whim#13: Spooky Edition — Death by Licorice, Jack-o-Lanterns, Tanookis and Robo-Dogs
At Pandera Labs, we dedicate our Wednesday morning stand-ups to sharing things that we’ve learned over the past week. We like to call it Whimsical Wednesday — Anything that piques one’s curiosity is fair game to share, the topics tend to span a plethora of categories. Here are a few highlights of what we were curious about this past week:
It’s that time of year again, when the news cycle is rife with warnings to check your children’s Halloween candy. Tales of strangers trying to drug, poison, or injure the youth of America abound. One such warning caught Jeff Hassberger’s attention. This time, the culprit is the candy itself!
A lot of licorice-flavored candies are made from anise-based flavorings, but true black licorice is made from the licorice plant, which contains glycerrhizin. Consuming too much glycerrhizin can alter your blood’s potassium levels, resulting in a variety of heart problems.
Luckily for licorice-lovers, “too much” licorice means consuming approximately 2 ounces per day, for multiple weeks, for adults. Kids are obviously susceptible to lower quantities, so make your little one is mixing up her candy consumption this week!
Happy Halloween!
While Bry Zettler was carving pumpkins with his girlfriend on Halloween Night, he realized that he had no idea where the tradition came from.
A few carving mistakes and some toothpick bandages later he decided to look it up.
It turns out, jack-o-lanterns originated in Ireland — more specifically Ancient Celtic cultures — and was brought over to America. The Irish originally carved turnips and lit them with a burning ember to ward off evil spirits. It wasn’t until they came to America in the 1800s and discovered pumpkins that they decided to make the switch.
The reasoning behind doing this goes back to a story about a man named “Stringy Jack” who tricked the Devil into an agreement of never taking his soul. Jack, however, wasn’t a very pleasant man. When he passed away he wasn’t allowed into heaven. And, as the promise forbade the Devil from taking his soul, he wasn’t allowed there either.
The Devil’s response to Jack asking for advice on what to do was simply to give him an ember. Jack, now a locked-out resident of the underworld wandered in between both planes with only his ember inside a hollowed turnip to light his way.
Bry found it interesting the he’s made it this far in life without knowing that there was so much lore around something he has been doing since he was little.
🎃
While enjoying Super Mario Odyssey this weekend, Joel McCance was reminded of the tanooki suit from Super Mario Bros 3. For some reason, this power-up gave you ability to turn into a statue of a bald guy with a staff with a ring on it. Joel had always written this off as video games just being kind of surreal, but Mario Odyssey revealed these statues actually have a name: “Jizo”.
A visit to Wikipedia revealed that Mario turns into a statue of the Buddhist monk Jizo. Jizo is postponing full Buddhahood so that he can protect the children that are in purgatory because they died before performing enough good deeds to continue into the afterlife. Statues of him can be found by the road or in graveyards in Japan.
Furthermore, in Japanese myth, “tanuki” are shapeshifting tricksters. Mario isn’t a raccoon just randomly turning into a weird statue. He’s a perfectly normal Italian-American plumber who just happens to be harnessing the powers of a mythical shapeshifter to turn into a common Japanese statue.
As you do.
Mallory Haack felt a special sort of whimsy when she read this article about Sony’s new robot dog, “Aibo” as it reminded her of the Poo-Chi robot dog she had when she was a kid. While there are a couple features on Sony’s Aibo that might be pushing some privacy boundaries (ie. recording everything), the other features like the “expressive eyes”, its ability to change its personality over time, and understanding cues to learn what makes its owners happy are truly mind-boggling. It’s amazing to Mallory how far lil doggie robot technology has come!
