It All Started with a Derecho

Unless you’re Tom Skilling or a huge fan of the Weather Channel, you might be thinking to yourself, “what the heck is a derecho?”  This is what I was thinking last week when I happened to catch a conversation on NPR about the derecho that caused damage in the Chicagoland area on July 1.  Derecho, which means straight in Spanish, is a severe windstorm that accompanies a long band of thunderstorms.  Rather than swirling in a circle like a tornado, a derecho travels in a straight line with wind gusts up to 100 mph.  Think of it as the Rockettes of thunderstorms.

This is not the first time that a derecho high-kicked its way through Chicago.  In fact, there was one as recently as June of 2011.  However this was the first time that I had ever heard the term derecho and I’ll admit that I was pretty excited about this new bit of knowledge.  I am a self-proclaimed lover of learning.  (I am also a self-proclaimed kick-ass parallel parker, by the way.)  I have always been interested in fun facts and obscure information, so a derecho was right up my alley and I readily shared this information with family and friends that night.

The next day I was on NPR.org (I’m a big fan of public radio) when I saw this headline from a blog by Linda Holms: “A Nerd is Not a Geek: Two Spins on Spider-Man.”  Wait, there’s a difference between nerd and geek?  Rather than reading the blog by Ms. Holms (which I did go back to read later and enjoyed) I headed to Merriam-Webster to investigate.  While I did find out the difference, I was much more excited to learn that the primary definition for a geek is “a carnival performer often billed as a wild man whose act usually includes biting the head off a live chicken or snake.”  Whoa, that’s a far cry from either “a person often of an intellectual bent who is disliked” or “an enthusiast or expert especially in a technological field or activity.”  In fact, I think it means that the Prince of Darkness, the Godfather of Heavy Metal himself, Ozzy Osbourne is a geek. Possibly the King of Geeks based on that description!  Another awesome bit of information for my mental collection.

The trifecta came the following day while I was watching Sports Center (sorry NPR, but sometimes I need to mix it up a little).  Sports Center was reporting on Joey Chestnut’s repeat victory at the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.  I don’t know if you’ve ever watched competitive eating, but it’s a little disturbing.  In fact, I was pretty sure that Joey Chestnut was going to hurl hotdog chunks all over the crowd since he appeared to be gagging every few seconds.  And really, who could blame him?  68 hotdogs in 10 minutes makes me gag a little just thinking about it.  But, thanks to the Sports Science clip I was watching I learned that he wasn’t gagging at all.  Well, not exactly anyway.  Joey Chestnut was employing the Valsalva Maneuver which increases thoracic pressure to move the food faster through the esophagus.  You know how you hold your nose and blow out your cheeks to pop your ears after a particularly pressure-filled plane ride?  We’ll you are executing the Valsalva Maneuver, and it’s named for a 17^th century Italian physician who used the maneuver to expel pus from the middle ear! 

As I relayed these facts to one of my friends, he rather disinterestedly said, “huh!  You learn something new everyday.”   While his lack of enthusiasm did little to dampen mine, his words did strike a chord.  If I learned three pretty cool, albeit random facts over the course of three days could I really learn something new everyday?

So I’m giving it a try.  Each day I am going to attempt to record something new that I learn the day before and then post my learnings here.  I should note that I am notoriously bad about doing anything on a regular basis.  It’s a miracle that I manage to brush my teeth each day, so recording a new learning every day for a year is going to be a monumental challenge.  But I hope when the 191^st day of 2013 rolls around I will have 365 new and likely useless bits of information in my fun fact repertoire.  

Here goes something…