Breakfast Granola for 4/15/10

Damn Tax Day! Meanwhile, it's easy to get distracted when it's cold...but distracted isn't always so bad.

Found on Funtasticus.

Improv from Jim and Frank camera test for Muppet Movie

I hate cilantro for a reason

The NY Times tells me something I already knew:

What is it about cilantro that makes it so unpleasant for people in cultures that don’t much use it?

Some people may be genetically predisposed to dislike cilantro, according to often-cited studies by Charles J. Wysocki of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. But cilantrophobe genetics remain little known and aren’t under systematic investigation. Meanwhile, history, chemistry and neurology have been adding some valuable pieces to the puzzle.

[....]

Modern cilantrophobes tend to describe the offending flavor as soapy rather than buggy. I don’t hate cilantro, but it does sometimes remind me of hand lotion. Each of these associations turns out to make good chemical sense.

Flavor chemists have found that cilantro aroma is created by a half-dozen or so substances, and most of these are modified fragments of fat molecules called aldehydes. The same or similar aldehydes are also found in soaps and lotions and the bug family of insects.

Soaps are made by fragmenting fat molecules with strongly alkaline lye or its equivalent, and aldehydes are a byproduct of this process, as they are when oxygen in the air attacks the fats and oils in cosmetics. And many bugs make strong-smelling, aldehyde-rich body fluids to attract or repel other creatures.

The published studies of cilantro aroma describe individual aldehydes as having both cilantrolike and soapy qualities. Several flavor chemists told me in e-mail messages that they smell a soapy note in the whole herb as well, but still find its aroma fresh and pleasant.

Found on the newstubes.

Breakfast Granola for 4/14/10

ONOZ! Cover your poopers, it's Ben Roethlisberger!

Shoop by yours truly.

Basic black

I don't like licorice. Image unrelated.

Marie-Claude Bourbonnais was found on Hollywood Tuna.

Breakfast Granola for 4/13/10

And now for something completely different: art, this time by Ryan Kinnaird. I was first acquainted with his work on the covers of Playstation Magazine, and a few comic covers. Apparently, he also does character designs for Sodapop Miniatures.

Stumbled upon Fiametta via Deviantart.

Somebody write that screenplay!

La Colombiana sounds like more like a nom de guerre -- in the literal sense, like some drug kingpin or jungle warlord -- than a Maxim Hometown Hottie, but here she is.

Found on F-listed.

To add to a damp Monday...

Kim Kardashian, at least slightly moist.

Found on F-listed.

Breakfast Granola for 4/12/10

Some folks like seafood for breakfast; not me. But as Olivia Munn would tell you, "Sea lion vs. Octopus = FUCKING NATURE!"



Found on io9.

The "c" in E=mc2

The speed of light can't be exceeded without causing some kind of weirdness to the universe as we currently, physically understand it. However, it can be slowed down. But what good is that?

According to io9 there are two reasons. A1, fictionally:

Bob Shaw's 1968 short story "Light of Other Days" proposed an interesting use for materials with a high refractive index – use slow glass with a refractive index so high that light takes a year to pass through it to "record" pleasant nature scenes. Then people living in drab cities could place these "scenedows" in their houses and enjoy a year's worth of lakeside bird watching instead of the laundromat across the street. L. Sprague de Camp had weaponized slow glass technology earlier, in "The Exalted," printed in a 1940 issue of Astounding. He used a rod that trapped light, then released it all at once to explosive effect.

And A2, in practice:

Modern researchers have found an even more powerful use for slow light. In the last ten years, scientists have managed to slow light to a crawl and even stop it using special gas diffusions excited in particular ways with laser beams. When scientists stop light, they aren't actually halting a photon – they're embedding its quantum state into the nearby atoms. Later, they use another laser pulse to activate those atoms and make them emit an identical photon. And by later, I mean almost instantly, because the quantum state starts to decay in less than one second. The ability to slow, stop and generate photons in this way is a major step on the road to developing quantum computers.

Breakfast Granola for 4/9/10

I'd seen Rebecca Witchard previously, and while she wasn't of poor quality the images were.

Thanks to Hit Hip Hop this has now been rectified. News to me: she's Australian and aiming to become a lawyer. Thus, she can file the TRO against you on her own.

And as she would tell you herself, she was born and raised in the outback. And there's nothing wrong with the out back.

Meanwhile, at the stool...

A new ore has been located: Mya Jane. Never heard of her, even on accident. That changes.

Found on Hit Hip Hop.

Breakfast Granola for 4/8/10

For today's breakfast, we'll be riding the pony with Jordan Carver.

Found on Hollywood Tuna.

Live from New York...

...it's Kim Kardashian going to visit Regis & Kelly.

Found on Hollywood Tuna after realizing there's a lack of Kim Kardashian around here.

Breakfast Granola for 4/7/10

Bulletproof t-shirts? io9 says yes:

Chemists discovered how to turn cotton fibers to boron carbide, creating armor from t-shirts.

Though the process is still experimental, it could lead to extremely flexible, strong body armor that weighs far less than the current models.

According to Chemistry World:

In the research, squares were cut from 100 per cent cotton T-shirts and soaked in a solution of boron powder and a nickel-based catalyst, before being heated to around 1100ºC for four hours under a flow of argon [to prevent the material from] burning. 'Cotton fibres have lots of small pores which can be used to trap the powder,' [lead researcher Xiaodong] Li explains. 'During the process the cotton fibres change to carbon fibres - which react with the boron powder, producing [boron carbide].'

Better late than never

It's well past Easter, but it's fuzzy and pink bunny Jordan Carver. And that's all right.

Found on Hollywood Tuna.

Breakfast Granola for 4/6/10

Great prophet Confusius reminds us, "Thongs not best thing in world, but close to it."

Found on Funtasticus.