Savvy Minds Entertainment

Bonus topic for the week of 05/31/26 - 06/06/26:

A few weeks ago I asked what the letters of TASER stood for, so I figured why not talk about the history of it. The use of non-lethal weapons in law enforcement began years before the TASER, when police would use mace or cattle prods for crowd control. This proved to be either ineffective or a brutal method with lasting effects and was met with severe public opposition, leading President Lyndon Johnson to order a study of a suitable replacement. There had been previous ideas for a “human” cattle prod but none that came to fruition. The first viable option was conceived in the late ‘60’s when NASA engineer Jack Cover found inspiration from a story about a man who walked into an electric fence and was incapacitated without any lingering injuries. The development of the first TASER took over five years and was completed in 1974. As a child, Cover was a fan of a series of sci-fi adventure novels featuring a young inventor named Tom Swift. The character was a teenager who always found himself in harrowing situations sometimes needing his inventions to save himself and others. One of these was in the 1911 novel, Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. His rifle fired electric bolts and could be adjusted to different levels of voltage. This was the impetus for Cover’s own version and he even used the initials of the novel’s name for his new device, (T)om (S)wift and His (E)lectric (R)ifle, the TSER. He originally referred to it just by its letters, but decided to add the “A” to simplify the pronunciation. The first model, the TF-76, was shaped like a flashlight and fired two wire projectiles creating an electrical circuit on impact. The propulsion was created by gunpowder which led to limitations in the device’s marketability. Since the TASER used gunpowder, the ATF designated it a Title II firearm which comes with strict regulations. This led to poor sales and a reputation for being a novelty. It wasn’t until 1993, when Cover collaborated with brothers Rick and Tom Smith that a new version of the TASER was designed. The significant change was the introduction of compressed air to fire the projectiles, removing the need for gunpowder allowing the redesignation of the device and improving its availability. The new model also included drive-stun mode where direct contact with the assailant could be achieved instead of having to use the projectiles. Despite the improvements, Air Taser International, now Axon, nearly went bankrupt but the device eventually got the attention of law enforcement agencies and there are now nearly one million TASERS in use today.

This week’s bonus question:

The first model of TASER, the TF-86, was marketed under this product name?

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Bonus topic for the week of 05/24/26 - 05/30/26:

Cinematic character Rose Dewitt-Bukater said this “was called the ship of dreams, and it was…it really was.” That ship was the Titanic, but I’m not here to talk about the Titanic. I’m here to talk about what could likely be called “the ship of nightmares”, the Queen Mary. At the time when the Titanic was built, it was the largest and most advanced ship of any other. About 24 years later however, the RMS Queen Mary was launched. It was longer, wider and taller than the Titanic. Although it operated in about the same area of the North Atlantic, it fortunately didn’t suffer the same fate. The Queen Mary ran from 1936 to 1967, its last voyage on October 31st brought it to its current location in Long Beach, California. Over the next three years, the ship went under a massive $31 million dollar renovation and opened for public tours in 1971, followed by the hotel in 1972. Stories of death aboard the Queen Mary ran rampant with an estimated 50 incidents over its sailing history. Most of these are attributed to accidents among the crew, but as with any true stories there are rumors to go along with them. Reports of grisly murders, unexplained deaths, and the drowning of a young girl in the ship’s pool were told, although these are not included in any actual recorded events. In the 1980’s, the idea that the ship may be haunted began to surface, possibly due to the ship’s employees spreading those rumors to bolster its popularity. Disney got involved in the early 1990’s by planning a theme park called Port Disney that was to be built around the ship, using it as the focal point. They had their own tours aboard the Queen Mary, which included one called Haunted Passages, where tourists were brought to different areas of the ship that were the supposed sites of some of these “deaths”. Within two years the project failed and Port Disney was scrapped. Despite this failure, the Queen Mary has been a popular tourist destination since it opened, surviving a few closures and many ownership changes. There are still tours and shops that perpetuate the haunted aspect of the ship, including the Paranormal Ship Walk, Haunted Encounters, Graveyard Tours and even Jackie’s Spirit Shoppe.

This week’s bonus question:

Created by Disney for the Haunted Passages tour, this room, which had special effects installed in it, is considered the most haunted room on the Queen Mary?

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Bonus topic for the week of 05/17/26 - 05/23/26:

Normally I try to share topics that are educational and certainly more lighthearted than this one, but when I wrote a question about this individual a few weeks ago, I was reminded of how crazy that time was. Paul Keller, a really lovely human being. I didn’t remember his name at first, but it quickly came back to me after researching his despicable deeds. For those of you who were in the area then, you know what I’m talking about. For the rest of you who weren’t around, here’s the story. Paul Kenneth Keller was born in Everett, grew up in Lynnwood and showed behavioral issues from an early age. He suffered from hyperactivity that was linked to a near death situation during his birth which may have led to his behavior. He engaged in shoplifting, abusing his siblings and other children and he obviously had an unhealthy fascination with fire, once setting fire to a neighboring vacant house at the age of 8 or 9. As Keller grew older, he was involved in other incidents of arson, but none led to his arrest. He also had a heavy interest in firefighting, collecting paraphernalia and listening to his emergency scanner to find out where fires were occurring. He would often hang out with the firefighters and even tried to join the local volunteers but was denied twice. Despite all of his proclivities, he was active in the church and visited elderly and ill parishioners, which seems very ironic considering forthcoming events. Keller had been taking medication to control his behavior, but had decided to stop using it. In the following years, he married, divorced and suffered bankruptcy. As a result, his mental state began to unravel, leading to abuse of alcohol and drugs and increased fits of rage. It finally came to a breaking point in August 1992 when he began his six-month long spree of arson. He attacked houses, businesses, and churches but also retirement homes, including the Four Freedoms House in September 1992 which resulted in the deaths of three elderly women. Keller was elusive, leaving very little behind for investigators to go on. He even mocked the firefighters, knowing the ins and outs of their whereabouts and response time. Eventually, a witness gave a partial description of Keller and coupled with a behavioral profile, Keller’s father, George, believed it was his son and contacted the authorities. After around-the-clock surveillance, the police arrested Paul on February 6th, 1993. It was estimated that he had set over a hundred fires but confessed to setting 76 of them. In court, he was convicted of only 32 of the fires plus the murders of the three women leading to 107 years in prison, eligible for parole in 2079 at the age of 113. For his help in the capture of his son, George Keller received $25,000 which he donated to his church, Trinity Lutheran, who had been a victim of his son’s arson. Paul Keller is serving his sentence at the correctional facility in Monroe.

This week’s bonus question:

Due to his elusiveness, investigators gave Paul Keller this nickname?

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Bonus topic for the week of 05/03/26 - 05/09/26:

The midwest of the United States is home to a massive geological secret that is nearly completely hidden from view. Depending on who you ask, there is a roughly 1,200 to 1,900 mile horseshoe-shaped scar that starts in Kansas, runs north to Michigan and perhaps all the way down to Alabama. About 1.1 billion years ago, tectonic movement triggered extreme volcanic activity that eventually created the Midcontinent Rift (MCR). It was believed to be over 200 miles wide and filled with lava estimated at a couple hundred to thousands of feet deep. Had the growth of the rift continued it would have most likely ripped North America in half and created a new body of water between them. 15-22 million years later, however, the rift surprisingly stopped advancing, over the course of about 100,000 years. In recent studies, it has been theorized that a continental collision event on the eastern coast was responsible for this. The lava that created the rift cooled and solidified into basalt which led to the repair of the geological scar. Over millions of years, layers of sedimentary deposits filled most of the rift covering the majority of evidence that it had even existed. Not all of the rift was repaired though. In the upper portion of it, it created the basin of what would become Lake Superior. That basin would later be filled by glacial meltwaters. The area around Lake Superior is also where you will find remnants of the rift with large deposits of exposed basalt and a high amount of natural resources including shale, copper, nickel, among others. Despite being over a billion years old, the initial discovery of the rift didn’t occur until the 1950’s. At first, scientists found an anomaly of gravity and magnetic levels that appeared higher in the upper midwest. Within the next few decades they were able to map out the rough outline of the rift and from 2004 to 2015, they employed an array of 400 seismographs, gathering data for two years before relocating them elsewhere. Instead of recording earthquake data, scientists were able to essentially produce images of the Earth’s interior allowing for further understanding of the Midcontinent Rift.

This week’s bonus question:

The continental collision event on the eastern coast of North America, that is thought to have been both the cause and the cure of the MCR, is known by this name?

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Bonus topic for the week of 04/19/26 - 04/25/26:

Space, the final frontier. Ok, so this isn’t about space technically, but it is about Earth’s atmosphere that eventually reaches space. The Earth’s atmosphere consists of five layers. The innermost or lowest layer is called the troposphere. This is where nearly all of the weather phenomena occur and obviously there is a large range in temperatures around the globe dropping to around -60 F at the edge of the layer called the tropopause. Oddly enough, the second layer, the stratosphere, “warms up” to a balmy 5 F at its outer edge, which I’m sure you can deduce is called the stratopause. The mesosphere is the third layer and the temperature plummets to about -150 F the further out it goes. The fifth and outer layer is the exosphere where cosmic radiation is rampant, so the particles found out there are full of stored kinetic energy. This is capable of producing temperatures up to nearly 2,000 degrees, but because this layer is nearly a vacuum it doesn’t convert to thermal energy and instead it’s near absolute zero, kinda cold. Now you may have noticed that I skipped the fourth layer, the thermosphere. Based on its name alone, it suggests that it might be warmer there and it is, much warmer, sort of. Located within the entire thermosphere and partially in the bordering atmospheric layers is the ionosphere where solar radiation charges the atoms, molecules and other particles. This is important in global communication, so this is where many of Earth’s satellites are found and also the International Space Station. The solar radiation creates extremely high temperatures up to about 4,000 degrees, but because the atmospheric gas levels are so low the heat can’t be felt. In fact, a thermometer might register what would be freezing temperatures on Earth. The thermosphere is also where the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis occur. It’s kind of amazing how a distant layer of our atmosphere has so much importance with life on Earth.

This week’s bonus question:

The thermosphere is considered to be the beginning of outer space designated by this line found near the lower end of the layer?

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Bonus topic for the week of 04/05/26 - 04/11/26:

The octopus may not necessarily be considered a unique animal compared to some of the bizarre creatures in nature, but there is more to it than you may think. As you know, octopuses have gelatinous bodies (outside of their chitin beak used for eating) allowing them to fit in extremely small spaces that don’t seem possible. Also well known is that they have the ability to excrete an inky substance as a defense against predators. This is produced from two different glands that mix a melanin based ink with a mucus. What may not be as well known is their internal structure. Let’s start with the fact that they have three hearts. The two branchial hearts are used to pump blood through their gills which supplies it with oxygen and then sent back to the central heart for distribution through the rest of its body. Unlike humans whose blood contains iron giving it its red color, octopus blood contains a copper protein which makes it blue. When oxygen is released in its body however, the blood will appear clear or pale. It also has nine brains that include a central brain and eight ganglion brains, one for each te****le. The central brain is circular, resembling a doughnut that surrounds the esophagus. Of its 500 million neurons, only 180 are found in the central brain, while the rest are dispersed in the eight “mini-brains” and the te****les. This gives the octopus the ability to move each te****le independently from the central brain. The ganglion brains can also communicate with each other without involving the central brain. Now, let’s talk about sexy time, bow chicka wow wow. Since they lack any external genitalia, male octopuses use a specialized te****le as a deliverer of s***m to the female. They can taste what they’re looking for through touch and once they find their destination, which is actually located behind the female’s eyes, (talked about being f***** in the head!) they send a s***m sac down to complete the deal. There is so much more interesting stuff about the octopus that I can’t cover in enough detail for this short topic so check it out for yourself, pretty fascinating creature.

This week’s bonus question:

This is the name of the specialized male te****le used for reproduction in octopus?

Bring your answer to this week’s trivia for a bonus point