Difference between Mineral, Soda or Tonic water

I was talking to a friend a while ago and she asked me what the difference was between mineral, tonic and soda water. Now I admit that I had no idea and it got me to thinking, 'What is the difference?' I decided to Google the answer and found an interesting few websites that explained the difference. In order to start this explanation we need to define that there is a difference between carbonated water (water with bubbles) and still water. Often this is phrased as still or sparkling, with sparkling obviously being the carbonated water. There are many varieties around the world of sparkling water, in the United States it is often known as seltzer and in the United Kingdom it is usually just referred to as sparkling water. When you are offered still or sparkling water, generally it is plain water (still) or plain water with bubbles (sparkling). Now mineral water is different from plain water because in order to be named mineral water it must contain a level of naturally occurring minerals. So the source of the water would have to be a mineral spring somewhere. This water, as with plain water, can be either still or sparkling.

Soda water is similar to mineral water however the minerals are added to the water and are not naturally occurring, hence why this water cannot be named mineral water. Soda water is always carbonated and has never been made in a still variety. All of the waters mentioned above taste similar and I personally think, others might disagree, can easily be substituted with each other in either their still or sparkling varieties (obviously the still varieties will taste difference from the sparkling). Tonic water is the main exception, although it is a carbonated (sparkling) water, this type of water tastes very different to the other varieties. The reason for this, is because it contains a compound called quinine, this is what gives tonic water its bitter taste. Quinine is actually a medicinal compound which was the first effective treatment for malaria and originally tonic water was used for medicinal purposes. It is also this bitter taste which quinine adds to tonic water that ensures any other carbonated water added in place of tonic, to a gin and tonic, will give it a drastically different flavour. Hopefully you (and myself) will remember all these differences and next time somebody asks you why these waters have different names, you will be able to give them an answer!

Check out the kitchn website to read more about these water varieties.

The Australian Ballot

I was in Canberra recently and I decided, since I was in our nations capital, that I should do something touristy. So I visited the Museum of Australian Democracy, which is located in Old Parliament House. I initially had a guided tour of Old Parliament House before I went wandering around the place myself. During my wander I found out an interesting fact about the system we use to vote in Australia. Apparently back in the 1800s, there were problems in Australia because voters were being intimidated into voting for a certain candidate. Due to the fact that a vote was public, for example people might stand in a group and show hands if they want to vote for Julia, it was easy for candidates to see who voted for them. So this public vote made it very easy to punish those who didn't vote for you, which made intimidating voters a very easy prospect.

During the 1850s it was proposed that all elections should be put to a secret ballot and a man by the name of Henry Chapman devised this process, which is still in use today. The process later came to be known as 'the Australian Ballot' and was designed with the expectations that the government would issue the voting documents, and that all voters would be registered, given these voting document to make their mark in secret for their preferred candidate, before depositing the voting documents to be counted by officials at a later time. This process removed the ability of candidates to threaten individuals into voting in their favour, because they could no longer see whether the individual voted for the candidate or not, and overall made the voting system in the Australian colonies a much fairer system. This system was then adopted by other nations around the world, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, and is today still known by many as the Australian Ballot.

Wisdom Teeth's name origin

I was speaking to my cousin the other day and she charged me with the task of finding out why wisdom teeth were known as wisdom teeth. She had apparently Googled it, as people these days do when searching information, however she was dissatisfied with the answer. Apparently the explanation she discovered was that people are wiser when their wisdom teeth come through than when their initial teeth come through. I decided to look into teeth growth a little and I found that the first stage is when you get your baby teeth (you are a young when this happens, hence why they are often referred to as baby teeth). Eventually you lose your baby teeth, and your second stage teeth replace them, these are the teeth you will have for the rest of your life. Usually the last teeth in the second stage come around the age of ten to twelve. However the final stage is your wisdom teeth which don't come through usually until you are at least 17 and often as late as 23. The stages are usually known as, your baby teeth (stage one) your permanent teeth (stage two) and your wisdom teeth (stage three). These stages were basically agreed upon on all sites I checked and also agreed with what I was taught growing up, however it still left the question of why the third stage teeth were called wisdom teeth.

I looked further into the reason and found many references to people being wiser when their third stage teeth came through than when their other teeth grew. I was nearly ready to give up and agree that this was in fact the reason when I discovered a line in one article which stated, that the ages of 17 to 25 was often a period in people's lives that was referred to as the 'age of wisdom,' hence, since the third stage teeth grew during this period they were referred to as wisdom teeth. I decided to Google this 'age of wisdom' further, however I could not find a reference to the age of wisdom that didn't relate to a clothing brand or to teeth. So it appears that wisdom teeth were named thus because the years of a person's life during which they grow is often known as the age of wisdom. However, why that period in people's life is referred to as the age of wisdom, I could not discover. I guess we will have to be happy with having half of the answer at this point in time.

Check out this article on teeth growth stages, or this one on the name wisdom tooth.

Gmail alerts users to attach documents

A few years ago I was applying for a job online and I sent a resume off to a prospective employer saying, "please find attached my resume for your consideration." However I forgot to attach my resume before I sent it. Luckily the email was also my cover letter and the employer assumed there was a technical error and let me know that he didn't receive an attachment. So I went along with the pretence and apologised for the technical error and to find my resume attached to the reply. Then I pressed send, however once again forgot to add the attachment. I realised this just after I clicked sent, but there was no way to get the email back, so my quick thinking led me to search my sent items, copy the text I had previously sent, and reply to the email again, this time adding the attachment. I hoped that the employer would assume there was another technical glitch and that the email sent twice, once with and once without attachment.

Now many of you reading this might think that nobody would fall for that, however this was in 2005 when email wasn't as widely used and there were many people who would happily believe in a technical error over a human error. Luckily for me this employer was one of those people, and he accepted my application, invited me to interview and offered me the job! This is a great example of my forgetfulness and things have only slightly improved over the years. In fact, again today, I was writing an email to a recruitment consultant, said the magic lines in the email, "I have attached a copy of my resume," and pressed send, without actually attaching my resume. Luckily however, Gmail came to my rescue with a prompt, "You have included the words 'I have attached a copy' in your message but have added no attachments, are you sure you would like to send?" I quickly pressed 'No' and thanked Gmail for its ingenious technological advances, attached the resume and clicked send again. So today I have learned that the technological advances of Google have reached a point where I no longer have to remember trivial things like attaching a resume to potential employers, as Gmail will remind me if I forget!

Cotton wool can prevent sea sickness

I was recently in Thailand and travelled from Phuket to Ko Phi Phi Don via a two hour ferry ride. Now I am somebody who can usually ride any form of transport and never have an issue with travel sickness, as not everybody feels this way, I count myself lucky. However on this particular journey, and again when travelling this route back to Phuket, I felt nauseous. I didn't really think anything of it, after all, a couple of journeys feeling sick out of hundreds still isn't that unlucky, however the subject came up when chatting to my Aunt about my trip. She told me that when her and a friend were travelling on a boat once, the captain of the boat cured her friend of sea sickness with a very simple method that didn't involve any medication. After first hearing the story, I thought this method was interesting, and even though the story would have been more useful a few weeks earlier, this method could help me in the future. 

So the story went that her friend was very unwell during the journey and throwing up over the side. The captain took her to the back of the boat gave her a cotton wool ball and asked her with which hand she wrote. He then told he to put the cotton wool ball into the opposite ear. He also said that anything can be used to block the ear, but only block one, and make sure it is the ear opposite to the hand with which you write. Thirty minutes later her friend was eating a full seafood buffet on board the boat, even though the sea conditions hadn't changed. I Googled this remedy when I returned home and the Internet is full of success stories for this particular method of curing sea sickness. Even people who get sick at the mention on the word boat apparently have had no issues in metre high swells using this method. So to me this seems like the cheapest and most effective way to combat sea sickness and I can't wait to try it myself, if I ever feel sea sick again!

The lyrics of Hollywood

Whilst I was travelling around Thailand I did much listening to Angus and Julia Stone. They are two of my favourite musicians and I love their music. During one of the many listenings on my holiday, I noticed the lyrics to one of their songs, Hollywood. It is a really nice song but I had never really paid attention to the meaning of the lyrics previously, and when I did, I liked the song even more. Basically the song is Julia singing about how she hates Hollywood because of the all the fairy tales that they tell, and that they make an impressionable young girl think that fairytale endings are real, but in the real world things like that just don't happen.

My favourite lyrics are, "They all would have been killed in the Sound of Music" and "She never would have made it to shore, The little mermaid. He would have married a whore, From a wealthy family, after all he was royalty." It just breaks down those fairy tale endings to what would have happened in the real world, in her opinion, and does it quite brutally. However, the song is just a nice slow song and so you just don't see the lyrics coming, which is why I like it. I also like the fact that she opens the door in the song for the possibility of a 'happily ever after', such as 'Johnny and June,' whom I assume to be Johnny Cash and June Carter (their 'happily ever after' came after many not so pleasant moments). So even though the song is about how Hollywood is responsible for false hope, there is actually some hope out there that you will get a 'happily ever after', maybe just not the fairytale one that Hollywood lead you to expect.

If you want to read the lyrics check out Song Meanings or listen to the song on YouTube.