You Need to Know about the Hundredth Meridian

The Hundredth Meridian was identified by John Wesley Powell (a fascinating character in his own right) as a geographic tipping point separating the wet Eastern US from the dry West.  This has all sorts of implications for ecology and social structure.  Here is a fascinating YouTube video on the subject.

Basically, the dry West is due to the rain shadow from the Rocky Mountains (very broadly defined).  East of the 100th meridian, the land was wet and dominated by forests that were not dissimilar to those with which most European immigrants were familiar.  To the west of this line the land was dominated by grasslands and desert, to which the settlement patterns adopted in the East were not well suited.

"At the Hundredth Meridian" is also a great song by The Tragically Hip.

Domesticated Foxes

Apparently foxes were domesticated thousands of years ago. I guess it never stuck like it did with cats and dogs. Gizmodo has an article that a site in Spain had foxes buried with humans.

"Researchers from several institutes and universities analyzed bones collected at the burial site. They studied the isotopes found in the collagen preserved in the bones, which can provide insights into the diets of individuals. In human bones, we can learn about the diet of an adult in the last five to 10 years of life. In young adult dogs, the diet data spans from six months to three years."

During the 1950s in the USSR, there was a successful systematic attempt to domesticate the silver fox.  The researchers also successfully bred silver foxes for "violence"; a sort of anti-domestication.

The 점심 - Dim Sum Connection

The Korean word for lunch (점심) comes from the same Chinese characters as Dim Sum (點心 or 点心). In Cantonese it is pronounced dim sam, and in Mandarin it is pronounced dian xin. In Japanese they pronounce it as tenshin and it means "snack" . In Vietnamese it is diem tam and means "breakfast". Apparently the lunch meaning came through Eastern Chinese dialects, as in the Shanghai dialect ti xin, is often used for "lunch". In most dialects of Chinese it means "snack", "light refreshment" or "pastry". The word dates back to the Tang Dynasty (618 - 906 A.D.).