Ruth Banks

Ruth Banks It's better to have ideals and dreams than nothing.

In the USA, a possum broke into someone else's house and ate a whole chocolate cakeEveryone has probably dreamed of eati...
26/02/2025

In the USA, a possum broke into someone else's house and ate a whole chocolate cake

Everyone has probably dreamed of eating a whole cake alone at some point, but life usually turns out in such a way that few people succeed in doing this brave and desperate act: lack of money, health concerns, parents, or just common sense.

But if you are a possum, everything becomes easier: just find the coveted cake. CNN told the story of the "Cake Bandit": an opossum who loves sweets so much that he even got his nickname because of it.

Kim Doggett, a realtor from Omaha, Nebraska, encountered an unexpected guest. The girl went out for an evening walk, and when she returned home, she found that a possum was sleeping on her couch, a tray from a cake she had bought earlier in the day was lying on the floor, and the beige carpet and sofa were covered with chocolate tracks of possum paws.

The confection that moved into the possum was called "Taxido" (from the American tuxedo, tuxedo).: This is a cake made of chocolate cakes with vanilla and chocolate cream, topped with chocolate icing.

The unfortunate animal felt unwell from such an amount of sweets, so the woman called the veterinarians, and now the possum is in a local animal clinic, where he is recovering from a "sugar coma."

For reasons having to do with optics and the way your brain works, the camera can in fact make you look heavier than you...
24/01/2025

For reasons having to do with optics and the way your brain works, the camera can in fact make you look heavier than you are.

The main difference between a camera's view of the world and yours is that the camera has a single "eye" whereas you have two. That subtly changes the way things look. Here's an experiment. Pose a round object in front of a varied background — a coffee cup in front of the computer monitor worked well enough for me. From a distance of two or three feet, look at the object alternately with both eyes, then one. You'll notice that, seen with one eye, the object looms larger in your field of vision, and obscures more of what's behind it. It seems bigger and bulgier. In other words, it looks fat.

If you look at the object first with your right eye, then your left, you notice the familiar shift in perspective known as parallax — background features hidden from one eye can be seen by the other. When you look at the object with both eyes, the brain blends the two views together. You see more of what's behind the object, making it seem smaller. Result: binocular vision is slimming, monocular the opposite.

There are ways to compensate for the fattening effect of the camera. One is to use a telephoto lens when shooting portraits. Step back from the subject and zoom in — parallax, and thus the addition of pounds, diminishes with distance. (I knew a photographer who swore by the rule "Never use a lens whose focal length, in millimeters, is less than the weight of the woman.")

If you don't have a telephoto lens but you do have digital photo-editing software, you can still step back when taking portraits and crop out the extra background later on the computer. If you're on the other side of the camera, here's some advice: watch out for amateur photographers who feel they need to have the subject fill the frame. They'll tend to take portraits from three feet away, making it appear that your face has been painted on a balloon. And do not forget those vertical stripes.

Cricket is a bat and ball sport played between two teams, usually of eleven players each. A cricket match is played on a...
21/01/2025

Cricket is a bat and ball sport played between two teams, usually of eleven players each. A cricket match is played on a grass field (which is usually roughly oval), in the centre of which is a flat strip of ground 22 yards (20.12 m) long, called a pitch. At each end of the pitch is a set of three parallel wooden stakes (known as stumps) driven into the ground, with two small crosspieces (known as bails) laid on top of them. This wooden structure is called a wicket. A player from the fielding team (the bowler) bowls a hard, fist-sized cork-centred leather ball from one wicket towards the other. The ball usually bounces once before reaching a player from the opposing team (the batsman), who defends the wicket from the ball with a wooden cricket bat. The batsman, if he or she does not get out, may then run between the wickets, exchanging ends with the other batsman (the "non-striker"), who has been standing in an inactive role near the bowler's wicket, to score runs. The other members of the bowler's team stand in various positions around the field as fielders. The match is won by the team that scores more runs.

Cricket has been an established team sport for hundreds of years. It originated in its modern form in England and is popular mainly in the present and former members of the Commonwealth. In the countries of South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, cricket is the most popular sport. It is also a major sport in places such as England and Wales, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Bermuda, and the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean, which are collectively known in cricketing parlance as the West Indies. There are also well established amateur club competitions in countries as diverse as the Netherlands, Kenya, Nepal and Argentina, among others; there are over one hundred cricket-playing nations recognised by the International Cricket Council. Cricket is arguably the second most popular sport in the world.

The sport is followed with passion in many different parts of the world. It has even occasionally given rise to diplomatic outrage, the most notorious being the Basil D'Oliveira affair which led to the banning of South Africa from sporting events. Other examples include the Bodyline series, played between England and Australia in the early 1930s, and the 1981 underarm bowling incident involving Australia and New Zealand.

Iconic American movie star Marilyn Monroe once famously sang, "Diamonds are a girl's best friend". Scientists from the U...
16/01/2025

Iconic American movie star Marilyn Monroe once famously sang, "Diamonds are a girl's best friend". Scientists from the University of Liege in Belgium believe they have unearthed a gargantuan amount of these precious stones. There could be an 18-km wide layer of the gems beneath the crust of the planet Mercury. Our nearest planetary neighbour could quite literally be a celestial jewel. Researchers tested how Mercury formed, approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The planet evolved from a gyrating cloud of cosmic dust and gas. Over millions of years, the dust was compressed into graphite, which is chemically identical to diamond. Both are solid forms of the element carbon. It is unlikely Mercury's diamonds could ever be mined as they are about 500 km below the surface.

Researchers used a machine called an anvil press to simulate the conditions under which Mercury was formed. The press is used to make synthetic diamonds. Researchers mixed elements inside a graphite capsule. These included silicon, magnesium and aluminium. The capsule was subjected to pressure 70,000 times greater than that on Earth. It was heated to temperatures of 2,000 degrees Celsius. The lead researcher speculated about the diamonds on Mercury. He said: "Diamonds are made of carbon only, so they should be similar to what we know on Earth…They would [resemble] pure diamonds." Scientists believe there are a quadrillion tons of diamonds beneath the Earth's surface. Experts say the value of these hidden gems is pretty much incalculable.

How Was Popcorn Discovered?Figuring out when people started making popcorn is harder. There are several types of maize, ...
14/01/2025

How Was Popcorn Discovered?

Figuring out when people started making popcorn is harder. There are several types of maize, most of which will pop if heated, but one variety, actually called “popcorn,” makes the best popcorn. Scientists have discovered phytoliths from Peru, as well as burned kernels, of this type of “poppable” maize from as early as 6,700 years ago.
You can imagine that popping maize kernels was first discovered by accident. Some maize probably fell into a cooking fire, and whoever was nearby figured out that this was a handy new way of preparing the food. Popped maize would last a long time and was easy to make.
Ancient popcorn was probably not much like the snack you might munch at the movie theater today. There was probably no salt and definitely no butter, since there were no cows to milk in the Americas yet. It probably wasn’t served hot and was likely pretty chewy compared with the version you’re used to today.
It’s impossible to know exactly why or how popcorn was invented, but I would guess it was a clever way to preserve the edible starch in corn by getting rid of the little bit of water inside each kernel that would make it more susceptible to spoiling. It’s the heated water in the kernel escaping as steam that makes popcorn pop. The popped corn could then last a long time. What you may consider a tasty snack today probably started as a useful way of preserving and storing food.

Yoga: not as old as you thinkNo one denies that Hinduism’s most sacred and ancient texts, including the Bhagavad Gita, d...
10/01/2025

Yoga: not as old as you think

No one denies that Hinduism’s most sacred and ancient texts, including the Bhagavad Gita, describe different kinds of yogic practices. But what does this ancient and sacred tradition of yoga have to do with what people all around the world do in yoga classes in gyms and fitness centres today? Some 16 million Americans do some form of yoga.

The reality is that postural yoga, as we know it in the 21st century, is neither eternal nor synonymous with the Vedas or Yoga Sutras. On the contrary, modern yoga was born in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Contrary to the widespread impression, the vast majority of asanas taught by modern yoga gurus are not described anywhere in ancient sacred Hindu texts. Anyone who goes looking for references to popular yoga techniques like pranayam, neti, kapalbhati or suryanamaskar in classical Vedic literature will be sorely disappointed.

The four Vedas have no mention of yoga. The Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita do, but primarily as a spiritual technique to purify the atman. The Bible of yoga, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, devotes barely three short sutras (out of 195) to physical postures, and that too only to suggest comfortable ways of sitting still for prolonged meditation. Asanas were only the means to the real goal — to still the mind to achieve the state of pure consciousness — in Patanjali’s yoga.

There are, of course, asana-centred hatha yoga texts in the Indic tradition. But they definitely do not date back 5,000 years: none of them makes an appearance till the 10th to 12th centuries. Hatha yoga was a creation of the kanphata (split-eared) Nath Siddha, who were no Sanskrit-speaking sages meditating in the Himalayas. They undertook great physical austerities not because they sought to achieve pure consciousness, unencumbered by the body and other gross matter, but because they wanted magical powers (siddhis) to become immortal and to control the rest of the natural world.

The history and future of Earth-Moon systemAccording to the latest theories, the moon was born from the Earth, its matte...
27/12/2024

The history and future of Earth-Moon system

According to the latest theories, the moon was born from the Earth, its matter torn off when a Mars-size planetoid hit the Earth in a grazing collision some 4.5 billion years ago, when the Sun and its court of planets were emerging from a contracting and spinning hydrogen-rich primordial cloud of matter.

Given that the moon emerged from Earth, their distance was once smaller. Simulations place the initial distance at about 10 Earth radii, while now it is at about 60, a huge difference. So, if today the full moon occupies an area in the celestial sphere comparable to that of your thumb nail (about 0.5 degrees), in the distant past the view was considerably more dramatic. Also, since the gravitational force varies with the square of the distance, in the past the mutual influence of Earth and moon was much larger.

Far into the future, with the continuous slowing-down of Earth's spin, a day will last about 47 hours and the distance to the Moon will be 43 percent longer than today. At this point, Earth will spin about its axis at the same rate that the moon will orbit the Earth — the pair will be tidally-locked: the moon will hover over the same point on Earth, somewhat like geostationary satellites do today. It will be a very weird reality, quite different from what we see today: on one side of the Earth there will be no moon to see; and there will be no tides. (Actually, no one will be around to see and it won't happen: the sun will blow up before then, destroying the Earth-moon system.)

The duration of a day changes, even if absurdly slowly for human standards. As of now, a day becomes longer by about 1.7 microseconds per century. At this rate, half a billion years ago a day lasted a bit over 22 hours and one year had 397 days.

Sweet peppers surge into ripeness in late summer and flourish into fall.The things that we call peppers are actually chi...
20/12/2024

Sweet peppers surge into ripeness in late summer and flourish into fall.

The things that we call peppers are actually chilies, not peppers at all. The misnomer started with a persistent case of mistaken identity and wishful thinking by Spanish and Portuguese explorers who confused New World capsicums — chili plants — with the plants that produce peppercorns, one of the profitable spices they had hoped to discover during their travels. Chilies are berries because they are the seed pods of the plants, botanically speaking.

Botanists and culinary historians tell us that peppers are native to Central and South America. When trade ships began to crisscross the globe during the 16th century, they carried peppers that got planted on new shores. Cultivated varieties now grow in all but the coldest of climates.

Some peppers are hot, but the rest are not. Hot peppers contain varying levels of capsaicin, a colorless, odorless but unmistakable fiery compound. Mild and sweet peppers carry a recessive gene that keeps them from forming capsaicin. The only way to know a pepper is to taste it, but in general most sweet peppers are green while unripe and change into colors (usually red, orange, yellow or purple). Sweet peppers tend to grow much larger than hot peppers.

No vegetable benefits from roasting more than ripe sweet peppers. Roasting intensifies their natural sweetness and removes their thin, tough skins.

The heat caramelizes the sugars in the peppers, so they must be ripe enough to have developed sugars. So don't try this with an unripe green pepper, because all you will get is an acrid, burned green pepper. (This caveat does not apply to green chilies because the point of roasting them is to char the skins, not sweeten the flesh.)

Leave the peppers whole and do not oil them. If using a gas burner or grill (either gas or charcoal), place them directly on the grate as close to the heat source as possible. Roast the peppers until they are blistered and blackened all over, turning as needed with tongs. Don't stop until they look ruined. Transfer the charred peppers into a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let the peppers rest until they are cool enough to handle. The captured steam will finish cooking them. Gently pull out the stem and core of each pepper; most of the seeds will come out still attached to the core. Gently rub or peel off the blackened skin. It's fine if a few charred bits stay stuck to the flesh.

Use the peppers at once, or cover and refrigerate up to three days. You also can freeze the peppers in an airtight container for up to three months. Frozen peppers retain their flavor, but they soften, so they are best used in cooked dishes.

Thailand wages war against 'alien' tilapia fishBattling an alien speciesThailand had experienced outbreaks of blackchin ...
02/09/2024

Thailand wages war against 'alien' tilapia fish
Battling an alien species
Thailand had experienced outbreaks of blackchin tilapia in the past, but none has been as widespread as this most recent episode.
Mr Nattacha estimates that this particular outbreak is going to cost Thai economy at least 10 billion baht ($293m; £223m).
The core problem is that the blackchin tilapia prey on small fish, shrimp, and snail larvae, which are among Thailand's important aquaculture products.
So for months now, the government has encouraged people to catch blackchin tilapia, which have found their way in rivers and swamps. The fish thrive in brackish water, but can also survive in fresh and salt water.
The Thai government has also doubled the amount that it will pay people who catch the fish, to 15 baht ($0.42; £0.33) per kilogram. The result? In Bangkok's suburbs, crowds have waded in knee-deep waters hoping to catch blackchin tilapia with their plastic basins.
Authorities have also released the blackchin tilapia's predators - Asian seabass and long-whiskered catfish - to hunt them down.
However, they are battling a species which reproduces at speed: females are able to produce 500 fingerlings at a time.
And so authorities have also gone to the extent of developing genetically-modified blackchin tilapia that would produce sterile offspring, planning to release them as early as the end of this year, in the hopes of stopping their population from exploding further.
But Mr Nattacha told BBC Thai the government needed to do even more.
"Who will win?" he wondered. "We need the people to follow the case closely, otherwise this matter will be quiet, and we will pass on this kind of environment to the next generation."

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A crisis cabinet has been set up by the São Paulo state government to deal with wildfires which have put 30 Brazilian ci...
28/08/2024

A crisis cabinet has been set up by the São Paulo state government to deal with wildfires which have put 30 Brazilian cities on alert.
Flames have killed two people and smoke has disrupted traffic on a dozen highways, while the capital, São Paulo, is shrouded in a grey haze.
Soaring temperatures and low humidity are stoking dangerous fire conditions in the state, which has endured a prolonged drought.
Local government said two employees at an industrial plant in the city of Urupes had died on Friday while fighting a fire, without providing more details, Reuters reported.

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The weird way the Los Angeles basin alters earthquakes�Southern California has been shaken by two recent earthquakes gre...
22/08/2024

The weird way the Los Angeles basin alters earthquakes�Southern California has been shaken by two recent earthquakes greater than magnitude 4.0. The way they were experienced in Los Angeles has a lot to do with the sediment-filled basin the city sits upon.
A little over an hour after sunset on 6 August 2024, a sparsely populated belt of farmland near Bakersfield, Southern California, was shaken from a restful evening. A magnitude 5.2 earthquake, followed by hundreds of smaller aftershocks, shuddered through the area as a fault near the southern end of the Central Valley ruptured.
It wasn't a terribly unusual event, by California's standards. The state is the second-most seismically active in the United States behind Alaska, with Southern California experiencing an earthquake on average every three minutes. While most are too small to be felt, around 15-20 events exceed magnitude 4.0 each year.
This latest magnitude 5.2 earthquake is the largest to hit Southern California in three years. The epicenter was about 17 miles (27km) south of Bakersfield, California, and people reported shaking nearly 90 miles (145km) away in portions of Los Angeles and as far away as San Diego. Then, a few days later, another jolt rattled the Los Angeles area due to a rupture on a small section of the dangerous Puente Hills fault system. The resulting magnitude 4.4 earthquake had its epicentre just four miles northeast of the city's downtown area.
Although there was minimal damage caused by both quakes, they have highlighted just how the geology under California's largest city can alter the effects of fault movements in the area. The relatively shallow depth of the 6 August earthquake appeared to create more intense or prolonged shaking in some parts of the city, while others felt almost nothing at all.

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