[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what there
is of it.

Mark Twain 

 

I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to
those places.

Henny Youngman 

 

What you look like on the outside is not what makes you cool at all. I mean,
I had a mullet and wore parachute pants for a long, long time, and I'm doin'
okay.

Ellen DeGeneres

 

Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to
bullets.

Unknown

 

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison 

 

Estimated amount of glucose used by an adult human brain each day, expressed
in M&Ms: 250

Harper's Index, October 1989

 

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Ambient

 

It turns out that ambient, as a bit of food industry jargon, has been around
for a decade or two without attracting much attention. The Oxford English
Dictionary has traced it back to the early eighties. It mostly turns up in
phrases like ambient food.

 

In its proper meaning, ambient refers to the immediate surroundings of
something. It comes from the French ambiant and, further back, from the
Latin ambientem, which is from the verb meaning "to go about". By the end of
the sixteenth century, it had taken on its modern meaning in English which
the OED comprehensively lists as "lying round, surrounding, encircling,
encompassing, environing". It's related to ambience, another word with
interesting cultural overtones, which also refers to one's surroundings, but
especially to the character and atmosphere of a place.

 

You might think that ambient is just the adjective from ambience. That is
how it was formed in the nineteenth century, but the two words have diverged
enough that their associations are different. So ambient music is strictly
speaking wrong, as it refers to a style of music with textures but without a
beat that aims to create a mood or atmosphere, an ambience in fact.

 

Engineers and other technical persons use the word correctly when they speak
of such matters as ambient temperature, meaning the conditions surrounding
some object they're interested in. This phrase has become so fixed, and is
so often how people come across the word ambient, that many seem to think it
means "normal room conditions". That's not so, of course, as you can talk
about the ambient temperature of a lump of iron in a furnace, or of a
meteorite in Antarctic ice.

 

But when food technologists speak of ambient foods, they're using the term
as shorthand for ambient temperature foods. You can argue they're using the
word correctly, since they're speaking of foods that can be stored at the
temperature of their surroundings in the store, without needing to be
chilled, such as canned foods, jars of coffee, fresh fruit or bags of sugar.
But also in use is ambient fishmonger, a wonderfully gnomic phrase meaning
one of those guys who sells unrefrigerated fresh fish.

 

You have to admit there's an ambience about ambient.

 

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Washington Monument

 

The engineer who completed the Washington Monument asked the government to
supply his workers with hot coffee. Several years after the 1855 death of
Mills, Col. Thomas Lincoln Casey Sr., chief of engineers of the United
States Army Corps of Engineers, assumed responsibility for completing the
Washington Monument. Among his most memorable orders was an official request
to the U.S. Treasury Department to supply his workers-specifically those
assigned to the construction of the monument's apex-with "hot coffee in
moderate quantities." The treasury complied.

 

Dozens of miscellaneous items are buried beneath the monument. On the first
day of construction, a zinc case containing a number of objects and
documents was placed in the Washington Monument's foundation. Alongside
copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are a map of
the city of Washington, publications of Census data, a book of poems, a
collection of American coins, a list of Supreme Court justices, a Bible,
daguerreotypes of George Washington and his mother Mary, Alfred Vail's
written description of the magnetic telegraph, a copy of Appleton's Railroad
and Steamboat Companion, and an issue of the arts and leisure magazine
Godey's Lady's Book, among many other items.

 

Some of the Washington Monument's memorial stones bear strange inscriptions.
The vast majority of the 194 memorial stones lining the Washington Monument
are not likely to inspire confusion. Common inscriptions celebrate George
Washington, the country, and the states they represent. However, a few of
the monument's stones bear engravings of a more curious variety. A stone
donated by a Welsh-American community from New York reads (in Welsh), "My
language, my land, my nation of Wales-Wales for ever." Another stone from
the Templars of Honor and Temperance articulates the organization's rigid
support of Prohibition: "We will not make, buy, sell, or use as a beverage
any spirituous or malt liquors, wine, cider, or any other alcoholic liquor,
and will discountenance their manufacture, traffic, and use, and this pledge
we will maintain unto the end of life."

 

The apex was displayed at Tiffany's before it was added to the structure.
The men who created the Washington Monument, though reverent in their
intentions, were hardly above a good publicity stunt. William Frishmuth, an
architect and aluminum magnate connected to the project, arranged for the
pointed aluminum top of the monument to enjoy an ornate two-day display at
New York City's luxury jewelry store Tiffany's. The apex was placed on the
floor of the storefront so that shoppers could claim to have walked "over
the top of the Washington Monument."

 

Opening ceremonies attracted several big-name guests. Among the 20,000
Americans present for the beginning of construction in 1848 were
then-President James K. Polk, three future presidents (James Buchanan,
Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson), former first lady Dolley Madison,
Alexander Hamilton's widow Elizabeth Hamilton (John Quincy Adams' widow was
too sick to attend), and a bald eagle.

 

The Washington Monument was the tallest structure in the world for about six
months. Upon its official opening on October 9, 1888, the Washington
Monument-standing an impressive 555 feet high-boasted the superlative of
tallest manmade structure on Earth. The honor was short-lived, however, as
the following March saw the unveiling of the Eiffel Tower, which topped out
at 986 feet.

 

It is still the tallest of its kind. As of 2019, the Washington Monument
still reigns supreme as both the world's tallest all-stone structure and the
tallest obelisk. (The stone San Jacinto Monument in Texas is taller, but it
sits on a concrete plinth.)

 

A few decades after construction, the monument caught "tuberculosis." Wear
and tear had begun to get the best of the Washington Monument by the early
20th century, prompting an exodus of the cement and rubble filler through
the structure's external cracks. The sweating sensation prompted John S.
Mosby Jr., author of a 1911 article in Popular Mechanics, to nickname the
phenomenon "geological tuberculosis."