Category: fun things

It’s Penguin Awareness Day! OK, on the count of three, everyone be aware of penguins. One…two…three! Boom. Done.

If you want to be extra aware of penguins today, here are some suggestions:

• See some penguins in person at your nearest zoo
• Read up on Magellanic penguins right here on Interesting Thing of the Day
• Watch Happy Feet or March of the Penguins
• Catch up on Bloom County
• Discover that yes, penguins actually do have knees
• Install Linux

Image credit: Pexels

Less buzz for your buck

Every day it seems medical researchers come out with a new study about coffee, how it is extremely unhealthy for you and/or full of amazing benefits. The focus of most of these studies is more particularly about the effects of caffeine on human health, caffeine being coffee’s most potent element. As caffeine is a stimulant, it can produce both positive and negative effects. It can wake you up in the morning, but it can also lead to sleeplessness, a racing heartbeat, and anxiety.

It is therefore no surprise that many people have decided to cut caffeine out of their diets. What I sometimes find surprising is how many people still opt to drink coffee, just without the caffeine. I have grown to like the taste of coffee, but to me the main purpose of drinking it is to get an extra jolt of energy.

I’ll admit to a certain prejudice against decaf, perhaps prompted by bad experiences in the past with weak and tasteless brews. It is true that the actual process of removing caffeine from coffee can degrade the taste beyond repair, but new methods of decaffeination have been developed to help the coffee retain more of its flavor in the process. In addition, researchers continue to look for and cultivate new strains of coffee plants that produce beans with a naturally low level of caffeine. This may all spell good news for those who still crave coffee without its kick.

Buzz Kill

Early decaffeination attempts involved soaking the green beans in water and then using various solvents to separate out the caffeine in the resulting water solution. The beans were then re-introduced to the caffeine-free solution in order to absorb some of the flavor they had lost. Solvents used included benzene, chloroform, and trichloroethylene, all of which were later found to have toxic effects. In the 1970s, dichloromethane came into use to replace the earlier solvents before it too was deemed possibly carcinogenic.

In response to these concerns about solvents, some coffee companies began to run the water solution through charcoal filters as a means of removing the caffeine. The so-called Swiss Water Process, developed in Switzerland in the 1930s, goes one step further. After a batch of coffee beans has been steeped in hot water, that water is filtered (the resulting solution is referred to as “flavor-charged”), and then is used to soak the next batch of beans to be processed. In this way, the beans lose caffeine as they soak, but lose less of their flavor. Currently there is only one official Swiss Water Process plant in operation in the world, located near Vancouver, British Columbia.

Yet another method that aims to safely remove caffeine from coffee beans involves a fascinating chemical process. The solvent used in this method is neither water nor one of the earlier toxic solvents. Instead, caffeine in the coffee beans is dissolved by means of carbon dioxide. In order to accomplish this, the carbon dioxide must become a supercritical fluid, created when it is compressed and heated to the point that it has the same density in liquid and gaseous forms. As this supercritical CO₂ is passed through the beans, it can penetrate them because of its gaseous properties, and yet is able to dissolve the caffeine they contain because of its liquid properties.

Hold the Caffeine

All these decaffeination methods are useful in extracting the caffeine from beans that already contain it, but how much more efficient would it be if the beans themselves contained less caffeine in their natural state? In 2004, news reports came out that Brazilian scientists had identified three coffee plants from Ethiopia that contain almost no caffeine; these plants seemingly lack an enzyme necessary to caffeine production. Since then, owing to various difficulties cultivating commercially viable versions of these plants, it seems no substantial progress has been made in bringing this coffee to market. Complications have included very low yields from the caffeine-free plants, the problem of pests (since caffeine seems to be the plant’s way of protecting itself from predators), and the inability to prevent cross-pollination with other caffeine-laden plants.

Although researchers around the world continue to search for the perfect way to cultivate caffeine-free coffee plants, for now the current methods of decaffeination will have to suffice for decaf junkies seeking their fix of coffee that not only tastes great, but won’t keep them up half the night. As for me, I do want to stay up half the night, so I’ll stick to my full-strength brew.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on June 15, 2007.

Image credit: Pixabay

I liked popcorn as a kid, and then—for reasons I am at a loss to explain—I went through a multi-decade period of not liking it. But now I’m back to liking it again. As long as it’s buttered and seasoned, that is. Or covered with caramel or chocolate or whatever. (Plain, unsalted popcorn is pretty disgusting.) I don’t know why today was designated National Popcorn Day but I do know that movies go really well with popcorn. So head on down to your local popcorn dealership today, and pick up some movies while you’re at it.

Image credit: Logicaldisaster~commonswiki [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Saskatchewan’s shifting sands

Picture of a part of the world covered with enormous sand dunes. You may be thinking of a desert in Africa, Asia, or the southwestern United States. But there’s another place, above the 49th parallel, where you can find such sand dunes—Saskatchewan, Canada. Many people associate Saskatchewan with its prairie landscape, but although the southern half of the province—where you’ll find major cities such as Regina and Saskatoon—is mostly prairie grasslands, the northern half is a wild expanse of rivers, lakes, and coniferous forests. In its south-central region it even has a salt lake with a salinity that is half that of the Dead Sea, Little Manitou Lake (Cree for “Lake of Good Spirit”). And Cypress Hills, in the southeastern corner of the province, is the highest point in Canada between Labrador and the Rockies. This diversity is not so surprising when you consider that Saskatchewan is twice the size of Italy and almost as big as Texas.

Located in the far northwest corner of Saskatchewan, almost at the border with the Northwest Territories, the province’s largest lake, Lake Athabasca, is accessible only by floatplane, there being no roads that go that far north. On the south side of the lake is a natural geological formation that is unique and surprising to find at this northern latitude—the Athabasca Sand Dunes. In places 30 meters (98 feet) high, and stretching 100 km (62 miles) along the shore of Lake Athabasca, the Athabasca Sand Dunes are the world’s largest area of active sand dunes north of 58 degrees latitude.

Don’t Desert Me

Although we often associate sand dunes with deserts, in the case of the Athabasca Sand Dunes, this doesn’t hold true. For one thing, deserts are identified by their lack of water, and not only do these dunes border 7,850 square kilometers (3,030 square miles) of water, they also contain significant patches of water in places, percolating up from the shallow water table below. Another feature of deserts—limited plant and animal life—does not hold true for these sand dunes either. In fact, of the 300 plant species that grow in the dunes, there are 10 species that are endemic (found nowhere else in the world), and another 42 species that are considered rare in the province. Not that the dunes are entirely welcoming to the local flora. Because the dunes are active, shifted by wind and eroded by water, they are constantly on the move. Visitors to the region tell of seeing entire stands of skeletal trees emerging from the sand—once above ground and flourishing, these trees were slowly buried by the shifting sand, and now are revealed by further dune movements.

So, if these sand dunes are not a desert ecosystem, created by extreme drought and aridity, how were they formed? The short answer is: the glaciers did it. The sand dunes are the product of the Athabasca sandstone formation, originally a delta in a freshwater lake created out of materials eroded from ancient mountain ranges by glaciers and rivers one billion years ago. These materials were eventually compressed into sandstone, and later still, eroded by wind, water, and glaciers to create the sand dunes that exist today. Of course, I also find the native Dene legend about the dunes’ creation interesting—that a giant man speared a giant beaver, which thrashed and ground the earth with its tail, making soil into sand.

Sand by Me

The dunes are now protected as part of the Athabasca Sand Dunes Provincial Park, but there is little infrastructure to welcome visitors. Aside from lack of accessibility (via floatplane only), there are no services available at the site. You need to be well versed in outdoor survival skills, or sign up for a guided tour. For the armchair traveler, you can see stunning photographs of the dunes on the Photo Journeys blog of photographers Robin and Arlene Karpan.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on July 3, 2004.

Image credit: Tim Beckett [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

If you’re looking for a synonym for the word “thesaurus,” forget about consulting the Merriam-Webster online thesaurus: it says there isn’t one. But of course Thesaurus Day honors Peter Mark Roget, eponym of Roget’s Thesaurus, who was born on this date in 1779. The Roget’s online thesaurus also lists no single-word synonyms for “thesaurus,” though it does suggest “storehouse of words” and “treasury of words.” To celebrate Thesaurus Day, go learn some new words! (You can start with eponym if you don’t already know what it means.)

Image credit: Ray MacLean [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

Getting the feel of the Exploratorium

San Francisco’s Exploratorium is an immense (and immensely popular) hands-on science museum. Exhibits cover the usual range of subjects—electricity, physics, optics, biology, and so on—but with a degree of interactive friendliness that’s rare even in the best science museums (and I’ve seen quite a few). Almost everything is designed to be touched, played with, and experimented on—even by young children, whose destructive impulses know no bounds.

Although I visited the Exploratorium a number of times during the years I lived in San Francisco, there was one exhibit I’d never experienced but always been curious about: something called the Tactile Dome. This is an exhibit for which you must make an advance reservation (and pay extra), and I had never had the foresight to call ahead before visiting the museum to see if there was an open slot. But on one visit when a same-day opening came up, I immediately signed up—after listening to a short speech on all the medical and psychological conditions that would preclude a safe visit and consenting to the non-refundability of the ticket.

A Touching Experience

The Tactile Dome is a smallish geodesic dome within the museum whose stated purpose is to explore the sense of touch—taking the “hands-on” principle to its logical extreme. Inside the dome is a series of oddly shaped chambers lined with a variety of materials. The chambers are completely dark, so visitors must navigate through them—climbing, crawling, sliding, and squeezing—using only the sense of touch for guidance. In an anteroom the eight or so people who have reservations at a given time remove their shoes and any objects that might fall out of pockets and get lost. (They are quite strict about their “no-extraneous-stuff” policy; I wasn’t even allowed to take a ballpoint pen in with me, even though it was capped and sealed in a zippered pocket behind a Velcro flap. I thought that prohibition was a bit silly, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.) Then, in smaller groups (in my case, a group of one), you proceed into the dark chambers.

A complete trip through the dome takes anywhere from five to ten minutes, and guests are spaced far enough apart that they won’t run into each other. The inside of the dome is not a maze; every chamber has just one entrance and one exit. An attendant in the anteroom monitors your progress by listening to the sounds picked up by microphones positioned throughout the dome. If a visitor gets stuck or panicked, a verbal request for help is all that’s needed; every spot in the dome is immediately reachable by hidden access doors. The intercom (which the other visitors waiting in the anteroom can also hear) serves another purpose, too: to discourage, shall we say, extracurricular activities that the dark and solitary environment might suggest. Each group gets to go through the dome several times during their visit.

As I made my way through the dome, I found that even though sight was not available, it was not a purely tactile experience. Each time I entered a new chamber, I could tell something about its size and shape from the sounds I heard, along with the combination of temperature and airflow I could feel. Even smell played a part—the characteristic scents of carpet, wood, plastics, and the smelly socks of the person who crawled through the dome before me all contributed to a mental image. And that effect was a bit eerie—even though I couldn’t see anything, I had the distinct sensation of visual images of the rooms constructed from the other sensory data I was gathering. That impression alone made the experience worthwhile for me.

Copp-ing a Feel

The Tactile Dome was designed by Dr. August F. Coppola (brother of director Francis Ford Coppola) in 1971 and has been in use ever since. Not only in the choices of materials in the dome, but in its overall design and marketing, it’s definitely showing its age—or perhaps I should say, “revealing” its age. (Note that the photo above is from the early 2000s; the dome is now a more stylish black and has better signs, though the basic design is still the same.) By an interesting coincidence, the Tactile Dome is not the only dome-shaped, building-within-a-building attraction in San Francisco that was constructed in the 1970s and designed to be experienced in total darkness. Audium, located across town, shares all these attributes but was designed to explore the sense of hearing rather than touch. If there’s also a Smell-O-Dome lurking somewhere in the city, I’d just as soon not know.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on June 1, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on July 5, 2004.

Benjamin Franklin was born on this day in 1706. He was, among many other things, a scientist, an inventor, an author, and a diplomat. He led a fascinating life, full of discovery and profound thought, and is certainly among my heroes. (Like all heroes, he was also flawed, but by today’s standards he was practically a saint.) Today, as I take my child to Benjamin Franklin Elementary School (no kidding), I’ll be thinking about the accomplishments and insights of this beloved figure from American history.

Image credit: After Joseph Duplessis [Public domain]

3D audio with just two speakers

I’m old enough to remember when the term high fidelity still meant something—it set apart audio equipment that had been deliberately engineered for faithful sound reproduction and a high signal-to-noise ratio from cheaper, cruder devices. At a certain point, though, pretty much everything was considered “Hi-Fi”; the new buzzword was stereo. Having equipment and recordings with two discrete channels of audio—conveniently matching the average number of human ears—was seen as the new sign of audio competence. Then there was the shift from the analog world of tubes, tapes, and vinyl to digital—a new standard of audio quality. A few years later, yet another phase: an increasing number of carefully positioned speakers and subwoofers to simulate the 360° audio field of the cinema. And now we’re using sophisticated digital signal processing to get better results with fewer speakers, but most people still seem to think two is too few.

For Those Who Have Ears to Hear…

While the number of speakers in the typical living room has increased since the days of my youth, the number of ears on the typical head has not. Humans somehow have the ability to locate the source of a sound spatially with only two inputs; even with a single ear, most people can pinpoint the direction a sound is coming from. Crucially, this sound-locating ability is not restricted to a single plane; we can also determine if a sound is coming from above, below, or anywhere in between (not to mention in front and behind). No home audio system I’ve ever seen (or heard) addresses the Z axis (up and down)—and neither, for the most part, do cinemas; for the most part, the only way to experience truly 3D sound artificially is to go into a special environment such as San Francisco’s Audium where speakers are physically placed above, below, and all around you.

If humans can determine the location of a sound anywhere around them with just two ears, it’s reasonable to imagine there must be some way of reproducing spatially accurate sound with just two speakers. But what’s the trick? What can ears and brains do that microphones and speakers can’t?

The Ears Have It

A large part of what enables people to identify the position of a sound is attributable to the hardware—the unique shape of the ear folds and ear canal. Because sounds coming from one direction will be reflected and channeled into the ear canal with slightly different characteristics than sounds coming from another direction, the brain is able to use these subtle clues to unconsciously create a mental picture of where the sound must have originated. While digital signal processing equipment can add depth and spatial separation to a stereo signal, there’s a much different and older approach to solving the problem: a method of recording known as binaural audio. A binaural recording is made with two microphones and a two-track recorder, just as a stereo recording would be. The difference is that the microphones are placed inside a dummy head—shaped just like a human head, complete with rubbery ears, sinus cavities, and so on. The microphones are right where the eardrums would be, so the signal they pick up is much closer to what ears would hear. The resulting recording—always most effective when heard through headphones—produces a vastly more accurate spatial rendition than would be achieved by using a pair of conventional microphones.

A well-executed binaural recording can sound shockingly realistic, even if the sound quality itself is not pristine. But binaural recording is appropriate only for live recordings; it’s also inconvenient, expensive (some pro-quality dummy heads retail for over US$8,000), and, frankly, just plain weird—all of which, along with the fact that you need to listen through headphones for maximum impact, helps to explain why you don’t encounter such recordings very often.

Hooked on Holophonics

But there’s a clever, patented variation on binaural recording that claims to go far beyond the simple microphones-in-the-dummy-head approach. It’s called holophonic recording, and the realism it produces, especially in the up/down dimension, is uncanny, eerie…even—as a friend of mine likes to say—freakadelic.

Ordinary holograms are produced by mixing reflected laser light with a second beam hitting an object from another angle; the resulting interference pattern of the two waves is what’s actually recorded on film. Expose the film to the same wavelength of light again, and a 3D image emerges from the interference pattern. Italian inventor Hugo Zuccarelli wondered whether a similar process could be used to record sounds, since after all, sound waves can form interference patterns with each other just as light waves can. His holophonic process starts with a type of binaural dummy head, but it reportedly records the interference pattern formed by mixing the sound with an inaudible, digitally superimposed reference signal. Zuccarelli believes that the human auditory apparatus, when listening to sounds, adds the same signal to the input, effectively decoding the interference patterns previously recorded. All that may sound like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo—and Zuccarelli certainly has detractors who claim “holophonic” sound is nothing more than binaural with maybe a few bells and whistles. All I can say is: hearing is believing. The holophonic recordings I’ve heard are simply remarkable—much more impressive than conventional binaural recordings—but I encourage you to listen for yourself (remember, use headphones!) and form your own opinion.

There is, of course, a little snag. As with all binaural recordings, holophonic sounds lose most of their spatial characteristics when played through ordinary speakers (though Zuccarelli has designed a special speaker system that enables holophonic sounds to be appreciated even outdoors by a large audience). As things stand now, you won’t be able to enjoy a holophonic soundtrack on your home theater system—no matter how many speakers it has—unless you and everyone else watching the film wear headphones. Nevertheless, a number of recording artists, including Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Pink Floyd, have employed holophonic technology in recordings or concerts, and it has also been featured in both films and commercials. Holophonic sound may be slow to catch on as a mainstream technology, but it’ll make your Surround Sound system sit up and go “Wow.”

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on July 17, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on October 12, 2004.

Image credit: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

If you’re sick and tired of all these daily observations of anything and anyone (whether serious or silly), today, January 16, is just for you. It’s National Nothing Day, a non-holiday to not celebrate a non-event—and has been since columnist Harold Pullman Coffin declared it so in 1973. So you don’t have to do anything, or celebrate anything, or protest anything today. If you have to watch TV, maybe you should watch the show about nothing, or just go around quoting your favorite line from Game of Thrones.

Image credit: darwin Bell from San Francisco, USA [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The curious process of canonization

Douglas Adams, whose writings I have always admired greatly, was a self-proclaimed “radical atheist” who nevertheless liked to say that he was “fascinated by religion”—carefully pointing out that interest was different from belief. Although I would characterize my own views in somewhat different terms, I share his fascination with certain religious beliefs that I do not personally hold. One such notion is that of the saint, particularly as the term is used in Catholicism.

Borrowing an expression from the historical canonization process, allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment. As an outsider, my impression of saints is that the Church considers them to be extra-holy (dead) people to whom God pays special attention, so that by praying to a saint instead of directly to God, you somehow stand a better chance of having your prayer answered. So they seem to function as heavenly lobbyists, and frankly, I would have thought that an omniscient God would frown on such tactics. Presuming, of course, that a departed soul can hear prayers at all, it is unclear to me why a saint would listen to me in the first place if God were disinclined to heed my prayer. And my mind boggles at why saints’ domains of intercession should be so specialized. (Did you know that Isidore of Seville is the patron saint of the internet? No kidding.)

These things puzzle and exercise me. At the same time, I find the whole subject of sainthood extremely interesting. In particular, I always wondered just how it was that someone came to be recognized as a saint, having picked up only bits and pieces of the process in books and movies. After doing a bit of research, I think I can give a very rough (and, I hope, approximately correct) outline of the path to sainthood. But before I describe the current process, I need to go back quite a few centuries to provide some background.

Saints Alive

As I understand it, the word saint (from a Latin word meaning “holy”) was used in the New Testament simply to denote a righteous person (living or dead). During the early centuries of the Christian Church, the term was applied fairly freely to any number of people, and the practice of praying to particular saints after their death gradually became an accepted part of religious life. Eventually, bishops reserved the authority to decide who should be considered a saint, but such proclamations were considered valid only for that bishop’s local area. By the 10th century, the Church realized that very uneven standards were being applied, and that rather questionable characters were being called saints—even some who may never have existed. So the process was officially codified for the first time, with the pope assuming sole authority to proclaim someone a saint. Although this title was given to some who had been called “saints” before, many didn’t make the cut. (St. Christopher was among these. Although never canonized—formally declared a saint—his feast day continued to be listed on the official Church calendar until 1969.) The rules for canonization were refined and improved over a period of several centuries.

The original process was an enormously complex and lengthy one. Church investigators collected extensive evidence about the person’s life and death—including, especially, any writings the person left. But the crucial test was that of miracles. It was not necessary that a person had performed a miracle while living (though such events certainly helped the cause). Rather, evidence had to be found that after the person’s death, someone had prayed to them—and only to them—and that a miracle had subsequently occurred. The number and nature of required miracles varied according to the circumstances. Many of the earliest saints were martyrs—those who had not only led holy lives but who had demonstrably died for their faith. Martyrs were put on the fast track to sainthood, with less-strenuous requirements—including fewer (or in some cases, no) miracles.

When a certain amount of evidence had been collected, the person was beatified, at which point he or she could be referred to as “the Blessed So-and-So.” But before sainthood could be granted, proof of one or more additional miracles was required. In addition, the life of the saint-to-be was subjected to the utmost scrutiny, with an appointee of the Church (commonly known as the “devil’s advocate”) digging up and pointing out any potential flaw or shortcoming, no matter how small. If this person, who functioned very much like a prosecutor in a trial, was unable to prove his case “against” the beatified, sainthood could be granted.

You will notice, of course, that I speak of all this in the past tense. In 1983, Pope John Paul II simplified the process of canonization tremendously—and eliminated the position of “devil’s advocate.” Now, in general, beatification requires an unblemished biography—with ample indication of the individual’s devotion to the Church—plus one posthumous miracle. Canonization requires a second miracle. Although the process is not even supposed to begin until at least five years after a person’s death, the pope can waive that requirement at his discretion, as he did with Mother Teresa.

It’s a Miracle

This business of proving that a saint was responsible for a miracle is particularly fascinating. The Church adopts a stance of skepticism toward all such claims, and has an entire staff of scientists and doctors who attempt to disprove the miracles—or to find alternative explanations. Most “miracles” are miraculous cures, and in such cases, the Church requires that a board of five doctors unanimously agree that no other explanation exists. Moreover, the cure must be complete and instantaneous; if the illness was cancer, a waiting period of 10 years is required to be sure the disease hasn’t merely gone into remission. Of course, proving that a particular saint was responsible for a miracle (having interceded with God on someone’s behalf) is not such a scientific undertaking. What if, for example, a neighbor prayed to another saint but didn’t tell anyone? What if—heaven forbid—the “miracle” occurred due to perfectly natural causes that simply escaped the scrutiny of the examiners? When all is said and done, no formal process, however detailed and rigorous, can completely eliminate the need for faith.

When all the tests have been passed, the pope proclaims, infallibly and irrevocably, that the person is a saint, and, in fact, always has been. The pope’s declaration does not, according to Catholic dogma, make someone a saint, it only acknowledges this fact officially. The faithful may honor and pray to a saint, but not worship a saint, as worship is to be reserved for God. Likewise, a saint does not actually perform a miracle but rather entreats God to do so. But in real life, these fine distinctions are sometimes lost, turning saints, for all practical purposes, into demigods.

Thanks to his newly streamlined process, Pope John Paul II declared nearly 500 people to be saints—many more than all his predecessors combined. Not to be outdone, Pope Francis has declared almost 900 people—including Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa—to be saints as of early 2019. This seems rather excessive to me, but then, having any saints at all strikes me as an unnecessary complication in an already complex religion. I suppose the optimistic view is that this is a reflection of an ever-growing number of virtuous people in the world. But I can’t prove that; you’ll have to take it on faith.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on March 19, 2005.

Image credit: Aleteia Image Department [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr