Everything You Probably DON'T Need To Know

212 years ago today, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr had their (in)famous duel, which would result in Hamilton’s death the next day, as well as the effective end of Burr’s political career.

So, Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were political rivals for many years, but the tensions really rose around 1800- Burr was campaigning for President, and Hamilton endorsed Thomas Jefferson, which greatly helped secure Jefferson’s win and Burr’s placement as Vice President. Then in 1804, after it became clear that Jefferson was going to drop Burr from the ballot, Burr ran for Governor of New York- Hamilton greatly assisted his opponent, Morgan Lewis, who ended up winning. After a subsequent series of angry and accusing letters, Aaron Burr challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel.

The duel took place at dawn on July 11, 1804, in Weehawken, New Jersey. Coincidentally, just three years earlier, Alexander Hamilton’s first son, Philip, was shot and in his own duel at Weehawken and died from his wound. Burr’s second was William P. Van Ness, and Hamilton’s second was Nathaniel Pendleton. Hamilton also brought with him Dr. David Hosack, who had attended to Philip Hamilton after his duel.

All firsthand accounts agree that two shots were fired; however, Burr and Hamilton’s seconds disagree as to who shot first. We do know that Hamilton’s shot went into the air, and Burr’s shot landed just above Hamilton’s hip. It ricocheted inside his body, did considerable organ damage, and lodged in one of his lumbar vertebrae. Alexander Hamilton was quickly rowed back across the Hudson River into New York. He died on July 12, 1804, with his wife at his side, and was later buried in the Trinity Churchyard Cemetery in Manhattan.

There is some evidence that Hamilton may have intentionally thrown his own shot- in his ‘Statement on Impending Duel with Aaron Burr’, Hamilton wrote, “I have resolved, if our interview is conducted in the usual manner, and it pleases God to give me the opportunity, to reserve and throw away my first fire, and I have thoughts even of reserving my second fire”. Hamilton also apparently told Pendleton that he had no intentions of firing at Burr - a claim which Dr. Hosack backed up in a letter he wrote about a month later - and may only have pulled the trigger of his pistol upon being hit.

Happy Independence Day! For those of us who live in the United States of America, today is the day we celebrate our country’s hard-won independence from Great Britain, often as loudly and obnoxiously as possible. If you’re anything like me, you’re going to eat good food, blast Hamilton, and attempt to avoid as much of the festivities as possible.

And for your reading pleasure, I have used some of that time spent avoiding festivities to do a little research on this national holiday. Here’s what I found:

Massachusetts made the 4th of July a state holiday in 1781

Independence Day was declared a federal legal holiday in 1941

The Continental Congress actually voted to declare independence on July 2nd, 1776, but didn’t officially adopt the Declaration of Independence for another two days

It also took nearly another month for most of the delegates to actually sign the Declaration of Independence

On July 4th, 1781, George Washington decided to celebrate by giving his soldiers double rations of rum! (Now that’s a way to get a party started!)

Three of our presidents died on the 4th of July

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the same day- July 4th, 1826; James Monroe died on July 4th, 1831

Conversely, only one of our presidents was born on the 4th of July- Calvin Coolidge, born on July 4th, 1872

You know who was also born on the 4th of July? Steve Rogers, that’s who! Captain America was born on Independence Day!

I hope y’all found some of this interesting, and I hope that (if you celebrate) your celebrations are fun and full of merriment. I also implore you to remember that this “land of the free” was built on the backs of the oppressed; the founding fathers declared that all men were created equal, but minorities were, and still are, being exploited and put down.

Happy Barricade Day, citizens!

As you may (or may not) know, today marks the 184th anniversary of the funeral of General Jean Maximilien Lamarque. At this funeral, a red flag was raised in the midst of a group of republican demonstrators, and the police shot into the crowded procession- and so began the ill-fated June Rebellion of 1832.

According to the firsthand account of Charles Jeanne, this group of republicans only wanted to make a political demonstration, not to start a rebellion - though they were advised to bring themselves ready for conflict - and it was the police who had the red flag (a symbol which the republicans then would have rejected) waved in their midst. The police then used this as excuse to fire upon the demonstrators. It was in direct response to this injustice that the rebellion began and the barricades were constructed, though tentative plans for rebellion against the monarchy had already been spread through different republican societies.

The republicans were severely outnumbered and outgunned, and the rebellion ended the next day, with the casualties numbering around 800 on both sides. Charles Jeanne, among others who had escaped death at the barricades, were eventually arrested, convicted at trial, and imprisoned.

Without Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, it is likely that this rebellion would have been lost to history.

Hi! Sorry I haven’t been updating as regularly as I wanted to. I actually meant to post this yesterday, but then life happened and my computer decided to do some spontaneous updates, so...yeah. On with the show.

On May 22, 1885, the great French author, poet, and dramatist Victor Hugo died at the ripe old age of 83.

What I want to talk about here is his funeral.

So, Victor Hugo was a pretty popular dude in his day. He campaigned for social progress for most of his life. When he returned to France in 1870 (he was in exile for a while, and then stayed outside France after he was granted amnesty so he could continue criticizing the French government in his writing), he was hailed by the common people as a national hero. A few years before his death, nearly half a million people marched in a parade past his house in his honor for his 80th birthday, and the city of Paris renamed the street he lived on Avenue Victor-Hugo.

When Victor Hugo died, the government (in an attempt to capitalize on his popularity) went against his wishes for a pauper’s funeral and instead gave him a hero’s funeral. His funeral procession started at the Arc de Triomphe and ended at the Panthéon, where he was buried. Over two million people joined his funeral procession, which (if I’m not mistaken) was actually more than Paris’ total population at the time. Among those in mourning were working people, artists, civil servants, suffragettes, war veterans- and nearly every prostitute in Paris. Evidently, most of the brothels in Paris closed on the day of Hugo’s funeral, so the prostitutes, all dressed in traditional mourning garb, could walk in his funeral procession and pay their respects. That night, the wine shops in Paris remained open as all the people Hugo tried to raise up celebrated his life and his work in writing and politics.

Happy Record Store Day, everybody!

In honor of this most joyous day, I have decided to give y'all some fun facts about vinyl records. Did you know:

there is actually a difference between colored vinyl and black vinyl; colored discs are more rare than black discs (which tends to make them more valuable to collectors), BUT colored discs will actually degrade faster and are damaged more easily than black discs.

the first 12-inch vinyl recording was of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra performing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, and was released in 1931.

the best way to store vinyl records is actually vertically, not stacked horizontally, which can irreparably damage the discs on the bottom of the stack.

on both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977, NASA included a vinyl record for any alien passers-by to pick up and listen to! This record (nicknamed the "Voyager Golden Record") is basically a mixtape- it contains birdsongs and whale-songs, various natural sounds (like thunderstorms and waves), spoken greetings in 55 different languages, and music by Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Blind Willie Johnson, Valya Balkanska, and Chuck Berry. The contents of this record were decided upon by a committee headed by Carl Sagan.

vinyl record sales have actually been on the rise! Since 1993, vinyl sales have been increasing pretty consistently, with a dramatic spike in sales in 2013.

I'm sure all of us who have watched Hannibal know this quote. Here, Will Graham is specifically commenting on blood, but this kind of thing happens pretty regularly- every night, in fact.

Have you ever noticed that bright colors just don't look the same in the dark? Like, a stop sign not looking particularly red in the middle of the night? This phenomenon is known as the Purkinje effect, or "dark adaptation". Here's how it works:

Human retinas have two different types of sensors- cones and rods. Cones are responsible for our color vision. Rods are extremely light-sensitive, and are important for low-light vision, but do not detect color as readily. They are, however, most attuned to the blue-green wavelengths on the color spectrum. So, when we transition from using our photopic (bright light, cone-based) vision system to our scotopic (low light, rod-based) vision system, typically bright/warm colors, like red and yellow, appear de-saturated, while typically cooler colors, like blue and green, do not.

On this day in history......

One of my favorite books was first published in Paris!

(Well, sort of.) On April 3rd, 1862, the first two volumes of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables were published in Paris, France. The rest of the book was released about a month later.

Les Mis (now fondly known as 'the Brick', due to its size) was originally met with very negative reviews, with many critics finding the novel's content either too sentimental or downright immoral. Others were put off by Hugo's apparent republicanism and sympathy for the rebels involved in the June Rebellion of 1832, which features heavily in the latter half of the novel.

Yesterday my dad and I made a really huge amount of orange marmalade (we must have had, like, eighty pounds of oranges come off of our trees), and my dad told me some really cool stuff about the history of canning. It was really interesting, and I figured I'd share.

So, in the grand scheme of things, canning is a relatively recent development in food preservation. Like, we've been salting and fermenting food for about as long as we've been a species- but heating and sealing food? Pretty new.

In the late 18th century, the French military offered a reward of 12000 francs for anyone who could come up with a reliable way to store and preserve large amounts of food for the frequently-traveling army. Nicolas Appert, a young chef from Champagne, came up with a very innovative method- he heat-treated the food and then removed all of the air from the container. At first, Appert used the strongest airtight containers he had access to, which were champagne bottles sealed with a weird mixture of lime and cheese. He quickly progressed to wider-necked glass containers, and experimented with preserving vegetables, fruits, meats, fish, and dairy products. In 1803, his new canned foods went out for trial runs with the French navy.

Have you ever felt like just.....not going to work? I know I haven't, but that's more because I am perpetually unemployed than anything, because I have certainly felt like not doing things that need to be done. That's also more because I have executive dysfunction issues, but....I think y'all get what I'm trying to say. You just don't want to get up and go anywhere, despite having that obligation.

If you have ever felt this, do I have some words for you! And not only are they incredibly useful (and weirdly specific), but they are also just really, really fun to say.

Egrote: "to feign illness in order to avoid work"

Malinger: "to exaggerate illness in order to avoid work"

Whindle: "feigned groan/feigned whine" (to be used when calling in sick, in order to make yourself sound, well, sick)

Jactation: "extremely restless or feverish tossing and twitching, usually by a person with a severe illness" (just say you're jactating, if asked for details about your illness; the word is so weird and gross-sounding, they might not ask any further and just tell you to stay home until you stop)

Dysania: "extreme difficulty waking up"

Clinomania: "the obsessive desire to lie down"

Hum Durgeon: "a feigned or imaginary illness" (which no one will understand unless they are familiar with eighteenth- or nineteenth-century slang in this particular subject)

I saw 'The Martian' last night - it was really, really good, and the science is surprisingly accurate, and everyone should go see it as soon as possible - so I thought I'd give y'all some random facts about the Red Planet.

Mars the planet is named after Mars the Roman god of war, and its moons (Deimos and Phobos) are named after two of the god's sons with Venus/Aphrodite

Mars is nicknamed 'the red planet' because of its reddish appearance, which is caused by the high concentration of iron oxide on the planet's surface

according to the Phoenix lander's data, the soil on Mars contains nutrients such as potassium, sodium, chloride, and magnesium, and the soil has a pH level of 7.7

Martian soil contains a high amount of perchlorates, which are the salts derived from perchloric acid; this could make it very difficult for crops to grow, and it might even make the crops that did grow toxic (but fortunately, if we ever wanted to grow crops on Mars, perchlorates can easily be washed out of the soil)

Olympus Mons, the tallest volcano on Mars, is about 3 times the height of Mount Everest (which stands about 5.5 miles/8.8 kilometers above sea level)

Mars' atmosphere is 95.32% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, .13% oxygen, and .08% carbon monoxide (in other words, NOT BREATHABLE BY HUMANS)

I have, on and off, played the violin since I was nine years old. (For reference, I'm twenty now.) And every single violin teacher I have ever had, at some point in time, has tried to drill into my head that if I wanted to learn a song, I had to read sheet music. And very well.

It hasn't really stuck. Even recently, when I try to play something new, it's always been a process of listening and reproducing rather than plucking the correct notes right off the sheet.

I'm never going to be a famous musician, but here's a list of a few that, like me, didn't read sheet music:

The Beatles! None of them could read music- not John, not Paul, not George, and not Ringo. (That might explain why their chords are always so simple.)

The Bee Gees didn't read or write sheet music, either!

Robert Johnson, who might be the greatest blues musician of all time

Eddie Van Halen

Slash, from Guns 'n Roses

Jimi Hendrix; he learned to play the guitar entirely by ear, which is made even more remarkable by the fact that he played (for the most part) right-handed guitars upside-down.

Eric Clapton

Michael Jackson! (ACK! How great is that?!)

Stevie Ray Vaughan

Tom Morello, from Rage Against the Machine

Angus Young, from AC/DC

Hey! Sorry I haven't been very up to posting here recently; the fall semester started last week and I've been pretty darn busy. I'll try to be better about it, I promise.

And now, onto the good stuff!

Have any of y'all read a book by a certain author, and you just couldn't get into it for some reason? One of those authors for me has always been Charles Dickens; there are very few Dickens pieces that I really enjoy (specifically, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, and Oliver Twist). And my primary complaint was not the content, but rather, the writing style- frequently, I felt like his writing was just unnecessarily wordy, and so got frustrated when trying to comprehend anything.

Did you know, though, that Charles Dickens got paid by the word? So you can't really blame him, right? For spending an entire chapter describing one tiny little prison cell? He was just trying to get paid.

I've heard similar complaints about the author Alexandre Dumas, who wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. He, however, was paid by the line. This is why his novels are dialogue-heavy, and why much of the dialogue looks something like this:

"Parlez-vous français?"

"Oui."

"ça va?"

"ça va."

It seems like an unnecessary amount of lines for a small amount of dialogue, but again, the man was just trying to get paid.

Did you know?

A lot of aquatic mammals don't show any evidence of rapid-eye-movement (REM) stage sleep. Many of them actually sleep one half of their brain at a time! This phenomenon is called unihemispheric sleep; one hemisphere of the brain is in slow-wave sleep (SWS), while the other hemisphere is completely awake. Unihemispheric sleep allows the mammal's brain to rest while still being able to swim and breathe and receive stimuli.

Another really cool thing is that some species of seals live half of their lives in the water and half of their lives on land; these species will exhibit unihemispheric SWS while in the water, but will exhibit REM sleep and bihemispheric SWS while on land!

Aquatic mammals are particularly badass when it comes to sleep. There are species of whales that can go for weeks without any sleep, and seem to suffer no ill effects. Like, mothers with newborn calves just don't sleep for nearly four weeks after the calves are born. They just don't. And it doesn't seem to cause any damage, even in the short term. Y'all know what the official record for a human going without sleep? The record (I think) is about 18 days, and a person staying awake for less time than that will start having some serious health issues- for example, short-term and working memory trouble, paranoia, and hallucinations. Losing sleep is bad for humans.

This blog officially has more followers than my primary blog. I don't know what I've been doing to gain so many followers recently, but I suppose I should keep it up, right? Cx

(And I know that this is just blatant self-promotion, but you can check out my primary blog here. Mostly multi-fandom stuff and music; feel free to see if anything strikes your interest.)

Okay, so this is really cool. I mean, there's a sad story attached, but it's still really cool.

I'm taking a summer class right now on behavioral neuroscience, which is fascinating. My professor talked about this in one of his lectures, but I didn't really think about it until today, when my dad told me that one of the coaches at my high school announced that he has a brain stem tumor.

And here's where it gets cool. Y'all know how cancer comes from mutated cells, right? Most types of cells divide in order to maintain their numbers; during this process, the division can be interrupted by carcinogens or mutagens, which can turn a cell cancerous.

But neurons in the brain and spinal cord (or rather, your central nervous system) rarely divide; it's mostly in the embryonic and fetal stages of life, and only happens in the hippocampus and the olfactory bulb of an adult brain, and it happens at a much lower rate than most other cells. So how does cancer within the central nervous system (CNS) exist?

So, the neurons which make up about half of the volume of your central nervous system are supported by a lot of other cells, like glial cells (e.g.- astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, microglia). And these cells do divide regularly, which leaves room for carcinogens or mutagens to interrupt and make them cancerous. ((Also, it should be noted that while not all cancers are malignant, tumors in the CNS can still have extremely negative side effect.))

I think right now I should really emphasize that I am talking primarily about cells in the central nervous system, not the peripheral nervous system (PNS). There are a few important differences between the two, which allow for occasional cellular division in the PNS; and what this really allows for is possible nerve reattachment within the PNS.

Another way that cancer can occur within the CNS is for it to have metastasized from another part of the body. Like, cancer cells of one type can move from their point of origin to other parts of the body- so for instance, you can be diagnosed with mesothelioma, which is a type of lung cancer, but it may not stay in your lungs. Some cancer ells can move to the CNS and grow from there.

.....Anyway, I just thought that was cool. You know, that brain cancer probably doesn't come from neurons.

Well, it's hurricane season, and we have a tropical storm passing my hometown right now, so I thought I'd spread some information about tropical storms and hurricanes.

First, let's get some terminology.

Tropical cyclone: a rotating, organized system of clouds and thunderstorms that originates over (sub)tropical waters and has a closed low-level circulation; rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere due to the Coriolis effect

Tropical depression: a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained wind speeds of 38 mph or less

Tropical storm: a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained wind speeds of 39 to 73 mph

Hurricane: a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained wind speeds of at least 74 mph; in some places known as typhoons

Major hurricane: a hurricane with maximum sustained wind speeds of 111 mph or higher

As described above, one way that hurricanes in particular are measured is on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which categorizes hurricanes on a scale of 1 to 5 based on sustained wind speeds. It also estimates potential damage of any affected areas. While all hurricanes are dangerous, Categories 3, 4, & 5 are considered major hurricanes due to the greatly increased potential for significant damage and loss of life. There is also some debate on whether or not a 6th category should be introduced, for hurricanes measuring sustained wind speeds of over 175 mph, of which there have been very few recorded.

Here are some recognizable examples of hurricanes at each scale category (also, these are listed at the scale of when they made landfall, NOT their maximum categorization, which I have also marked):

Category 1: Hurricane Humberto (2007), Hurricane Barbara (2013)

Category 2: Hurricane Arthur (2014), Hurricane Ike (2008) ((max: Category 4))

Category 3: Hurricane Katrina (2005) ((max: Category 5)), Hurricane Rita ((max: Category 5)), Hurricane Sandy (2012)

Category 4: Galveston Hurricane (1990)

Category 5: Mexico Hurricane (1959), Hurricane Felix (2007)

There are a few major criticisms of the Saffir-Simpson scale. For instance, many scientists have pointed out that the scale doesn't take into account the actual size of the storm or the amount of precipitation that occurs. Another criticism is that it is not a continuous scale, like the Richter scale, and so is overly simplistic.

A couple of proposed replacements include the Hurricane Intensity Index, which measures the dynamic pressure caused by a storm's winds, and the Hurricane Hazard Index, is based on surface wind speeds, the radius of maximum winds by the storm, and the storm's translational velocity. Neither have been used by officials.

As I've mentioned before, all hurricanes are dangerous, and this is particularly true along the coast or on an island. Arguably, the greatest threat to life during a hurricane is a storm surge- an abnormal rise in water level generated by a storm. Storm surge is caused by the force of cyclonic winds forcing water onshore.

This phenomenon gets even more dangerous if the storm surge coincides with the natural high tide. Another thing that makes storm surge particularly dangerous is the fact that much of the US coastal populations live less than 10 feet above sea level. Some notable storm surge events include Hurricane Katrina (2005), Hurricane Dennis (2005), Hurricane Opal (1995), and the 1900 Galveston Hurricane.