The sister of a history teacher

I was doing some research yesterday for a history project when I stumbled upon an unthinkable fact. Did you know that in 1659 the celebration of Christmas was outlawed in Massachusetts?! Apparently it was according to Puritan custom in England or something. But still! It wasn't until about 22 years later that the law was repealed, and can you imagine being forbidden all that time not to celebrate Christmas? Next thing you know we'll discover that in the mean time it was always winter. And it's crazy! What ever happened to "freedom of religion" and our constitutional rights? Oh yeah. They hadn't happened yet.

Hey, and do you happen to know what the term "spooning" means? Why, it's the Welsh term for courting of course! I guess when the young man came to visit the young lady at her house he would carve spoons while she might play music or something. And if the sound of whittling or music stopped, the parents would get suspicious. In the end, the man would present a "love spoon" to the girl for an engagement present.

And, while I'm on a historic note, today I learned something else in history class today. My teacher said it, so I have no concrete evidence to back it up, but did you know that Queen Elizabeth I was almost killed by smallpox? And not only that, but once she had survived the traumatic disease, she hid the scars on her face by painting it with white lead and vinegar, and then to smather on some color she painted her lips and added red dye and egg white to give her cheeks color. Some make-up! And, oddly enough, it was actually the white lead that eventually killed her. Or at least I think that's what my teacher said. Moral of the story? Don't wear white lead and vinegar!

And now that I'm relieved of my watchman's duties, I can breathe a sigh of relief that at least your blood won't by on my hands if you end up trying it. (but take my advice and don't)

Ha. I guess you tell that I'm the sister of a history teacher.

Goodbye to plus sizes! (or is it hello?)

Hey, check out this article my chemistry teacher shared with us in class today. Bet you never knew this. It's amazing!

 

Soda and Ice Cream Diet

 

            As we all know, it takes 1 calorie to heat 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius. Translated into meaningful terms, this means that you can eat a very cold dessert (generally consisting of water in large part), and the natural processes that raise the consumed dessert to body temperature during the digestive cycle literally suck the calories out of the only available source: your body fat.

 

 

For example, a dessert served and eaten at nearly 0 degrees C will, in a short time, be raised to the normal body temperature of 37 degrees C. For each gram of dessert eaten, that process takes approximately 37 calories, as stated above. The average dessert portion is 6 oz., or 168 grams. Therefore, by operation of thermodynamic law, 6,216 calories (1 cal./gm/deg. x 37 deg. x 168) are extracted from body fat as the dessert's temperature is normalized.

 

 

Allowing for the 1,200 latent calories in the dessert, the net calorie loss is approximately 5,000 calories.

 

 

Obviously, the more cold dessert you eat, the better off you are and the faster you will lose weight, if that is your goal.

 

 

This process works equally well when drinking very cold soda in frosted glasses. Each ounce of soda contains 16 latent calories, but extracts 1,036 calories (6,216 cal. Per 6 oz. portion) in the temperature-normalizing process. Thus the net calorie loss per ounce of soda is 1,020 calories. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to calculate that 12, 240 calories (12 oz. 1,020 cal./oz.) are extracted from the body in the process of drinking a can of soda.

 

 

Frozen desserts, e.g., ice cream, are even more beneficial, since it takes 83 cal/gm to melt them (i.e., raise them to 0 deg. C) and an additional 37 cal./gm to raise them further to body temperature. The results here are really remarkable, and it beats running hands down.

 

 

Unfortunately, for those who eat pizza as an excuse to drink soda, pizza (loaded with latent calories and served at above body temperature) induces an opposite effect. But, thankfully, as the astute reader should have already reasoned, the obvious solution is to drink a lot of soda with pizza and follow up immediately with large bowls of ice cream.

 

 

We could all be thin if we were to adhere religiously to a pizza, soda, and ice cream diet.

 

 

Happy eating!

 

 

As I listened to my teacher reading this I couldn't keep myself from grinning and grinning. I shoved away the majority of my skepticism as I basked in the revelation of this incredible idea. Why, this is genius! The whole world must have it wrong! And how come I never heard this before? But of course, if you are chemistry-savy like I'm not (that would be why I'm taking chemistry!:), you may have been able to point out the gross error in this theory (besides your common sense telling you that you can't get thin eating icecream and soda) as you read--there's a huge difference between "calorie" and "Calorie."  And those are terms that were kind of blurred in the account above. But hey, it sounded good, right?

 

 

Now I wonder if any of you were as gullible as I was . . . .