There are so many different diet programs that exist. Most of these have been around for a long time. A new weight loss documentary follows a number of individuals who talk about their weight loss and the many things they have tried including, personal self-control, weight loss programs, weight loss pills and what finally convinced them that they must loose weight.

Inspired – The Movie will be finished soon and shown at the Sundance Movie Festival. You can keep up with the status by reading their blog. Here are a few clips from the movie:

I was browsing through some foreign film listings the over day and came across this film made in Poland – Komornik (The Debt Collector). The movie is about Lucek who works for debt collection agencies. He has no remorse and will repossess anything. He lives by the letter of the law. At one point Lucek becomes a more emotionally human being and a transformation takes place. The Debt Collector was the winner of the Golden Lions at the 30th Polish Feature Films Festival in Gdynia. It was also the Polish Submission for the 2006 Academy Awards.

My nephew is enthralled with the Slinky! He brought one over the other day and was laughing hysterically as it went down the steps. While working in the shipyards in Philadelphia, Richard James, a US Naval engineer decided that a torsion spring would make a great toy. He received a $500 loan in 1943 and made 400 toys. His wife came up with the name. He set up a display in Gimbels Department Store and sold his 400 Slinkys in just 90 minutes.

A factory was built in 1948 in Philadelphia and then relocated to Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. The line expanded an other toys were added. The Slinky was actually used as a mobile antenna during the Vietnam War. It is also the official toy of Pennsylvania.

Richard James decided to join a evangelical religious sect in 1960 and relocated to Bolivia. He left the company to his wife who took over as CEO. She got the company out of debt and introduced the new jingle that you can hear in the commercial below. Richard James died in 1974 in Bolivia. The company, James Industries, was sold to Poof Products, Inc. in 1998.

Since I was thinking about Vegas vacations, I got to wondering what does “Las Vegas” mean anyway. Las Vegas actually means “the meadows.” When I think of Las Vegas, I think of a desert and not a meadow. The name came from a group of explorers, who came across a green area after walking through the desert. Thus, the name Las Vegas stuck.

Doesn’t look too much like a meadow, does it?

The first digital camera was produced for consumer use in 1994 – the Apple QuickTake 100 Camera. Shortly thereafter Kodak released the Kodak DC40 camera. However, the technology that made digital cameras possible has been around for a lot longer. Digital camera technology is related to the same technology that recorded television images in the 1950s. Digital imaging was also used by spy satellites in the 1960s.

Texas Instruments patented a film-less camera in 1972 and in the 1980s Sony released the Sony Mavica electronic still camera. This camera recorded images onto a mini disc that could them be put into a video reader connected to a television monitor or a color printer. The Mavica, however, was considered a video camera that took still video frames and not a true digital camera.

Kodak engineer Steve Sasson, built a digital camera in 1975 which relied on cassette tape to record the images. You could playback the images on a television with a custom machine.

Ayds was an appetite suppressant that was the precursor of some of the modern diet pills. It was a candy that was popular in the 70s and 80s. The product was first introduced in the 1940s.

In 1981, due to the attention given to the disease AIDS, the product name was changed to Diets Ayds. Unfortunately, the company saw the sales of the products drop by as much as 50% due to the association with the name AIDS. The product was eventually withdrawn from the market.

Here is one of the originally television commercials:

Does anyone remember the Plastic Man Cartoon? It was popular from 1979 to 1980, just one year! It was based on a comic book originally published by Quality Comics and acquired by DC Comics and first appeared in 1941.

Here is the intro to the cartoon:

In 1905, Russian surgeon Nikolai Korotkoff came up with a method to accurately measure blood pressure. Although a blood pressure monitor had previously been invented, Korotkoff was the first to use the monitor with a stethoscope to accurate measure blood pressure and thus detect hypertension. He wrote the following procedure in his thesis:

The cuff of Riva-Rocci is placed on the middle third of the upper arm; the pressure within the cuff is quickly raised up to complete cessation of circulation below the cuff. Then, letting the mercury of the manometer fall one listens to the artery just below the cuff with a children’s stethoscope. At first no sounds are heard. With the falling of the mercury in the manometer down to a certain height, the first short tones appear; their appearance indicates the passage of part of the pulse wave under the cuff. It follows that the manometric figure at which the first tone appears corresponds to the maximal pressure. With the further fall of the mercury in the manometer one hears the systolic compression murmurs, which pass again into tones (second). Finally, all sounds disappear. The time of the cessation of sounds indicates the free passage of the pulse wave; in other words at the moment of the disappearance of the sounds the minimal blood pressure within the artery predominates over the pressure in the cuff. It follows that the manometric figures at this time correspond to the minimal blood pressure.

Most of us know that “letting the cat out of the bag” means to reveal a secret. But how did this term come about. It seems that there was an old scam of selling young piglets in a bag and substituting a cat for the piglet, thus taking the buyer’s money who in turn would get a cat (and probably a feral one at that). If the cat was let out of the bag before the deal was closed, the scam would be revealed and the seller out any money.

I recently saw Up the Down Staircase again after many years and it was appropriate to watch just before school started. The movie is about a new teacher, Sylvia Barrett, who is teaching classic literature at Calvin Coolidge High School in New York City. She quickly gets frustrated by the bureaucracy of the school, students who don’t care and colleagues who are incompetent. Barrett decides to leave the school, but then finds out that she has touch more lives that she realized.

I love the title of the movie. It is based on a rule at the school – some staircases are for going up and some for down. A student in Barrett’s class takes the wrong staircase and is punished for it. This movie was based on the novel of the same name and I am looking forward to reading it.

Sylvia Barrett is played by Sandy Dennis. The high school students in the film look a little old for the parts (no need for acne treatments here). Bud Cort, of Harold and Maude fame, has an uncredited role in the film.