We’ve just returned from the IRA conference in sunny Orlando! We’re still getting our feet back under us and assure you that we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming soon. In the meantime, though, here are a couple of highlights from our booth at the conference:
Happy 15th Birthday to the adorable Biscuit!
Attendees received a free My Weird School book when they signed up for Dan Gutman’s My Weird Classroom Club.
Thanks to all the teachers, librarians, and media specialists who made the IRA conference such a great time!
More pictures coming soon…
The following books, no matter how simple or complex, have been selected to motivate the earth-conscious spirit within all of us ...
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Like many British people (and I suspect many other people around the world), it’s a real treat to crunch on a biscuit when enjoying a cup of tea or coffee. So you can imagine my surprise, when having my early Sunday morning imperfectly made cuppa (see http://purpleslinky.com/offbeat/the-complicated-cuppa-cup-that-cheers-or-mug-of-misery/) that I discovered I was amongst those idiots who have managed to suffer a minor injury at the hands of the humble hobnob.
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/125767/Crumbs-half-of-us-have-been-injured-by-biscuits
I regret to admit that I’m one of the 29% of adult Brits who have managed to splash themselves with hot tea when dunking my digestive. For those of you who’ve never dunked or heard of dunking let me enlighten you. Once you’ve made your tea (or coffee) (beverage) and taken the biscuit of your choice from the biscuit tin (dunkee), you then proceed to dip a bite size piece of the dunkee into the beverage while holding onto the remainder to use as a ‘handle’ . Once the dunkee has been dunked for a couple of seconds you bring it to the surface of the beverage and then manouevre the dunkee together with beverage as close to your chin as you can before biting (or sucking) the dunkee. The skill is in getting dunkee to lips before it drops back into the beverage. More often than not the dunkee drops its load back into the beverage thereby splashing the dunker with hot beverage!
If you’re lucky enough to dodge the hot beverage if the dunkee drops, don’t believe for one minute that the danger ends there. You then have the job of taking a teaspoon, delving to the bottom of the beverage and trawling the cup to retrieve the errant dunkee to prevent choking. This is no mean feat as, more often than not, the dunkee slips back into the beverage like an eel through a fishing net, which again can cause the dunker injury from splashback!
Having overcome the hazards of dunking, I have also regularly fallen into the 28% of Brits who have choked on biscuit crumbs and at times I’ve fallen into the 7% of Brits who have dropped a biscuit tin on their foot and the 7% who’ve been nibbled by a pet while feeding it with a biscuit (obviously I’m so sweet they can’t tell the difference between a biscuit and me), but thankfully none of my injuries have required the services of the A&E Department of the local hospital.
So there you have it – the Great British Biscuit Bite Back!! I’m now going to get my mid morning coffee and I’m just pondering on whether to risk having a Bourbon (the UK version of the Oreo) biscuit – could be a nice treat or could end up as ‘death by chocolate’!!! If it turns out to be the latter then at least I will have died happy!
Well, you can fess up any day about it but what’s the worry?! Everyone has done it! The top chunks of a hamburger fall off while you’re trying not to trip over, or a biscuit slips through your hands. We say that after three seconds on the ground food will really start to spoil. But is it really the case?
Most of us has heard of and aboded by this “three second rule”, but is it true that when you pick food up from the floor before three seconds no harmful bacteria can get a grip on your food yet? Well, “What’s Good For You” on Channel Nine has put this to the test…
Three cookies and three banana slices are put on three plates, one of each on each plate. This is to determine whether the texture of a food helps the bacteria stick on. Another cookie and banana is left alone because it is the control.
One plate of food is dropped on the ground, and is left there for three minutes. Two and a half minutes later the second plate is dropped, and with three seconds left the last plate is dropped.
The specimens were then wrapped up and sent to a lab. Over there the bacterial were smeared on agar plates and left to grow for a prolonged period of time.
The results:
Three minutes:
The cookie had 10 to 100 colonies of bacteria. So did the banana.
Thirty seconds:
They both had the same as the three minute sample.
Three seconds:
Cookie: 5-10
Banana: 5-10
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The experiment proves that there is no such thing as the three second rule. Take in mind that bacteria are infinitesimally small and one colony contains over 1 million bacteria which is enough to make you terribly sick! This also demonstrated that bacteria even found a foothold on these dry biscuits! So next time if your food drops on the floor, don’t take chances with your health. Bin it.
