My introduction into the savory, bitter world of yeast extracts came by way of an Australian landscape painter named Mike. I was one of half a dozen guests crammed into his camper one night in the desert of northern New Mexico. As we talked over beers, Mike presented us with an odd treat from his homeland: toast smeared with butter and Vegemite. My compatriots cringed at the funky, foreign flavor of Vegemite, but I fell in love. Here was a brown sludge, with the viscosity and visual appeal of crude oil. It was salty and bitter, like a bouillon cube made out of fermented radicchio. It was wonderful.

When I tried to track down my own jar of Vegemite a few months later, it was my turn to cringe. The goo was nearly impossible to find, and when I did locate a few jars in a British specialty shop, the import mark up caused me to balk. It would take several more years of craving before I finally rekindled my love with a jar of Vegemite’s venerable ancestor Marmite.¹

Born in 1902 in Burton-on-Trent, England, Marmite is the grandfather of all yeast extracts. Long before the waste of modern consumerism impelled Americans to forge large-scale recycling programs, the makers of Marmite were recycling the yeast leftover after brewing beer. By breaking down yeast collected from nearby breweries, filtering and concentrating the liquid results, and adding assorted vegetable and spice extracts and a few vitamins Marmite was invented.²

Today, most of Marmite’s yeast is still drawn from nearby breweries, including the Bass brewery. On occassion, though, Marmite’s gone out on a limb, concocting limited editions that use champagne yeast, or the yeast from Guinness.

Recently both Marmite and Vegemite have made headlines as they become the latest victims of Denmark’s drive to ban all food products fortified with additional vitamins, much to the chagrin of Commonwealth expats living there. Of course, such a ban may not be a total loss. Denmark plays home to an array of flavorful fish-based spreads that are sure to satisfy even those most desperate for a little salty funk.

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1. Marmite takes its name from the French word “marmite” meaning a kind pot.  The product was packaged until the 1920s in earthenware pots that resemble the French marmite.

2. Of course, one could view such edible efficiency as eating garbage or, more appropriately, rubbish.

“Educational” action figures with awesome mustaches. If we actually made toys like this, child literacy would probably improve. Alternatively, we could just teach kids the value and pleasure of reading.

Jersey Shore filtered through a lense of Oscar Wilde is a surprisingly good idea. There are four other videos in this series that you can find on YouTube. This one’s the funniest, so it gets posted here.

Q began its odyssey in the scripts of various Semitic languages that arose in the Middle East some time between 2000 and 1200 BCE. Rising alongside this new way of writing was a loose collection of city-states in the Levant that would eventually establish a trading empire spanning the Mediterranean that reached as far west as the Atlantic Ocean. One key to this empire was its numerous colonies, including Rome’s famed rival Carthage, that provided both materials and markets for Phoenician merchants. The other key was a prolific trade with other Mediterranean cultures. Phoenician traders peddled such goods as precious metals, wine, olive oil, cedar, and their famous purple fabric, but their most important commodity was their writing system.

They passed this writing system, a consonantal alphabet or abjad, onto the city-states of Greece some time during the eighth century BCE. In adapting the 22 characters abjad to their language, the Greeks made some important changes. They gave certain characters vowel sounds, added some new characters to represent sounds not found in Phoenician, and dropped characters representing sounds not found in Greek. It was here qop, now called koppa, almost met its demise.

Since Greek had no sound corresponding with the Semitic qop, the letter was eventually dropped from most versions of the Greek alphabet. However, thanks to the Greeks’ own prolific colonization, koppa lived on for a time in western scripts used in settlements such as Cumae and Pithekoussai on Italy’s western coast. It was through these colonies that the Greek alphabet, including the humble q, was transmitted to the Etruscans.

The Etruscans in turn would leave their own indelible stamp on q. They began to pair it with u, preferring to partner c with i or e and k with a. This was not the only lasting contribution the Etruscans would make to later cultures. Acting as a conduit for Greek culture in Italy and Western Europe, the Etruscans began cultivating grapes for winemaking, planting the first vineyards in the famed winemaking region of Chianti. They also left a legacy of their own rich culture, particularly on that of the fledgling city of Rome.

Along with their alphabet, the Etruscans gave their southern neighbors, the Romans, the gift of advanced engineering skills. It was under a series of three Etruscan rulers, beginning in 616 BCE with Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, that Rome was transformed from a small collection of huts to a large, organized city of brick and stone. These Etruscan kings drained a swampy area of the city that would later become the Roman Forum, constructed the first sewers in the city, and erected several temples, including the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill.

After ousting their last Etruscan ruler, the once provincial Rome grew in power and influence. It eventually subsumed the Etruscan city-states to the north. They would also fight a series of wars with Carthage, finally destroying it in 146 BCE. As Rome grew, it gradually transformed the Etruscan alphabet into something resembling the modern English alphabet. In 43 CE, they introduced this alphabet, along with Roman rule, to the island of Britain.

Although Roman rule would last in Britain for nearly 400, their presence there had little direct effect on the English alphabet. It was only after Rome abandoned Britain that the Germanic tribes, which spoke what would become the English language, began settling on the island. These peoples, the Angles, for which England is named, Saxons, and Jutes, spoke a variety of dialects that would come to be called Anglo-Saxon or Old English. When they arrived in Britain, they brought with them their own runic alphabet, thought to be derived from contact with Etruscan traders. This alphabet conspicuously lacked any equivalent to the letter q.

It was not until the sixth century that Anglo-Saxons began using a version of the Roman alphabet. This new Anglo-Saxon alphabet reflected the various cultures that influenced it. The Roman alphabet at the time lacked letters for w and th; the Anglo-Saxons represented these sounds instead by two letters adapted from their runic alphabet: ƿ (wynn) for w and þ (thorn) for th. Contact with Irish missionaries gave the Anglo-Saxons another letter for th,ð (eth),as well as a peculiar g, ȝ(yogh)drawn from the Irish’s own version of the Roman alphabet. Anglo-Saxon scribes also employed æ (ash), derived from the Roman a and e to represent a sound midway between the two letters’ pronunciations. These same scribes also eschewed the Latin combination qu in favor of cƿ (often transliterated to cw in modern reproductions.) It seemed nothing short of a major cultural upheaval could bring q into the English language.

In 1066, that upheaval arrived. After leading a successful invasion of England, William the Conqueror, a Norman, was crowned king on Christmas Day of that year. The Normans, though of Viking descent, were a French-speaking people. For the next 300 years, French would reign supreme as the language of power. This is reflected not only in the fact that the words reign, supreme, language, and power are of French origin, but numerous other words, particularly legal and governmental terms, are also.

French scribes made their own important contribution to English by replacing the Old English cƿspelling with the much more French qu. By the end of the 13th century, this change had become the standard. Thus they transformed the words like the now-foreign-looking cƿen into the throughly recognizable queen, cementing q‘s place as one of English’s least used letters.

Scorpiurus Muricatus

A year ago, my sweetheart and I were looking to start a garden in her apartment.  The attempt failed miserably, but when we tried again this year at our new house, we met with more success.  A strange little plant we had been looking forward to growing is the above Scorpiurus Muricatus, also known as Prickly Caterpillar, Caterpillar Plant, and Prickly Scorpion’s-tail.

We had purchased the seeds from Seed Savers Exchange based on the description of the plant’s unusual seed pods which resemble caterpillars and supposedly “were added to salads to surprise unexpected diners” back in the day.  I was thrilled by the prospect of growing these little botanical freaks, unfortunately, they were one of the many failed plants that never really grew in our first garden.

This year, we hesitantly placed the last three seeds we had in a little pot of soil and waited.  One little seedling popped up.  I was still wary; we’d gotten as far a seedlings before, but over the months our lone caterpillar grew into a funky, beautiful little plant.  Our biggest thrill, of course, came when the plant’s lovely, yellow flowers began to transform into twisted, spiky seed pods.

Prickly Caterpillar Seedpods

Watching the plant grow from seed to seed producer allowed me to see how the plant looked at all stages of it’s growth, but that only whetted my appetite to learn more about this bizarre little plant.

It turns out Scorpiurus Muricatus is native to the greater Mediterranean region, extending north into Ukraine, east into Iran, and south into Ethiopia.  According to the USDA, Scorpiurus Muricatus is also found growing wild in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Massachusetts, where it presumably spread from cultivated gardens.

Despite it’s unusual appearance, Scorpiurus Muricatus, as a member of the Fabaceae family, is related to such everyday plants as peas, beans, clover, and even the Acacia tree.  Like many other Fabaceae, Scorpiurus Muricatus is able to form a symbiotic relationship with rhizobial bacteria in its roots.  This bacteria is able to convert (or “fix”) nitrogen gas into ammonia, which Scorpiurus Muricatus is then able to absorb.  This nitrogen-fixing capacity has led to it being studied as a companion plant for grain crops in Ethiopia, however in America and Europe it is grown mostly as ground cover, or for simple novelty.

For some nice pictures of Scorpiurus Muricatus you should go here or here.

I doubt Nelly could have ever suspected “Hot In Herre” would present a more coherent understanding of global warming than every corporately-funded denial campaign.

Not long ago, I  ended up discussing global warming with a friend over drinks.  I mentioned how there was strong scientific evidence and consensus that global warming is caused by human activity.  A friend scoffed at this and I had to backpedal a little since, aside from the consistent shrinking of Arctic ice cap, I had no other specific evidence I could cite.  On further research it turns out the evidence of humanity’s role in causing global warming is overwhelming.  Below is a brief overview of a small fraction of this evidence.

As early as the 1890s, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius suggested that human produced carbon dioxide could produce a global warming effect.

Almost a century later the idea Arrhenius had put forward had become clear science.  In 1979, the National Academy of Sciences issued these statements in the study Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment:

“For more than a century, we have been aware that changes in the composition of the atmosphere could affect its ability to trap the sun’s energy for our benefit. We now have incontrovertible evidence that the atmosphere is indeed changing and that we ourselves contribute to that change. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are steadily increasing, and these changes are linked with man’s use of fossil fuels and exploitation of the land. Since carbon dioxide plays a significant role in the heat budget of the atmosphere, it is reasonable to suppose that continued increases would affect climate.”—page vii

“If carbon dioxide continues to increase, the study group finds no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible. The conclusions of prior studies have been generally reaffirmed. However, the study group points out that the ocean, the great and ponderous flywheel of the global climate system, may be expected to slow the course of observable climatic change. A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late.”—page viii

Of course, that was 1979, science has advanced since then.  Maybe more scientists have come to a different conclusion.  That would be lovely, except that scientists today continue to reiterate the point made by the National Academy of Sciences.  Here is a smattering of recent statements on global warming:

From the Network of African Science Academies (2007):

“A consensus, based on current evidence, now exists within the global scientific community that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change.”

From the American Geophysical Union’s position statement, Human Impacts on Climate (2007):

“The Earth’s climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century. Global average surface temperatures increased on average by about 0.6°C over the period 1956–2006. As of 2006, eleven of the previous twelve years were warmer than any others since 1850. The observed rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice is expected to continue and lead to the disappearance of summertime ice within this century.”

“With climate change, as with ozone depletion, the human footprint on Earth is apparent. The cause of disruptive climate change, unlike ozone depletion, is tied to energy use and runs through modern society. Solutions will necessarily involve all aspects of society.”

From the American Meteorological Society’s information statement, Climate Change (2007):

“In recent decades, humans have increasingly affected local, regional, and global climate by altering the flows of radiative energy and water through the Earth system (resulting in changes in temperature, winds, rainfall, etc.), which comprises the atmosphere, land surface, vegetation, ocean, land ice, and sea ice. Indeed, strong observational evidence and results from modeling studies indicate that, at least over the last 50 years, human activities are a major contributor to climate change.”

From the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2006):

“The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in species ranges, and more. The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now.”

“The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a critical greenhouse gas, is higher than it has been for at least 650,000 years. The average temperature of the Earth is heading for levels not experienced for millions of years. Scientific predictions of the impacts of increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation match observed changes.”

That’s all well and good, but these statements are a few years old.  Doesn’t “Climategate” debunk all that.  Once again the answer is a clear, fact-based, and utterly resounding, “No.”  Factcheck.org states that the  “Climategate” “e-mails…don’t change scientific consensus on global warming.”  Politifact.com, responding to a statement made by the ever-ignorant Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, point out that “there are reams of data that show temperatures are increasing and that greater concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are largely to blame.”

In the wake of the controversy, several statements reclarify the unambiguous science behind human-caused global warming.

Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of American Association for the Advancement of Science, reaffirmed the organizations 2006 position statement, saying “The vast preponderance of evidence, based on years of research conducted by a wide array of different investigators at many institutions, clearly indicates that global climate change is real, it is caused largely by human activities, and the need to take action is urgent.”

The National Academy of Sciences also reaffirm’s it’s 1979 conclusion in it’s 2010 publication Advancing the Science of Climate Change stating that “Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for—and in many cases is already affecting—a broad range of human and natural systems.”

The EPA reported in 2010’s Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990 – 2008 that “Although the direct greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, and N2O occur naturally in the atmosphere, human activities have changed their atmospheric concentrations.  From the pre-industrial era (i.e., ending about 1750) to 2005, concentrations of these greenhouse gases have increased globally by 36, 148, and 18 percent, respectively (IPCC 2007).”

The Geological Society of America added its own two cents in this position statement (2010):

“Decades of scientific research have shown that climate can change from both natural and anthropogenic causes. The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2006), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) that global climate has warmed and that human activities (mainly greenhouse‐gas emissions) account for most of the warming since the middle 1900s. If current trends continue, the projected increase in global temperature by the end of the twentyfirst century will result in large impacts on humans and other species. Addressing the challenges posed by climate change will require a combination of adaptation to the changes that are likely to occur and global reductions of CO2 emissions from anthropogenic sources.”

“Scientific advances in the first decade of the 21st century have greatly reduced previous uncertainties about the amplitude and causes of recent global warming. Ground-station measurements have shown a warming trend of ~0.7 °C since the mid-1800s, a trend consistent with (1) retreat of northern hemisphere snow and Arctic sea ice in the last 40 years; (2) greater heat storage in the ocean over the last 50 years; (3) retreat of most mountain glaciers since 1850; (4) an ongoing rise of global sea level for more than a century; and (5) proxy reconstructions of temperature change over past centuries from ice cores, tree rings, lake sediments, boreholes, cave deposits and corals. Both instrumental records and proxy indices from geologic sources show that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries (National Research Council, 2006).”

“[H]umans are a major factor responsible for recent global warming.”

So, if the evidence is so clear and scientific consensus so strong, why do so many people believe that global warming is not real or at least not human-made?  The short answer is because companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, GM, Chrysler, Ford, Koch Industries, AT&T, Monsanto, and Dow, and organizations like the Aluminum Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, the Western Fuel Association, the National Mining Association, and many others have spent large amounts of money to obscure the public’s perception on climate change in order to ensure their own short term profits at the expense of our planet.

To learn more about who is using lies and deception to minimize public understanding of global warming, please visit our sister blog Guthrie’s Machine, or one of the websites listed below:

DeSmogBlog.com
ExxonSecrets
SourceWatch
The Heat Is Online
Climate Change Denial (Wikipedia)

The books Climate Cover-Up, The Heat is On, and Boiling Point, also offer a clear picture of greed-driven lies behind global warming disinformation.

For a more in-depth look at global warming, I suggest Elizabeth Kolbert’s excellent three part article “The Climate of Man” which you can read in The New Yorker or for free here and here.

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TYWKIWDBI

Pronounced tai-wiki-widbee this unwieldy acronym stands for Things You Wouldn’t Know If We Didn’t Blog Intermittently.  The sort of whimsy inherent in its title extends to its content which is an eclectic mix of knowledge, politics, pop culture, and butterflies.

Damn Interesting

This site, though it hasn’t been updated in a while, features a slew of articles that are, well, damn interesting.

WyrdPlay.org

This site is a fun resource for anyone who thinks that the spelling of English words is essentially insane.  A variety of people have put forward an impressive array of orthographic reforms, ranging from minor changes to complete overhauls.

The megacryometeor is an enormous hunk of sky-ice that weighs one pound or more.  One, that landed in Oakland, was reported to weigh over 200 pounds.¹  These iceballs, which seem to often fall out of the clear, blue sky have been sighted around the globe and can total cars and smash holes through buildings.

As to what causes these masses of ice to form, the scientific community has not yet come to a consensus.  A leading researcher on the topic, Spanish scientist Jesús Martínez-Frías, has put forward a theory that megacryometeors (a term he coined) form high in the atmosphere during unusual atmospheric conditions, which include a decrease in ozone levels.  The leading competitor to Martínez-Frías’ controversial theory is that the ice forms on the body of aircraft and are subsequently dislodged.  Others have put forward the idea of extraterrestrial origin, although this last hypothesis seems to have little support or evidence.  The largest problem with each explanation is that none fully explain the phenomenon.  It may turn out there is more than one cause for megacryometeors.

Until scientists can figure out exactly what causes these massive iceballs, I’d recommend keeping an eye to the sky.

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1.  There are numerous unsourced accounts of a megacryometeor weighing over 400 pounds crashing into a Mercedes Benz factory (or dealership) in Brazil.  Unfortunately, as is so common when a fact is so astoundingly unbelievable as 400-pound iceballs, it is also usually made up.  The only time I was able to track down a source was in a Wikipedia entry stating that a 490-pound megacrymeteor was found in Brazil.  Unfortunately, the article it cited listed the iceball as weighing in at a much more humble 50 kilograms, or about 110 pounds.  Also, according to the article, it was a warehouse, not a factory nor a dealership that the megacryometeor hit.  Nice fact checking, everyone.

The largest megacryometeor I was able to find landed in Oakland, California, in 2006.  The 200 pound behemoth was documented in an article from the Oakland Tribune, which also, sadly, listed the fictitious 400-pound Brazilian icebomb.

[Edit] In doing a little additional research, I have come across two references in an article by Jesús Martínez-Frías referring to a 200 kg (roughly 441 pounds) iceball falling in Brazil in 1997 and to a 400 kg (roughly 882 pounds) falling in Spain in 2004.  I may have to eat my words about fact checking, but I still feel skeptical.  I can’t seem to find any corroborating evidence for either claim.

Learn More:

http://tierra.rediris.es/megacryometeors/

http://www.weatherquestions.com/What-causes-megacryometeors.htm

http://tierra.rediris.es/publipapers/megacryometeors_JAC.pdf

http://scienceray.com/astronomy/megacryometeors-a-phenomenon-with-no-clear-explanation/

http://www.damninteresting.com/the-peculiar-phenomenon-of-megacryometeors

http://www.megacryometeors.com/

http://tierra.rediris.es/megacryometeors/megacryometeors.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megacryometeor

http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/ChemScience/Volume/2008/04/falling_ice.asp

http://www.theweatherprediction.com/severe/gianthail/

2009 was the year of the pirate.  While Somali pirates were raiding Africa’s sea lanes (and American  news outlets, for that matter) another group of pirates was carrying out a quieter assault on European politics.

In June of last year, Sweden’s Pirate Party captured one of their country’s 18 seats¹ in the European Parliament.  The party has, since its formation in 2006, been leading a quiet revolution in politics.  The party ran in Sweden’s national elections the year it was formed and polled 0.63% of the vote.  From this humble beginning, the party has gained in popularity in Sweden, where it was able to loot 7.1% of the nation’s votes in the latest election.  Although their membership has since dwindled, at its peak, the Pirate Party boasted 50,000 members.
Internationally, the party has also fared well.  It has spawned more than 40 sister parties.  They have spread not only through Europe and Asia, but have also sailed across the Atlantic to find footholds in North and South America.

What accounts for this rapid spread of political piracy is more than the party’s amusing name.  The party’s platform consists of only three planks.  Sweden’s pirates advocate less restrictive copyright laws, the abolition of patents, particularly medical patents, and the protection of personal privacy.  These are the sort of planks many voters are willing to walk, particularly younger voters who make up the bulk of the party’s membership.

The Swedish Pirate Party hopes to transform its victory in the European election into a victory in Sweden’s national election later this year.  As long as it can stave off the competing Viking Party and prevent the foundation of a potentially ruinous Ninja Party, Sweden’s pirates may be able to plunder their way into parliament.

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1.  For the sake of simplicity I say 1 seat of 18.  In reality, it appears the Pirate Party captured 2 seats of 20.  The problem is Sweden has two non-voting seats on the European parliament, one of which now belongs to the Pirate Party.  Effectively this means Sweden only has 18 real seats in Europe’s parliament and therefor the Pirate Party only won one real seat.  See why I left this out of the article proper?

More on Pirates:

http://www.thepirateparty.com/index.php/policy-overview

http://www.pp-international.net/

http://af.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idAFTRE55623320090607

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/08/elections-pirate-party-sweden

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/02/rick-falkvinge-is-the-face.ars

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/20/pirate_bay_trial_one_year_on/

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,613820,00.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,631403,00.html

http://torrentfreak.com/the-swedish-pirate-party-presents-their-election-manifesto/

I first came across phthisic in a lecture series by Seth Lerer, where he characterized it as an unusual bit of Maine dialect.  While it probably lasted in actual use longer in Maine than anywhere else, phthisic and its cousin phthisis predate English settlement of Maine by a few centuries.

The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation of the word, spelled tisik, dates from 1301.  Over the years, phthisic went through quite a few contorted spellings in the hands of numerous authors.  It danced from pthisic to tphisike, from tissick to tysyc, from ptysic to tisyk, and just about every other imaginable spelling.  When its spelling finally became standardized, people eschewed more intuitive spellings like tissic in favor of the freakishly obtuse phthisic.

How we got to the strange spelling can be seen in the word’s etymology.  The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the word’s history back from English into Old French as tisike to the Vulgar Latin word phthisis which, when traced back through identical words in Latin and Greek, has its origin in the Greek word phthinein (φθινειν), meaning “to waste away.”²  Somewhere along the line, as was the case with words like doubt, which comes from the Old French douter, a more archaic spelling was substituted for the more intuitive one to give phthisic a more official appearance.  This ridiculous change has survived, much to the chagrin of spelling bee contestants, into present times.

Fortunately for the average speller, phthisic now exists largely as a historical artifact, unlikely to rear its head outside the confines of more challenging spelling bees.

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1.  It is also the case for the even more amazing word phthongometer, which was an instrument for measuring the intensty of vowel sounds.

2.  This etymology is essentially the same as that in the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology except that the ODEE has tisik in Middle English entering from the Old French word tisike or tisique and it spells phthínein with an accent over the first i.  Klein’s Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language lists the Old French as only tisique, which descended from an older French form phthisique, which comes from the Latin phthisica.  While the different etymologies differ on minor details, they all show that phthisic had lost the phth before entering English and regained the spelling as a later addition.

Some people will do anything to get attention or money and, it turns out, so will some places.  One of those places is Topeka, Kansas.  Topeka caused quite a stir when the city’s mayor, Bill Bunten, declared in an official proclamation that the city would be known as Google through the month of March, in a bid to get internet giant Google to install a high-speed fiberoptic cable network in the city.¹ In a reciprocal gesture, Google, for April Fool’s Day rechristened itself “Topeka.”

This wasn’t Topeka’s first foray into the world of shameless marketing.  Back in 1998, when Pokemon was poised to take America by storm, Topeka redubbed itself “Topikachu” when it hosted the official launch of the Japanese franchise in America.

Of course, Topeka isn’t the only city to ever rename itself for a quick buck and a little attention.  In 2000, Halfway, Oregon, a town of under 400 people, renamed itself Half.com for a year in exchange for some computers and a ton of cash.

The granddaddy of all sellout cities, however, is Hot Springs, New Mexico.  Better known by its present day name of Truth or Consequences, Hot Springs changed its name when Ralph Edwards, the host of the popular radio game show Truth or Consequences, offered to broadcast the show from the first town that would change its name to the name of his show.  Edwards kept his word, hosting his show live from Truth or Consequences on April 1, 1950.  Edwards would return for the next fifty years to celebrate with the townspeople in the annual Truth or Consequences Fiesta.  Since his death in 2005, Truth or Consequences has celebrated Edwards with Ralph Edwards Day every April 1.

Unfortunately, being willing to do anything for a little money or attention also has a dark side.  West Virginia for a few years boasted of its willingness to be pillaged for profit with the official slogan “Open for Business.”²  And it was true.  The West Virginia landscape is dotted with smoke-belching factories.  It also plays host to the socially and environmentally devastating practice of Mountain Top Removal, where coal mining companies literally blow off the tops of mountains with explosives.  West Virginia has since changed its slogan to “Wild and Wonderful,” but should it maintain its current economic practices, there won’t be much left that could be called either “wild” or “wonderful” about the state.

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1.  Of course, this name change isn’t actually a legal renaming.  Actually renaming a state capital, changing all its signage and letterheads, etc, and then changing it all back after a month would be a legal and financial nightmare.

2.  One West Virginian was quoted at Adfreak.com as saying, “[The slogan] sounds like an invitation to anyone and everyone to come right in and start raping the land that we have left for strip malls, movie theaters, Starbucks, sex shops and every other business that marks the downfall and overdevelopment of an area.”