17 December 2022
Daily Almanac for
Flagstaff
Week 51 Day 351 \ Ave. Sky Cover 5% \ Visibility 10 miles Flagstaff Today 24° \2°
Wind 5mph \ Gusts 15mph Air Quality: Fair \Very Low Risk of fire \ Nearest active fire 339mi \ Nearest Lightning 1986mi
Dec Averages for Flagstaff: 43° \ 17° `
Today’s
Quote
Weekly
Observations
Andisop (Meteorological
Fiddling): 5-24 Link
Human Rights Week: 10-17
Christmas Bird Count Week: 14-1/5 Link
Halcyon Days: 14-28
Halcyon Days: 14-28
Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over: 15 - 1/1/23 Link
Posadas: 16-24
Saturnalia: 17-23
Daily Observations
National
Maple Syrup Day
Pan American Aviation Day
Wright Brothers Day
A Christmas Carol Day (Story)
Clean Air
Day
National Wreaths Across
America Day Link
Wright Brothers Day
My
Sometimes-Long-Winded Thoughts
Another
cold morning. I warmed up to a sweltering 24°
by noon.
Many
were awaiting Trump’s big announcement. The wait was over when he introduced,
for a mere $99, anyone could purchase an NFT Trading Card about Trump. He said
you could follow his life by buying the set. The Conservatives are yelling
about how bad the economy is and their leader wants them to buy a digital
trading card that you can never really touch. I can’t wait to see how many are
actually sold.
I
follow a conservative guy on Facebook as he also runs a good site on happenings
in Flagstaff. He posted that he is looking for a new church because his current
church is not holding Christmas Day services because Christmas is on a Sunday this
year. I am dumbfounded that a Christian church
would not honor the birth of Christ. I must be missing something.
Favorite
Memes
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|
 Actual temps from this morning.
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Did you
Know?
Run your
fingers along the edge of a dime and you’ll notice the coin has a crimped edge.
If you were to count those tiny grooves and valleys, you’d find 118 ridges, one
less than is found on a quarter.
But not all
American coins have ridges, and here’s why. Rippled edges on
larger-denomination coins have been a part of American currency since the U.S.
Mint’s early days, and they were a clever solution to a massive currency
conundrum: counterfeiting and fraud. Around the 1700s, coins were an easy
target for money-generating schemes, including coin clipping: People would clip
or shave off slim portions of a coin’s outer edge, cashing in the scraps of
precious silver and gold. In Great Britain, coin clipping was so common that the
crown deemed it a form of treason. In early North American settlements,
“coining” — the actual production of fake coins — was equally problematic.
Knowing
this, American coin makers added grooved bands — called reeded edges — to the
thin sides of dimes, quarters, and larger coins then made from silver, in order
to prevent shaving and make fraud more difficult. (Pennies and nickels remained
smooth-sided since they were pressed from less-valuable copper and nickel.) But
reeded edges lost some of their utility when the Coinage Act of 1965 changed
the composition of dimes and quarters from silver to a copper-nickel blend.
Reeded edges remain today as a design choice, and because they help people with
visual impairments differentiate among coins.
Slang
Origins
1938: Socko
Meaning: strikingly impressive,
effective, successful
This word doesn’t come from the socks on
your foot, but rather a "sock" to the face. It was used to describe
something so impressive that it hits you in the face, like a movie with a socko
actor.
Corny
jokes
Why did the scarecrow
win an award?
Because he was
outstanding in his field.
….
Where can you
buy soup in bulk?
The stock market.
….
If athletes
get athlete’s foot, what do elves get?
Mistle-toes.
Historical
Events
1843 – A Christmas Carol by Charles
Dickens was published.
1903 – The Wright brothers make the first
controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina.
1969 – Project Blue Book: The United
States Air Force closed its study of UFOs.
2101 – The Arab Spring began
2014 – The US and Cuba re-established
diplomatic relations after severing them in 1961.
Birthdays
Today
