soporific or soda-jerk

From editrice extraordinaire Messy Nessy Chic, we learn that behind the domineering soft-drink empire’s decision to drop cocaine from its recipe in 1903 was only the tip, the last words of a crazed drug-fueled revelry that lent much credence to the Prohibition movement.
Though the treacly, family-friendly international brand might not like to own up to its heritage, the decidedly non-adult-beverage had its origins in an infusion of Bordeaux wine and said opiate: a Corsican chemist concocted a very potent cocktail called Vin Mariani in 1863, whose consummate consumers included Thomas Edison, Queen Victoria, Mark Twain, Jules Verne and Pope Leo XIII. The combination resulted in terribly epic binges—together, mightier than cocaine or alcohol alone, and eventually led to many jurisdictions banned both outright. In response, the tonic of John Pemberton, originally peddled as a coca-wine to the elite of Atlanta, was brought into compliance with the prevailing attitudes and its legacy went on to overshadow its roots.

post and lintel

The Markthal (or Koopboog—the horseshoe) of Rotterdam is an eleven-storey vaulted arch, completed in 2014, that frames a bustling farmers market within the complex.
The building also hosts retail and office space and some two hundred apartments that either have bay windows or glass panels in the floor where residents can observe the activity going on below. Aside from the unique design, the ceiling is decorated with some really incredible artwork, the largest installation in the world (according to some measures). The cornucopia (Hoorn des Overvloeds) fresco consist of four thousand panels and reflects the abundance available in the gallery below. Thanks to Presurfer for finding this marvel and be sure to check out the Amusing Planet post for some really stunning photography of the Markthal.

minas tirith

Boing Boing reports on one of the recent acquisition the Bodleian libraries of Oxford, a map of Middle Earth annotated by the author himself.
Tolkien was a little wary of inviting illustrators into the world of Hobbits, Orcs and Man, wanting to ensure that his vision remained true and imagination unprivileged by an inaccurate depiction, and used this map as a working-version of a poster commissioned to show the lay of the land. Notes reveal that places in Middle Earth have real world correspondence, with Hobbiton having the same latitude as the storied university town and further insights into the creative process.

om nom nom or singing for one’s supper

Via the resplendent Nag on the Lake, we learn that gorillas and other primates compose happy little songs of contentment to accompany their meals.
There are two distinct types of humming, one steady and seemingly like a dinner-bell (or saying grace) to signal to the group that it is now time to eat, and the other highly idiomatic and personalised that’s always varied and seem to express pleasure in the repast. This behaviour has been observed both in the wild and in zoos, but outside of captivity, social norms seem to prevail and only the dominant males, the silver-backs, sing—whereas in zoos, all gorillas do so. Studying these vocalisations may help researchers learn more about the development of language and socialisation. Listen to recorded samples of the hums at the link above.

eepp, oopp, uurpp, exercise

Traditional wisdom prescribes taking at least half an hour of moderate exercise most days of the week.
An interesting clinical trial suggests that just one minute of explosively vigorous activity—and I am not sure if I can properly imagine what exactly those ninja acrobatic pugilistic bursts might look like, could return the same benefits of trudging through a forty-five minute routine. These turbo-charged calisthenics are not better than the slower and steady iteration, but the faster (much, much faster) route seems to be at least just as effective. With fewer opportunities for jousting, bezerking, sword-play or fisticuffs and shifting focus on endurance, I think that this now unfamiliar spasm of activity might be the right direction. I also wonder how many might be changing their daily agendas to carve out spare minutes for violent flagellation.

ttip or ta-ta for now

It ought to come as no surprise that the successive rounds of shady, secreted negotiations over the American-EU trade accords was rife with compromise that would spurn the light of day and favoured business over health, welfare (human and animal) and the environment, but thanks to Greenpeace Netherland’s leaking a trove of documents, the public gets a glimpse of just how much their government holds them in disdain.
Europe is not conceding wholesale to American demands for open market access and the creation of corporate tribunals that will sit in judgement, presiding over the regulatory bodies of accenting nations to ensure that their policies aren’t at cross-purposes with profits, but the fact that talks have dragged on this long over differences and outlooks that are flatly irreconcilable, one wonders how persuasive and inuring the endless negotiations can become and how parties might not be so resilient to this constant onslaught. What’s a bigger disappointment that the contents of the dirty deals is the revelation—by its absence in the transcripts—of the dissenting voices that went on public-record, echoing wider concerns, but those objections are not mentioned in the minutes, begging the question whom is on our sides.

ponceau 4r

As possibly one of the biggest hoaxes to come out of France since arguably the Priory of Sion (and notable for being a contemporary phenomenon with the bloodline conspiracy), the missive known as the Villejuif leaflet (anonymous but sourced to the oncological institute in the Paris suburbs) spread from 1976 onward with impressive virality contained a list of twenty or so—several different versions were in circulation for over a decade—of food additives, preservatives, and colouring agents alleged to be carcinogenic.
The original author of the pamphlet that was shared more than seven million times via chain-letters (chaîne de lettres, and more by word of mouth) across Europe was never identified and seemed to be spring-boarding his or her concerns off of the newly introduced codes called E Numbers that standardised food chemical labelling for the continent—as if the coding scheme was a veiled way to peddle poison like the notion that barcodes were the mark of the Devil, the classification system reserving E100-199 for dyes, E300-399 antioxidants, E900-E999 for sweeteners and so on. Obviously, processed food ought to be avoided when possible, and naturally the definition of fit for consumption is a fluid one, though I think that these specific panics are sometimes red-herrings, like so many red M&Ms, and regulatory bodies within the EU have rejected some of the substances deemed safe in the US—even if that use in America is strictly limited to colouring the skin of oranges to make them look riper or as cosmetics for other things that generally aren’t in the human food-chain, but that list also included a lot of naturally occurring compounds that are synthesised in industrial kitchens, like sodium sulphite, potassium nitrate, and citric acid. It was that last item that especially caused a panic, which is a pervasive food-additive, and propagated as the most toxic.  Perhaps the list (which we still encounter today as super foods and super villain foods, confronting us especially in the whitespaces of the internet) began innocently enough when a concerned but confused citoyen heard that citric acid was an essential catalyst for the Krebs cycle, mistaking the German word for cancer for the act of metabolising.  Incidentally, E124 or Ponceau 4R is a chemical pigment meaning poppy-red and one of the few not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration