1-15-15

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Almanac: Week: 03 \ Day: 015 
January Averages: 43°\16°
86004 Today: H 41°\L 21°
Ave. humidity: 75%     Average Sky Cover: 80%
Wind ave:   8mph\Gusts:  26mph
Ave. High: 43° Record High:  65° (1943)
Ave. Low: 16° Record Low:  -12° (1937)

Observances Today:
Get to Know Your Customers Day
Hat Day
Humanitarian Day

Observances This Week:
11-17
Cuckoo Dancing Week
National Vocation Awareness Week
14-18

National Soccer Coaches of America Week
No Tillage Week

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Quote of the Day 


Historical Highlights for Today
1535 - Henry VIII declares himself head of the Church in England
1759 - British Museum opens in Montague House, London
1777 - People of New Connecticut (Vermont) declare independence from England
1797 - 1st top hat worn (John Etherington of London)
1844 - University of Notre Dame receives its charter in Indiana
1863 - 1st US newspaper printed on wood-pulp paper, Boston Morning Journal
1864 - 60 starving Navajo surrender to Kit Carson after the Canyon de Chelly fight
1870 - Donkey first used as symbol of Democratic Party, in Harper's Weekly
1907 - Gold dental inlays first described by William Taggart, who invented them
1934 - Dillinger is shot several, but survives--he is wearing a bullet proof vest.
1936
 - 1st all-glass windowless structure in US completed, Toledo, Ohio

1943 - World's largest office building, Pentagon, completed
1947 - The brutalized corpse of Elizabeth Short ("The Black Dahlia") is found
1969 - Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Terence O'Neill announces that an official inquiry will analyze the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland
1976 - Sara Jane Moore sentenced to life for attempting to shoot Pres Ford
1977 - Coneheads debut on "Saturday Night Live"
1988 - Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder makes racist remarks about black athletes
1997 - Diana, the Princess of Wales, calls for an international ban on landmines, angering ministers in the UK
2001 - Wikipedia, a free Wiki content encyclopedia, goes online
2009 - US Airways Flight 1549 makes an emergency landing into the Hudson River
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  Birthdays Today:
How many can you identify? Answers below in Birthday’s Today


My Rambling Thoughts
Snow, sunshine, snow, clouds, rain…it’s January in Flagstaff. Don’t like our weather, just wait 5 minutes.
I had a great lunch with one of my old bosses. Caught up on stuff since November and then reminisced on some of the good ol’ days in the Bureau. Nice. Lots of laughs.
Got to make a stop at Sam’s and Sprouts so am set with necessities and with fresh organic fruits and veggies. Also decided if I bought chocolate candy at Sprouts, it was probably better for me than chocolate from other stores. LOL
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Brain Teasers
(answers at the end of post)
What sort of story begins with a limb and ends with a finish?
           
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today
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Paraphernalia 4 the Brain:     
60’s Inventions…
1963
The video disk invented.

Emotion Facts…
--People who laugh more are better able to tolerate pain - both physical and emotional.
--Crying literally alleviates stress and uniquely allows humans to decrease feelings of anger and sadness.

Flagstaff, AZ History…
75 YEARS AGO
The first real snow fell last Friday leading to a whole series of auto wreaks.

Harper’s Index…
15
Estimated height in feet of a memorial tree planted for George Harrions that died in July after an attack of beetles
$120,000,000,000
Estimated annual cost of invasive animal, plant and microbe species to the US economy

Rules of Thumb…
CHOOSING A CALM PUPPY
Pick a puppy whose tail wags in sync with his walk.

Unusual Fact of the Day…
The name for "piggy banks" comes from the use of family money jars in the Middle Ages made from a type of clay called pygg.
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Joke-of-the-day
A guy wants to become a magician so he goes out and buys a magician book. Later he gathers his family around the living room for his first trick. Reading his new book he reaches into a bag and pulls out a hammer and to the amazement of his family hits himself in the head with it.
He's unconscious and spends a month in the hospital. Suddenly a nurse notices his eye lids flicker.
She calls the family in and they gather around his bed. Just then he sits up in bed awake and says..."TA-DAA"
           
Yep, It Really Happened
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (UPI)
Canada's Vancouver Aquarium said a copper rockfish was outfitted with a prosthetic eye to keep him from being "picked on" by underwater bullies. Aquarium officials said the rockfish had one of his eyes surgically removed two years ago when a case of cataracts failed to heal and he has lately been acting distressed at the bottom of his tank. "Before the prosthetic, he was being hurt and quite uncomfortable because he was picked on," Dr. Martin Haulena, head veterinarian at the aquarium, told Global News. "What's been observed with fish that are missing an eye is other fish take advantage of that ... they kind of go to that blind side, steal food and pick on [them]." "It's a well-known thing that there is natural aggression as different species kind of vie for the best space and habitat they're in, so that kind of aggression is very very normal," he said. The prosthetic was an eye designed for taxidermied fish. Haulena said the surgery is not unheard of at similar facilities but was the first of its kind at the aquarium. "Ever since we put in the prosthetic the fish is right back in the mid-water column, interacting with other fish," the veterinarian said. "He's more robust. Everybody, including the fish, seem a lot happier now." A second rockfish underwent the same procedure and returned to display at the Vancouver International Airport.           

Somewhat Useless Information
--Dietary fiber (roughage) is an essential nutrient required for proper digestion of foods, proper functioning of the digestive tract at large, and for helping you feel full. A deficiency of fiber can lead to constipation, hemorrhoids, and elevated levels of cholesterol and sugar in the blood. Conversely, an excess of fiber can lead to a bowel obstruction, diarrhea, or even dehydration. Individuals who increase their intake of fiber should also increase their intake of water.
--Ten common, extremely high fiber foods include; Bran, Cauliflower & Broccoli, Cabbage, Berries, Leafy Greens, Celery, Squash, Beans, Mushrooms and Oranges!
--Osmium is the most dense metal! Many people are familiar with lead (11.3 kg/mL), but Osmium is twice as dense (22.6 kg/L)! Each liter of Osmium weighs 22.6 kg (50 lbs). For comparison, each liter of water weighs only 1 kg (about 2.2 lbs). Some other heavy metals include Tungsten and Gold (19.3 kg/L), which are almost as dense as Osmium.
--The Large Hadron Collider recently made a matter known as quark-gluon plasma. It's a hundred thousand times hotter than the inside of the sun and denser than anything in the universe, except black holes.
--Quark-gluon plasma is what scientists believe the entire universe was like immediately after the Big Bang. It's made up of quarks, which are the elementary building blocks of positive charged protons and neutral neutrons and gluons, particles that glue quarks together using the strong force. A physicist says that "if you had a cubic centimeter of this stuff, it would weigh 40 billion tons."
--To make that magic matter, the LHC was used to smash together lead ions at nearly the speed of light.


Gizmos
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (UPI)
Brain scans have been widely employed and remarkably useful in correlative and experimental research, helping scientists better understand the human brain structure and its relationship to biological systems and the diseases that disrupt them. But can brain imaging also be used to predict human behaviors? 
A new survey of recent scientific literature on the subject -- conducted by researchers at MIT and published this week in the journal Neuron -- suggests the answer is yes, it can. And has. 
According to the new survey, imaging of the brain has already proven capable of predicting a person's future learning abilities and disabilities, propensity for criminality, health-related behaviors, and reception to drug and behavioral treatments. 
As part of the new survey, researchers point to previous studies which showed brain imaging could predict infants' future performances on reading and math examinations. Another study found a correlation between brain structure and the likelihood of a criminal becoming a repeat offender. 
"Presently, we often wait for failure, in school or in mental health, to prompt attempts to help, but by then a lot of harm has occurred," lead author Dr. John Gabrieli, an MIT neuroscientist, said in a press release. "If we can use neuroimaging to identify individuals at high risk for future failure, we may be able to help those individuals avoid such failure altogether." 
"Seventy or so studies have reported positive findings that analyzing brain measures beforehand can considerably improve knowing whether a person will be successful at something," Gabrieli told Fox News. 
Gabrieli and his colleagues were sure to point out the ethical dilemmas and risks involved in this sort of scientific research. Their hope in shedding light on these studies is to illuminate new methods of intervention, not to instigate restrictive policies aimed at high-risk patients. 
"We will need to make sure that knowledge of future behavior is used to personalize educational and medical practices, and not be used to limit support for individuals at higher risk of failure," explained Gabrieli. "For example, rather than simply identifying individuals to be more or less likely to succeed in a program of education, such information could be used to promote differentiated education for those less likely to succeed with the standard education program."           

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Today’s Events through History
1847 - 1st Swedish magazine in US, Skandinavia, published in NYC
1882 - 1st US ski club forms (Berlin NH)
1961 - Supremes signed with Motown Records
1971 - George Harrison releases "My Sweet Lord"
1973 - 4 Watergate burglars plead guilty in federal court
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Birthday’s Today
Charo [Maria Baeza], actress, comedienne and flamenco guitarist is 64
Mario Van Peebles, Mexico, actor (Posse, South Bronx Heroes) is 58
Drew Brees, American football player is 36
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Remembered for being born today
Richard Martin, Irish animal rights activist 1754-1834@79
Marjory Fleming, Scottish child writer and poet 1803-1811@8
Peter C Asbjornsen, Norwegian fairy tale writer1812-1885@72
Rex Ingram, [Reginald IM Hitchcock], Irish director (4 Horsemen of Apocalypse) 1892-1950@57
Aristotle Onassis, Greece, rich shipping magnate 1906-1975@69
Edward Teller, fathered H-bomb (Manhattan Project), 1908-2003@95
Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman's drummer (Sing Sing Sing)1909-1973@64
Lloyd Bridges, actor (Sea Hunt, Roots, Airplane) 1913-1998@85
Martin Luther King Jr., clergyman and leader of the Civil Rights Movement (Nobel 1964), 1929-1968@39
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Historical Obits Today
Ray Bolger, actor/dancer (Wizard of Oz), 1987, @83
Matthew B Brady, US photographer (Civil War), accident, 1896, @72ish
Fannie Farmer, American culinary figure\author, 1915, @57
Brad Renfro, actor (The Client), OD, 2008, @25
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Brain Teasers Answers
Legend 
It begins with a limb (Leg) and ends with a finish (End).

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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 contains mistakes and sadly once 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…§


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Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
I retired in '06--at the ripe old age of 57. I enjoy blogging, photography, traveling, and living life to it's fullest.