Hydrogen production in extreme bacterium

A researcher at Missouri University of Science and Technology has discovered a bacterium that can produce hydrogen, an element that one day could lessen the world's dependence on oil.



Dr. Melanie Mormile, professor of biological sciences at Missouri S&T, and her team discovered the bacterium Halanaerobium hydrogeninformans in Soap Lake, Washington. It can "produce hydrogen under saline and alkaline conditions in amounts that rival genetically modified organisms," Mormile says.


"Usually, I tend to study the overall microbial ecology of extreme environments, but this particular bacterium has caught my attention," Mormile says. "I intend to study this isolate in greater detail."


Mormile, an expert in the microbial ecology of extreme environments, wasn't searching for a bacterium that could produce hydrogen. Instead, she first became interested in bacteria that could help clean up the environment, especially looking at the extremophiles found in Soap Lake. An extremophile is a microorganism that lives in conditions of extreme temperature, acidity, alkalinity or chemical concentration. Living in such a hostile environment, Halanaerobium hydrogeninformans has metabolic capabilities under conditions that occur at some contaminated waste sites.


With Halanaerobium hydrogeninformans, she expected to find an iron-reducing bacterium and describe a new species. What she found was a new species of bacterium that can produce hydrogen and 1, 3-propanediol under high pH and salinity conditions that might turn out to be valuable industrially. An organic compound, 1, 3-propenediol can be formulated into industrial products including composites, adhesives, laminates and coatings. It's also a solvent and can be used as antifreeze.


The infrastructure isn't in place now for hydrogen to replace gasoline as a fuel for planes, trains and automobiles. But if hydrogen becomes an alternative to gasoline, Halanaerobium hydrogeniformans, mass-produced on an industrial scale, might be one solution -- although it won't be a solution anytime soon.


"It would be great if we got liters and liters of production of hydrogen," Mormile says. "However, we have not been able to scale up yet."


In her first single-author article, Mormile's findings were featured in the Nov. 19 edition of Frontiers in Microbiology.


Mormile holds two patents for her work on the Soap Lake bacterium's biohydrogen formation under very alkaline and saline conditions. Also named on the patents are Dr. Judy Wall, Curators' Professor of Biochemistry and Joint Curators' Professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and her former lab members, Matthew Begemann and Dwayne Elias. A pending patent application, submitted along with Elias; Dr. Oliver Sitton, professor of chemical and biochemical engineering at Missouri S&T; and Daniel Roush, then a master's student for Mormile, is for the conversion of glycerol to 1, 3-propanediol, also under hostile alkaline and saline conditions.


This patented and patent-pending technology is available for licensing through the Missouri S&T Center for Technology Transfer and Economic Development.




Story Source:


The above story is based on materials provided by Missouri University of Science and Technology . The original article was written by Joe McCune. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.



While You Were Offline: Taylor Swift Gets Hacked and Comcast Enrages the Internet


TaylorHackTweet

Screengrab: WIRED



This week, the Internet abounded with important questions: How can someone who’s trademarking a random phrase not look like a villain in these days of information wants to be free? When is a Latina cartoon character not Latina? Why shouldn’t you piss off Comcast? Why are error pages the hot new thing on a certain website? Does anyone care about Super Bowl ads enough to make them worth the cost? And most importantly of all, have you got what a piano-playing dog nee-eeds? The answers to all of these (and more) await you below, as we round up what you need to know about the last seven days on this wild wooly web.


Hashtag Hackers Gonna Hack, Hack, Hack


What Happened: Taylor Swift took on hackers. It still hasn’t been determined who won, to be honest.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: While on vacation earlier this week, Pop’s Favorite Taylor (Sorry Ms. Dayne and Mr. Hawkins) apparently woke up to find her Twitter account had been hacked (and later, her Instagram account, too). Soon thereafter, TMZ reported the hackers were planning on releasing nude pictures of the singer they’d accessed as a result of the hacks, although Swift quickly suggested that was more tabloid fantasy than anything else. (Whether or not the images exist, someone is definitely trying to sell them, as Gawker reported later in the week.)


Something the hackers did have was access to Swift’s Twitter direct messages, which made it online on Tuesday afternoon, only to reinforce the belief that maybe Swift is just a nice person after all. She asks people how their 2015 is going so far! She makes self-conscious jokes about being bad because she plays cards and drinks! She makes whale puns! How could you fail to be charmed by all of that?

The Takeaway: It’s so charming—and the hack in general evokes such sympathy for Swift overall—that it’s almost enough to make you forgive her for trademarking everyday phrases like “this sick beat.” Hackers, well done; you accidentally created the perfect counter-narrative to undo any ill will Taylor might have received otherwise.


Disney Finally Enters A Whole New World


What Happened: In 2015, just 93 years after its creation, Disney announced it would be adding its first Latina Disney princess to its stable of characters. In 2015.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Disney introduced Elena of Avalor, who’ll show up in the successful Disney Junior series Sofia the First before getting her own TV series next year, and initial feedback was mutedly enthusiastic. Yet many fans wondered why it hadn’t happened before, or why she was only getting a TV show.


And then it turned out that, well, maybe she wouldn’t be Latina after all, because a Disney executive had previously suggested that real world cultures and ethnicities don’t actually exist in Disney’s fairytale lands. This is where you have to start wondering if we should even give Disney points for trying, isn’t it?

The Takeaway: Let’s wait and see if Disney can clarify the status of Elena’s cultural origins and manage to explore them without exploiting or cheapening them, shall we? Next up: Waiting for Disney to realize the problematic elements of the “Princess” archetype in general, and working out ways to deal with those. We’re not going to hold our breath.


Turns Out, Comcast Does Hate Its Customers


What Happened: Comcast officially changed the first name of one of its customers to “Asshole.”

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Ricardo Brown’s wife called Comcast to try and cancel their cable service, with little success. That’s not to say nothing changed as the result of her attempt, however; instead, the next bill Brown got from the company saw him officially renamed “Asshole Brown.” As you might expect, the story quickly went viral, with seemingly every major site weighing in on the subject. (Reddit also got in on the act.) On the plus side, at least Comcast has apologized, but let’s just wait and see if they also offer free Internet for a couple of years to back up the apology.

The Takeaway: Admit it. Now you’re worried about what your Internet provider secretly calls you, aren’t you?


The Greatest 404 Error Ever


What Happened: Bloomberg.com’s 404 error page has been gaining some fans. Yes, really; the 404 error page.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Earlier this week, someone on Twitter noticed that the Bloomberg News site had a great 404 error page. And then, lots of other people noticed. (It’s not just the 404 page, the 500 error page is equally hypnotic, as is the Politics-specific 404 page.) You should thank design company Code and Theory, it turns out.

The Takeaway: Other websites, it’s time to up your game. At least until we find out from Bloomberg that everyone started going to its 404 page at the expense of going to every other page on the site.


It’s The Most Expensive Ad Time Of The Year


What Happened: Ahead of the Big Game, countless Super Bowl ads flooded the Internet.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: With the Super Bowl almost upon us, companies that have spent obscene amounts of money on special ads for the game have tried to maximize their investment by releasing the ads online first and seeing if anyone’s interested. This year’s spots include appearances by Kim Kardashian, Katie Couric and Mindy Kaling—oh, and an entirely adorable lost puppy.



What Went Wrong With the Spider-Man Musical


Spider-Man Fall

Kathy Willens/AP



It’s too bad Glen Berger doesn’t have spidey sense; it would have warned him to run away. But in 2005, when Berger was hired to work on a Broadway musical adaptation of Spider-Man, it seemed like a dream come true for the well-respected but financially struggling playwright. In the wake of the Spider-Man films, a musical version seemed like a surefire hit, especially given the director (Julie Taymor of The Lion King fame) and composers (Bono and Edge of U2). Everyone involved thought the show would be brilliant.


“A New York Times reviewer said this was a show ‘conceived in cynicism,’ and he couldn’t be more wrong,” says Berger in Episode 135 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It was conceived with a sort of naive idealism, and there were a lot of high spirits early on.”


Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark suffered an early setback when its charming producer Tony Adams died of a stroke. But for a while everything seemed to be on track, with the script and music earning high praise from test audiences. The only complaints came from comics fans, who feared a cheesy musical would tarnish Spider-Man’s image, and from critics, who thought superheroes were too lowbrow for Broadway. But Berger and Taymor both saw the character as exactly the sort of demigod hero that’s thrilled audiences for generations.


“Musicals being done around the fire 40,000 years ago, that’s what it was, it was singing and dancing, gods and monsters,” says Berger. “There’s always been this fascination that humans have had with humans fusing with the powers of an animal.”


But soon a string of mishaps plagued the production, from financing woes to technical glitches to injuries on set. Theater critic Michael Riedel set his sights on Spider-Man, whipping up so much notoriety that the show’s troubles became the subject of a New Yorker cover. When Taymor refused to change course, producers replaced her with former circus director Phil McKinley, whose family-friendly revamp became a fair financial success, while falling far short of brilliance.


Berger chronicles the adventure in his memoir Song of Spider-Man , which should stand beside Oedipus Rex as a warning on the dangers of hubris. Still, Berger says that for all the drama, most elements of the musical actually worked quite well.


“What gets lost in this story is how many people actually wound up loving the show,” he says. “For a lot of people, because it was Spider-Man, it was their first musical ever, and for some it was kind of a gateway drug. They were turned on to Broadway musicals in a way they hadn’t been before.”


Listen to our complete interview with Glen Berger in Episode 135 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (above), and check out some highlights from the discussion below.


Glen Berger on inspiration:


“I was sort of fed up with George W. Bush at this moment, and I was trying to think of a way to do him in without making a martyr out of him, and I kept thinking about, ‘Well, if only a piano could drop on him.’ And then I was thinking more and more about what sort of cynicism it would require to drop a piano on somebody so as not to make a martyr out of them, and that got me thinking about the Green Goblin on top of the Chrysler building, throwing a piano down on the citizens of New York—on the little ants down below—because he had such disdain for them, and from that point forward the scene wrote itself, with the Goblin and Spider-Man on top of the Chrysler building. And a piano, because in a musical a piano made perfect sense—you could start the scene with ‘Green Goblin does Liberace‘ and end it with that. So I wrote that scene, and I guess it got me the job.”


Glen Berger on adaptation:


“It’s a tricky balance because every artist needs to feel like they’re not just doing data entry, they need to feel like they’re contributing something to the iconography. There was a meeting we had early on with Joe Quesada over at Marvel, and he did convey to us this sense that Spider-Man has been around for—at that time—almost 50 years, and all these inkers and artists and writers had been contributing and adding—with a lot of thought and artistry—to just who Peter Parker/Spider-Man is, and what this universe is. And he did convey this sense, certainly to me, that it wasn’t really fair for us to mess with that, that we needed to respect how Spider-Man got to this place in the center of our culture. So I think it is very fair of the fans to expect a lot of respect for the material. That said, they’re also going to howl if it’s just boringly rote. What you want to do is find new ways of telling the story, opening up new perspectives into the story without totally changing it.”


Glen Berger on setbacks:


“Tony Adams was the original producer of Spider-Man. He was an Irish impresario, beautiful man. He’s the one who convinced Marvel in the first place to let him do Spider-Man: The Musical, and he could have persuaded anyone to do anything, he was just that sort of person—he’s the one who persuaded Bono and Edge to get on board. And after a whole lot of wrangling—this was early on in the process, back around 2005—he finally got all the contracts in order and went over to Edge’s apartment to have him sign the deal—Bono had already signed, Julie had already signed, everything was finally coming together. And Edge went to go get a pen, and when he came back he found Tony Adams slumped over, and Tony Adams, who was still in his 50s, was dead the next day, from a stroke. And that, early on, put a wrench in things. It didn’t really occur to anyone at the time that that was going to be in some ways a fatal blow [to the project].”


Glen Berger on political subtext:


“Back in 2005, when I was first writing with Julie, we made Norman Osborn—the reason he was doing these things with genetics was he was convinced humans needed to more quickly adapt to what was clearly going to be a climate change catastrophe in a few years. And Julie was saying, ‘If we make him seem liberal in that way, is that going to turn off all the potential conservative audience members?’ And then she thought, ‘Oh, but he turns out to be the villain.’ So maybe a lot of conservatives would see—you know, people would read into the show whatever political ideology they wanted to read into it. And that turned out to be true, years later, when Glenn Beck saw in the Spider-Man show an affirmation of everything he had been talking about, in terms of the individual rising above the situation, to fighting for liberty and justice, to this climate change proponent getting his comeuppance and all that. So he went on his radio show more than once and was a huge advocate for the show.”


Glen Berger on the new director:


“And so Phil [McKinley] came on board, and he felt like one of the large problems in the show wasn’t just the [story] structure, but also just the tone in general was too dark, and he thought the choreography in certain numbers was too violent, and so he came in and really tried to brighten things up. … This was around the time that Charlie Sheen was having his meltdown, so people saw a lot of similarities between Charlie Sheen and Spider-Man—they called us ‘the Charlie Sheen of theater.’ And he had a thing about his ‘goddesses,’ and at one moment in rehearsal, Phil McKinley, it came to him, ‘Oh, Goblin’s Goddesses, that’s perfect!’ We could have these sort of mutant assistants of Goblin wear these [Goblin’s Goddesses] T-shirts. And then other people on the team are thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s going to date itself within a month.'” That idea fell by the wayside eventually, but there were any number of ideas that were flying around, and of course the tech staff were all freaking out, because they felt like we didn’t really have time to implement even half the changes that were being proposed.”



While You Were Offline: Taylor Swift Gets Hacked and Comcast Enrages the Internet


TaylorHackTweet

Screengrab: WIRED



This week, the Internet abounded with important questions: How can someone who’s trademarking a random phrase not look like a villain in these days of information wants to be free? When is a Latina cartoon character not Latina? Why shouldn’t you piss off Comcast? Why are error pages the hot new thing on a certain website? Does anyone care about Super Bowl ads enough to make them worth the cost? And most importantly of all, have you got what a piano-playing dog nee-eeds? The answers to all of these (and more) await you below, as we round up what you need to know about the last seven days on this wild wooly web.


Hashtag Hackers Gonna Hack, Hack, Hack


What Happened: Taylor Swift took on hackers. It still hasn’t been determined who won, to be honest.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: While on vacation earlier this week, Pop’s Favorite Taylor (Sorry Ms. Dayne and Mr. Hawkins) apparently woke up to find her Twitter account had been hacked (and later, her Instagram account, too). Soon thereafter, TMZ reported the hackers were planning on releasing nude pictures of the singer they’d accessed as a result of the hacks, although Swift quickly suggested that was more tabloid fantasy than anything else. (Whether or not the images exist, someone is definitely trying to sell them, as Gawker reported later in the week.)


Something the hackers did have was access to Swift’s Twitter direct messages, which made it online on Tuesday afternoon, only to reinforce the belief that maybe Swift is just a nice person after all. She asks people how their 2015 is going so far! She makes self-conscious jokes about being bad because she plays cards and drinks! She makes whale puns! How could you fail to be charmed by all of that?

The Takeaway: It’s so charming—and the hack in general evokes such sympathy for Swift overall—that it’s almost enough to make you forgive her for trademarking everyday phrases like “this sick beat.” Hackers, well done; you accidentally created the perfect counter-narrative to undo any ill will Taylor might have received otherwise.


Disney Finally Enters A Whole New World


What Happened: In 2015, just 93 years after its creation, Disney announced it would be adding its first Latina Disney princess to its stable of characters. In 2015.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Disney introduced Elena of Avalor, who’ll show up in the successful Disney Junior series Sofia the First before getting her own TV series next year, and initial feedback was mutedly enthusiastic. Yet many fans wondered why it hadn’t happened before, or why she was only getting a TV show.


And then it turned out that, well, maybe she wouldn’t be Latina after all, because a Disney executive had previously suggested that real world cultures and ethnicities don’t actually exist in Disney’s fairytale lands. This is where you have to start wondering if we should even give Disney points for trying, isn’t it?

The Takeaway: Let’s wait and see if Disney can clarify the status of Elena’s cultural origins and manage to explore them without exploiting or cheapening them, shall we? Next up: Waiting for Disney to realize the problematic elements of the “Princess” archetype in general, and working out ways to deal with those. We’re not going to hold our breath.


Turns Out, Comcast Does Hate Its Customers


What Happened: Comcast officially changed the first name of one of its customers to “Asshole.”

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Ricardo Brown’s wife called Comcast to try and cancel their cable service, with little success. That’s not to say nothing changed as the result of her attempt, however; instead, the next bill Brown got from the company saw him officially renamed “Asshole Brown.” As you might expect, the story quickly went viral, with seemingly every major site weighing in on the subject. (Reddit also got in on the act.) On the plus side, at least Comcast has apologized, but let’s just wait and see if they also offer free Internet for a couple of years to back up the apology.

The Takeaway: Admit it. Now you’re worried about what your Internet provider secretly calls you, aren’t you?


The Greatest 404 Error Ever


What Happened: Bloomberg.com’s 404 error page has been gaining some fans. Yes, really; the 404 error page.

Where It Blew Up: Twitter, media think pieces

What Really Happened: Earlier this week, someone on Twitter noticed that the Bloomberg News site had a great 404 error page. And then, lots of other people noticed. (It’s not just the 404 page, the 500 error page is equally hypnotic, as is the Politics-specific 404 page.) You should thank design company Code and Theory, it turns out.

The Takeaway: Other websites, it’s time to up your game. At least until we find out from Bloomberg that everyone started going to its 404 page at the expense of going to every other page on the site.


It’s The Most Expensive Ad Time Of The Year


What Happened: Ahead of the Big Game, countless Super Bowl ads flooded the Internet.

Where It Blew Up: Blogs, media think pieces

What Really Happened: With the Super Bowl almost upon us, companies that have spent obscene amounts of money on special ads for the game have tried to maximize their investment by releasing the ads online first and seeing if anyone’s interested. This year’s spots include appearances by Kim Kardashian, Katie Couric and Mindy Kaling—oh, and an entirely adorable lost puppy.



What Went Wrong With the Spider-Man Musical


Spider-Man Fall

Kathy Willens/AP



It’s too bad Glen Berger doesn’t have spidey sense; it would have warned him to run away. But in 2005, when Berger was hired to work on a Broadway musical adaptation of Spider-Man, it seemed like a dream come true for the well-respected but financially struggling playwright. In the wake of the Spider-Man films, a musical version seemed like a surefire hit, especially given the director (Julie Taymor of The Lion King fame) and composers (Bono and Edge of U2). Everyone involved thought the show would be brilliant.


“A New York Times reviewer said this was a show ‘conceived in cynicism,’ and he couldn’t be more wrong,” says Berger in Episode 135 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It was conceived with a sort of naive idealism, and there were a lot of high spirits early on.”


Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark suffered an early setback when its charming producer Tony Adams died of a stroke. But for a while everything seemed to be on track, with the script and music earning high praise from test audiences. The only complaints came from comics fans, who feared a cheesy musical would tarnish Spider-Man’s image, and from critics, who thought superheroes were too lowbrow for Broadway. But Berger and Taymor both saw the character as exactly the sort of demigod hero that’s thrilled audiences for generations.


“Musicals being done around the fire 40,000 years ago, that’s what it was, it was singing and dancing, gods and monsters,” says Berger. “There’s always been this fascination that humans have had with humans fusing with the powers of an animal.”


But soon a string of mishaps plagued the production, from financing woes to technical glitches to injuries on set. Theater critic Michael Riedel set his sights on Spider-Man, whipping up so much notoriety that the show’s troubles became the subject of a New Yorker cover. When Taymor refused to change course, producers replaced her with former circus director Phil McKinley, whose family-friendly revamp became a fair financial success, while falling far short of brilliance.


Berger chronicles the adventure in his memoir Song of Spider-Man , which should stand beside Oedipus Rex as a warning on the dangers of hubris. Still, Berger says that for all the drama, most elements of the musical actually worked quite well.


“What gets lost in this story is how many people actually wound up loving the show,” he says. “For a lot of people, because it was Spider-Man, it was their first musical ever, and for some it was kind of a gateway drug. They were turned on to Broadway musicals in a way they hadn’t been before.”


Listen to our complete interview with Glen Berger in Episode 135 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast (above), and check out some highlights from the discussion below.


Glen Berger on inspiration:


“I was sort of fed up with George W. Bush at this moment, and I was trying to think of a way to do him in without making a martyr out of him, and I kept thinking about, ‘Well, if only a piano could drop on him.’ And then I was thinking more and more about what sort of cynicism it would require to drop a piano on somebody so as not to make a martyr out of them, and that got me thinking about the Green Goblin on top of the Chrysler building, throwing a piano down on the citizens of New York—on the little ants down below—because he had such disdain for them, and from that point forward the scene wrote itself, with the Goblin and Spider-Man on top of the Chrysler building. And a piano, because in a musical a piano made perfect sense—you could start the scene with ‘Green Goblin does Liberace‘ and end it with that. So I wrote that scene, and I guess it got me the job.”


Glen Berger on adaptation:


“It’s a tricky balance because every artist needs to feel like they’re not just doing data entry, they need to feel like they’re contributing something to the iconography. There was a meeting we had early on with Joe Quesada over at Marvel, and he did convey to us this sense that Spider-Man has been around for—at that time—almost 50 years, and all these inkers and artists and writers had been contributing and adding—with a lot of thought and artistry—to just who Peter Parker/Spider-Man is, and what this universe is. And he did convey this sense, certainly to me, that it wasn’t really fair for us to mess with that, that we needed to respect how Spider-Man got to this place in the center of our culture. So I think it is very fair of the fans to expect a lot of respect for the material. That said, they’re also going to howl if it’s just boringly rote. What you want to do is find new ways of telling the story, opening up new perspectives into the story without totally changing it.”


Glen Berger on setbacks:


“Tony Adams was the original producer of Spider-Man. He was an Irish impresario, beautiful man. He’s the one who convinced Marvel in the first place to let him do Spider-Man: The Musical, and he could have persuaded anyone to do anything, he was just that sort of person—he’s the one who persuaded Bono and Edge to get on board. And after a whole lot of wrangling—this was early on in the process, back around 2005—he finally got all the contracts in order and went over to Edge’s apartment to have him sign the deal—Bono had already signed, Julie had already signed, everything was finally coming together. And Edge went to go get a pen, and when he came back he found Tony Adams slumped over, and Tony Adams, who was still in his 50s, was dead the next day, from a stroke. And that, early on, put a wrench in things. It didn’t really occur to anyone at the time that that was going to be in some ways a fatal blow [to the project].”


Glen Berger on political subtext:


“Back in 2005, when I was first writing with Julie, we made Norman Osborn—the reason he was doing these things with genetics was he was convinced humans needed to more quickly adapt to what was clearly going to be a climate change catastrophe in a few years. And Julie was saying, ‘If we make him seem liberal in that way, is that going to turn off all the potential conservative audience members?’ And then she thought, ‘Oh, but he turns out to be the villain.’ So maybe a lot of conservatives would see—you know, people would read into the show whatever political ideology they wanted to read into it. And that turned out to be true, years later, when Glenn Beck saw in the Spider-Man show an affirmation of everything he had been talking about, in terms of the individual rising above the situation, to fighting for liberty and justice, to this climate change proponent getting his comeuppance and all that. So he went on his radio show more than once and was a huge advocate for the show.”


Glen Berger on the new director:


“And so Phil [McKinley] came on board, and he felt like one of the large problems in the show wasn’t just the [story] structure, but also just the tone in general was too dark, and he thought the choreography in certain numbers was too violent, and so he came in and really tried to brighten things up. … This was around the time that Charlie Sheen was having his meltdown, so people saw a lot of similarities between Charlie Sheen and Spider-Man—they called us ‘the Charlie Sheen of theater.’ And he had a thing about his ‘goddesses,’ and at one moment in rehearsal, Phil McKinley, it came to him, ‘Oh, Goblin’s Goddesses, that’s perfect!’ We could have these sort of mutant assistants of Goblin wear these [Goblin’s Goddesses] T-shirts. And then other people on the team are thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s going to date itself within a month.'” That idea fell by the wayside eventually, but there were any number of ideas that were flying around, and of course the tech staff were all freaking out, because they felt like we didn’t really have time to implement even half the changes that were being proposed.”