Quickies

Quickies: Black Market Doughnuts, Paper Centrifuge, and Today’s Senate Confirmation Hearings

  • The Paperfuge: A 20-Cent Device That Could Transform Health Care – The concept of the paper centrifuge is pretty cool, and if you have access to the original paper, you should check that out to see the results of the blood samples.
  • ‘Goodnight Moon’ author was a bisexual rebel who didn’t like kids – “Margaret Wise Brown is the deserving subject of a new biography ‘In the Great Green Room’ by Amy Gary, a Brown-obsessive, who unearthed a treasure trove of her unpublished works, diaries and letters and has devoted her career to continuing Brown’s.” (I guess I’ll take back what I said about the horrible color scheme of Goodnight Moon.)
  • When picky eating becomes an affliction – “When Marla Lopez looks at a steak—or a bowl of strawberries, a chunk of brie, a slice of pizza—her brain doesn’t send out that excitement, and her salivary glands stay firmly in park. To her, most of the dishes on American tables don’t look edible at all. ‘It’s like asking a colorblind person what color that is,” Lopez says. “It doesn’t look like food to me.’ “
  • Sow Your Seedlings Now, in Winter, for a Healthier Garden in the Spring – “Winter sowing works especially well with most annuals and common perennials, most temperate trees and shrubs, and cool growing vegetables.”
  • There’s a small but booming black market near the US-Mexico border … for doughnuts – “On any given night in Juarez, you can find Sonia Garcia and her son selling doughnuts out of the trunk of their car. They make daily cross-border trips from Juarez to the Krispy Kreme store in El Paso, where they buy 40 dozen or so assorted doughnuts, which they sell to their Juarez customers at a modest markup. It’s a family affair, so they’ve been affectionately nicknamed the ‘Krispy Kreme Familia.’ “
  • The Meatless, Wheatless Meals of World War I America – “For example, a batch of a dozen Biltmore Bran Muffins calls for bran and rye flour instead of wheat flour, and a half-pint of molasses instead of sugar. Sixty pieces of sweet Genoa Cake (which contains no flour at all) requires two pounds of almond paste, sugar, and 20 eggs all beaten together with corn starch and melted butter.”
  • Senate confirmation hearings for Trump’s Cabinet picks: time, live stream, and what to expect – “The sheer number of hearings scheduled for Wednesday — although now somewhat lightened — was the subject of much debate in Washington, as the hearings also coincide with the president-elect’s much-anticipated press conference on possible conflicts of interests. Congressional Democrats are arguing that the overlapping hearings and press conference will distract the American public from an important step in the Cabinet nomination process.”

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Mary

Mary Brock works as an Immunology scientist by day and takes care of a pink-loving princess child by night. She likes cloudy days, crafting, cooking, and Fall weather in New England.

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2 Comments

  1. Re: The Paperfuge, I made those as a kid. Who knew there was a medical application?

    Re: Trump, yeah, I’m not surprised. Really, right now our only hope is that the CIA drops everything they have on him days before November 2020. If there still is a CIA.

  2. Mary, that paperfuge is a really nifty idea.
    (The link to the original paper worked nicely for me, thanks!)

    My one concern would be that if you knocked one up in the field, what guarantee would you have that the capillary would not detach itself at high rpm and go straight thru the user’s eyeball??

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