"5 COOL THINGS" - weekly emails

5 Cool Things 😎
5 Cool Things:
11/16/23
Hi, this is Greg Powell. I hope you'll enjoy one or more of these interesting topics from the world of business and beyond. Dan Powell, my son and collaborator, has researched the articles and written the summaries, so this is not a boilerplate message. We'd like to give you a weekly break to learn about something cool or, better yet, 5 Cool Things


The U.S. is Having a Rail Travel Renaissance, But You Probably Didn’t Notice (Fast Company)

Over a hundred years ago, train travel connected Americans across two oceans, spanning vast tracts of wilderness and desert and changing the human experience forever. Today, the American passenger rail system lags woefully behind that of other advanced nations — but that’s changing for the good. As a result of the funding contained in 2021’s Infrastructure Bill, Amtrak is running brand-new cars and making plans for expansion. In so many states — Illinois, Virginia, California, Florida — plans are underway for new lines and high-speed options that will ease congestion on freeways and in the air, while being more fuel-efficient, quieter, and releasing less carbon than other transportation options. Read more…


A Drug For Regrowing Teeth Could Be Available Within The Next Decade (Science Alert)

Teeth are a wonderful part of the human body, but also a very frustrating part when they cause pain. Our mouth-bones are so problematic that they have their own special doctors — with extra insurance and co-pay costs as well (if you live in the US, anyway). All of that drilling, filling, and cleaning is such a hassle. Why can’t we just grow new teeth? USAG-1 is a gene that appears to inhibit growth of teeth in the body. Recent trials on mice have shown that an antibody can be used to control the expression of this gene, promoting tooth growth. "The idea of growing new teeth is every dentist's dream," said Katsu Takahashi, head of dentistry at Kitano Hospital in Japan, which conducted the study. Someday, our bodies might naturally replace their own broken teeth. Read more…


The ‘Crispy R’ and Why R Is the Weirdest Letter (Atlas Obscura)

“Rhoticity” is the use (or lack thereof) of the R sound in the English language. The pronunciation of R, which is really more akin to an open-mouthed vowel than a closed, clipped consonant, is more or less present in the dialects of speakers across the North American continent and in Europe. For example, while some speakers roll their Rs, a large contingent of people in the UK and in the northeastern US omit the R sound almost entirely, as with FDR’s quote, “the only thing we have to feah is feah itself”. A more recent development has been the appearance of the so-called “crispy R”, a dragging sort of R sound that you might hear on the Kardashians. Read more…

 

Where 'Roger That' Really Comes From (Popular Mechanics)

“Roger that”. When do we first learn this phrase? For most of us, early in childhood and, though it sounds a little corny today, it’s one that most people might hear or say without a second thought. The origin of “Roger that” most likely dates back to the days of telegraph communication, when a single letter could be sent to represent a more complex message — in this case, “received”. By the time of World War Two, the radio shorthand was still in use, but operators substituted the military code word “Roger”, which was equivalent to “Romeo” in today’s standardized NATO alphabet. Read more…
 

Great Glass Coffin Scam: When Hucksters Sold the Fantasy of Death Without Decay (Collectors Weekly)

During the turn of the 19th century, entrepreneurial zest combined with a strange sort of vanity saw the rise of a new investment opportunity: glass coffins. While traditional wooden caskets allow the body to decay and be compromised, glass would hermetically seal a body in a perfect time capsule, according to the salespeople, and “last in the earth forever”. Unfortunately for investors, the technology to construct these products barely existed, and they would have been entirely too heavy and unwieldy to be used on a large scale. By the 1920s, the glass coffin manufacturers were being investigated for fraudulent sales practices. Even so, their efforts marked a shift in American attitudes toward death, and exemplify a particular fear of the inevitable decay of our physical forms. Read more…

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See you next week!
            - Greg
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