Doctor Blacklight Chapter 3

Doctor Blacklight Chapter 4

Toothbrush

The toothbrush is an oral hygiene instrument used to clean the teeth, gums, and tongue. It consists of a head of tightly clustered bristle, atop of which toothpaste can be applied, mounted on a handle which facilitates the cleaning of hard-to-reach areas of the mouth.

Over 1 billion toothbrushes are disposed of into landfills annually in the United States alone. $

Where’s Phoebe?


Centipedes (from the New Latin prefix centi-, “hundred”, and the Latin word pes, pedis, “foot”) are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda of the subphylum Myriapoda, an arthropod group which also includes millipedes and other multi-legged creatures. Despite the name, centipedes can have a varying number of legs, ranging from 30 to 354. Centipedes always have an odd number of pairs of legs. Therefore, no centipede has exactly 100 legs. As a food item, certain large-sized centipedes are consumed in China, usually skewered and grilled or deep fried. They are often seen in street vendor’s stalls in large cities, including Donghuamen and Wangfujing markets in Beijing. Also in China, as well as in Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, large centipedes are kept in liquor for a period of time. This custom is allegedly part of the traditional Chinese medicine. Said to have medicinal properties and to be reinvigorating, the liquor with the centipede submerged in it is consumed as a special drink. $

What’s For Dinner?

Cutlery includes any hand implement used in preparing, serving, and especially eating food in Western culture.

Introduced for convenience purposes (lightweight, no cleanup after the meal required), disposable cutlery made of plastic has become a huge worldwide market.

Along with other disposable tableware (paper plates, plastic table covers, disposable cups, paper napkins, etc.), these products have become essential for the fast food and catering industry. The products are emblematic of throw-away societies and the cause of millions of tons of non-biodegradable plastic waste. Europe will be banning such plastic products from 2021 as part of the European Plastics Strategy. $

High As Phuque

In pharmacology, a drug is a chemical substance, typically of known structure, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. 

There are numerous governmental offices in many countries that deal with the control and oversee of drug manufacture and use, and the implementation of various drug laws. The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is an international treaty brought about in 1961 to prohibit the use of narcotics save for those used in medical research and treatment. In 1971, a second treaty the Convention on Psychotropic Substances had to be introduced to deal with newer recreational psychoactive and psychedelic drugs. $

Corkscrewed

A corkscrew is a tool for drawing corks from wine bottles and other household bottles that may be sealed with corks. In its traditional form, a corkscrew simply consists of a pointed metallic helix (often called the "worm") attached to a handle, which the user screws into the cork and pulls to extract it. Corkscrews are necessary because corks themselves, being small and smooth, are difficult to grip and remove, particularly when inserted fully into an inflexible glass bottle. 

A person who collects corkscrews is a helixophile. $

Breaking The Law “Breaking the Law” is a song by British heavy metal band Judas Priest, originally released on their 1980 album British Steel. The song is one of the band’s better known singles, and is readily recognized by its opening guitar riff. Directed by Julien Temple, the video starts with vocalist Rob Halford singing from the back of a 1974 Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado convertible traveling along on the Westway section of the A40 in West London. The lyrics tell of someone at the rock bottom in their life – out of work, unable to find work, frustrated, feeling that nobody cares if they live or die, eventually turning to crime for survival. 

The song made VH1’s 40 Greatest Metal Songs at No. 40. In 2009 it was named the 12th greatest hard rock song of all time by VH1. $

Pencils

A pencil is an implement for writing or drawing, constructed of a narrow, solid pigment core in a protective casing that prevents the core from being broken and/or marking the user's hand.

Notable pencil users

Thomas Edison had his pencils specially made by Eagle Pencil. Each pencil was three inches long, was thicker than standard pencils and had softer graphite than was normally available.

Vladimir Nabokov rewrote everything he had ever published, usually several times, in pencil.

John Steinbeck was an obsessive pencil user and is said to have used as many as 60 a day. His novel East of Eden took more than 300 pencils to write.

Vincent van Gogh used only Faber pencils as they were "superior to Carpenters pencils, a capital black and most agreeable".

Johnny Carson regularly played with pencils at his Tonight Show desk. These pencils were specially made with erasers at both ends to avoid on-set accidents.

Roald Dahl used only pencils with yellow casing to write his books. He had 6 sharpened pencils ready at the beginning of each day and only when all 6 pencils became unusable did he resharpen them. $

Road Trip

Monopoly is derived from The Landlord's Game created by Lizzie Magie in the United States in 1903 as a way to demonstrate that an economy which rewards wealth creation is better than one where monopolists work under few constraints. The game is named after the economic concept of monopoly—the domination of a market by a single entity.

 In 1936, Parker Brothers began licensing the game for sale outside the United States. In 1941, the British Secret Intelligence Service had John Waddington Ltd., the licensed manufacturer of the game in the United Kingdom, create a special edition for World War II prisoners of war held by the Nazis.  Hidden inside these games were maps, compasses, real money, and other objects useful for escaping. They were distributed to prisoners by fake charity organizations created by the British Secret Service.

One common criticism of Monopoly is that although it has carefully defined termination conditions, it may take an unlimited amount of time to reach them. Edward P. Parker, a former president of Parker Brothers, is quoted as saying, "We always felt that forty-five minutes was about the right length for a game, but Monopoly could go on for hours. Also, a game was supposed to have a definite end somewhere. In Monopoly you kept going around and around.

In 1991, Hasbro acquired Parker Bros. and thus Monopoly. Hasbro states that the longest game of Monopoly ever played lasted 1,680 hours (70 days or 10 weeks or 2.3 months). $

Perfect Fit

A jigsaw puzzle is a tiling puzzle that requires the assembly of often oddly shaped interlocking and tessellating pieces. Each piece usually has a small part of a picture on it; when complete, a jigsaw puzzle produces a complete picture.

Jigsaw puzzles soared in popularity during the Great Depression, as they provided a cheap, long-lasting, recyclable form of entertainment.

According to the Alzheimer Society of Canada, doing jigsaw puzzles is one of many activities that can help keep the brain active and may contribute to reducing the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. $

Hopscotch Prodigy

A child prodigy is defined in psychology research literature as a person under the age of ten who produces meaningful output in some domain to the level of an adult expert.

Gifted children often struggle with interpersonal relationships with peers. They may find it difficult to relate to others and may recognize that they are different from most children and might view themselves as needing to be separate.

Gifted children often have trouble paying attention in class which can result with a mixed diagnosis of ADD or ADHD. Although it is possible for a gifted child to have these disorders, careful diagnostic measures must be taken. Gifted children often lack motivation to complete certain tasks if they feel that they are not being challenged enough. When gifted children are not provided with engaging material, their lack of focus may be perceived as an attention deficit disorder.

Children who equate their performance with their self-worth often become perfectionists and struggle to perform to their own ideal standard, often setting bars for themselves that are too high and becoming angry, upset, or even depressed when they fail to meet their own expectations. $

Doctor Blacklight Chapter 3

Speechless

In the United States, freedom of speech and expression is strongly protected from government restrictions by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Categories of speech that are given lesser or no protection by the First Amendment include obscenity (as determined by the Miller test), fraud, child pornography, speech integral to illegal conduct, speech that incites imminent lawless action, and regulation of commercial speech such as advertising. 

Within these limited areas, other limitations on free speech balance rights to free speech and other rights, such as rights for authors over their works (copyright), protection from imminent or potential violence against particular persons, restrictions on the use of untruths to harm others (slander), and communications while a person is in prison. When a speech restriction is challenged in court, it is presumed invalid and the government bears the burden of convincing the court that the restriction is constitutional.

In a 9–0 decision, the Supreme Court extended the full protection of the First Amendment to the Internet in Reno v. ACLU, a decision that struck down portions of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, a law that prohibited "indecent" online communication (that is, non-obscene material protected by the First Amendment). The court's decision extended the same Constitutional protections given to books, magazines, films, and spoken expression to materials published on the Internet. Congress tried a second time to regulate the content of the Internet with the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). The Court again ruled that any limitations on the internet were unconstitutional in American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft (2002). $

Last But Not Least

Barrel of Monkeys is a toy game released by Lakeside Toys in 1965. It was created by Leonard Marks and Milton Dinhofer in 1961, and in 1964, Herman Kesler partnered to sell it to Lakeside Toys. Lakeside Toys released it in 1965 and today it is produced by the Milton Bradley Company within the Hasbro corporation. The current Hasbro version is sold with ten monkeys in the barrel.

In May 2012, Dartmouth College student Parker Phinney led a fundraising group that built a chain of 5,990 monkeys, the longest ever. $

A Tough Nut To Crack

A nutcracker is a tool designed to open nuts by cracking their shells. There are many designs, including levers, screws, and ratchets. A well-known type portrays a person whose mouth forms the jaws of the nutcracker, though many of these are meant for decorative use.

After the 1960s, the availability of pre-shelled nuts led to a decline in ownership of nutcrackers and a fall in the tradition of nuts being put in children's Christmas stockings.

Some artists, among them the multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield have used the sound nutcrackers make in music. $

Ooze

Toothpaste is a paste or gel dentifrice used with a toothbrush as an accessory to clean and maintain the aesthetics and health of teeth. Toothpaste is used to promote oral hygiene: it serves as an abrasive that aids in removing dental plaque and food from the teeth, assists in suppressing halitosis, and delivers active ingredients (most commonly fluoride) to help prevent tooth decay (dental caries) and gum disease (gingivitis).

After using toothpaste, orange juice and other juices have an unpleasant taste. Sodium lauryl sulfate alters taste perception. It can break down phospholipids that inhibit taste receptors for sweetness, giving food a bitter taste. In contrast, apples are known to taste more pleasant after using toothpaste. $