IT Insights Blog — TestOut Continuing Education

Once upon a time in 1937, the Hormel Foods Corporation created a cooked lunch meat product sold in a distinctive tin can. The main ingredient is pork — originally pork shoulder, which was believed to be a less desirable cut of meat — along with ham (pork meat from the leg), salt, sugar, water, modified potato starch, and sodium nitrite. The brother-in-law of a Hormel Foods executive won a $100 cash prize for coining the distinctive moniker "spam," quickly trademarked as "SPAM."

The next few days on the calendar are fraught with animal auspices. If you find yourself taking a serious interest in reincarnation, or maybe even just contemplating a one-time donation to PETA, well, there's something in the air. Saturday is Groundhog Day (which more or less represents the nirvana that ever zany This or That Day out there strives to achieve). On Sunday, we've got the Rams in the Super Bowl. And, perhaps of greatest portent, next Tuesday is the first day of the Year of the Pig.

One of our favorite movies of 2018 is the Alex Honnold rock climbing documentary Free Solo. It's one of five films presently in contention for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, and a must-see for anyone who's the least bit intrigued by big wall climbing. If you haven't seen it yet, then check your local theater listings quick! There's a special one-week IMAX release that begins Friday, and this is definitely a film that would be more enjoyable on a massive IMAX screen.

Here we are in the last few days of January and winter, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, is about as cold as it's going to get. Although according to the people in charge of forecasting the weather, that could be about to change — and not for the better. (Topic: Would you enjoy working as a weather forecaster? You'd get a lot of ridicule for all those time when projections don't pan out. On the other hand, algorithms and databases would do most of your job for you.)

It seems like there are comic book movies and comic book superheroes everywhere you turn these days. Five of the six highest-grossing movies to play in theaters in 2018 were superhero movies. (Incredibles 2, technically speaking, has no antecedent in comic books, but is 100 percent in the spirit of its archetypally ink-spawned fellow feature films.) There's a Best Picture Oscar-nominated comic book superhero movie. There are two such films in the running for Best Animated Feature.