Science stuff...

[Pulak_Bose]

How can a single hair dye color different colors of hair?
Simply put, all hair is the same color, it's just that some hair has more color than others. The protein in hair contains a natural brownish-black pigment called melanin, with dark hair containing more of it than light hair. Basically, everyone has
hair that's the same color, it's just that some people have more of that color than others. The melanin in blond hair is exactly
the same color of that in black hair, there's just less of it in blond hair. Albinos have no melanin, Africans or Asians have much more than Caucasians. As we age, the melanin levels decrease, causing the dreaded gray hair to appear. Hair coloring products that promise to slowly return your hair to its natural color with repeated applications are merely giving you small applications of melanin. Used daily, they will restore melanin to your hair, effectively getting rid of the gray. However, used for too long, they will make your hair darker than it originally was. Not a problem if that's what you wanted it to do, but too much of a good thing can be just too much.
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Where does the term "spill the beans" come from?
In the days before voting boots, voting was kept secret by dropping white beans into a container by those who favored a candidate. Brown or black beans constituted negative votes. Only officials were supposed to know how many of these were cast. Occasionally, however, a clumsy voter knocked a jar or other container over and disclosed its contents, literally spilling the beans and revealing the secret vote count. The term is used today to indicate any form or indiscretion in revealing information of
any kind.
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Why is something hastily thrown together referred to as "jerry built?"
No, Jerry wasn't a guy who built things fast but poorly. The term is a holdover from the old language of the sea. Gales often snapped some of the masts of sailing vessels. Sailors responded by rigging temporary poles in order to try to make port. In their lingo, a flimsy upright likely to crash on the heads of crew members was often dubbed an injury mast. Later abbreviated to
jury mast, the term for the hastily erected timber was slurred into the term jerry mast. Today the term is applied to anything
flimsy that was put together hastily. Like the old-time sailors'jury mast, jerry-build housing is likely to deteriorate almost
before the new has worn off of it.

pulak.bose@bangladesh.com