8/27/13

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Almanac: Flagstaff:  Week: 35/ Day: 239   

Today: H 68°…L 55°

Wind: ave:   3mph; Gusts:  9mph  

Ave. humidity:  89%

Record Low: 47°    

Record High: 78°    

Average Low: 37° (1989)     

            Average High: 88° (1974)

Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

1st hydrogen balloon flight (unmanned); reaches 900 m altitude…1783

1st successful oil well drilled, near Titusville, Penn by Edwin Drake…1859

Barack Obama becomes the first African-American nominated by a major 

     political party…2008

Edgar Rice Burroughs' publishes "Tarzan of the Apes"…1912

Krakatoa, west of Java, explodes with a force of 1,300 megatons and kills 

     approximately 40,000 people…1883

Polish King Wladyslaw crowned king of Russia…1610

"Guinness Book of World Records" 1st published…1955

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

How many can you identify?…answers in Today’s Birthdays

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Monday…really? I spent 45 minutes on the phone trying to get my iPhone5 fixed. It has a ‘do not disturb’ feature that doesn’t work anymore. While I was at our discussion group, my phone…on do not disturb…started ringing. So I call Verizon, and find that I have to upgrade the hardware. That takes 1 hour and 20 minutes…and I have a fairly fast internet. I told the guy to call me back, so that both my landline and phone would not be busy that long. Turns out he calls back before the download is finished. Then he never calls back. So I call again. This call has me redo everything I have already done then they connect me to Apple again. This time the lady gives me her actual 800 phone number, and has me redo everything I have already done twice. She then says she will call me back in 15 minutes. She actually does and says that she has to check with engineers and is putting it on the highest priority meaning that she will get an answer in 24-48 hours…but…there is always a but, she only works M,T, and F. Can’t believe this is taking so much time.

 

I am concerned that we are ready to get into another military conflict. While it is apparent that Syria has used poison gas on its own citizens, shouldn’t the UN be the ones doing something. They may need our help, and that’s OK as long as others are also going into harm’s way to stop this inhumane treatment of its citizens. I have visited a lot of countries since my retirement and every one of them has a ‘military’ that parades around in various ways. Just because our government likes to be the ‘police’ of the world, does not mean that we have to do it every time some crazy guy does crazy things.

 

Flagstaff has been so fortunate this fire season, with all our rain, we have been spared any devastating fires. We keep hearing that Yosemite is burning and that the fire has covered an area the size of Chicago. Seems to me this should be a good place for the military to do its thing and stop this fire. Surely they have the resources to stop a fire of this magnitude.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

Each group of definitions describes three words that are spelled the same, except for one letter (each group describes a different set of words). Example: king, ring, wing. The length of the words in each group is provided.

1) a small bundle & a pointed stake for a fence & a small isolated area or group (6 letters) 2) to express in words & not freshly made & to look fixedly at something (5 letters) 3) a dance that conveys a story & a makeshift bed & a hammer-like implement (6 letters) 4) a local branch of a society & a mercantile lease of a ship & to talk incessantly (7 letters)

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Louis Mountbatten

• George Burns and Gracie Allen take a drive

• The Captain & Tenille "LOVE WILL KEEP US TOGETHER

• BLUE VELVET ~ Tommy Sands

Hmmmm…Fearsome Phobias

If you have an irrational fear of... Animals
You're suffering from... Zoophobia

If you have an irrational fear of... Animals, wild
You're suffering from... Agrizoophobia

NEW!!!  It is Illegal…

Whistling Underwater Is Illegal In Vermont

NEW!!! Privileges granted to people in the U.S. (and many western nations) for being Christian…

Following is a list of privileges granted to people in the U.S. (and many western nations) for being Christian.  If you identify as Christian, there’s a good chance you’ve never thought about these things.  Try and be more cognizant of these items and you’ll start to realize how much work we have to do to make the United States a place that is truly safe and accessible for folks of other belief systems.

You can expect to have time off work to celebrate religious holidays.

Ok, then?

Harper’s Index    

Percentage of known human genes that are patented: 100

Unusual Fact of the Day

Chewing gum does burn off calories, but it would take two weeks of continuous chewing to burn off the equivalent of one pound of fat.

Joke-of-the-day

A married couple rushed to the hospital because the woman was in labor the doctor asked the couple, "I have invented a new machine that you might want to try, it takes some of the labor pains away from the mother and gives it to the father." So the married couple decided that they would try this. So the doctor hooked the machine up and put it on 10% of pain switched from the mother to the father and the husband said "I feel okay turn it up a lot more" so the doctor turned it up to 50% and the husband said "why don’t you just put it all on me cause I’m not feeling a thing" but the doctor warned them "this much could kill you if your not prepared", and the husband replied "I am ready "so the doctor turned the machine up to 100% but the husband didn’t fell a thing so they went home happy with a pain free labor, but when they got home the mailman was dead on the front porch!  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

THE CHRISTMAS TREE RULE OF THREE

To find out how many lights your Christmas tree needs, multiply the tree height times the tree width times three.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

NEWCASTLE, Pa. - A Pennsylvania woman who failed a drug test because she ate poppy seed dressing is entitled to damages for losing her newborn son for 75 days, a judge ruled. Eileen Bower was unaware the urine sample she provided to Jameson Health Systems an hour before giving birth to Brandon in July 2009 was being used to test for drugs, Courthouse News Service reported. Bower tested positive for morphine because there were poppy seeds in a pasta dressing she had at dinner. Her newborn son tested negative for drugs, the intake form of Lawrence County Children and Youth Services noted. U.S. District Judge Terrence McVerry dismissed Bower's claims for negligence against the department but her claim of due process violations under the 14th Amendment survived. "By taking custody of Baby Brandon without any effort to corroborate the drug test and without talking to the parents, LCCYS policy did not provide sufficient protection for the fundamental parental rights involved in light of the drastic nature of the deprivation," McVerry wrote. He awarded summary judgment against the child services department with the amount of damages to be determined by a jury.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• It is estimated that one eighth of the world's population lives in mountainous zones, and that mountains cover a quarter of the world's surface.

• More than half of the world's fresh water originates in mountains, and all the world's major rivers are fed from mountain sources.

• The Andes, which runs more than 4,900 miles, is the longest mountain range in the world.

• Fold mountains are the most common type of mountains. Examples of fold mountains are the Himalayas (Asia), the Alps (Europe). They are formed due to collision of two plates, causing folding of the Earth's crust. 

• Fault mountains or fault-block mountains are formed when blocks of rock materials slide along faults in the Earth's crust.

• Volcanic mountains are formed due to volcanic eruptions, for e.g. Mount Fuji (Japan). They are formed when volcanic magma erupts and piles up on the surface of the Earth.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

25-31

Be Kind To Humankind Week
National Safe at Home Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        The Duchess Who Wasn't Day celebrates the life of Margaret Wolfe Hungerford, an Irish novelist who was always published under the pen name “The Duchess” in the United States – also the name of her most popular novel, published in 1887

^^^

·        Moldova: Independence Day (1991 from Soviet Union)

Today’s Events through History  

Dodger Tommy Lasorda wins 1,000th game as manager tops Phila, 4-2…1988

Naomi Sims is 1st black model on US cover (Fashion of the Times)…1967

NYC Metropolitan Opera House catches fire…1892

Parks College, America's oldest aviation school, opens…1927

Rainbow Bridge, connecting Tokyo's Shibaura and the island of Odaiba, is completed…1993

Shah of Iran abdicates throne to his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi…1941

Transsexual Renee Richards barred from competing in US Tennis Open…1976

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Barbara Bach [Goldbach], actress (The Spy Who Loved Me, Force 10 from Navarone) is 66

"Downtown" Julie Brown, TV host (Club MTV, Inside Edition) is 54

Daryl Dragon, keyboardist (Capt & Tennille) is 71

Pee-wee Herman, [Paul Reubens], actor (Pee-wee's Big Adventure) is 61

Tommy Sands, singer/actor (Teenage Rock, Dream With Me) is 76

 [Susan] Tuesday Weld, actress (Dobie Gillis, Wild in Country) is 70

Remembered for being born today

Edward Beecher, American theologian [1803-1895]

Charles Gates Dawes, 30th VP (1925-29, Nobel 1925) [1865-1951]

Theodore Dreiser, US, novelist (Sister Carie, American Tragedy) [1871-1945]

C.S. (Cecil Scott )Forester, English historical novelist (Horatio Hornblower) [1899-1966]

Lyndon B Johnson, 36th Pres (1963-1969) [1908-1973]

Martha Raye, [Margaret Reed], actress (Martha Raye Show) [1916-1994]

Charles Stewart Rolls, British auto manufacturer (Rolls-Royce Ltd) [1877-1910]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Gracie Allen, actress (Burns & Allen)…heart attack…1964…at 69

Bennett Cerf, (Random House)/panelist (What's My Line)…1971…at 73

W E B Du Bois, scholar/founder (NAACP)…1963…at 95

Brian Epstein, rock manager (Beatles)…drug overdose….1967…at 32

Rowland Hill, introduced postage stamps…1879…at 84

Charles Evans Hughes, U.S. Supreme Court justice…1948…at 86

Louis Mountbatten, British adm of the Fleet…assassinated by IRA…1979…at 79

Emperor Haile Selassie, depossed Ethiopian emperor…strangled…1975…at 83

Brandon Tartikoff, TV exec (NBC)…Hodgkin's lymphoma…1997…at 48

Brain Teasers

1) packet, picket, pocket 2) state, stale, stare 3) ballet, pallet, mallet 4) chapter, charter, chatter

Disclaimer: All opinions are mine…feel free to agree or disagree.

All ‘data’ info is from the internet sites and is usually checked with at least one other source, but I have learned that every site has mistakes and sadly once out the information is out there, many sites simply copy it and is therefore difficult to verify. Also for events occurring before the Gregorian calendar was adopted [1582] the dates may not be totally accurate.

§    And That Is All for Now  §