Read more about the article Lawns

Lawns

Beautiful, orderly, ecological problems.

It used to be that, if you owned land, you used it to grow plants for some kind of profit (food, timber, fabric, etc.). Decorative manicured grounds have no monetary value. To keep a grassy lawn was a sign of wealth – it was a status symbol that you had so much money you could use some of your land for pure ornamentation. Beyond being a “waste of space”, you also had to pay for people to maintain the lawn, making it even more expensive.

Our modern idea of a meticulously manicured grassy lawn has its roots in 18th century European aristocracy. While earlier palaces featured intensely manicured gardens with topiaries and geometric lines (such as the Palace of Versailles), 18th century English garden design drew inspiration from the pastoral landscapes of Italian paintings. This new style featured wide open spaces that, while manicured, looked more natural. For example, some estates used ha-ha walls as barriers to keep grazing animals away from the house while offering the illusion of an uninterrupted natural view of the grounds.

As for the upkeep, grazing animals were sometimes used to maintain the lawn in the distance (and were a visual addition to the “natural” scene) but the areas closest to the house were tended to by men using hand tools. Even after the invention of the lawn mower in 1830, which helped increase the number of grassy lawns, these trimmed green fields were found primarily around the homes of the wealthy.

Imported Grass

17th century colonists arriving in North America were generally preoccupied with trying to stay alive and didn’t have the time for decorative lawns. They were also missing the grass itself. The East Coast lacked the types of grasses necessary to turn into lawns. What’s worse is that these were the kinds of grasses that best served as food for the colonists’ grazing animals. As such the animals over grazed the native available plants, eventually turning in desperation to eating poisonous plants (to their detriment).

To solve this problem colonists began to import grass from Europe for their cows, sheep, etc. This is how many of the grasses that are so common in America got here. For example Kentucky bluegrass, one of the most popular grasses in America, is a non-native/invasive species and was imported from Europe.

Suburban America

As settlers spread around North America so too did grass. Throughout the 19th century as people became more established, grassy lawns slowly became a feature of homes and parks. After the Civil War the more prosperous northern states adopted lawns sooner than southern states. Public parks and cemeteries increased the popularity of grassy lawns. Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted designed one of the earliest suburbs in 1868 with his plans for Riverside, Illinois. He set the homes back 30ft from the street and placed grassy lawns out front. What really democratized lawns however was the housing boom in the mid 20th-century.

With the 1944 G.I. Bill millions of veterans were able to receive home loans which helped them buy homes and move to the suburbs. Abe Levitt, who created Levittowns, said that “A fine lawn makes a frame for a dwelling …”. Millions of homes were suddenly being created with millions of lawns. As so many families were becoming home owners lawns became less about economic status and more about cultural conformity. A well-maintained lawn was the sign of a good neighbor, and an unkempt lawn was subversive. Lawn care became big business and articles about lawn care surged in post-war America. With color TV more people could watch professional sports (especially golf) and see what was possible for their own lawns.

The Wasteland

Today there is an estimated 40 million acres of grass in America. Grass is America’s greatest crop all while being (generally) inedible – lawns serve almost no functional purpose other than looking nice. Cutting grass regularly encourages it to spread out, edging out other plants and reducing biodiversity. Interestingly more affluent homes which can afford the time & money needed for a more manicured lawn actually have lower biodiversity than lower-income homes. The nicest looking lawns are, paradoxically, the worst for the environment.

As for carbon emissions grass is a carbon sink (which is a good thing), meaning it captures carbon emissions and stores it in its roots. Unfortunately the act of mowing the lawn contributes far more carbon dioxide than is captured. Gas powered lawn equipment produce more air pollution than cars over comparable periods of time (For example: the air pollution of 1 hour of mowing equals around 100 miles of driving). Lawn mowers account for around 5% of America’s air pollution. Having and maintaining a lawn ultimately produces more dangerous carbon dioxide than it captures. Further, lawn equipment in America uses around 800 million gallons of gasoline annually of which about 17 million gallons are spilled and never even used.

Homeowners use 10 times the amount of pesticides and fertilizers per acre than farmers, and many of these chemicals find their way into the water supply. Watering these lawns uses 30-60% of urban fresh water – all for a crop that isn’t eaten and just sits there.

Go Native

An alternative to lawns are trees or other native plants that require less maintenance (less gas powered machines) and improve biodiversity. Native plants are better for butterflies, bees, and other helpful insects. This in turn is better for birds and other animals. Planting native plants, not using pesticides, reducing the size of your grass lawn, etc. creates a healthier and more bird friendly yard. Break free of the conformist thinking that you must have a green carpet around your house.

Read more about the article Brain Freeze

Brain Freeze

The short headache triggered by cold food and/or drinks touching the inside of your mouth.

To start, brain freeze (aka “ice cream headache” or “cold-stimulus headache”) only affects about 30-50% of the population. Most people can eat ice cream and drink extra cold drinks without any fear of reprisal from their nervous system.

Brain freeze occurs when the roof of your mouth or the back of your throat suddenly come into contact with cold food, cold drinks, or even cold air. The trigeminal nerve in your head reacts to the cold by telling the arteries connected to the meninges (the membranes surrounding your brain) to contract to conserve warmth (much like how our bodies react to the cold in general). Then the body sends more warm blood up to the head telling those same arteries to expand. This quick succession of vasoconstriction and vasodilation of blood vessels triggers pain receptors along the trigeminal nerve which creates the pain you feel behind the eyes or forehead during a brain freeze.

A lot of nerve

While we all have a trigeminal nerve its varying sensitivity may explain why not everyone gets brain freeze. For example 37% of Americans may get brain freeze but only around 15% of Danish adults do. Further, 93% of people who get migraines are also susceptible to brain freeze.

Read more about the article The Amen Break

The Amen Break

The most sampled drum beat of all time used in thousands of songs and helped launch new genres of music.

The 1963 film Lilies of the Field stars Sidney Poitier as a traveling jack-of-all-trades who encounters a group of German speaking nuns in the Arizona desert. As he performs odd jobs for them he also helps teach them English through song, and in particular he teaches them the song Amen. The song is a traditional gospel song which, along with the movie, were inspiring to a young Curtis Mayfield who recorded a new version of the song in 1964 with his band The Impressions.

In Lilies of the Field Sidney Poitier teaches the nuns the traditional gospel song Amen.

After watching Lilies of the Field, Curtis Mayfield was inspired to write a more modern version of Amen.

The version of Amen recorded by The Impressions then served as inspiration in 1969 for an even funkier instrumental version of the song by The Winstons titled Amen, Brother. At 1:26 the song breaks for a 5.2 second drum solo by drummer Gregory Coleman. This drum solo has become one of the most prolific drum solos of all time.

The Winstons were inspired by The Impressions version of Amen, and wrote the instrumental song Amen, Brother. The drum break at 1:26 in has become the most sampled drum break of all time.

Sampling and the rise of Hip Hop

In 1980s New York the sampler, combined with the turntable, helped create hip hop. The sampler allowed musicians to take pieces of music, especially drum beats, and transform them into new songs. They could loop audio clips, rearrange the notes, change the pitch, change the tempo, etc. An additional asset in this new genre were bootleg records of collected beats that artists could sample. In 1986 Amen, Brother was included on Ultimate Breaks and Beats which was immediately popular for the drum solo which became known as the “Amen break”.

The Amen break at different speeds.

The beat that launched a thousand songs

The Amen break soon became a staple of sampling. Its popularity and influence can be heard throughout early hip hop. The Amen break became even more versatile once it was broken down into its individual components where each sound was isolated, allowing musicians to rearrange the pieces. Entirely new genres of music such as Hardcore, Jungle, Drum and Bass, etc. wouldn’t exist without the Amen break. While early hip hop tended to slow down the Amen break (such as in NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, DJs in Jungle sped it up into a frenzy (as heard in Incredible by M-Beat).

NWA’s Straight Outta Compton uses the Amen break as the drum beat throughout the song, but slowed down.

Jungle music took the Amen break, sped it up, and would rearrange the beats, as heard here in M-Beat’s Incredible.

The Amen break can be found in at least 5,617 songs. Some examples of songs using the Amen break include Salt-N-Pepa’s I Desire, Jay-Z’s Can’t Knock the Hustle, UK Apachi’s Original Nuttah, The Invisible Man’s The Beginning, the theme song to the TV show Futurama, etc.

Success or “Success”

The Winstons were never compensated for any of this. The Amen break took on a life of its own without the band. Today, you would clear the use of a song and pay royalties to the original artist but the Amen break became popular at a time when artists weren’t concerned with copyright laws and were more focused on their art. Richard Spencer of The Winstons says he only became aware that the drum solo from Amen, Brother had become the Amen break in 1996, at which point the beat was everywhere.

Over the years there have been multiple attempts to raise money for Spencer and for The Winstons’ drummer Gregory Coleman to compensate them for the unlicensed sampling of the song, but to mixed success. In 2006 Gregory Coleman died, reportedly homeless, having never seen any royalties from his contribution to music history.

Added info: the Winstons’ Amen, Brother was actually the B-side to Color Him Father, which won the 1970 Grammy award for Best R&B song.

Another incredibly popular sample of the time was the Think break from the 1972 song Think (About It) by Lyn Collins and James Brown, famous for it’s “Woo! Yeah”. The Think break is perhaps most famously used in 1988’s It Takes Two by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock.

A deep-dive into the Amen break, and its copyright implications, by Landon Proctor.
Read more about the article Grip the Raven

Grip the Raven

Charles Dickens’s pet raven Grip helped inspire Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven.

In the first half of the 19th century Charles Dickens had a pet raven named Grip who, by all accounts, was quite the handful. Grip was talkative, bossy, and aggressive. She intimidated the family’s mastiff Turk (she would steal food from his bowl) and would also bite the Dickens children. Eventually Dickens exiled Grip to the shed where, being a mischievous raven, she got into a can of white paint (which contained lead). On March 12, 1841 Dickens wrote to his friend, the illustrator Daniel Maclise, that Grip had died.

Because he loved Grip Dickens had her stuffed and mounted in a case complete with a woodland setting of branches and leaves. He also had Maclise create a portrait of her. Despite Grip’s difficult personality it didn’t put Dickens off to having more ravens as pets, the next of which he also named Grip (who, according to Dickens’s daughter Mamie, was also a handful).

Grip the raven inspired Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe.

Quoth the Raven …

In 1842 Dickens and his wife traveled to America. As part of his tour around the states he met with Edgar Allan Poe who had favorably reviewed Dickens’s 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge. In the novel the titular character of Barnaby Rudge has a talkative pet raven whose name just happens to be Grip. Poe was particularly interested in Grip, whom he described as “intensely amusing” and liked that Grip the character was based on Dickens’s own real pet Grip.

A few years after learning about Grip, Poe would write his most defining work, 1845’s The Raven. In the poem a raven flies into the room of the grief-stricken narrator, tormenting him that he will never be reunited with his lost love. It’s widely believed by Poe scholars that the inspiration for the bird in the poem was Grip the raven (both the real Grip and the fictional Grip). There are numerous similarities between the bird in The Raven and Grip the raven in Barnaby Rudge.

the Free Library of Philadelphia

After Dickens died in 1870 Grip was sold at auction. She was eventually bought by Colonel Richard Gimbel (a wealthy member of the Philadelphia department store family) who was an avid collector of both Dickens and Poe. He also purchased the Philadelphia home of Edgar Allan Poe which was later donated to the National Park Service. Grip, as well as the rest of the Gimbel collection of Dickens and Poe artifacts (including the only known copy of The Raven written in Poe’s hand), were bequeathed to the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1971. Today Grip can be found, still in her case, at the end of a series of hallways on the 3rd floor of the Central Library in the Rare Books department.

Grip at the end of the 3rd floor hallway in the Rare Books department of the Philadelphia Free Library
Grip sits in her case at the end of the hallways in the Rare Books department of the Philadelphia Free Library central branch on Vine Street.
Plaque from the Friends of Libraries

Grip the mischievous raven inspired two literary giants. The Raven the poem then went on to inspire untold others including the naming of the Baltimore Ravens (the only football team named after a piece of literature).

Added info: Grip was not the only Dickens pet that had a life after death. After Bob the family cat died Dickens had one of his paws turned into a letter opener.

Also, while crows and ravens are fairly similar there are some easy ways to tell them apart. It’s frequently written that “ravens are larger than crows” but without seeing the two side-by-side it can be difficult if you haven’t previously seen both species. Perhaps the easiest way is the tail feathers which, when in flight, the feathers of a raven come to a point like a “V” (like the “v” in “raven”). A crow’s tail feathers are more of a straight line.

Read more about the article Color Blindness

Color Blindness

The visual condition that changes what colors you see, which is mostly found in men and is mostly hereditary.

To start, being color blind almost never means someone is blind to color, as if they’re living in a black & white movie. “Color blind” usually just means someone doesn’t see the full spectrum of colors the way the rest of us. To understand color blindness we have to understand two concepts: light and our eyes.

Let there be light

The colors that we see are photons moving at different wavelengths/frequencies. They’re part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The full electromagnetic spectrum ranges from Gamma rays (the shortest, highest frequency waves – quite dangerous) to radio waves (the longest, lowest frequency waves – not so dangerous). What we call visible light is radiation in a particular range of wavelengths. Within this bandwidth the colors of violet and blue have the shortest wavelengths while oranges and reds have the longest. Through evolution we have developed two small biological machines capable of detecting this range of wavelengths … our eyes.

the electromagnetic spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum ranges from gamma rays to radio waves, photons moving at a variety of wavelengths & frequencies.

Eyes: rods & cones

Our retinas have two kinds of photoreceptive cells: rods and cones. Rods see light & dark while cones see color. We have about 120 million rods per eye and but only 6-7 million cones per eye. Further, instead of just one kind of cone cell we have three and each kind is tuned to a certain range of wavelengths (short, medium, and long). To put it another way, our three kinds of cone cells are each tuned to see certain ranges of colors – blues (short), greens (medium), reds (long).

Bringing it all together, color blindness is when one (or more) of your cone cell types are either defective or missing entirely. The result is that you are unable to properly see certain wavelengths of colors.

Color Blindness

Why does color blindness happen? While color blindness can be an acquired condition most of the time it’s genetic. The most common forms of color blindness are carried on the X chromosome, and because men only have one X chromosome, if it’s defective they’re out of luck. This is why men are more commonly color blind than women. Women have two X chromosomes so a functioning X chromosome will compensate for a defective one. As a result around 8% of men are color blind compared to only around 0.5% of women. That said color blindness isn’t evenly distributed across men – it has a higher prevalence amongst Caucasian men than other ethnicities.

red-green color blindness is the most common form of color blindness
Red-green color blindness is a group of different kinds of color blindness. It’s the most common form of color blindness.

Because cones come in three varieties, and those cones can be defective or absent, the various combinations of factors means there are many forms of color blindness. The most common type is “red-green” color blind (which is a few kinds grouped together) where reds and greens aren’t seen properly and shift to look more like yellows and browns. This is the result of the medium and long (green and red) cone cells being defective or absent. Red-green color blindness accounts for about 99% of all color blindness with about 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women having it.

Blue-yellow color blindness is where blues and greens aren’t seen properly. It’s also genetic but it’s not carried on the X chromosome so men and women are affected relatively evenly. It’s quite rare – around 0.01% of men and women are blue-yellow color blind.

Are you seeing what I’m seeing?

The effects of color blindness range from the benign to the dangerous. Accidentally wearing clothes that don’t match can be embarrassing but confusing “stop” for “go” on a traffic light can be dangerous. Color blind individuals can have difficulty determining the ripeness of fruits & vegetables. They can see sports jerseys as similar and have difficulty tracking games. The designer shorthand that red means error/bad while green means success/good (the traffic light analogy) can make a variety of safety features, dashboards, and websites more difficult to use. One positive is that color blind individuals may be better at detecting camouflage.

What do other animals see?

The concept of “color blindness” is relative. What most humans consider normal is not what most bees would consider normal, or dogs, or any other species. So when people say that most other animals are color blind it’s just that these species can’t see the same spectrum of colors that humans normally see.

To start, most mammals are red-green color blind (which to them is normal). They tend to only have two cone cell types lacking the third we have to see a wider range of colors. So when a dog can’t find the green tennis ball in the green grass, it’s probably because they really can’t see it (especially if it has stopped rolling). Dogs rely on movement to distinguish between things more than we do. That said dogs have more rods than humans so when it seems like they’re looking at something in the dark, and you can’t see anything, they’re probably seeing something beyond your vision.

The old idea that bulls dislike the color red is untrue – they’re red-green color blind. When a matador waves a red/pink cape to attract a bull the bull is responding to the motion of the cape, not the color. Dolphins and other marine animals see even less due to having only the long wavelength cone type and are monochromatic.

Beyond normal sight

Deer are red-green color blind but can see more shorter wavelength colors than we can including some amount of ultraviolet which to us is invisible. Some laundry detergents contain brightening agents that are intended to brighten the colors of your clothes but can make clothes look bright blue to deer. The result is that, even if your clothes are camouflaged, the deer probably saw you long before you saw the deer. That said to red-green color blind animals the orange of a tiger’s fur does not stand out like it does to us and instead blends in with the environment making it more effective than it might seem. Similarly this is why you can wear bright orange while hunting – the humans with the guns will see the orange easily, but the animals not as much.

It is believed that the artist Claude Monet was able to see some amount of ultraviolet. Because of cataracts in both eyes at the age of 82 he had the lens of his left eye removed. The result was he could not only see better but he could see color he had never seen before. This new range of colors can be seen in his work where he began to use a whitish purple more so than in his previous paintings.

Mantis shrimp have twelve different color receptors, four times more than our three. It was believed that equipped with so many receptor types they could see colors far beyond humans but now scientist think that mantis shrimp are actually worse at seeing color than we are. Our brains mix the information from our three cone types to better see a range of colors. Mantis shrimp are not equipped to do so and so they need more receptor types for each color. Mantis shrimp actually see less colors than we do despite having more receptor types.

Even beyond seeing ultraviolet, some animals can detect/see the Earth’s magnetic fields. It’s believed that robins can see magnetic field lines as a darker shading on the normal colors they already see, but they can only see it through their right eyes and only on clear days. When cryptochrome molecules in their right eyes are struck by blue light the molecules become active and allow robins to see magnetic fields which they can use to navigate as they migrate north & south. Interestingly, non-migratory bird species seem to have less sensitivity to magnetic fields than migratory birds.

Finally, contrary to popular misconception, bats are not blind and some actually have quite decent sight. While they are red-green color blind like most other mammals they have an ultraviolet sensitivity that helps them hunt as well as detect predators. All of this in addition to echolocation means they are quite capable of seeing and navigating the world around them. That said, some species of bats as well as other nocturnal animals have no cones at all and are really truly color blind.

Read more about the article Corporate Jargon

Corporate Jargon

The intentionally confusing language of business, politics, and advertising that helps the speaker fit in, lie, and pretend to say something when saying nothing.

After WWII there was increasing interest in the sociology of leadership, how groups of people interact, etc. The military as well as corporations (such as General Electric, AT&T, IBM, etc.) wanted to know the most efficient ways to run their organizations. They wanted to know how workers could find personal fulfillment in the workplace while also increasing profits. They turned to researchers and consultants to help them manage their growing workforces. This was the dawn of corporate jargon.

Corporate jargon (e.g. customer-centric, CSAT, flywheel, hard stop, disrupt, in the loop, stakeholders, value added, value stream, synergy, restructure, disrupt, circle-back, think outside of the box, paradigm shift …) is a product of post-WWII consulting. Corporate jargon is the language of white-collar business – it’s metaphors, acronyms, euphemisms, and other linguistic tools used to dress up ideas.

Mid-century consultants peppered their advice with this new business speak. Their clients heard these terms and used the same jargon towards their coworkers, who then told other coworkers, etc. Over time the business lexicon changed & grew as it spread around the world like a virus.

Doublespeak

Corporate jargon is a form of doublespeak and doublespeak is designed to deceive. It’s a way to obfuscate the truth. George Orwell’s ideas of “doublethink” and “newspeak” in Nineteen Eighty-Four are the basis of our modern idea of doublespeak. You find doublespeak not just in business but in politics and advertising as well. It’s a way of speaking that can make it seem like you’re saying something when you’re saying nothing at all. It can make the simple seem complex. More dangerously it can make intolerable concepts seem benign – “downsizing” instead of “we’re laying people off”, “gaming” instead of “gambling”, “collateral damage” instead of “we accidentally killed/hurt civilians.”

In the closing of his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language (which you can download here) Orwell says that “Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Doublespeak isn’t about communication it’s designed to achieve conformity, or as Joseph Goebbels said, “We do not talk to say something, but to obtain a certain effect.”

The court of King Louis XIV found numerous ways to emulate him including unneeded anal fistula surgery.

The in-crowd

Despite knowing that corporate jargon is nonsense people keep using it, and not just to lie or confuse. Using this kind of speech can serve as a signifier that you’re part of the powerful in-crowd, that you’re a serious member of the workplace. Linking right back to how corporate jargon spread in the first place, people use the words & phrases they hear their manager say and they, in turn, use the same words when talking with coworkers.

Using corporate speak is but the latest example in a long line of things subordinates have done to curry favor with their superiors. In the mid 17th century French King Louis XIV began to lose his hair (a side effect of syphilis). He turned to wearing a wig to hide this problem. Soon other members of court also took to wearing wigs so as to copy the style of the king and seek his favor. More extreme is when Louis required a surgery for an anal fistula and, again to be like the boss, other members of court also got the surgery (even if it wasn’t needed). In the court of Louis XVI & Marie Antoinette some women got special pouf hair styles constructed to advertise that they had been inoculated against smallpox just like the king & queen had been — people finding ways to signal that they are (or want to be) like the people in power.

People have always found ways to appeal to those in power and to signal their membership in a tribe. People want to be a part of the in-crowd. While corporate jargon is relatively new the motivations behind it are nothing new.

Bonus: have fun (while a part of you dies) using a corporate jargon generator.

The king, George Carlin on soft language and doublespeak.

On the usage of corporate jargon.
Read more about the article Diamonds are not forever, but pretty close

Diamonds are not forever, but pretty close

Diamonds very slowly degrade into graphite … but the sun, the solar system, and many of the black holes will have died long before then.

When thinking about diamonds we can think of the Shawshank Redemption line that, “Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes really… pressure… and time”. Diamonds mined from the Earth are carbon atoms that have been compressed over long periods of time (in the billions of years) under enormous amounts of pressure.

The sands of time

The underground pressure that forms a diamond also holds it together. Once removed from the ground the carbon atoms very, very, slowly rearrange into graphite. Graphite is a more stable arrangement of carbon atoms than a diamond, but “more stable” is extremely relative. Under normal conditions a diamond sitting in your house would take an estimated 10 to the power of 80 years (1080 years) to become graphite, which is:

100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years

One with 80 zeros after it, years. To put that in perspective, the universe is only around 14 billion years old, or 14,000,000,000 years old. A wildly shorter period of time.

The slow death of the universe

So what will life be like when diamonds begin to lose their luster? Nothing lasts forever, including our sun and the universe as we know it. Our sun is scheduled to become a red giant star, expanding in size to engulf Mercury, Venus, and probably Earth, in about 5 billion years. But before that happens the increasing brightness of the sun will kill off all life on Earth in about 1 billion years.

If humanity takes its diamonds aboard a spaceship (with standard Earth like conditions), and sails the universe through space & time, it will theoretically take until the Black Hole Era for the diamonds to become graphite. The Black Hole Era will be from 1043 to approximately 10100 years from now. Leading up to the Black Hole Era the stars will have burned out and the planets (and your diamonds) will have decayed because their protons fell apart. In this time of darkness the black holes of the universe will decay and evaporate into nothingness … and then, finally, your (theoretically still existent) diamonds will have become graphite.

Added info: in 1947 De Beers launched the marketing campaign that “A Diamond Is Forever” (which they used to create our modern idea of the engagement ring). Also learn more about the carat measurement of diamonds (and the other karats, carets, & carrots).

Crash Course Astronomy discusses the long … long, future in store for our universe.

And because it’s an incredible song, and it mentions diamonds (albeit as a metaphor), and it will surely be the soundtrack of our interstellar space travels … Pink Floyd’s Shine On You Crazy Diamond.
Read more about the article Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th

The superstition that’s the combination of two separate superstitions (and a lot of magical thinking).

Superstitions are ideas that unrelated things are connected in some supernatural way. They’re frequently practices that are thought to bring about good or bad luck. Knocking on wood, walking under ladders, black cats, four leaf clovers, etc. are all classic western superstitions. Astrology and other fortune telling methods have a similar kind of magical thinking. The superstition of Friday the 13th is a combination of two separate superstitions: Fridays + the number 13.

From the Norse gods, to the Last Supper, thirteen people at a table has made 13 an unlucky number.

The unlucky number

One of the earliest examples of 13 being an unlucky number comes from Norse mythology. Loki was the uninvited 13th god to attend a feast following the recent slaying of the god Baldr (who died because Loki had tricked the blind god Höðr into inadvertently killing him). Another unlucky dinner with 13 members was the Last Supper where Judas betrayed Jesus. This spurred a related number 13 superstition that dinners with 13 members are unlucky. The first person to rise from the table will be in store for ill fortune (akin to how Judas was the first to rise from the Last Supper and was met with ill fortune). However various workarounds include dividing the guests across two tables or just having everyone rise at the same time (which seem like pretty simple hacks).

Another reason 13 is considered unlucky is that it throws off the satisfying “completeness” of 12. There are 12 months in the year, 12 signs of the western zodiac, there were 12 gods of Olympus, the 12 labors of Hercules, the aforementioned 12 Nordic gods in attendance at the the meal following Baldr’s death, 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles, etc.

Over time western culture’s fear of 13 has spread to a wide variety of outlets. Over 80% of tall buildings skip counting the 13th floor and instead call it the 14th floor. Hotels sometimes skip having 13th rooms, the 13th card in the major arcana of the tarot deck is the card for death, the 13th loaf of bread in a baker’s dozen was sometimes said to be for the Devil, cruise ships tend to skip having a 13th floor, in Florence some houses which should have an address of 13 are given 12 1/2, etc.

The superstition that Friday is unlucky is largely because of the Good Friday crucifixion of Jesus as well as other Bible stories.

It’s Friday I’m in … trouble

The fear of Friday has mostly Judeo-Christian origins. Jesus was said to have been crucified on a Friday (or perhaps it was a Wednesday). The start of the Great Flood and the confusion at the Tower of Babel were both said to have taken place on a Friday. Eve supposedly tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit, and the resulting expulsion from the Garden of Eden, took place on a Friday. Further Cain killed Abel on a Friday. Unfortunately the Bible is silent on what calendar system was in use in the Garden of Eden or how they had Fridays at all.

Eating meat on a Friday is considered unlucky because it’s reminiscent of death and the crucifixion (but eating fish is apparently exempt from this bad luck somehow). Cutting your nails on a Friday is also considered unlucky for similar severing of the body related reasons. Over time Fridays became an inauspicious day to begin or finish things. Starting a voyage, starting a new job, finishing the production of an article of clothing, moving house, getting married, giving birth, etc. on a Friday have all been considered unlucky.

That said if you die on a Good Friday there’s a superstition that you go right to Heaven.

The 1868 Friday the 13th death of Rossini is one of the first instances of Friday the 13th being unlucky but the superstition became popular during the 20th century.

Two great tastes that taste great together

Bringing these two superstitions together seemed inevitable, the super-superstition of bad luck on Friday the 13th, but it’s relatively new. Friday the 13th is first mentioned as unlucky in the 19th century with the most famous example being the Friday the 13th, November 1868 death of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini.

Friday the 13th didn’t become more widely unlucky in pop culture until the 20th century. Most people credit the 1907 Thomas Lawson novel Friday, the Thirteenth, about a stockbroker who chooses that date to manipulate (and crash) the stock market, as the popularization of the Friday the 13th superstition.

But like all superstitions, an unlucky day & date combination is inconsistent and culturally specific. While English speaking countries think of Friday the 13th as unlucky, in Spain and Greece it’s Tuesday the 13th that’s supposed to be unlucky, but in Italy it’s Friday the 17th.

It’s all in your mind

Ultimately the idea that Fridays, or the number 13, or the combination of Friday the 13th, are in any way unlucky, is nonsense. If they were real they’d be universally held beliefs (not to mention some objective proof). Instead these three superstitions are mostly just inconsistent western ideas – people in the rest of the world are going about their lives unaware of the danger they’re supposedly in (and somehow surviving).

There is no evidence that Friday the 13th brings about an increase in unfortunate incidents or accidents. A 2011 study in the The American Journal of Emergency Medicine reviewed hospital emergency admission rates and found no significant difference between Friday the 13th to other days. In fact a 2008 Dutch study demonstrated the opposite may be true, that people are more cautious on Friday the 13th and as a result there are fewer road accidents.

The Friday the 13th movie franchise capitalizes on the superstition. Interestingly in Spanish speaking countries the movies are sometimes called Martes 13 (Tuesday the 13th) in keeping with the Spanish superstition around Tuesday the 13th, instead of Friday the 13th. Finally, the most important metal band of all time Black Sabbath released their eponymous debut album on Friday the 13th, February 1970.

Black Sabbath, the most important metal band of all time, released their debut album on Friday the 13th, February 1970.

There are highs & (many) lows to the Friday the 13th movie franchise, but the disco theme song for Part 3 is something else.
Read more about the article the May 8, 1977 Barton Hall Concert

the May 8, 1977 Barton Hall Concert

One of, if not thee, greatest Grateful Dead concert of all time (thanks to taping).

Having over 2,300 concerts to choose from, to try and pick just one Grateful Dead show as the best is both subjective and impossible (as well as controversial). That said, one show that is mentioned over and over as one of (if not thee) best is the May 8, 1977 Barton Hall concert at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

The band were in especially good form during the 1977 tour. The Barton Hall concert is a legendary show partially because the music is accessible – it’s enjoyable for hardcore Deadheads and casual fans alike. But perhaps even more importantly the show is accessible in a more literal sense. Grateful Dead audio engineer Betty Cantor-Jackson recorded over 1,000 tapes of live concerts for the band and the Barton Hall show is one of her most famous recordings. The “Betty Board” recording of the Barton Hall concert is of excellent quality, without which the concert likely would not be held in such high esteem.

The Betty Board recording of the Barton Hall concert by Betty Cantor-Jackson has helped make the concert one of the most famous Grateful Dead shows of all time.

“Everybody’s favorite fun game, move back …”

Recording Grateful Dead concerts, and the Shakedown Street style trade of concert tapes, is an entire sub-culture of the band. More than 2,000 of the estimated 2,300 concerts have been preserved by tapers. The non-profit Internet Archive has an entire section just for Grateful Dead recordings with over 16,000 entries. Instead of being anti-piracy the band embraced tapers, giving them their own space behind the mixing desk. As drummer Mickey Hart said “We can’t be cops.” The decision inadvertently worked like a viral marketing campaign. Fans would record shows, they would trade tapes with other people, and in the process millions more people were exposed to the band’s music. Today the band’s website has a “Taper’s Section” devoted to highlighting taped recordings from each week’s concerts in the band’s history.

In 2017 on the 40th anniversary of the Barton Hall concert Tompkins County, NY (where Cornell is located) declared the day “Grateful Dead Day.” In 2011 the Barton Hall Concert was entered into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress alongside other culturally significant recordings such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colors, Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, etc.

Added info: you can purchase the Cornell 5/8/77 concert as a 3-CD set, or you can listen to the concert for free on archive.org.

A mini documentary on the magic of the Barton Hall concert.

In 2017 on the 40th anniversary of the concert the Cornell Chimes performed a concert on the bells.
Read more about the article Cinco de Mayo e Jalisco

Cinco de Mayo e Jalisco

The holiday celebrating a victorious military battle (not Independence) that’s become a celebration of Mexican culture (and especially Jalisco culture).

In 1861 after multiple wars, a nearly bankrupt Mexico was in debt to Britain, France, and Spain. President Benito Juárez instituted a temporary moratorium on foreign debt payments which France used as a justification for invasion. France wanted to expand their empire by seizing Mexico, and Mexico’s unpaid debt was an excuse to do so. The French fleet launched an invasion at Veracruz and marched westward toward Mexico City. On the way to the capital the Mexican army engaged the French near the town of Puebla.

Despite being outnumbered 2 to 1, on May 5, 1862 the Mexican army defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla. This is what Cinco de Mayo celebrates – a Mexican victory over the French. Unfortunately the Mexicans eventually lost the war and in 1864 the French installed the Austrian born Emperor Maximilian I as ruler of Mexico. By 1867 though the Mexicans rose up and took back the country, executing Maximilian on June 19, 1867.

General Ignacio Zaragoza led the Mexican forces to a victory over the French at the Battle of Puebla.

Cinco de Mayo … nos Estados Unidos

Today Cinco de Mayo is more popular in the United States than Mexico. Outside of the state of Puebla most of Mexico pays little attention to the holiday (which in Mexico is not called Cinco de Mayo of course but is “El Día de la Batalla de Puebla” or “The Day of the Battle of Puebla”). One reason for its popularity in the US is that the Mexican-American community uses the holiday as a cultural holiday honoring their Mexican heritage, much like what Irish-Americans do with Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s become more of a celebration of Mexican culture than of a military victory over the French.

Many of the things people associate with all of Mexico really come from just the state of Jalisco.

Jalisco es Mexico

On the Pacific coast of Mexico, sits the state of Jalisco. While Jalisco had little to do with the Battle of Puebla it has a lot to do with modern Cinco de Mayo and what we think of when we think of Mexico. The first mass produced tequila, mariachi music, the iconic folk dresses with large ribboned skirts, jaripeo bull riding, wide-brimmed sombreros, and the national dance “Jarabe Tapatío” (“Mexican Hat Dance”) all come from the state of Jalisco. As a result the state’s motto is “Jalisco es Mexico” (“Jalisco is Mexico”).

Similar to how many of the things people associate with Germany really just come from the Bavarian region, many of the cultural elements that people associate with Mexico are just from the state of Jalisco. As such every Cinco de Mayo Jalisco’s contributions to the Mexican cultural identity loom large as they appear in homes and restaurants around the United States as people celebrate Mexico.

Added info: Mexican Independence day is called “Grito de Dolores” (“The Cry of Dolores”) which is when Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla gave a speech to his parishioners and rang the church bell as a call to arms. This was the 1810 start of the Mexican War of Independence and is celebrated every September 16th.