Hugo Ball

Hugo Ball was a German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists. He was born in Pirmasens, Germany and was raised in a Catholic family. He studied sociology and philosophy at the universities of Munich and Heidelberg (1906–1907). In 1910, he moved to Berlin in order to become an actor and collaborated with Max Reinhardt. At the beginning of the First World War he joined the army as a volunteer, But, after the invasion of Belgium, was disillusioned saying: "The war is founded on a glaring mistake, men have been confused with machines". Considered a traitor in his country, he crossed the frontier with his wife and settled in Zürich. Here, Ball continued his interest in anarchism, and in Bakunin in particular; he also worked on book of Bakunin translations, which never got published. Although interested in anarchist philosophy, he nonetheless rejected it for its militant aspects, and viewed it as only a means to his personal goal of enlightenment.

In 1916, Hugo Ball created the Dada Manifesto, making a political statement about his views on the terrible state of society and acknowledging his dislike for philosophies in the past claiming to possess the ultimate Truth. The same year as the Manifesto, in 1916, Ball wrote his poem "Karawane," which is a German poem consisting of nonsensical words. The meaning however resides in its meaninglessness, reflecting the chief principle behind Dadaism. Some of his other best known works include the poem collection 7 schizophrene Sonette, the drama Die Nase des Michelangelo, a memoir of the Zürich period Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary, and a biography of Hermann Hesse, entitled Hermann Hesse. Sein Leben und sein Werk (1927).

As co-founder of the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, he led the Dada movement in Zürich, and is one of the people credited with naming the movement "Dada", by allegedly choosing the word at random from a dictionary. He was married to Emmy Hennings, another member of Dada.

His involvement with the Dada movement lasted approximately two years. He then worked for a short period as a journalist, for Freie Zeitung in Bern. After returning to Catholicism in July of 1920, Ball retired to the canton of Ticino where he lived a religious and relatively poor life. He died in Sant'Abbondio, Switzerland in 1927.

The Wave

The wave is achieved in a packed stadium when successive groups of spectators briefly stand and raise their arms. Each spectator is required to rise at the same time as those straight in front and behind, and slightly after the person immediately to either the right (for a clockwise wave) or the left (for a counterclockwise wave). Immediately upon stretching to full height, the spectator returns to the usual seated position.

The result is a "wave" of standing spectators that travels through the crowd, even though individual spectators never move away from their seats. In many large arenas the crowd is seated in a contiguous circuit all the way around the sport field, and so the wave is able to travel continuously around the arena; in discontiguous seating arrangements, the wave can instead reflect back and forth through the crowd. When the gap in seating is narrow, the wave can sometimes pass through it. Usually only one wave crest will be present at any given time in an arena. Simultaneous, counter-rotating waves have been produced.

Although it was not associated with sports, Frank Zappa is credited by some with inventing a precursor to the wave in 1969 at the Denver Pop Festival in Denver Mile High Stadium when he assigned sounds and gestures to sections of the crowd and sequenced them with hand gestures. He conducted with the audience making sounds. He would conduct waves of one, two, or three sounds at the same time. He then commented, "You guys are pretty good, you ought to get a band together and call yourselves Denver". He then walked offstage to end the performance. The exact origin of the wave is disputed. Its growth may be traced to five different sports, across three different North American countries, and Russia.

• Some claim that it was created (by chance) at a National Hockey League game in Canada in 1980, and introduced to a wider audience (intentionally) in October 1981 at a Major League Baseball game in Oakland, California, and at an American football game in Seattle, Washington.^{[citation needed]}

• The wave is also believed to have been created in Vancouver, British Columbia by a marketing campaign for the local soccer team the Vancouver Whitecaps, in which they got the crowd to perform this for a commercial in which their slogan was "Catch the Wave."^{[citation needed]}

There are other reports that claim that in the 1960s, in Monterrey Mexico, during a game between Tigres and Rayados, the wave was created in the half time. The crowd was anxious, and the organizers were doing games and throwing football balls as presents in the half time because players took a lot of time returning to the field. That made people start doing the wave.

Whatever its origin, by the mid-1980s the practice was widespread throughout North America. Finally, it gained worldwide notice, and the specific name Mexican wave, during the FIFA Football World Cup in Mexico at the Estadio Universitario in Monterrey, 1986.

In 2002, Tamás Vicsek of the Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary along with his colleagues analyzed videos of 14 waves at large Mexican football stadiums, developing a standard model of wave behavior (published in the September 12 issue of Nature). He found that it takes only the actions of a few dozen fans to trigger a wave. Once started, it usually rolls in a clockwise direction at a rate of about 12 m/s (40 ft/s), or about 22 seats per second. At any given time the wave is about 15 seats wide. These observations appear to be applicable across different cultures and sports, though details vary in individual cases.

Chuck Steak

Chuck steak is a cut of beef and is part of the Sub-primal cut known as the chuck. The typical chuck steak is a rectangular cut, about 1" thick and containing parts of the shoulder bones, and is often known as a "7-bone steak". (This is in reference to the shape of the bone, which resembles the numeral '7', not to the number of bones in the cut.) This cut is usually grilled or broiled; a thicker version is sold as a "7-bone roast" or "chuck roast" and is usually cooked with liquid as a pot roast. The bone-in chuck steak or roast is one of the more economical cuts of beef. In the United Kingdom, this part is commonly referred to as "braising steak". It is particularly popular for use as ground beef, due to its richness of flavor and balance of meat and fat.

Other boneless chuck cuts include the chuck eye (boneless cuts from the center of the roll, sold as Mock Tender Steak or Chuck Tender Steak), chuck fillet (sold as Chuck Eye Steak and Chuck Tender Steak,) cross-rib roast (sold as Cross-Rib Pot Roast, English Roast, or "the bread and butter cut"), top blade steak, under blade steak, shoulder steak and roast, and arm steak and roast. The average meat market cuts thick and thin chuck steaks (often sold as Chuck Steak or Chuck Steak Family Pack) from the neck and shoulder, but some markets also cut it from the center of the cross-rib portion. Short ribs are cut from the lip of the roll.

Some meat markets will sell cross-rib pot roast under the generic name "pot roast." The difference between a pot roast and a cross-rib pot roast is the vertical line of fat separating the two types of chuck meat; the cross-rib pot roast contains the line of fat.

The chuck contains a lot of connective tissue, including collagen. Collagen melts during the cooking of the meat, making the flavor intensely stronger. Meat from the chuck is usually used for stewing, slow cooking, braising, or pot roasting.

The Rockford Files

The Rockford Files is an American detective (private investigator) television drama originally aired on the NBC television network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980; it has remained in constant syndication to the present day. The show is notable for the quality of its writing, largely from Stephen J. Cannell, Juanita Bartlett, and David Chase, the easy charm and charisma of James Garner, who starred as Jim Rockford, and an agile Pontiac Firebird.

Producers Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell devised the main character to be a rather significant departure from typical television detectives of the time. James Scott Rockford, usually called Jim (sometimes "Jimmy" or "Jimbo"), played by veteran movie/television actor James Garner, served time in California's San Quentin prison in the 1960s due to a wrongful conviction for armed robbery; after five years, he received a pardon. His infrequent jobs as a private investigator barely allowed him to maintain his dilapidated mobile home (which doubled as his office) in a parking lot on the beaches of Malibu, California. His often-uncollected rate was "$200 a day, plus expenses", which many of his mid-1970s era clients considered steep.

In early episodes in the show's first season, the trailer was located in a crowded parking lot alongside the highway and near the ocean; for the rest of the series, the trailer was located at Paradise Cove, adjacent to the pier, and a restaurant, "the Sandcastle".

Unlike the almost uniformly macho and trigger-happy gumshoes on other shows of that day (and before), Rockford would just as soon duck a fight as swing his fists, and he rarely carried a gun (a Colt Detective Special for which he did not have a permit; he kept it in his cookie jar in the kitchen). In contrast to most nattily dressed TV private eyes of the time, Rockford wore off-the-rack, low-budget, slightly tacky clothing (favoring tan, brown and beige jackets, much to the amusement of a high-fashion model in one episode).

As Rockford preferred talking his way out of trouble over violence, he typically worked on cold cases, missing persons and low-budget insurance scams. He repeatedly states in the series that he does not handle "open cases". In the pilot (and in Rockford's Yellow Pages ad), it was stressed he "specialized in closed criminal cases," so as to avoid conflict (and trouble) with the police.This point was mostly ignored in the later seasons, to allow Rockford to become involved in more dramatic cases like murder, kidnapping, and extortion.

The series' memorable theme by composers Mike Post and Pete Carpenter received Top 40 radio airplay, went to #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, stayed 44 weeks on the charts, and won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement.

The series continues to air in reruns today; as of 2008, Sleuth, RTN and a handful of syndicated affiliates carry the program. All six seasons can be viewed in "streaming-only" format on Netflix as well as the first three seasons on Hulu.com.

Antipope

An antipope is a person who, in opposition to a sitting Bishop of Rome, makes a widely accepted claim to be the Pope. In the past, antipopes were typically those supported by a fairly significant faction of cardinals and kingdoms. Persons who claim to be the pope but have few followers, such as the modern sedevacantist antipopes, are not generally classified as antipopes, and therefore are ignored for regnal numbering.

Saint Hippolytus (d. 235) is commonly considered to be the earliest antipope, as he protested against Pope Callixtus I and headed a separate group within the Church in Rome. Hippolytus was later reconciled to Callixtus's second successor, Pope Pontian, when both were condemned to the mines on the island of Sardinia. He has been canonized by the Church. Whether two or more persons have been confused in this account of Hippolytus, and whether Hippolytus actually declared himself to be the Bishop of Rome, remains unclear, especially since no such claim has been cited in the writings attributed to him.

Eusebius of Caesarea quotes from an unnamed earlier writer the story of a Natalius who accepted to be bishop of a heretical group at Rome, but who soon repented and tearfully begged Pope Zephyrinus (Pope from 199 to 217) to receive him into communion. If Natalius claimed to be Bishop of Rome rather than only of a small group in the city, he could be considered an antipope earlier than Hippolytus and indeed the first antipope.

Novatian (d. 258), another third-century figure, certainly claimed the See of Rome in opposition to Pope Cornelius, and if Natalius and Hippolytus were excluded because of the uncertainties concerning them, Novatian could then be said to be the first antipope.

The period in which antipopes were most numerous was during the struggles between the popes and the Holy Roman Emperors of the 11th and 12th centuries. The emperors frequently imposed their own nominees to further their own causes. The popes, likewise, sometimes sponsored rival imperial claimants in Germany to overcome a particular emperor.

The Great Western Schism – which began in 1378, when the French cardinals, claiming that the election of Pope Urban VI was invalid, elected Clement VII as Pope – led to two, and eventually three, rival lines of claimants to papacy: the Roman line, the Avignon line (Clement VII took up residence in Avignon, France), and the Pisan line. The last-mentioned line was named after the town of Pisa, Italy, where the council that elected Alexander V as a third claimant was held. To end the schism, in May 1415, the Council of Constance deposed John XXIII of the Pisan line, whose claim to legitimacy was based on a council's choice. Pope Gregory XII of the Roman line resigned in July 1415. In 1417, the Council of Florence also formally deposed Benedict XIII of the Avignon line, but he refused to resign. Afterwards, Pope Martin V was elected and was accepted everywhere except in the small and rapidly diminishing area that remained faithful to Benedict XIII. The scandal of the Great Schism created anti-papal sentiment, and fed into the Protestant Reformation at the turn of the 16th century.

Mezcal

Mezcal, or mescal, is a Mexican distilled spirit protected by International Denomination of Origin, made from agave (maguey) plants. Its production and consumption is popularly associated with the Mexican state of Oaxaca. However, commercial and private production of mezcal is known over a wide area of Mexico outside of tequila-producing areas (primarily the states of Jalisco and Guanajuato). There are many different species of agave plant, and each produces a different flavor of mezcal. The term mezcal generally refers to all agave-based distilled liquors that are not tequila (a mezcal variant allowed to be made only from the blue agave plant, usually in the town of Tequila and the surrounding region of Jalisco).

Mezcal ages quite rapidly in comparison to other spirits. It is aged in large wooden barrels for two months to seven years. During this time the mezcal acquires more and more of a golden color, and its flavor is influenced by the wooden barrels. The longer it is aged, the darker the color and the more noticeable the flavoring effect.

Age classifications:

• Añejo ("aged") – aged for at least a year in barrels no larger than 350 litres.
• Reposado ("rested") – aged two months to a year.
• Joven or blanco ("young" or "white", often marketed as "silver" in English) – colorless mezcal, aged less than two months.

The "worm" (sometimes more than one) commonly seen in bottles of mezcal is actually the larva of one of two kinds of insects. The most common type is that of the agave snout weevil. The "red worm" or gusano rojo is the caterpillar of the Hypopta agavis moth, one of the several kinds of "maguey worm", found on the agave plant. (Agave worms are sometimes found in the piña after harvesting). Many brands contain such worms. Some are named after the worm itself, as in Gusano Rojo and some are even named for the number of worms, e.g. Dos Gusanos, "Two Worms". Inside the mezcal, however, the worm is more a marketing substance, as it has lost its nutrients inside the bottle. Nacional Vinicola (NAVISA) was the first company to add a worm to its Gusano Rojo mezcal. Andres Paniagua and Jacobo Lozano, creators of Gusano Rojo and Dos Gusanos, first introduced the practice of adding larva to mezcal. Today there are several brands doing this.

Although the custom is relatively recent, larvae are used frequently by several brands of mezcal to give flavor to the drink. A whole larva is deposited in the bottle, normally after having previously been cured in pure alcohol.

There is nothing to support the widespread myth that the worm contains hallucinogens or aphrodisiac properties.

When a worm is included, the mezcal is known as con gusano ("with worm"). Aside from its consumption with mezcal, the maguey worm is considered a delicacy in Mexico and can be found on restaurant menus throughout the nation.

The use of the worm is exclusive to mezcal, since the Mexican standards authority, Norma Oficial Mexicana (NOM), prohibits adding insects or larvae to tequila.

The word mezcal comes from the Nahuatl mexcalli.

Bomber Mountain

Bomber Mountain is the crest of a ridge line within the Big Horn Mountains of the U.S. State of Wyoming. It rises to an elevation of 12,448 feet (3,794 meters), and borders the south side of Cloud Peak, the tallest peak in the range. Bomber Mountain get its name from an aviation accident that occurred in 1943.

On June 23, 1943, a B-17 Flying Fortress (serial number 42-3399, nicknamed "Scharazad"), departed Pendleton Army Air Base in Pendleton, Oregon destined for Grand Island, Nebraska. From there, the bomber would join the other members of the 383rd Bomb Group and continue to England to participate in the ongoing World War II bombing campaigns. Around midnight, the captain radioed that their position was near Powder River, Wyoming. They were not heard from again. After the plane failed to arrive in Grand Island, the plane was declared missing and the Army mounted a search effort with no results. A second search was conducted the following year, concentrating on the Wind River Mountains, Absaroka Mountains and Big Horn Mountains, but still no wreckage was spotted.

On August 12, 1945, two cowboys spotted something shiny on a ridge line in the Cloud Peak area of the Big Horn Mountains. They discovered the wreckage and the deceased crew, and contacted authorities, who conducted an operation to recover the bodies of the crew and return them to their families. It was believed that during earlier search efforts, the paint color of the aircraft blended in closely with the mountain side, making the wreckage difficult to spot. After a few years, the paint wore off, and the shiny aluminum underneath made the plane more visible. No official cause for the crash was ever determined, but it is presumed that malfunctioning navigational equipment, and a moonless night combined with bad weather caused the pilot to not see the ridge until it was too late.

After some petitioning by veterans groups in Wyoming, the previously unnamed ridge was christened Bomber Mountain on August 22, 1946 by the U.S. Forest Service. In honor of the crew members, a commemorative plaque was placed on the shores of Florence Lake, 1.5 miles from the crash site.

Dymaxion

The Dymaxion was a concept car designed by U.S. inventor and architect Buckminster Fuller in 1933. The word Dymaxion is a brand name that Fuller gave to several of his inventions, to emphasize that he considered them part of a more general project to improve humanity's living conditions. The car had a fuel efficiency of 30 miles per US gallon. It could transport 11 passengers. While Fuller claimed it could reach speeds of 120 miles per hour , the fastest documented speed was 90 miles per hour.

The car was a three wheeler, steered by a single rear wheel, and could do a U-turn in its own length. However, the rear-wheel steering made the car somewhat counterintuitive to operate, especially in crosswind situations. The body was teardrop-shaped, and naturally aerodynamically efficient. The car was twice as long as a conventional automobile, at 20 feet (6.1 m) long. Drive power was provided by a rear-mounted Ford V8 engine, which produced 85 brake horsepower through the front wheels. The front axle was also a Ford component, being the rear axle of a contemporary Ford roadster turned upside-down.

An accident at the 1933 Chicago world's fair damaged the first prototype badly, killing the driver, and seriously injuring the two passengers. The Dymaxion had rolled over, and although the driver was wearing a seatbelt, the prototype's canvas roof had not offered sufficient crash protection. The cause of the accident was not determined, although Buckminster Fuller reported that the accident was due to the actions of another vehicle that had been following the Dymaxion closely. The crash prompted investors to abandon the project, blaming the accident on deficiencies of the vehicle's steering.

Of the three prototype cars built, only the second prototype survives, located in the Harrah Collection of the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada. The exterior has been restored, though it is a hollow shell, as they did not know what the Dymaxion's interior was like.

As of September 2009, the one surviving Dymaxion is undergoing a partial interior restoration by the company Crosthwaite and Gardiner, with the help from the collective knowledge of fans at Synchronofile.com.

Baker's Dozen

A baker's dozen, also known as a long dozen and a "long measure", is 13, one more than a proper dozen. The expression found its genesis in 13th-century England, when an Assize of Bread and Ale was introduced. Then, it was commonly called "the long measure".

The oldest known source and most probable origin for the expression "baker's dozen" dates to the 13th century in one of the earliest English statutes, instituted during the reign of Henry III (r. 1216-1272), called the Assize of Bread and Ale. Bakers who were found to have shortchanged customers could be liable to severe punishment. To guard against the punishment of losing a hand to an axe, a baker would give 13 for the price of 12, to be certain of not being known as a cheat. Specifically, the practice of baking 13 items for an intended dozen was to prevent "short measure", on the basis that one of the 13 could be lost, eaten, burnt, or ruined in some way, leaving the baker with the original legal dozen. The practice can be seen in the guild codes of the Worshipful Company of Bakers in London.

While modern bakers must no longer fear medieval laws, they have found other reasons for a baker's dozen, as seen in the tidy way 13 disks (loaves, cookies, biscuits, etc.) can pack a rectangle (baking tray) of appropriate proportions. Modern standard-sized packing trays have a 3:2 aspect ratio, and the most efficient two-dimensional array is hexagonal close packing, which has sixfold symmetry, such that each baked item is equidistant from its six nearest neighbors. The corners of a cookie sheet heat up and cool off faster than the edges and interior, so any item placed near a corner will not bake at the same rate as the other items. A 4+5+4 arrangement provides the dense hexagonal packing while avoiding corners, and would have been discovered empirically by bakers with the goal of baking the maximum number per batch with optimal uniformity.

Alice the Goon

Alice the Goon is a fictional character in E.C. Segar's comic strip Thimble Theatre and in the Popeye cartoon series derived from it.

Alice made her debut in the Sunday, December 10th, 1933 Thimble Theatre strip, part of the "Plunder Island" storyline. As yet unnamed (and her gender unspecified), she worked as a guard for the Sea Hag, a vicious pirate and the last sorceress on Earth. She is portrayed as a giant (her height is eight feet) with a big nose and prominent, hairy forearms and calves. Her name and gender were given in the January 14, 1934 strip, after she had captured Wimpy.

Alice first appeared when the Sea Hag returned to Sweethaven searching for a former slave of hers named Cringly, as he is the only one who knows the location of Plunder Island, the Sea Hag's lair. At this time Alice was nameless and genderless, but when Wimpy is captured and locked in the deck of the Black Barnacle, the Hag's ship, the Sea Hag orders, "Keep an eye on him, Alice!". And from this moment on, the characters and the readers realise Alice is a female. Upon arriving at Plunder Island, Popeye and Alice fought violently and Popeye threatened to throw Alice off a cliff, until Alice's own child (its gender also unspecified) appeared and shouted "Mama!". Realizing that he is fighting a woman, which goes against Popeye's principles, Popeye released Alice and discovered that Alice was an unwilling slave to the Sea Hag (who had threatened Alice's own baby if Alice did not become her servant) then the sailor helped Alice gain her freedom. In fact, Alice was just one of a race of goons (though apparently their leader) enslaved by the Sea Hag; Popeye and Alice together raised them up in a successful Spartacus-like slave rebellion.

At the time, Alice caused controversy with protective mothers who claimed that her "frightening" appearance alarmed their children. Alice was therefore toned down to become a gentler and more motherly apparition. In later appearances, Alice starts wearing a skirt and flowered hat. Her tribe live on Goon Island and the Goons are indistinguishable from each other. When Alice spoke, her words would appear as a series of meaningless squiggles. Wimpy is the only one who can understand her language. After being liberated from the Sea Hag, Alice came to live with Olive Oyl, and became a nursemaid to baby Swee'Pea.