Last Updated May 22, 2008
Food history has its favorite bits of fakelore and old saws, and Food History News has been taking shots at them early and often. On this web page, you will find the straight scoop about some of these persistent tales, plus advice on how to spot food mythology when you see it.
The Truth About Spices, Lobsters, and Flaming Ladies
By Sandy Oliver
If you believe everything you read about colonial life, you might think that one day the housewife was dredging her spoiled meat heavily in spices so her servants who had already eaten lobster (or salmon) twice that week and so would refuse another bite of seafood, would not notice the bad flavor. Sadly she stepped a little too close to the fire, her skirts caught flame, and she perished in a horrible fiery death. And the exact same thing happened only the week before at her neighbor's house!
We like a good story, even when they aren't true, and especially if the story makes us feel a little smarter than we imagine people in the past were, or else having thrilled us with the dangers of colonial life, it leaves us more self-satisfied about modern conveniences and comforts. Every field has tales, usually apocryphal, which persist though knowledgeable professionals spend an inordinate amount of time trying to present the facts. History is full of them; famously, for example, Parson Weem's invention about George Washington and the cherry tree.
Food historians shake their heads over the idea that spices were used heavily in the past to cover up the bad taste of spoiled food; that some people refused to eat lobster or salmon more than twice a week; and that the second most common cause of death among women (right after childbirth) was dying when their skirts caught fire at the hearth. These stories are so firmly entrenched that they are solemnly repeated even by experts. There seems to be no evidence, however, that any of these are true. At the center of all these stories, though, is a tiny kernel of truth which is often much more interesting and revealing than the exaggerations.
For example, it is true that for a while in the history of culinary practice, cooks used spices with a heavier hand than many of us are accustomed to today. In fact, in some parts of the world, usually in hot, humid, climates, food is more dramatically spiced than it is in cooler, drier climates. There has even been a little scientific research conducted that shows certain spices retard spoilage somewhat. But the story about covering the taste of spoiled meat is mainly told about Medieval and Early Modern European and sometimes about colonial American, cooking, too.
In fact, European elites were most likely to use spices heavily, the very same folks with the most sophisticated food procurement systems, and the means to obtain the freshest and finest fare on demand. Aristocrats and their cooks had the same good sense that the peasantry did not to eat spoiled food. This didn't prevent them from hanging some kinds of fowl or flesh to age somewhat, much as we age a fine steak today. And on the odd occasion when some piece of meat began to show signs of going off, there were recorded methods of washing it to bring it back to good condition. Those instructions may give rise to the idea that there was a lot of spoiled meat around. Actually what the elite were doing is what the very wealthy have always done: they were showing off-demonstrating their wealth by using lavishly very expensive spices. The fad did not endure because it did not actually improve the cooking very much but mainly because spices lost their caché along with their scarcity when European merchants established regular trade with the East and West Indies and even middling sorts had access to them.
The lobster and salmon story is one of the most frequently told about New England seafood. It generally goes like this: Salmon and lobster "used to be so abundant that, it is said, " pick one---the apprentices, servants, boarders, lumbermen, occupants, prisoners, and slaves of-pick another--Newcastle, England, Boston or Lowell, Massachusetts, Puget Sound, Bristol, Rhode Island, Islesboro, Maine, the Maine State Prison, or the South-refused to eat either lobsters or salmon, more than twice a week. Recent versions of the story usually feature lobster, but the vast majority of accounts prefer salmon.
All the stories have in common some group of people who have no control over their food choices, people who have to eat what is served them. The stories all explain that these sufferers had a meeting to form a complaint presented to an official in charge. The story, substantiated only by reference to an alleged expert who "has it on good authority" or words to that effect, is usually put in the context of former natural abundance. So the tale is reported second hand, refers to a time from fifty to one hundred years earlier than the usual late 1800s publishing date. The most common sources for this particular tale are town histories which abounded in the nineteenth century often written by a local antiquarian, though it appears also in George Brown Goode's The Fisheries and Fishery Industries of the United States published in 1887. Lack of primary evidence is the main reason to doubt this story. No minutes of these indignation meetings, nor ordinances outlawing sea food more than twice a week, have ever emerged. But why salmon, why lobster, why twice a week?
The stories appear when salmon or lobster are becoming historically scarce, when the author wants to recall a distant, more abundant past. Twice a week was for many in early England or the colonies, the number of fast days a week on which one customarily ate fish. As Protestantism neglected religious fasts marked by fish consumption, the idea of having to eat fish more than one's religion formerly required sounded like an imposition on people who always preferred meat to fish.
Now, housewives did occasionally die from burns when their skirts caught fire at the hearth and when it happened it made for sensational headlines in the papers. However, more died, as did their husbands and children, from contagious disease. Researchers have closely examined two late 18th century diaries, one kept by the Philadelphian Elizabeth Drinker who recorded the cause of death of everyone she knew or heard about, and one kept by Martha Ballard, a midwife and health care provider in frontier Maine. The diaries reveal that when people died from burns, it was often, as Drinker noted a toddler dressed in cotton, or an tottery elderly person, who fell into or near the fire. Once someone suspected of being a drunk perished from burning in a fireplace. Interestingly enough, Martha Ballard recorded caring for children with burns and noted that she occasionally treated women with scalded feet and legs.
Most women hard at work in their kitchens, never feared catching fire. They knew their hearth like the back of their hands. But with little ones about, a moment's distraction could mean a child getting too near flames, or setting a pot down too suddenly could result in splashing ones feet with hot liquid. Otherwise, staying sober and wearing sensible and less combustible wool or linsey-woolsey skirts kept most women safe and alive and their toddlers, too.
Of course, if you really want to believe these stories, I can tell you ones about poisonous tomatoes and the invention of the doughnut hole, too. And popcorn at the First Thanksgiving.
Spices and Rotten Meat
Old Saw: "They Used A Lot of Spices to Disguise Spoiled Meat."
Medieval cuisine is notable for its astonishing seasoning. Sharp, spicy sauces pointed with vinegar and richly flavored with numerous spices, accompanied each dish of meat, fowl, or fish; vegetables were stewed with herbs and spices; an the final course of a grand meal invariably featured a highly spiced wine called hippocras. After dinner, the nobility retired to their rooms to nibble epices de chambre. Spices were the consuming passion of the Middle Ages, devoured by all but the poorest. The wealthier one was, the more spices one consumed.
The number of different spices familiar to the medieval cooks exceeds that of any other period in the West, yielding complex flavors (though generally the seasonings were not hotchilies, after all, were still to be introduced from the New World.) This is true even though the ancient Romans had been very fond of exotic spices and had conducted a busy trade with India. It remains true today, despite our own recent curiosity about ethnic foods and the fact that spice imports to the US have risen steadily for over a decade.
Later historians and chefs, at a loss to explain this extravagant taste for spices so foreign to their own culinary customs, came up with an explanation whichalthough it is wronghas been embraced and repeated with great relish ever since: namely, that medieval eaters, poor dears, had to season their food heavily in order to disguise the unsavory taste of spoiled meat.
This theory allows us in the 20th century to feel a comfortable superiority to the people of the past (and often, we suspect, as well, to tropical regions in what we call the Third World.) We are modern, scientific, technologically advanced. They were backward, lacking refrigeration, modern canning technology, and any notion of the bacteria which were acting on their foods. Unable to feed their herds, we assume, through the long winters, they had to slaughter all their cattle in the fall and salt the meat in an attempt to preserve it. Even so, it went off, and would have been impossible to eat without a lot of potent spices, however bizarre the flavor that amount of seasoning might be. Our tastes are far more refined than those of the simple, undereducated, benighted souls of the Middle Ages, and thank Heaven, we don't have to eat that way.
Of course, many cultures today use a good many spices to produce rather tasty dishes. Spices are the splendor in wholesome, delicious, and, incidentally, often vegetarian, Indian food. The cooking of southeast Asia is another example of an extraordinarily fineand spicycuisine. And the tremendous popularity of fiery peppers in Mexican fare is virtually a mainstream taste in modern North America. Perhaps the cooking the Middle Ages was no so aberrant after all. It is time to take another look at our old notions about medieval, and later, seasoning.
Spices and spoiled meat: During the middle Ages, large market towns, and many smaller ones, controlled the quality of the goods sold there, and provided inspectors to enforce its laws. The records of regulations and court cases concerning the sale of putrid meat show that people were aware of the importance of freshness, and what's more they felt it was possible to ensure that they were given fresh meat. When in 1319, William Sperlyn was pilloried in London in front of two carcasses of putrid beef he had attempted to sell, there is no evidence of a resigned, "what-the-heck,-I'll-just-cover-up-the-off-flavors-with-spices" sort of attitude toward his product.
Medieval recipes do not suggest heavier seasoning for tainted meat than for fresh; indeed, the only author I know who mentions spoiled meat at all is Platina, whose De honesta voluptate was destined to become the first printed cookbook in 1475. Platina warns cooks to salt carefully the flesh of piglets "lest it start to spoil or taste rancid." In his section on ham, he instructs the reader to plunge a knife into the middle and smell it; if it does not have a good odor, one should let it alone.
Sir Jack Drummond in his book The Englishman and His Food, offers another alleged proof of the "tainted meat" hypothesis. Drummond quotes Hugh Platt's The Jewell House of Art and Nature, 1594, suggestion of wrapping "greene" venison in a cloth and burying it for a few hours to make it "sweet enough to be eaten." The word "green" was often used in past times to describe fresh foods, including meat, in this case quite probably venison not yet hung for flavor and tenderness.
In medieval cookbooks, meatless Lenten dishes are just as highly seasoned as meats and meat's sauces. Vegetables, too, are copiously spiced: chickpeas are cooked with cinnamon and sage, for example; mushroom tarts contain ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and grated cheese; and saffron, cubebs, cardamom, and mace flavor applesauce. To make hippocras, grains of paradise, long pepper, and sugarthen a rare, expensive substance which was also considered a spiceare added to wine.
Spices and preservation: Spices certainly contribute to the preservation process but their use in tropical cuisines has more to do with inducing perspiration, which helps cool the diner, than to preserve meat. Contrast the heat of tropical cuisines with those of hot, desert regions, where perspiration is not as desirable, and flavoring tends towards aromatic and herbal and avoiding extremes of pungency.
Finally, medieval methods of food preservation were effective and produced the same delicious products we produce today: bacon, salt fish, spiced sausages, and dried beef have remained popular over the centuries. Furthermore, spices in medieval quantities were abandoned in European cuisines long before the introduction of modern methods of refrigeration and preserving.
Spices and conspicuous consumption: Imported over long distances from Africa, India, Indonesia, or China, spices were indeed expensive. Yet surviving household accounts show purchases of vast amounts of spice, quantities which work out to a annual consumption per person far beyond what we consume today. Those who could afford to indulge themselves this extent could also afford to feed their cattle through the winter and so eat freshly slaughtered beef. Besides, the nobility also had year-round access to the wild animals in their game preserves.
What did medieval food taste like? It is difficult to tell. Period recipes do not specify quantities. Keep in mind that the long time spices spent in transit, coupled with the customary long storage periodup to ten yearsprobably made medieval seasoning much less potent than what we use today. But medieval dishes would not have been bland, for the flavor of the spice was the flavor of wealth and power. Conspicuous consumption was the feature at every medieval banquet, where precious silver pieces were routinely displayed on a sideboard and the host was honored by the placement of an elaborate salt cellar squarely in front of him. The music and entertainment, the elegant decor, the abundant foodpredominately meatsand the spicing thereof, were all designed to impress guests and onlookers.
Spices and the Doctrine of Humors: Spices were not limited to grand occasions. They were used at every meal, and their primary purpose was to ensure the good health of the master and his household. Since ancient times, the humoral system of health described all foods and even the physical natures of all human in terms of varying quantities of hot or cold, moist or dry, which had to be kept in balance. Disruption of the balance led to illness. In keeping with accepted medical theory, the cook carefully selected spices to add to food in accordance with its humoral make-up. For example, the potentially dangerous moistness of beef could be tempered by a dollop of a sauce redolent of dry spices, while the hot natures of the spices themselves would be balanced by the vinegar basis of the sauce.
There is a great deal more evidence for this argument than for the old spoiled meat explanation of medieval spicing. Every herbal takes great pains to list the humoral nature of each herb or spice. Medieval medical books, where we often find recipes, discuss diet at length. While these cookbooks contain no special instructions for cooking with fresh or spoiled meat, there are some variations in the sauce making methods for summer and winter, since according to the doctrine of humors, the seasons, too, have different qualities of heat and moisture.
In our age, in which physicians are largely oblivious to diet, we may be skeptical of the humoral theory, and find people of the Middle Ages were far more credulous than we are. But credulity depends on what one is asked to believe. Medieval people may have believed that cinnamon came from the nest of the phoenix, that serpents guarded pepper plants, that grains of Paradise grew in the Garden of Eden, and that spices could cure their ills, but they would laugh in amazement at the preposterous notion that they were using spices to disguise the taste of spoiled meat.
"The people of twenty generations ago knew perfectly well the difference between fresh food and rotten food. They knew of several very effective ways to preserve food over long periods, and they had enough common sense not to try to prepare or to eat rotten food by dousing it in strong spices.!" Terence Scully, Early French Cookery
On the food of the late medieval Britain "...for the gentry fresh meat, newly slaughtered on the manor farm, was in fact available through much of the year, while poultry was never killed until it was needed for the table. Regular spicing, however, became a habit; and once palates were accustomed to strong aromatic flavours, unspiced foods tasted insipid." C. Anne Wilson, Food and Drink in Britain
A Typology of Culinary Fakelore
The Invention of Culinary Fakelore and Food Fallaciesi
When I began exploring the history specific culinary products years ago, I quickly discovered that some foods had been researched extensively, while others seemed to have been overlooked. Surprisingly, the tomato was one commonly-consumed food whose history had not been examined. But what was written about the tomato's history was intriguing: Many writers claimed that the tomato had been considered poisonous and was an aphrodisiac. Other writers offered stories about how the tomato entered into the American diet. One such story was preeminent: Robert Gibbon Johnson, claimed many writers, ate the first tomato in the United States on the court house steps of Salem, New Jersey, on September 26, 1820. Thousands of people watched him in horrified expectation that he would drop dead with his first bite into the poisonous love apple, or so the story goes. However, the authors who recounted this story offered no primary evidence and various versions of the story differed dramatically.
I found the story intriguing enough to visit Salem, where I examined newspapers from the period, books written about Salem in the 19th century, hundreds of articles in magazine and agricultural journals, memoirs, and other primary source material. Robert Gibbon Johnson was a prominent Salemite and much was written about him. Unfortunately, I found no evidence connecting him to the tomato. The first version of the story appeared in print 86 years after the purported event. All it said was the Johnson ate a tomato in 1820.iii Subsequent authors embellished the story adding extraneous information and the purported event was dramatized on national radio in 1949. Subsequently versions have appeared in numerous professional and scholarly journals, newspapers, and popular magazines.iv While it is impossible to say that something did not happen, based on all the evidence uncovered about Johnson and Salem in the 19th century, it is extremely unlikely that any such event occurred. I wrote up an article debunking the myth. However, the story acquired a life of its own and writers have continued to perpetuate the storyeven those who are well aware that it was not likely true. The Johnson and the tomato story has graduated to a national legend, not unlike the tale of Johnny Appleseed planting apple trees throughout the Midwest, dramatized by Walt Disney in cartoon format, and believed by most Americans.v
The Johnson story suggests several characteristics of how fakelorevi becomes enshrined as legends. First, the story rings true and is presented in such a way as to be difficult or impossible to disprove.vii Second, the story explains a real problem. Everyone knew that Salemites did not eat tomatoes during their early years, so a story that explained why they shifted from not eating tomatoes, provided locals with the solution to a puzzling mystery. Third, simple stories are more enjoyable than complex reality. Fourth, some Salemites believed the story gave their community visibility, and therefore promoted the story to magazine, newspaper and book writers. Finally, writers found the story attractive. As there was no primary source evidence, writers couldand didembellish the story to give punch to their writing.
Towards a Typology of Culinary Fakelore and Logical Fallacies
Since uncovering the Johnson fakelore, I've located hundreds of other undocumented food stories and I suspect that they are inherent in all culinary histories. Some contain statements that are easily disproved; others that are likely false; and still others that are possibly true, but undocumented. Part of the reason for accepting undocumented stories is the fact that historically food preparation has largely been based on oral traditions: cooks orally passed on techniques, recipes and lore to successor generations. This is particularly true in non-literate cultures, but even in literate societies, methods, traditions and rituals of food preparation and consumption were rarely recorded until the 20th century. And much of what was written down in cookery manuscripts or diaries has been lost, hence oral traditions may be the only sources available. Yet, undocumented culinary folklore cannot be accepted at face value without qualification: oral traditions change over time, with information dropped and other aspects added. While culinary folklore and oral traditions are important dimensions of food history and need further exploration, it is clear that many stories that purport to be folklore in fact have been invented in modern times for reasons other than historical accuracy, such as promotion of people, places and products.
Fakelore is not the same as mistakes made by authors. All authors make mistakes. However, factual or other mistakes are usually easily fixed. Neither are we concerned with genuine oral traditions, which may not be documented with primary print sources. Culinary fakelore specifically refers to invented stories that serve purposes other than historical accuracy. While stories that serve other purposes are not necessarily false, other motives coupled without documentation should arouse suspicions. The usual motivations that underlie culinary fakelore are:
1. Journalistic enrichment: undocumented accounts repeated by writers who want to spice up their stories with "exciting tales." Journalists usually do not invent basic information, but they do frequently add facts, dialogue and drama. The reasons for this are several. They frequently rely on interviews and often fail to check the information given to them with primary sources. Most newspaper and magazine writers are not historians. They are usually on deadline and need a story quickly, which usually precludes their examination of primary sources. Finally, journalists adore pithy quotes or sound bites with unusual twists.
2) Culinary jingoism: undocumented stories about cuisines intended to improperly attribute origins of particular dishes to a specific location, group, or nationality.
3) Great (usually white) men stories: undocumented attribution of origins of dishes to specific individualsusually white males. The Johnson story is but one example of this tendency to identify great men as the inventors, introducers, or originators of food, recipes and other culinary matters. Marco Polo is frequently credited with introducing pasta from China into Italy, but pasta like foods were already consumed in Europe before Polo was born. Thomas Jefferson is frequently credited, for instance, with introducing Carolina Gold rice, which, according to culinary historian Karen Hess, was grown in South Carolina well before Jefferson was born.xi
4) Commercial promotion: undocumented stories repeated by corporations in their advertising intended to sell commercial products. Almost all food advertising that makes reference to historical events is inaccurate. In this case, advertisers are interested in promoting sales, not in accurately telling history.
5) Health myths: medicinal claims for specific foods/products frequently repeated without solid scientific basis.
George Lang wrote in 1980 that "Culinary history is a collection of questionable happenings, recorded by persons of dubious credibility, about events no one cares about and people of no consequence."xviii Lang went on to prove this point by presenting many culinary stories as fact while offering no evidence for them. In fact, much of what has been written under the rubric "culinary history" has been collections of twice-told myths.
Food fakelore is frequently repeated because there are few easily accessible, accurate culinary histories. This general lack of serious work depends in large part upon the failure of academics to take culinary history seriously. Academic course offerings in culinary history are haphazard and sporadic. Partly at fault is the rigid departmental structure of modern universities. Since no departments of culinary history exist, courses must be tacked onto history or culinary arts departments. Most mainstream historianseven social historianshave little interest in food except as it relates to war, mass starvation, malnutrition, or an economic ingredient to trade. Few historians consider the cookbook an important primary source for information about people or about the times in which they live. Other academics in the arts and humanities do not consider food to be an art form, or certainly not a "high art," like painting, poetry, or music. Hence, food history is usually segregated into culinary schools or nutrition departments. Still, despite its shallow toeholds in academia, culinary history enjoys wide popular appeal, permitting amateurs, dilettantes, and popularizers to jump on the chuck wagon without any need to consult an established canon of knowledge.
Hence, anything goes in the culinary history fieldparticularly the telling of undocumented food stories, which become the grist for newspapers, magazines, cookbooks, and even serious works that purport to be well researched. Myths gain reality through repetition, and unfortunately almost all modern food writers are guilty of the repetition at one time or another. However, if the field of culinary history is to thrive, it must promote higher evidentiary standards. Failure to do so will result in culinary history's relegation to the arena of fiction and trivia.
i. Adapted from Andrew F. Smith, "False Memories: The Invention of Culinary Fakelore and Food Fallacies," in Harlan Walker, ed., Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2000 (Devon, United Kingdom: Prospect Books, 2001).
ii. Andrew F. Smith teaches culinary history at the New School in Manhattan. He has written or edited ten books on food history. He is currently the General Editor for the University of Illinois's Food Series, and the Editor in Chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.
iii. Joseph S. Sickler, The Old Houses of Salem County (Salem, N.J.: Sunbeam Publishing, 1949), 40; Steward H. Holbrook, Lost Men of American History (London: Macmillan, 1946), 131; Salem Sunbeam, February 1, 1949.
iv. Jan Longone, "From the Kitchen," American Magazine 3 (Autumn-Winter 1987-88): 1; Salem Sunbeam, July 22, 1988; July 24, 1988.
v. Andrew F. Smith, "The Making of the Legend of Robert Gibbon Johnson and the Tomato," New Jersey History 108 (Fall-Winter 1990): 59-74; Andrew F. Smith, The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture and Cookery (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994).
vi. The term fakelore was borrowed from Richard M. Dorson, Folklore and Fakelore (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1976), 5.
vii. For more information about the introduction of the tomato into America, see Andrew F. Smith, The Tomato in America (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994).
viii. Andrew F. Smith, "The History of Home-made Anglo-American Tomato Ketchup," Petits Propos Culinaires 39 (December 1991): 35.
ix. Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, Savoring the Past; The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1983), 42-48.
x. Andrew F. Smith, "The First Thanksgiving," Gastronomica (Fall 2003): 79-85.
xi. Karen Hess, The Carolina Rice Kitchen; The African Connection (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992), 19-20.
xii. Andrew F. Smith, Peanuts: The Glorious History of the Goober Pea (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
xiii. For instance, see [Louis Eustache Audot], La Cuisinière de la Campagne Vingt-cinquieme Édition (Paris: Audot, editeur du bon jardinier, 1841), 215, in which no tomatoes are mentioned in the recipe; M. M. et Fouret et Délan Viart, Le Cuisinier Royal (Paris: Gustave Barba, 1842), 298, which uses tomatoes as an ingredient and mentions the Napoleon story.
xiv. Andrew F. Smith, Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 3-5.
xv. Andrew F. Smith, Peanuts: The Glorious History of the Goober Pea (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
xvi. For a broader discussion of invented traditions, see Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
xvii. Andrew F. Smith, "Tacos, Enchiladas and Refried Beans: The Invention of Mexican-American Cookery," in Mary Wallace Kelsey and ZoeAnn Holmes, eds., Cultural and Historical Aspects of Foods (Corvallis: Oregon State University, 1999), 183-203; Andrew F. Smith, "Tomatoes, Peanuts and Okra: African-American Influence on Early American Cookery," forthcoming.
xviii. George Lang, Lang's Compendium of Culinary Nonsense and Trivia (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1980), 11.
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Disinfectants have been used throughout the history of mankind on the earth in one form or another.
As far back as 865 AD, Ethanol was discovered by the Iranian chemist Rasis, and was used as a disinfectant in the 1700’s by the French for dressing wounds.
The 1700’s saw numerous other advancements in disinfectants, a Swedish chemist discovered the element Chlorine and began studying it’s disinfectant properties. Not far behind this discovery, a US Navy Pharmacopeia identified the disinfectant properties of Vinegar. At the same time, the French chemist, Berthollet, discovered hypochlorite’s and by 1800, Issac-Benedict Provost demonstrated that copper salts prevented the germination of spores.
The 1800’s brought discoveries and advancement we still see in use today. Heat was introduced as a way to allow for canning & sterilization and preservation of foods. Iodine was discovered and began to be used for sterilizing wounds. Hydrogen Peroxide was noted for its ability to eliminate foul odors (bacteria) and in 1832 Phenol was discovered by the German chemist Reichenbach. Finally in 1916 Quats were being report and by 1932 they had come into commercial use.
Many of these discovered elements form the base disinfectants (in varying molecular structures) still being used today to take advantage of their disinfectant capabilities. The problem for scientists over the years has been to develop these items in a useful format. The stronger the disinfectant, the more toxic it becomes. The safer the disinfectant, the less effective it becomes.
After World War II, more and more disinfectants and pesticides were being used, and negative environmental effects were being realized. The world began to demand products that would be safer to human use, and the environment as a whole. In addition, it was noted that microorganisms can develop resistance against some Quats, Pseudomonas, Chlorohexidine, pine oil, etc. A new change was needed in disinfectants.
A new generation of disinfectants was born. Mixtures of different elements and chemicals were created such as quat-alcohols and phenol-alcohols. The advantage of these products was a broader spectrum of antimicrobial activity. The disadvantage was that they were still toxic and corrosive in nature and posed a potential harm to humans or the environment.
Back to the drawing board for scientists to identify and develop a product that could reach the standards being set. The result over the last couple of decades has been Oxidizing chemicals such as Hydrogen Peroxide, PAA (peroxyacetic acid…used in the food industry) and AHP (Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide). The advantages of these products is that they have a broad spectrum activity and do not develop antimicrobial resistance in microorganisms. The have a faster “kill time” than the earlier disinfectants. They are also readily biodegradable and break down to oxygen and water. As a result, there is no remaining chemical residue left behind. The balance with disadvantages is that these items can be corrosive to soft metals.


Hurricane Hunters have been flying in and out of Hurricane Delta continuously for days, getting a close-up look as the hurricane has re- intensified.
Delta regained some of its previous fury. The hurricane, which was once a Category 4 before striking Mexico, dropped to a Category 1 on Wednesday. As the storm is set to strike the Louisiana coast on Friday, Delta has re-intensified into a Category 3 hurricane with top winds of 115 mph.
As of Thursday evening, the hunters found that Delta had a 30-mile wide eye. Getting such detailed data from inside the hurricane can give forecasters a sense of the impact a hurricane will produce.
There are two Air Force Reserve groups that fly into hurricanes to send back data to the National Hurricane Center.
In total, the Air Force Reserve utilizes 20 WC-130J aircraft that are equipped with palletized meteorological data-gathering instruments.
According to the Hurricane Hunters, “The navigator keeps track of the aircraft's position and movement and monitors radar to avoid tornadic activity. The flight meteorologist acts as flight director and observes and records meteorological data at flight level using a computer that encodes weather data every 30 seconds. The weather reconnaissance loadmaster collects and records vertical meteorological data using a parachute-borne sensor known as a dropsonde. It measures and encodes weather data down to the ocean surface.”
The following videos were provided by Jemery DeHart on board one of the flights passing through the hurricane:


Eagle’s syndrome is an interesting disease to hear but a painful condition to experience. It is synonymous with the styloid syndrome, stylohyoid syndrome or styloid stylohyoid syndrome, styloid carotid artery syndrome. This disease was first described by a otorhinolaryngologist Watts Weems Eagle in 1937.
Eagle’s syndrome is a rare condition caused by the elongation or deviation of the styloid process (an elongation along the right or left side of the neck) and or hardening (calcification) of the stylohyoid ligament which interferes with the nearby organs and structures giving rise to pressure symptoms such as pain.
The exact cause is not known. But there is no specific lesion found which could lead to this syndrome.
Hence, it is labeled as a syndrome (cluster of symptoms) and not a disease.
How does Eagle’s syndrome present itself?
The possible signs and symptoms of eagle’s syndrome include:
- Ear pain (Otalgia)
- Difficulty in swallowing (Dysphagia)
- Sensation of foreign body in the throat
- Pain on swallowing
- Pain on turning the head especially towards the affected side
- Intense pain on examination along the neck
- Pain along the carotid artery (along the neck)
There are two forms of eagle syndrome, one is the classic form and other is called as the vascular type
The classic form of eagle’s syndrome presents itself with the following symptoms
- One sided sore throat,
- Ringing sounds or noises in the ears,
- Difficulty or painful swallowing,
- One sided facial and neck pain
- Ear pain
The vascular type of eagle’s syndrome has its own pressure symptoms due to the compression of the carotid artery by the elongated styloid process. This compression of the artery while turning the head can give rise to delayed blood supply to the brain thereby leading to a mini-stroke (transient ischemia attack).
How to diagnose eagle’s syndrome?
One has to be keen enough to observe and identify the symptoms pertaining to eagle’s syndrome. This being a rare syndrome is often misdiagnosed and treated symptomatically. The diagnosis is suspected when the patient presents with the symptoms of classic type of eagle’s syndrome like one sided neck pain, ear pain, sore throat or ringing in the ears. The unique feature which can help one to diagnose this condition is pain or any of the above symptoms on neck rotation.
The diagnosis of the vascular type is challenging and may require an expert opinion. Thorough examination of the neck is mandatory in order to confirm the diagnosis. One should always opt for CT Scan to get an clear idea about the case. An X ray of the affected side is the choice of investigation to see the extent of enlargement of the stylohyoid process.
What is the best treatment for eagle’s syndrome?
Surgery is the indicated treatment for both vascular and classical variety of eagle’s syndrome. A repair of the carotid artery is essential to prevent further complications and pressure symptoms. Many cases are also treated conventionally with pain killers, sedation and some pressure releasing injections. It gives a certain amount of pain free period which is not long lasting though. The patient finally has to opt for surgery. However, re-growth of stylohyoid process and relapse of the condition post surgery is a common occurrence.
If you found this information useful, do let us know in the comments section below. For more information, you may get in touch with Dr Rajesh Shah’s associate doctors at LifeForce Homeopathy. You can do so by giving us a call at +91-22-66888888 or writing in to us at email@example.com
– Dr Kanchan Gohil, Associate Doctor to Dr Rajesh Shah, Team LifeForce


Regeneration can mean the process of renewal, rebirth. In biology it can also mean the regrowth of lost parts. Often, it has a moral or spiritual connotation. Small Damages by Beth Kephart takes place in Spain, where 18-year-old Kenzie lives amongst the survivors of the Spanish Civil War. The “lost generation.” Kenzie is pregnant, about to give birth to a new generation. She literally embodies all of these permutations of the word “regeneration.”
Estela, the cook whom Kenzie is assisting, was roughly the same age as Kenzie when the war took hold in Spain and her family lost everything. Worse, Estela lost both her parents. But we don’t learn the extent of her loss right away.
Kenzie has lost her father. The parent to whom she was closest. The one from whom she inherited her creativity. Her father was a photographer; Kenzie is a filmmaker. Through Kenzie’s first-person narrative we learn how observant she is, how closely she inspects her world. Kenzie has lost her compatriot, her father, her confidant. Lonely and alone in the wake of her father’s death, she responded to the kindnesses of her dear friend Kevin, and their intimacy grew into a physical one. Now she charts the life growing inside her by the milestones outlined in her eighth grade health class: a necklace of bones, the presence of fingernails.
When Kenzie’s father died, the pain of his loss was almost physical to her. The pain was so acute because of the joy he brought to Kenzie while he lived. She cannot take any more loss. When she learns of her pregnancy, Kenzie wants her child to live, even if it means going to Spain and giving up her child to friends of her mother’s. Kenzie wants to give her child a chance.
Beth Kephart exposes what it means for Kenzie to live through this process of regeneration--incubating this life within her--but also what her presence does to bring about Estela’s regeneration. In one scene, after months of building a trust between them, Estela takes Kenzie out to a field. They knock away dust “soft as a baby’s head” from a grindstone. Estela explains it’s where they once crushed the olives for their olive oil. Now they ship the olives away, and the oil comes back in bottles. “Something’s missing,” Estela says. Kenzie connects Estela’s grindstone with her father’s headstone, newly laid, her wound still fresh. Something is missing for her, too.
For both Estela and Kenzie, the life they once knew has vanished. But together, through their friendship and shared pain across a generation, they’ve made something new.


Educação e Pesquisa
versão impressa ISSN 1517-9702
CHAGURI, Jonathas de Paula e JUNG, Neiva Maria. Nine-year elementary school in Brazil: legal and pedagogical actions in official documents. Educ. Pesqui. [online]. 2013, vol.39, n.4, pp. 927-942. Epub 27-Nov-2012. ISSN 1517-9702. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1517-97022012005000023.
Social literacy is a concept that has been widely addressed in studies related to reading and writing. The need for â€˜students' literacy in native languages that exceeds standard school curricula is a major issue for literacy discourses in Brazil (SOARES, 2004, 2010a; TERZI, 1995; KLEIMAN, 1995; CERUTTI-RIZZATTI, 2009, 2012). Thus, this study attempts to facilitate a discussion of the politics related to increasing the number of elementary school years to nine, and verify the implications of literacy education in this new educational scenario. The theory and methodology of this study are based on Social Literacy New Studies (STREET, 1984, 2010; HEATH, 1983; BARTON; HAMILTON, 2000) and propose an analysis of documented data concerning the introduction of the nine-year elementary school. The data of the results reveal that the initiative to increase Brazilian students' education is important, but beyond increased schooling, it does not establish a clear strategy that schools should implement at this grade level. The documents describe treating literacy as a social practice, but do not specify that literacy is a part of the broader social literacy. Therefore, the schools need to identify the relationship between phonemic-graphemes and graphemes-phonemic in literacy (CERUTTI-RIZZATTI, 2009) to create an effective strategy for the social practice of writing. Further, the documents reveal our students' insufficient knowledge about the culture of writing.
Palavras-chave : Literacy; Educational Politics; Nine-year Elementary School.


The high value of gold has made it a prime target of massive industrial mining operations designed to extract the mineral in the most efficient way possible. Heavy machinery, strip mining and acid extraction techniques give miners access to the valuable metal, but they can have significant side-effects. The gold mining and extraction industry creates a wide variety of pollution types, and if not regulated it can devastate any region that's home to veins of the sought-after ore.
Gold mines are usually large-scale operations, with heavy machinery and large vehicles required to dig and transport ore from place to place. These large vehicles produce emissions and greenhouse gases just like any other combustion engine-powered vehicle will, but usually on a larger scale and with much lower fuel efficiency. In addition, the earth-moving equipment that digs mine shafts or strips away topsoil can produce substantial amounts of dust and airborne particles that can further reduce the air quality around the mining operation. Airborne pollution from gold mining frequently contains heavy metals such as mercury, and as such is a potential health hazard for anyone exposed to it.
The soil pollution created by mining operations is another threat to wildlife and human health. Frequently, valuable ores run through rocks containing sulfides, and exposing this rock creates sulfuric acid. Washing these toxic byproducts away results in a semi-solid slurry called “tailings” that can contaminate the soil it comes in contact with. The acid leaching out of tailings can poison groundwater, and the toxic substances and heavy metals present in the leftover material can invade the topsoil and remain dangerous for years.
Gold mining also has the potential to contaminate any nearby water supplies. Acid washed out of mines frequently finds its way into the water table, altering the pH of nearby streams and rivers and threatening the survival of wildlife. If a tailings reservoir bursts, it can result in a toxic mudslide that can block the flow of waterways and wipe out any living thing it encounters. In addition, some small-scale mining operations practice illegal dumping of their toxic byproducts. One such case is the Minahasa Reya mine in Indonesia. In 2003, the corporation that ran the mine dumped 4 million tons of toxic tailings into Buyat Bay, enough to leave detectible residues in fish caught in the bay and cause swimmers and fishermen to suffer skin rashes.
Extracting the ore is not the only source of pollution in gold mining. Refining raw ore to remove impurities and concentrate the gold content usually involves caustic chemicals. One method involves dissolving the gold with a concentrated cyanide solution, allowing the resulting liquid to run away from the remaining ore and collecting it for reconstitution. The concentrations of cyanide used in this process are extremely dangerous, and if spilled into the environment, pose a significant threat to wildlife and human health.
- No Dirty Gold: Poisoned Waters
- University of Idaho: 1 Mercury Pollution at Gold Mining Sites in the Amazon Environment
- Environmental Protection Agency: Reducing Mercury Pollution from Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining
- U.S. Geological Survey: The Summitville Mine and its Downstream Effects
- National Wildlife Federation: Hard Rock Mining Pollution
- Thinkstock/Comstock/Getty Images


Research into myofascial trigger point pain therapy began as early as 1843, but the one person that pioneered and documented trigger point therapy was Dr. Janet Travell. Dr. Travell was a cardiologist, and personal physician to Presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Her research stands out and has stood the test of time, becoming the mainstay for all information and treatment.
Her work was published in 1983 with the Trigger Point Manual, then a second volume in 1992. Early in her career she practiced in pulmonary, cardiology, and general medical services. The major complaint she found among patients was pain.
In all three categories of her practice she would ask patients how they were feeling. They would often respond with something like, “Okay, but I’ve got this pain in my shoulder and I can’t sleep.” In many cases there was no objective evidence of disease to account for the patient’s pain. Dr. Travell began to research the unexplained pains that her patients complained about so often.
Trigger point pain and its release through trigger point therapy is the result of that research.
Myofascial trigger points are extremely common and can become a problem for anyone at some time or another throughout life. Skeletal muscles are the largest single organ of the body. Our muscles account for around 50% of our body weight. With hundreds of muscles, any one of them can develop trigger points. Trigger points, in general, have received little medical attention, especially as a source of pain and dysfunction in medical school and teachings.
As we use our muscles for every activity in our daily lives they are a big target for wear and tear, injury and dysfunction. Although trigger point pain is not life threatening, it can be extremely painful and hinder our quality of life and movement.
Disabling chronic pain costs the US population billions of dollars annually. A significant amount of chronic pain due to myofascial trigger points could be prevented by proper diagnosis and treatment. Trigger points respond very well to massage therapy.
One way of defining a trigger point is to rule out what they are not. Trigger point pain can mimic many other conditions. Many people go to their doctor thinking they have a medical condition, only to find out with testing that it is not what they think it is. So, the source of their pain and dysfunction remains a mystery to them.
What is a myofascial trigger point? Our massage therapy school textbook definition explained it well: “A firm, palpable, highly irritable spot in a taut band of muscle fibers or fascia characterized by exquisite tenderness, referred pain and loss of range of motion. “ (Trigger Point Therapy, Steiner Education Group, ©2008 FCNH, Inc.) Research has clarified that trigger points and, therefore, trigger point pain are caused by dysfunction of the “motor endplates” of skeletal muscle fibers.
People who experience trigger point pain usually complain of localized, regional, aching pain in subcutaneous (under the skin) tissues, including muscles and joints. Sometimes symptoms will also include numbness or “pins and needles” sensation, loss of range of motion, referred pain to other areas of the body, weakness without muscle atrophy (getting smaller), and inflammation.
Muscles with trigger points will have a decline in strength, greater fatigue, and longer recovery times than muscles that are pain free, without trigger points. The involved muscle shows a fatigue pattern at the beginning of a repetitive task and accelerated fatigue-ability with delayed recovery. The trigger point is like a nest of hornets in a muscle that contains multiple sources of intense trouble and dysfunction.
There are several things that can activate a trigger and bring about trigger point pain and dysfunction. Trauma to a muscle, such as an automobile or sports injury, an acute illness, emotionally charged events such as a death or tragedy, overworked or strained muscles, postural imbalances, repetitive work postures, overload, overuse or straining of muscles in the workplace.
Sickness, which might include excessive coughing can bring about a trigger point in surrounding muscles. Tension and stress in our lives can cause trigger points. Sometimes we can get a trigger point that will go away in time. Then certain stressors or activities perpetuate the trigger point, so that it repeatedly returns every time we repeat that same activity. If not taken care of and relieved, the trigger point pain can return time and time again.
There are both active and latent (inactive) trigger points. An active trigger point starts due to a one-time trauma, and might become inactive when the soft tissue heals. However, it is still there, asleep until triggered by something to set it off again. Eventually, something will set it off. For instance, a calf muscle with a latent trigger point that gets cold might develop a knot and trigger point pain will occur again, long after the injury is gone.
Trigger points are also identified as “key” and “satellite” trigger points. A key trigger is directly caused by the original stress or trauma to the muscle. A satellite trigger is a spin off of a key trigger point. Several satellites could form.
The satellite trigger point could develop in the “pain referral zone”, a synergist (complementing) muscle or an antagonist (opposing) muscle of the key trigger point. Releasing or inactivating a key trigger from the trigger point will also release the satellite trigger points. The pain referral zone is an area of pain that is felt at a distance from the original sight of the trigger point. So ,the “trigger point pain” might be felt away from the original trigger point.
Trigger point pain can be treated with medical massage. Click here for specific information about trigger point therapy through massage.
Have questions? Do you have pains that are caused by trigger points? Ask questions about your symptoms.
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Read what others have shared or asked below:
Multiple trigger points
I seem to have trigger points everywhere. My rib cage especially is covered with small painful ball like areas. It seems that there isn’t an area on my …
Success with Trigger Point as a Massage Therapist
I'm a Massage Therapist and I sometimes use Trigger Point Therapy with my clients. I've had some great success using this amazing therapy! A lot of my …
Trigger Point Pain
I have found this type of therapy to be very helpful. Brenda has done a great job of relieving my aches and pains with it.
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"The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (German: Nussknacker und Mausekönig) is a story written in 1816 by German author E. T. A. Hoffmann, in which young Marie Stahlbaum's favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and, after defeating the evil Mouse King in battle, whisks her away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls. In 1892, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov turned Alexandre Dumas père's adaptation of the story into the ballet The Nutcracker, which became one of Tchaikovsky's most famous compositions, and perhaps the most popular ballet in the world.
The story begins on Christmas Eve at the Stahlbaum house. Marie, seven, and her brother, Fritz, eight, sit outside the parlor speculating about what kind of present their godfather, Drosselmeyer, who is a clockmaker and inventor, has made for them. They are at last allowed in, where they receive many splendid gifts, including Drosselmeyer's, which turns out to be a clockwork castle with mechanical people moving about inside it. However, as they can only do the same thing over and over without variation, the children quickly tire of it. At this point, Marie notices a nutcracker, and asks whom he belongs to. Her father tells her that he belongs to all of them, but that since she is so fond of him she will be his special caretaker. She, Fritz, and their sister, Louise, pass him among them, cracking nuts, until Fritz tries to crack one that is too big and hard, and the nutcracker's jaw breaks. Marie, upset, takes him away and bandages him with a ribbon from her dress.
When it is time for bed, the children put their Christmas gifts away in the special cabinet where they keep their toys. Fritz and Louise go up to bed, but Marie begs to be allowed to stay with the nutcracker a while longer, and she is allowed to do so. She puts him to bed and tells him that Drosselmeyer will fix his jaw as good as new. At this, his face seems momentarily to come alive, and Marie is frightened, but she then decides it was only her imagination. The grandfather clock begins to chime, and Marie believes she sees Drosselmeyer sitting on top of it, preventing it from striking. Mice begin to come out from beneath the floor boards, including the seven-headed Mouse King. The dolls in the toy cabinet come alive and begin to move, the nutcracker taking command and leading them into battle after putting Marie's ribbon on as a token. The battle goes to the dolls at first, but they are eventually overwhelmed by the mice. Marie, seeing the nutcracker about to be taken prisoner, takes off her slipper and throws it at the Mouse King. She then faints into the toy cabinet's glass door, cutting her arm badly.
Marie wakes up in her bed the next morning with her arm bandaged and tries to tell her parents about the battle between the mice and the dolls, but they do not believe her, thinking that she has had a fever dream caused by the wound she sustained from the broken glass. Several days later, Drosselmeyer arrives with the nutcracker, whose jaw has been fixed, and tells Marie the story of Princess Pirlipat and Madam Mouserinks, who is also known as the Queen of the Mice, which explains how nutcrackers came to be and why they look the way they do.
The Mouse Queen tricked Pirlipat's mother into allowing her and her children to gobble up the lard that was supposed to go into the sausage that the King was to eat at dinner that evening. The King, enraged at the Mouse Queen for spoiling his supper and upsetting his wife, had his court inventor, whose name happens to be Drosselmeyer, create traps for the Mouse Queen and her children.
The Mouse Queen, angered at the death of her children, swore that she would take revenge on Pirlipat. Pirlipat's mother surrounded her with cats which were supposed to be kept awake by being constantly stroked, however inevitably the nurses who did so fell asleep and the Mouse Queen magically turned Pirlipat ugly, giving her a huge head, a wide grinning mouth, and a cottony beard like a nutcracker. The King blamed Drosselmeyer and gave him four weeks to find a cure. At the end, he had no cure but went to his friend, the court astrologer.
They read Pirlipat's horoscope and told the King that the only way to cure her was to have her eat the nut Crackatook (Krakatuk), which must be cracked and handed to her by a man who had never been shaved nor worn boots since birth, and who must, without opening his eyes hand her the kernel and take seven steps backwards without stumbling. The King sent Drosselmeyer and the astrologer out to look for both, charging them on pain of death not to return until they had found them.
The two men journeyed for many years without finding either the nut or the man, until finally they returned home to Nuremberg and found the nut in the possession of Drosselmeyer's cousin, a puppet-maker. His son turned out to be the young man needed to crack the nut Crackatook. The King, once the nut had been found, promised Pirlipat's hand to whoever could crack it. Many men broke their teeth on it before Drosselmeyer's nephew finally appeared. He cracked it easily and handed it to Pirlipat, who swallowed it and immediately became beautiful again, but Drosselmeyer's nephew, on his seventh backward step, stepped on the Mouse Queen and stumbled, and the curse fell on him, giving him a large head, wide grinning mouth, and cottony beard; in short, making him a nutcracker. The ungrateful Pirlipat, seeing how ugly he had become, refused to marry him and banished him from the castle.
Marie, while she recuperates from her wound, hears the Mouse King, son of the deceased Madam Mouserinks, whispering to her in the middle of the night, threatening to bite the nutcracker to pieces unless she gives him her sweets and dolls. For the nutcracker's sake, she sacrifices them, but then he wants more and more and finally the nutcracker tells her that if she will just get him a sword, he will finish him off. She asks Fritz for one, and he gives her the one from one of his toy hussars. The next night, the nutcracker comes into Marie's room bearing the Mouse King's seven crowns, and takes her away with him to the doll kingdom, where she sees many wonderful things. She eventually falls asleep in the nutcracker's palace and is brought back home. She tries to tell her mother what happened, but again she is not believed, even when she shows her parents the seven crowns, and she is forbidden to speak of her "dreams" anymore.
Marie sits in front of the toy cabinet one day while Drosselmeyer is repairing one of her father's clocks. While looking at the nutcracker and thinking about all the wondrous things that happened, she can't keep silent anymore and swears to him that if he were ever really real she would never behave as Pirlipat did, and would love him whatever he looked like. At this, there is a bang and she faints and falls off the chair. Her mother comes in to tell her that Drosselmeyer's nephew has arrived from Nuremberg. He takes her aside and tells her that by swearing that she would love him in spite of his looks, she broke the curse on him and made him human again. He asks her to marry him. She accepts, and in a year and a day he comes for her and takes her away to the doll kingdom, where she marries him and is crowned queen.
Mouse King: Mouscedes King (possibly)
Marie : Unknown
Fritz : Unknown
- Nathan Nutcracker is a book-only character.
- Mouscedes King is a character from Monster High.


Impact of AIDS on Sub-Saharan Africa’s Economy
Sub-Saharan Africa is the part of the world most terribly influenced by AIDS. By the end of 2004 it was estimated that twenty-six million inhabitants in Sub-Saharan Africa were suffering from AIDS. Approximately seven to eight per cent of the grown population is affected, with occurrence rates getting as high as forty per cent in a few countries.
Females are strangely infected, with adolescent girls five times more prone than teenage boys to catch AIDS. In 2004 only, two million people expired of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa.
However the epidemic has far stretched from its peak, since infectivity rates are still exceeded casualties from AIDS. Due to the gap between infectivity and successive death, we have until now to see the full impact of AIDS on Sub-Saharan Africa’s society as a whole.
There have been differing opinions over how AIDS has affected the economic future of the African continent. Mixed messages on the true economic repercussions of the spread of the disease have contributed to a limited response, despite the inclusion of combating AIDS in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
One of the least studied but most significant areas of the epidemic’s impact is rural agriculture. Though long de-prioritized, rural agriculture is a source of livelihood for millions on the African continent and is now again being perceived as a crucial contributor to economic growth and development by such organizations as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD).
Hunger, food aid and agricultural subsidies are all key elements of the current discourse on Africa in policy circles and in the media, but few studies have assessed the impact of AIDS on agriculture to push for specific interventions to mitigate the impact of the epidemic on rural agriculture.
This disease has affected millions of people and since many of them are farmers therefore it has indirectly affected agriculture also. Since agriculture is a major source of capital for individuals and the country therefore it has affected the economy of Africa also. It seems clear that such high levels of illness and mortality will severely hamper economic performance in the most heavily affected countries.
Yet over the last decade, a number of macroeconomic studies have declared that AIDS is not having a significant impact on GDP growth. These analyses are important because they provide ammunition that allows statesmen and scholars to dismiss the epidemic as not worthy of action and funding.
In circles of power around the world, it is money that drives policy initiatives. The claim that AIDS is not impacting economic performance speaks loudly and prevents aggressive intervention.( n5)
This paper will start with an assessment of a number of the macroeconomic studies that aim to measure the impact of AIDS on GDP growth, and which contribute to the justification of a limited international response to the disease.
Macroeconomic Analysis Of The Impact Of AIDS
The assessments of the macroeconomic impact of AIDS have been largely dismissive due to the unique character of the epidemic. AIDS affects the poorest of the poor: those who are not recognized or measured by traditional macroeconomic indicators. (Ruxin, 2004)
As a UN report on “The Impact of AIDS” notes, “those rural people whose activities are not counted by standard measurements of economic performance and productivity are among the most vulnerable to the impact of AIDS.”( Bloom, Mahal, 1997, 108)
By not fully accounting for the informal sector, the rural economy and small-scale agriculture are largely dismissed, and women, who play a large role in the informal economy and agricultural sector, are marginalized. While the macroeconomic studies assessing the impact of AIDS disregard them, in fact it is the poor, the rural and women who are most affected by the disease.
After decades of neglect by governments and abandonment by structural adjustment programs, there is a renewed focus on agriculture by international organizations and groups such as the World Bank and NEPAD. Agriculture is once again being seen as a driving force for growth in Africa.
The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) released in July 2003 states that “the high economic growth rates envisaged by NEPAD cannot be realized unless farm production is significantly increased. Higher output will directly reduce hunger and bring down the cost of food imports.
It will also have wider economic benefits, from stimulating rural incomes to providing raw materials for African industry.”(Harsch, 2004, 13) However, the rural areas are where AIDS is having its most devastating impact.
At a time when population growth is high relative to other emerging economies, the amount of arable land is stable, the quality of land is degrading, and output per hectare stagnant, the rural areas are under increased pressure.
Adding the AIDS epidemic into an already precarious mix of factors forces the agricultural sector into a dangerous downward spiral and threatens hopes for economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa.
Few of the macroeconomic studies specifically address rural livelihoods and agriculture. They also assess the impact of AIDS without acknowledging that, from an economic point of view, the primary impact of the disease manifests mainly among individual economic agents, i.e. individuals and households. (Booysen, Bachmann, 2002)
As a result, these macroeconomic models often fail to allow for the effects of a number of important microeconomic impacts which are endogenous to such models. (Booysen, Bachmann, 2002)
Though the death of an individual might only represent a minor change in GDP, the macroeconomists fail to understand the ripple effect chronic illness and death has on communities. The impoverishment of communities cascades upwards and impacts macroeconomic measures. The traditional macroeconomic research approach is not sufficient in the face of the widespread devastation of AIDS.
Microeconomic Analysis Of The Impact Of AIDS
It is vital for researchers to conduct microeconomic household-level studies on the impact of AIDS. Such analyses document the economic choices that households and individuals are forced to make in the face of the epidemic in terms of household composition, labor, productivity, savings and coping strategies.
It is these behaviors that will inform observers of the real impact the epidemic is having on sub-Saharan Africa and will thus serve as the basis for understanding the effect of AIDS on families, communities and the nation.
Rural Household Studies
It is clear from existing microeconomic household-level analyses that AIDS is devastating and will continue to devastate Sub-Saharan Africa’s rural agricultural sector and, through it, undermines the agricultural and rural revival that many see as the basis of Africa’s recovery.
As Carolyn Baylies notes, “AIDS is having a profound effect, undermining rural household production, contributing to declining agricultural output and affecting the very integrity of families and their sustainability as viable units.”(Baylies, 2002, 12)
This paper will now delve into a number of the microeconomic studies, with a focus on rural agricultural household studies, to assess the house hold level impact of the epidemic and to investigate the effects that the macroeconomic analyses have largely missed.
A 2002 household impact study conducted in South Africa by Frederick Booysen and Max Bachmann explores the impact of AIDS on families in the Free State province. Researchers note that deaths in the households due to AIDS mostly occurred in individuals in their 20s and 30s.
A Rwandan study revealed that, for those that died, the average period of illness before death was 23 months: a long period during which care had to be provided and medicines sought. (Donovan, 2003) Household illness dramatically increases the dependency ratio in the home.
Booysen and Bachmann note that the households affected by AIDS in fact have a smaller supply of labor than non-affected households, with a larger proportion of the household consisting of children and elderly persons. (Booysen, Bachmann, 2002) Furthermore, dependency is exacerbated by the fact that many individuals return to their rural homes to receive terminal care after becoming ill. (Jayne, 2002)
The South African study also assesses the impact of AIDS on household income. The authors note that “per capita and adult equivalent income in affected households represents only between 50% and 60% of the levels of income in non-affected households.”(Booysen, Bachmann, 2002)
This dramatic drop results not only from the loss of labor of the infected individual but also from the burden of care that falls on family members. Importantly, Booysen and Bachmann also explore the impact of the disease on expenditure levels.
AIDS significantly alters the consumption patterns of households: “per capita and adult equivalent expenditure is between 60% and 70% of the levels of expenditure in non-affected households.” (Booysen, Bachmann, 2002) Notably, affected households spend less on food than non-affected households, which has a negative impact on the health of household members.


UCase is a commonly used ASP function that allows you to convert all characters in a string to their upper case versions. It only takes in one parameter:
* The string variable to operate on
The original string variable is not altered.
Let's say you have a form in which a user types in a model number. You then want to compare that model number against a database of models to get more information. You have millions of model numbers, so you don't want to do a drop down or something like that. But if the user starts typing in lowercase letters, say "xyg142" or "Xyg142", you will have trouble doing a search properly. So you use:
ModelNo = UCase(ModelNo)
That would turn both of the above examples into "XYG142" without the user having to think about which way they enter the information.
ASP String Functions
|Introduction to ASP Ebook|
Download this ebook to get everything you need to know about learning ASP - from a step by step tutorial to function lists, sample code, common errors and solutions, and much more! 101 pages.


Summary (Masterplots, Fourth Edition)
Florentine Vivier, a French dressmaker, gives birth to an illegitimate son and accuses an Englishman, Lord Frederick Purvis, of being the boy’s father. When Lord Frederick and his family refuse to recognize the baby, Florentine stabs Lord Frederick to death, a crime for which she receives the maximum prison sentence; she entrusts her son, whom she calls Hyacinth Robinson, to Miss Amanda Pynsent, a poor dressmaker, who raises the boy without telling him the unfortunate circumstances surrounding his birth.
Years later, Mrs. Bowerbank, a prison matron, visits Miss Pynsent to tell her that Florentine is dying in the prison hospital and had asked to see her son, now ten years of age. Miss Pynsent consults Mr. Vetch, a violinist in a Bloomsbury theater, who is her closest friend. On his advice, she takes Hyacinth to the prison but does not tell him at first that the woman is his mother. The grim prison frightens him, and at first his mother speaks only in French, saying that she fears he is ashamed of her. She embraces him pitifully before the matron bustles the visitors away.
During the following years, the rowdy family of Millicent Henning, Hyacinth’s childhood friend, is ejected from their quarters next to Miss Pynsent’s shop in Lomax Place. When Mr. Vetch has a copy of Lord Bacon’s Essays bound as a gift for Hyacinth, he meets the master bookbinder Eustache Poupin, who had been exiled from France after the Commune of 1871. Mr....
(The entire section is 922 words.)
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Posted 16 March 2010 - 12:16 PM
I'd like to make historical map for my diploma work. Can anyone оffer to me any suggestion for making of this kind of map. I want to use Adobe Illustrator and Avenza MAPublisher.
Posted 16 March 2010 - 06:00 PM
Most historic maps are made by simply tracing over an image of an old map, sometimes adjusting features to move them to their known positions on a modern map. For example, we may know the current correct position of a coastline or city from a 16th century map, but the exact route taken by an invading army between the coast and the city would have to be based on conjecture and topography.
Posted 16 March 2010 - 06:17 PM
"There is much beauty that we fail to see through our own eyes teeming with life forms that give us that perception of our reality. Leaves on the trees blowing gently in the wind, or scarily, the waves pounding through high surf, or lightly on a warm summer’s day; that opportunity to sit or swim in the water on a white beach. That comfort to shout, “The universal conscious do you hear me? I am alive, guide me dear logos towards the path of rightnesses.” Earned what has been kept, no longer to be absorbed into a life filled with cold damn winds and that stubborn fog clouding my vision with nothing but darkness."
Posted 17 March 2010 - 03:35 AM
Posted 17 March 2010 - 03:54 AM
Posted 17 March 2010 - 08:41 AM
The ESRI Mapping Center has some information, blog posts, papers and presentations, styles, etc. related to both historical styles and historical subject mapping. Of course, those will be ESRI-centric, but a lot of it can be translated to Illustrator readily enough I think. If you can be more specific about what you're looking to do I might be able to point you to specific links there.
(you can see a thumbnail of one map I did as my avatar)
Posted 17 March 2010 - 09:32 AM
Thanks for the suggestions received up to now.
Posted 17 March 2010 - 09:52 AM
I was just reading the wikipedia pages about the Kingdom of Jerusalem (the medieval crusader state), just a suggestion. Or related to that: Saladin's conquest and empire, the crusades or why not my favorite: the realm of Prester John!
(I have a secret project to one day make a map of the adventures from Umberto Eco's book Baudolino)
Posted 17 March 2010 - 11:49 AM
I'd like to make a map covering a historic theme. The map will compare same territory in the past and now.
Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire? If you were looking for something close to home, that is. Rather you than me, though .
Posted 17 March 2010 - 12:48 PM
Posted 17 March 2010 - 01:14 PM
I don't want any suggestions for the themes of the map. I'd like some suggestions about the technology of making this kind of maps, using Adobe Illustrator and MAPublisher, and then export them to Flash.
The technology would be pretty much the same as when you're making a modern map, it's the styles that make the difference.
Do you have access to historical GIS data? (e.g. historical boundaries, place names and such)? If not, you'll need to find that somehow, for example by tracing it off an existing map. But once you have that in Illustrator, the process of styling isn't any different from a modern map.
Email: email@example.com / Twitter: @redgeographics
Posted 17 March 2010 - 02:07 PM
Posted 17 March 2010 - 02:57 PM
When I'm taking on a project like this where there is a particular theme I'm looking for, I like to collect as many examples of similar themes as possible and analyze them for their individual styles, symbology and features. Emulate what works, make changes to what doesn't. With historical maps you may be looking for particular styles on actual paper maps and trying to find a way to create that in Illustrator, or you may find other graphic work that has re-created the historical look and feel.
One good source for a lot old maps to look over is the David Rumsey Historical MAp Collection: http://www.davidrumsey.com/
Posted 18 March 2010 - 01:07 PM
Everything you could need has been included in that file...
Everything except a reason to ever do it. The finished products just make me cringe.
Using GIS for this purpose is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.
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Studies have shown that children whose parents play a large role in homework time do better on tests and overall academics.
Children who have parents that show a marked interest in their kid’s homework and school work as well seem to do much better in terms of grades. Studies have shown that children whose parents play a large role in homework time do better on tests and overall academics.
When my little one was studying Indians I took her to the free Native American museum near us. It was fun and she and I both had a chance to apply all she was learning to what lessons she had studied and would be studying. There are a number of ways in which you can create fun games for your kids, depending on their age level. If you have an elementary school age child then you can easily create flash card games that you can play with him/her in order to help him/her learn spelling or vocabulary words. The same can be done for mathematics. Because of the popularity of the internet today you can also find a wealth of learning games online that you can play with.
Kids also love getting rewards. If you offer some kind of incentive such as ice cream or even extra amounts of allowance, chances are your kids will enjoy doing homework much more. The reward does not have to be big and it does not have to cost a lot of money. It just has to be something that will cause the child to want to work toward it.
For children, everything is more fun when there is some kind of prize at the end. your children to help them learn times tables, grammar and much more.
Most of all remember that your love and support matter!


I think the best description is given by the author himself in the documentation (1.1 About biblatex):
This package provides advanced bibliographic facilities for use with LaTeX in conjunction with BibTeX. The package is a complete reimplementation of the bibliographic facilities provided by LaTeX. It redesigns the way in which LaTeX interacts with BibTeX at a fairly fundamental level. With biblatex, BibTeX is only used to sort the bibliography and to generate labels. Instead of being implemented in bst files, the formatting of the bibliography is entirely controlled by LaTeX macros, hence the name biblatex. Good working knowledge in LaTeX should be suffcient to design new bibliography and citation styles. There is no need to learn BibTeX’s postfix stack language. This package also supports subdivided bibliographies, multiple bibliographies within one document, and separate lists of bibliographic shorthands. Bibliographies may be subdivided into parts and/or segmented by topics. Just like the bibliography styles, all citation commands may be freely defined. The package is completely localized and can interface with the babel package.
Instead of BibTeX (the program) or BibTeX8 (the 8-bit reimplementation of BibTeX), with biblatex you can also use biber as a backend. It can handle UTF-8, has advanced sorting capabilities and is intended to replace BibTeX.
You should consider switching to biblatex when you often have style guides for which you do not have appropriate BibTeX styles, or when you need to use UTF-8 for some reason. Some hints on what to take notice of when switching to biblatex can be found in the answers to the following question: What to do to switch to biblatex?
BTW: The documentation is excellent, and the package itself is very “mature” compared to other packages.


What About the Discovery of Q?
has been found! So claims Burton L. Mack, professor of New Testament at the School of Theology at Claremont, California. It has been postulated for years, but its discovery is now said to be official. No, a cache of ancient scrolls and artifacts has not been uncovered in Asia Minor. And no, a janitor has not found a previously unclassified manuscript upon a dusty shelf in the basement of a museum somewhere that scholars can now recognize as Q. So where was the document found?
Scholars have long supposed that, besides Mark, Matthew and Luke employed a common source when they composed their Gospels. The main clue to this was the fact that besides the material that they share in common with Mark, both Matthew and Luke contain additional material in common with each other that is not in Mark. This shared material amounts to over 200 verses. Luke’s comment that other reports concerning Jesus were circulating before he put his record down on paper has led some scholars to suspect that more than mechanical dictation or “inspired memory” was at work when the Gospels were written (Luke 1:1-4). The question then arose: What was this source that both writers used? Because the German word for source is quelle, it became scholarly shorthand to refer to this undiscovered source as “Q.”
The search for Q overlapped and sometimes came in conflict with what became known as the search for the historical Jesus. Many scholars came to the opinion that the New Testament tended to obscure the actual character and identity of Jesus. They reasoned that the well-meaning writers of the New Testament embellished the actual historical facts about Jesus. So they set out to find the authentic Jesus. One of these efforts was attempted by Adolph von Harnack (1851-1930), who extracted from the Gospel records all the “sayings” of Jesus. He thought that if we would read those sayings without their narrative settings, we would be able to form a more objective opinion of the historical Jesus.
Eighty years later, some scholars believe that Harnack was both very far from, and yet very close to, finding Q. Where he went wrong was in putting all the sayings on equal footing (whether they were actually said by Jesus or merely attributed to Him). He was close to Q, though, because it has now been decided (by some) that Q is a subset of the sayings that Harnack had isolated.
Q’s discovery, on the one hand, is somewhat anti-climatic, since (according to these scholars) we have been reading it all along, but just didn’t know it! On the other hand, it has created a maelstrom of controversy. Why all the furor? The reason is because scholars who have isolated Q suggest that reading Q alone leads us to a radically different picture of Jesus and the earliest movement He created. By analyzing Q as a document that arose out of a particular cultural, social, and political climate, we are given insights into the original community of people who followed Jesus. What does Q tell us about these people? Mack explains:
The remarkable thing about the people of Q is that they were not Christians. They did not think of Jesus as a messiah or the Christ. They did not take his teachings as an indictment of Judaism. They did not regard his death as a divine, tragic, or saving event. And they did not imagine that he had been raised from the dead to rule over a transformed world. Instead, they thought of him as a teacher whose teachings made it possible to live with verve in troubled times. Thus they did not gather to worship in his name, honor him as a god, or cultivate his memory through hymns, prayers, and rituals (1993, p. 4).
That is Mack’s story. Conservative scholars, however, are not so impressed.
While recent enthusiasm over Q is running at an all-time high, there are fundamental problems that must be addressed. First, merely distilling the gospel material that is common to Matthew and Luke (and absent in Mark) and printing it as a separate Gospel ignores the question as to whether the Q hypothesis is the best explanation for the commonality. The issue of literary dependence cannot be merely assumed, but must be proved. This has not been done (Linnemann, 1992, pp. 145-152). A more likely explanation for common material is that the Gospel writers were all discussing the same core of historical data surrounding the same central figure. Second, there is no manuscript evidence that Q existed or was in circulation as an independent document. Its existence is still mere conjecture. Third, even if the so-called Q material in Matthew and Luke were drawn from an independent source (and this stretches the imagination), there is no way to know how much of that source actually exists in the Gospels. So, all efforts to reconstruct the beliefs of an early community of Jesus’ followers based upon the Q material alone are lame. To say, as does Mack, that the “people of Q” knew nothing of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus begs the question. It assumes that the Q material isolated in Matthew and Luke was all there was to the original document. That is a claim that never can be substantiated without a Q manuscript.
The bottom line is this: Q has not been discovered.
Linnemann, Eta (1992), Is There a Synoptic Problem? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker).
Mack, Burton L. (1993), The Lost Gospel—The Book of Q and Christian Origins (San Francisco, CA: Harper).


The Wnt signaling pathway is an ancient cell communication pathway that has important roles in development and cancer. For the first time, work by Mariann Bienz’s group in the LMB’s PNAC Division has uncovered the molecular mechanism triggering the assembly of the Wnt signalosome, a key component of the Wnt signal transduction pathway that controls normal development and tissue homeostasis in all animals.
Signalosomes are tiny three-dimensional mesh-like particles that arise by transient local aggregation of otherwise diffuse proteins. Their assembly is triggered by signals from outside of the cell, and they function to relay these signals to the inside of cells to change the cell properties and fates. The transient local aggregation of proteins (known as phase transitions) is commonly observed in cells, but the mechanisms that control their assembly are largely unknown.
Using a combination of crystal structure determination, biophysics, NMR, biochemistry and cell biology, Mariann’s group identified a crucial step during Wnt signalosome assembly – the cross-linking of individual Dishevelled polymers into a mesh which depends on a reciprocal interaction between two Dishevelled molecules (via their DEP domain) reminiscent of a handshake. The discovery has led to a new mechanistic model of Wnt signal transduction, in which Wnt-induced clustering of Dishevelled in clathrin-coated pits triggers DEP domain swapping and consequently signalosome assembly and signal transduction to the nucleus.
This work not only provides a model for how signalosomes transiently form, but also advances the understanding of Wnt signaling. The Wnt signalling pathway is of major importance in cancer, most notably in colorectal cancers most of which are initiated by derailed Wnt signalling in the bowel. A detailed molecular understanding of this pathway can inform therapeutic strategies and rational drug design.
The work was funded by the MRC and Cancer Research UK.


Purple Coneflower is native to the central and southeastern U.S. and is valued for its showy pink daisy-like flowers, attractiveness to pollinators and birds, and its drought and deer tolerance. It was first exported to Europe in 1699 by John Banister, the Virginia botanist. In the 19th century, American garden writer Thomas Fessenden commented on Coneflowers: "many flowers . . . very durable . . . and much admired."
Sow seeds indoors 8-12 weeks before last frost date at 70 degrees F. Transplant to 3" pots once they have several true leaves, then harden off and plant outdoors in well-drained soil after last frost. Approximately 50-60 seeds per packet.
|Exposure||Planting Method||Planting Depth||Plant Spacing||Size at Maturity||Zone|
|Full Sun to Part Shade||Transplant||1/8"||1.5-2' apart||3-4'H||3-8|


Dental and periodontal charting provides the graphic details of the conditions in a patient’s mouth, combine caries restorations, missing or malposed teeth, clinical attachment levels, furcation root involvement, mobility, pocket depths, bleeding sites, and other deviations from normal. Other conditions that may be charted include erosion, abrasion, developmental anomalies and use of prostheses. Dental charting is the part of both initial and periodic dental examinations and is included in the cost of care. Exams are normally covered by dental insurance. Dental charting is a process in which your dental healthcare professional lists and describes the health of your teeth and gums. Periodontal charting, which is a part of your dental chart, refers to the six measurements in millimeters that are taken around each tooth.
What does dental charting include?
- Charting begins with tooth naming and numbering. The maxillary or upper arch and the mandibular, or lower arch, each contain 16 teeth in a full adult dentition.
- Teeth are paired right and left by size, shape, and function. Starting at the midline every arch includes two central incisors side by side.
- Regular outward to right and left are pairs of lateral incisors, canines (cuspids), first premolars 1st bicuspids, second premolars 2nd cuspids first molars, 2nd molars, and third molars (wisdom teeth).
- Periodontal charting refers to a chart utilized by a licensed dental care professional to write and record gingival and overall oral conditions relating to oral and periodontal health or disease. A periodontal examination is a clinical examination of the periodontium (gums).
- It is routinely carried out in dentistry and allied specialties. Many different techniques are used around the world.


|Home Life Teachings|
History of Christ
History shows that Jesus was a real person. The life of Christ can be placed in a historical context.
This section is presented to affirm the historical Jesus, and to stimulate further personal study on the history of Christ.
Crucifixion - Read a medical account of the death of Christ, written by a doctor. Examine the controversial Shroud of Turin. See the dramatic ShockWave animation of the crucifixion.
Historians - Links to Roman history websites, and to the works of first century historians, like Josephus, Philo, and Eusebius
Maps - Maps of the Roman Empire, Israel, and Galilee. See where Jesus traveled, and where John baptized him.
Rulers - Links to sites on Augustus Caesar, Herod, Pilate, and other rulers who influenced the life of Christ.
Timeline - A timeline for the life of Christ. Learn when he was born, when his ministry began, and when he died.
Get 2 free lessons now!


Candy apples are a Halloween favorite. Photo
Yesterday we published a recipe for caramel apples, also known as toffee apples.
Today we present candy apples: the same concept, but with a hard, crackly red candy coating instead of the softer caramel.
The practice of coating fruit in sugar syrup dates back to ancient times. In addition to tasting good, honey and sugar were used as preserving agents to keep fruit from rotting.
Who Invented Candy Apples
According to FoodTimeline.org, food historians generally agree that caramel apples (toffee apples) probably date to the late 19th century. Both toffee and caramel can be traced to the early decades of the 18th century. Inexpensive toffee/caramels became available by the end of the 19th century. Culinary evidence confirms soft, chewy caramel coating from that time.
Red cinnamon candy apples came later. And, while long associated with Halloween, they were originally Christmas fare, not a Halloween confection.
According to articles in the Newark Evening News in 1948 and 1964, the red candy apple was invented in 1908 by William W. Kolb, a local confectioner.
Experimenting with red cinnamon candies for Christmas, he dipped apples into the mixture and the modern candy apple was born. The tasty treat was soon being sold at the Jersey Shore, the circus and then in candy shops nationwide.
Red candy apples were once popular trick-or-treat booty. Beginning in the 1960s, they became less popular when news reports scared the public into thinking that sociopaths were inserting razor blades or needles into the apples. (This was later exposed as a hoax.)
As a precaution, newscasters advised parents that their children should accept only factory-sealed, packaged candy. Candy bar companies jumped on the opportunity to advertise their packaged candies as the “safe alternative” for Halloween treats. Parents would sort through the candies kids brought back to discard any unwrapped, loose treats (and they still do).
CANDY APPLES RECIPE
1. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Wash the apples carefully and remove any stems. Stick the apples in boiling water* for 10 seconds, then remove and dry thoroughly—moisture will prohibit the coating from adhering properly. You can do this step first; towel dry the apples, then let them air-dry for an hour or more.
3. Stick the skewers firmly in the stem ends.
4. Combine the water, corn syrup and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves; then continue to cook, without stirring, until mixture reaches 250° degrees on a candy thermometer. Occasionally wash down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush to prevent crystallization.
5. Once the candy thermometer reaches 250°F, add the cinnamon candies or cinnamon oil and stir briefly to incorporate. Continue to cook, washing down the sides, until the thermometer reaches 285°F.
6. Remove the pan from the heat and stir the candy coating until it is smooth. Hold an apple by the skewer and dip it into the candy, tilting the pan at an angle and rotating the apple to cover it completely with an even layer. Remove the apple and twirl over wax paper to remove the excess, then set it on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining apples.
7. Allow the apples to cool. Candy apples are best enjoyed within 24 hours, when the candy coating will be the most crackly. Over time, ambient moisture and humidity cause the coating to soften.
TIP: If you have leftover candy syrup, there’s no need to waste it. Spoon it into rounds on a wax paper- or parchment-covered cookie sheet until it hardens into red cinnamon hard candy.
*This removes any wax from the apples and helps the coating to adhere. Alternatively, you can soak them for a few minutes in hot tap water with a dash of cider vinegar, then remove and polish dry with a soft cloth. You can also purchase Veggie Wash, a spray solution that removes the wax from fruits and vegetables.
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