Jampedia Entry # 6

Chocolate 

It is often believed that chocolate was an early form of cement which a builder accidentally came across when he fell into a cement mixer and had to eat his way out. In fact, chocolate goes back even further to the origins of the universe which were discovered by Chinese astronomers in the 19th century. In Chinese ‘chocolate bar’ is 巧克力棒. The pinyin romanization for 棒 (bar) is bàng. The Big Bang hence in fact means the ‘Big Bar’, a name derived from ancient Chinese astronomers who thought that the origin of the universe came from a massive chocolate bar exploding. Einstein confirmed this belief with his formula and recipe: E=MC², or Excellence = Mass X Cocoa².

Jampedia # 5

Mystopia    [miss-toh-pee-uh]

noun – state created from the inadvertent mistaking of a Dystopia for a Utopia.

Jampedia Entry # 4

Pridges

In the early days of the Roman Empire, instead of using bridges to allow safe passage across rivers, existing bridges were flipped over using slaves. This was to prohibit unwanted marauders crossing rivers. The slaves would use giant spatulas to flip the bridges, and much skill was needed so that they would not crumble in the air as they turned. The flipped bridges were known as pridges, because the b in bridge was flipped to a p, much as the bridge was.

Jampedia Entry # 3

Yeast

Yeast was one of the first micro-organisms to exist, being formed at some point during the Precambrian period. It would convert the carbohydrates in the ground to carbon dioxide, which was vital for other organisms to flourish, such as starch particles. Yeast would collect in rock pools, mating and forming starters while making a vacuous screeching sound (see The Sound of the Tube). If there was an increase in temperature, one would be able to see an expanse of sour dough loaves rising from the rock pools.

Jampedia Entry # 2

The Sound of the Tube

London commuters will be familiar with the rumbling and almost vacuous screeching that occurs as a tube train pulls into the platform. They won’t however, be so familiar with the fact that trains actually make no sound at all as they arrive. The sound one hears is actually a fabrication that is emitted from speakers on the platform, the sound itself being the sound of yeast (see Yeast).

Jampedia Entry # 1

Kettle

The word ‘kettle’ derives from the Latin ‘ket’, meaning to encircle, and ‘le’, meaning an uncountable noun, and was most commonly used to describe the city walls. The first kettle in England was York kettle, the wall which now marks the limits of the old city.

The reason contemporary kettles are called kettles is both because they are objects that encircle water and because York was the first place to develop the ‘water boiling pot’, as it was originally known, in a company located near the South Wall of the kettle which was called York Kettle Water Boiling Pots Limited. The use of the word kettle to describe the temporary imprisonment of protesters also derives from this meaning, and describes the tension between the old meaning and the new (that of boiling water). Even though the police take the kettle to describe the encircling of people, the result is invariably to boil those people into a steaming frustration.