish = crazy

New learning courtesy of a chickpea.

Catfish have taste buds all over their bodies.

"Catfish are swimming tongues," says Dr. John Caprio of Louisiana State University. "You can't touch any place on a catfish without touching thousands of taste buds. To use an analogy, it's as if the tip of your tongue grew out and covered your body."

Gross.

Apparently their other senses are great too, but this one is the creepiest if you ask me.

Whaling and body language

I'm supposed to be researching for a Japanese lesson plan but keep getting distracted.

An Australian guy (I don't know anything about him, but the accent gives his country of origin away pretty quickly) has a youtube culture series under the username TheJapanChannelDcom. He seems to know his stuff.

I found his take on the whaling issue insightful. He makes some fair points, especially at around 5:53 of the 10 minute video.

I also really liked his short description of some Japanese body language. He does the head tilting and air-through-the-teeth thing (from ~1.43 onwards) really well.

In the sky

I find it strange that there are people out there who are not pilots for a living but possess the qualifications to fly a plane and/or helicopter. I think that the majority of those people are very rich. Maybe if we were all rich we'd all have flying qualifications.

Here's my hastily constructed list of some famous people who can apparently legally fly something:

• John Travolta
• Harrisson Ford
• Dr. Phil
• Angelina Jolie
• Ben Affleck
• Clint Eastwood
• Morgan Freeman
• Dennis Quaid
• Tom Cruise
• Jay Leno
• Prince Charles
• Fergie
• George Bush (both W. and Snr.)

I somehow had the idea in my head that it's not easy to get a pilot's license of any kind. But maybe you do just need a lot of money. Or maybe I'm underestimating the capabilities of the people on that list... maybe.

When catastrophe strikes

I know how to use a computer, but I'm relatively shortcut illiterate.

Only recently did I discover the joys of Ctrl + z. Undo. Magic.

Sure you probably already knew that, but I bet someone still doesn't.

Hurt locker

I saw The Hurt Locker this week, but didn't know what the title meant and I don't think it was actually mentioned in the movie. I asked my friend Google to fill me in.

hurt locker
noun. a period of immense, inescapable physical or emotional pain.
Source: Urban Dictionary

BBC News has a whole article on the term 'hurt locker.' In it they quote Mark Boal, the film's writer, who said, "It means slightly different things to different people, but all the definitions point to the same idea. It's somewhere you don't want to be."