Black Cocaine

Black cocaine, also known as Coca Negra, is a combination of regular cocaine hydrochloride and various chemicals, such as potassium thiocyanate, usually added at 40% admixture. This renders it undetectable to drug sniffing dogs and the regular chemical tests. Since the result is usually black, it is generally smuggled in as toner in fake IBM or HP brand toner cartridges, fingerprint powder, fertilizer or pigment. The potassium thiocyanate substance is separated out after delivery with a solvent such as acetone and discarded.

The Securtec "Drugwipe test" has been one of a few that have worked in detecting the mixture.

Edward Penfield

Edward Penfield was a leading American illustrator in the era know as the "Golden Age of American Illustration" and he is considered the father of the American Poster. His work has been included in almost every major book on American Illustration or the history of the poster. He is also a major figure in the evolution of graphic design.

He was born 2 June 1866 in Brooklyn, New York to Ellen Lock Moore and Josiah B. Penfield. He first studied at New York's Art Student's League. He worked under George de Forest Brush, who was known for his romantic scenes of American Indian life. He first worked for Harper's Weekly and later became art director. He developed his own unique style of simplified figures with bold outlines in settings free of extraneous detail. He wrote and published a book titled Holland Sketches, which was published by Scribner's in 1907.

His posters were bold and stood out from a distance with great clarity. As artists like Alphons Mucha, Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen and Toulouse-Lautrec popularized the poster in Europe, Penfield accomplished the same feat in the United States. For his posters, Penfield utilized simple, shapes and a limited palette of colors that lent themselves to the primitive methods of reproduction of the era.

Sukiyaki

"Ue o muite aruko" is a Japanese song that was performed by Japanese crooner Kyu Sakamoto, and written by Rokusuke Ei and Hachidai Nakamura. It is best known under its alternative title "Sukiyaki" in English-speaking parts of the world. The song reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts in the United States in 1963, and was the only Japanese language song to do so. In total it sold over 13 million copies internationally. The original Kyu Sakamoto recording also went to number eighteen on the R&B charts.

The lyrics tell the story of a man who looks up and whistles while he is walking so that his tears won't fall. The verses of the song describe his memories and feelings. The title, sukiyaki (which is a Japanese steamboat dish), has nothing to do with the lyrics or the meaning of the song; the word served the purpose only because it was short, catchy, recognizably Japanese, and more familiar to most English speakers. A Newsweek columnist noted that the re-titling was like issuing "Moon River" in Japan under the title "Beef Stew."

Sakamoto's follow-up to "Sukiyaki," "China Nights (Shina no Yoru)," charted in 1963 at number fifty-eight. That was the last song by an artist from Japan to reach the U.S. pop charts for sixteen years, until the female duo Pink Lady had a top forty hit in 1979 with their English-language song "Kiss in the Dark".

Periodic Table

The periodic table of the chemical elements is a tabular display of the chemical elements. Although precursors to this table exist, its invention is generally credited to Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, who intended the table to illustrate recurring ("periodic") trends in the properties of the elements. The layout of the table has been refined and extended over time, as new elements have been discovered, and new theoretical models have been developed to explain chemical behavior. The periodic table is now ubiquitous within the academic discipline of chemistry, providing a useful framework to classify, systematize, and compare all of the many different forms of chemical behavior. The table has found many applications in chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering, especially chemical engineering. The current standard table contains 118 elements to date.

Surimi

Surimi is a Japanese loan word referring to a fish-based food product intended to mimic the texture and color of the meat of lobster, crab and other shellfish. It is typically made from white-fleshed fish (such as pollock or hake) that has been pulverized to a paste and attains a rubbery texture when cooked. The term is also commonly applied to food products made from lean meat prepared in a similar process.

Surimi is a much-enjoyed food product in many Asian cultures and is available in many shapes, forms, and textures. The most common surimi product in the Western market is imitation crab meat. Such a product often is sold as sea legs and krab in America, and as seafood sticks, crab sticks, fish sticks or seafood extender in Commonwealth nations.

God Mode

God mode is a developer's code, or backdoor, that facilitates testing of a particular game. As the name suggests, the player's character becomes akin to a 'god' in the game world, with the associated invulnerablility to most sources of damage.

Debug codes such as 'God mode' are typically accessed by way of a button sequence or a command on the game's console; often, the codes will reference events, places or persons particular to the game's developers, so that a player would be unlikely to stumble upon them by accident during normal game play.

Used most often to test the game's artificial intelligence and level design without having to actually survive the game's hazards, lists of debug codes such as 'God mode' have been widely available on the Internet for many years. Occasionally, developers will patch the debug codes so that they're inoperative in a given version of the game. Such patches are uncommon, however, because of time-constraints and the effort it would take to remove the debug code without causing errors in other parts of the game.

Some developers caution against the use of debug codes, warning that use of the codes can cause the game to act in an unintended manner, or render it entirely unplayable. Accordingly, most developers will not provide technical support in cases where it's obvious the player altered the game via one of these codes.

R. Budd Dwyer

Robert "Budd" Dwyer was an American politician from the state of Pennsylvania. He served from 1971 to 1981 as a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate representing the state's 50th district, and he served from 1981 until 1987 as the 30th Treasurer of Pennsylvania.

In the early 1980s, it had been discovered that Pennsylvanian government workers had overpaid federal taxes, and many accounting firms competed for a multimillion-dollar contract to calculate the amount to be repaid to each employee. Dwyer was convicted in 1986 of receiving a bribe from a Californian firm meant to persuade him to ensure that the company received the contract. He consistently maintained throughout his trial and after his conviction along with many others that he was completely innocent of this charge and that he had been framed.

On the morning of January 22, 1987, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth with a revolver during a televised press conference at his office in Harrisburg, the state capital of Pennsylvania.

Vasari Corridor

The Vasari Corridor is an elevated enclosed passageway in Florence, central Italy, which connects the Palazzo Vecchio with the Palazzo Pitti. Beginning on the south side of the Palazzo Vecchio, it then joins the Uffizi Gallery and leaves on its south side, crossing the Lungarno dei Archibusieri and then following the north bank of the River Arno until it crosses the Ponte Vecchio. At the time of construction the Torre dei Mannelli had to be built around using brackets because the owners of the tower refused to alter it. The corridor covers up part of the façade of the chiesa di Santa Felicità. The corridor then snakes its way over rows of houses in the Oltrarno district, becoming narrower, to finally join the Palazzo Pitti. Most of it is closed to visitors.

The Vasari Corridor was built in 5 months by order of Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici in 1564, to the design of Giorgio Vasari. It was commissioned in connection with the marriage of Cosimo's son, Francesco, with Johanna of Austria. The idea of an enclosed passageway was motivated by the Grand Duke's desire to move freely between his residence and the government palace, when, like most monarchs of the period, he felt insecure in public, in his case especially because he had replaced the Republic of Florence. The meat market of Ponte Vecchio was moved to avoid its smell reaching into the passage, its place being taken by the goldsmith shops that still occupy the bridge. At the latter extremity, the corridor was forced to pass around the Mannelli's Tower, after the staunch opposition of that family to its destruction.

In the middle of Ponte Vecchio the corridor is characterized by a series of panoramic windows facing the Arno, in direction of the Ponte Santa Trinita. These replaced the smaller windows of the original construction in 1939, by order of Benito Mussolini.

After the Ponte Vecchio the Corridor passes over the loggiato of the church of Santa Felicita; at that point it had a balcony, protected by a thick railing, looking into the interior of the church, in order to allow the Grand Duke's family to follow services without mixing with the populace.

In its Uffizi section the Vasari Corridor is used to exhibit the museum's famous collection of self-portraits.

Terroir

Terroir comes from the word terre "land". It was originally a French term in wine, coffee and tea used to denote the special characteristics that geography bestowed upon particular varieties. Agricultural sites in the same region share similar soil, weather conditions, and farming techniques, which all contribute to the unique qualities of the crop. It can be very loosely translated as "a sense of place," which is embodied in certain characteristic qualities, the sum of the effects that the local environment has had on the manufacture of the product. Terroir is often italicized in English writing to show that it is a French loanword.

The concept of terroir is at the base of the French wine Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) system that has been the model for appellation and wine laws across the globe. At its core is the assumption that the land from which the grapes are grown imparts a unique quality that is specific to that region. The amount of influence and the scope that falls under the description of terroir has been a controversial topic in the wine industry.

Over the centuries, French winemakers developed the concept of terroir by observing the differences in wines from different regions, vineyards, or even different sections of the same vineyard. The French began to crystallize the concept of terroir as a way of describing the unique aspects of a place that influence and shape the wine made from it.

Tomte

A tomte is a mythical creature of Scandinavian folklore. Tomte were believed to take care of a farmer's home and children and protect them from misfortune, in particular at night, when the housefolk were asleep. The Swedish name tomte is derived from a place of residence and area of influence: the house lot or tomt. The Finnish name is tonttu.

The tomte was often imagined as a small, elderly man (size varies from a few inches to about half the height of an adult man), often with a full beard; dressed in the everyday clothing of a farmer. Despite his smallness, the tomte possessed an immense strength. Even though he was protective and caring he was easy to offend, and his retributions ranged from a stout box on the ears to the killing of livestock or ruining of the farm's fortune.

One was also required to please the spirit with gifts – a particular gift was a bowl of porridge on Christmas night. If he wasn't given his payment, he would leave the farm or house, or engage in mischief such as tying the cows' tails together in the barn, turning objects upside-down, and breaking things.

The tomte is connected to farm animals in general, but his most treasured animal was the horse. Belief had it that you could see which horse was the tomte's favourite as it would be especially well taken care of and healthy. Sometimes the tomte would even braid its hair and tail. (These tomte braids were in fact most likely caused by insufficient brushing.) Sometimes actually undoing these braids could mean misfortune or angering the tomte.