O hi

I was watching a Breaking Bad episode recently where the character Jesse is talking about possums.

Possum. Big, freaky, lookin' bitch. Since when did they change it to opossum? When I was comin' up it was just possum. Opossum makes it sound like he's irish or something. Why do they gotta go changing everything?

Now I've never actually seen a possum, or an opossum or whatever but I knew of the animal and had heard people say it both ways, so I too was curious.

The short version of the story is that the animal that lives in North America is called an opossum and possums are marsupials that live in Australia and some of the surrounding islands.  Apparently opossums were given their name back in the 1600s and in the late 1700s the Australian animal was named a possum because it looked like the American opossum.

However in the US, opossum is often shorted to just 'possum or possum which has created the confusion.  Visibly the two species are fairly different, though they are both marsupials.  For example possums have a furry tail while opossums have a hairless tail.  They are however both nocturnal omnivores that will "play possum" when under threat.

Opossum

Possum

Navel gazing

From time to time I notice that I have lint in my belly button.  I've always presumed it somehow got there from my clothes and I may have even considered collecting it at some point (never got around to it).  Fortunately for me others have also wondered this (and collected it!).

The general consensus seems to be that the lint is "an accumulation of cloth fibers that are scraped by body hair".  It also contains dust, fat, protein and sweat!  Believe it or not some scientists have done studies on this subject and have found that hair around the navel seems to correlate with more lint, although there were still a few hair free women that ended up with some.  This explains why it seems to affect men more than women, maybe also because men are more willing to talk about it!  The theory is that the hair around the belly button scrapes off clothing fibers and channels the lint to the belly button.

The colour of the lint tends to correlate with the colour of the clothing the person is wearing, with a common bluish-grey colour being the average of the colours of most clothes.  This is similar to what you would see with dryer lint.  Apparently belly button piercings seem to be effective at combating the lint.  There is also an alternative explanation.

My favourite part of looking into this was reading the website of the Guinness world record holder for the biggest collection of navel lint.  It's an amusing read and some of the comments he's received are quite funny as well.  He's been collecting his own lint since 1984 with an average of 3.03 milligrams per day.

By Design

I've been using iPads quite a bit lately at work and though I've never really been much of an "Apple guy" I find that the hardware is quite nice and overall I like the touch interface.  Some of the times products have tiny features that you don't really notice until they're missing, or working incorrectly.  One nice little touch I like on the iPad has to do with the volume button.  Now remember I'm not an Apple guy so this may have been around for a while and other products probably have done it first.

The tiny thing I noticed is that when I'm pressing and holding the up button on the volume it will go up one notch at a time.  However when I'm holding down it will go down a couple notches and then automatically go to zero, muting it.  Tiny, tiny feature, but I really appreciated the thought that went into it.  If someone is holding down the volume button for over a second they probably do want to mute the iPad and this gives them a nice shortcut.  However sometimes a feature is actually pretty great, but unfortunately is most noticeable when it doesn't work.

On my new Android phone I attempt to type too fast.  Most of the time the autocorrection feature fixes my fat fingering mistakes and automatically gives me the word I want, but when it fails I notice it right away and it annoys me.  I've thought about it and I'm quite sure it's a net gain, but the human brain seems to remember the few bad times and forget about the 90% of the time that it does work.  Unfortunately for me this means I need to double check my messages and if I don't I can say some silly things.  For example goos corrects to goosebumps and not good??  Fortunately there's a way to add your own custom corrections!

One final design feature that I have a love hate relationship with is when holding the backspace button on my phone to delete something it will start deleting words very quickly after about a second.  Similar to the iPad's volume button but it's annoying when I delete more than I want to and feel like I have to be careful or I'll delete all of the text!

Semi-coherent rant aside, it's interesting to think about all of the micro-design decisions that are made in software and hardware.  Presumably it all goes through some sort of usability testing before being released to the general public (thought it doesn't always seem that way).  Making the right decisions is important no matter how small, and when added together can make a product feel polished or clumsy.

Why do fish jump?

I've seen fish jump out of the water in a lake and it wasn't immediately obvious to me why it would be necessary.  Maybe some of them like the air, like some people like water?  Maybe they just like to jump for fun?  Regardless, I was interested in seeing if there was an actual reason why a fish might decide to jump.

From reading around it seemed like there wasn't an exact consensus but there were a few things that seemed to be repeated.  One reason is that some fish feed on insects that are at or hovering near the surface of the water, so they'll jump out to eat them.  Or the fish might be trying to escape a predator and hope to throw them off by leaving the water temporarily.  Since air is much less dense than water a fish can move much quicker through it.  Some think it could be an attempt to remove parasites, though others think it's unlikely.

The size of the body of water doesn't seem to matter.  Fish may jump out of the ocean or even garden ponds.  One explanation for the garden pond was high ammonia levels causing burns on the fish!  The one somewhat unique (and rambley) explanation was that fish just jump for the fun of it.  I've jumped or ran around for fun so even though it may not be the only reason fish jump, it at least seems plausible.

Chocolate Lab

Most people have probably heard that dogs shouldn't eat chocolate.  Out of those "most people" most of them at least wonder why this is the case and sometimes "common knowledge" can be a common misconception.  However in this case it is correct.

The problem occurs because of the chemical theobromine that is naturally found in cocoa beans.  It affects the central nervous system and the heart and can be poisonous to dogs in certain quantities.  Dogs metabolize it slower than humans which is why chocolate is safe for humans to consume (in less than obscene amounts).  Smaller dogs are also more susceptible because a lower amount is required to be toxic (it generally goes by body weight).

Different types of chocolates contain more or less theobromine and so are correspondingly more or less toxic to dogs.  White chocolate has the least amount of theobromine, so it is unlikely to cause too many issues for a dog.  Darker chocolates tend to have higher amounts of it, with baker's chocolate having the most, over 400 times as much as white chocolate!

Initial symptoms after a dog has eaten chocolate include vomiting, diarrhea and increased urination.  Over time there is an increase in the dog's heart rate, possibly causing hyperactivity and eventually leading to seizures, a coma or death!  Apparently cats are also at risk for this, but lacking sweetness receptors, they generally don't go after sweet food.