Sep 15, 2012

FYI: Click on any blue text for a link to more information!

Flagstaff Almanac…  

Week: 37 / Day: Today: High   67°…Low 48°

Records: High   88°(2000, 1948)…Low 29°(1988,1925)

Averages: High  74°…Low 33°

Wind: average:   10mph;  Gusts:  00mph

Today’s average humidity:  49%

Quote of the Day…

Today’s  Historical  Highlights…

2004 - NHL commissioner Gary Bettman announces a lockout of the players 

            union and cessation of operations by the NHL head office. 

1982 - 1st issue of "USA Today" published by Gannett Co Inc

1973 - Secretariat wins Marlboro Cup in world record 1:45 2/5 for 1¼ miles

1971 - 1st broadcast of "Columbo" on NBC-TV

1959 - Soviet Premier Khrushchev arrives in US to begin a 13-day visit

1952 - UN turns over Eritrea to Ethiopia

1942 - US aircraft carrier Wasp torpedoed at Guadalcanal

1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin

1857 - Timothy Alder patents typesetting machine

1620 - Mayflower departs from Plymouth England with 102 pilgrims

♪   Happy Birthday To: ♪.. 

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

 Returns Tomorrow

Free Rambling Thoughts…   

The days are certainly not as warm as a few weeks ago. I guess Fall is just around the corner. Time to start preparing for it.

Tomorrow is our discussion group meeting, which I will be moderating. We are talking about Native Americans and my time working on the Rez. Should be interesting. I’ve got a handout ready and a common list of differences between mainstream culture and Natives. I hope I am able to open some eyes to the differences and shy there is conflict between the two groups. For anyone who has successfully worked on a Rez, they would see this as Culture 101.

Thirty countries are now protesting the US. The issues are old, the solutions are not easy to figure out. One of the key issues seems to be that average age of many countries...yesterday I noted that 75 African countries have a median age of 20 or younger. Of course the leadership of those countries are much much older. It is almost always the youth of a country that bring about change. High unemployment rates and low literacy rates play a role in all this. There are many more problems that deal with culture, expectations, and history. Some idiot made news today saying that none of this would have happened if Romney was President. Just ignorant and immature.

Game  Center: (answers at the end of post)

What is the rhyming answer?

Answer the following clue in two rhyming words (e.g. an obese feline is a fat cat) If only one number is given, the answer is a word featuring internal rhyme (e.g. voodoo)

silence a migratory songbird (4,6)

Rebus…

Can you figure out what this means?

Lifestyle  Substance…     

Do you remember this?

Read This Headline Carefully!!

Deaf Mute Gets New Hearing in Killing

Do you know what this word means?

What is this not so common name of a common object?

 Rowel

Whitewater Fun…

Great Scenes in Musical Movie History…:

Rich Man’s Frug…Sweet Charity (1969)

Harper’s Index…         

Number of countries in which births are unnaturally male-biased: 23

Unusal Fact of the Day…

In 1939, Hitler’s nephew wrote an article called “Why I Hate My Uncle.” He came to the U.S., served in the Navy, and settled on Long Island.

Found on You Tube… 

Nipsey Russell comedy

Joke-of-the-day…

A biology teacher wished to demonstrate to his students the harmful effects of alcohol on living organisms. For his experiment, he showed them a beaker with pond water in which there was a thriving civilization of worms. When he added some alcohol into the beaker the worms doubled-up and died. "Now," he said,” what do you learn from this?" An eager student gave his answer.
"Well the answer is obvious," he said " if you drink alcohol, you'll never have worms."

Rules of Thumb…   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

BUILDING WALLS OF ADOBE…The height of an adobe wall should be less than ten times its thickness unless it is stiffened by buttresses or intersecting partitions.    

Yeah, It Really Happened…

Boston--When two men entering a family grocery store in New Bedford, Mass., showed the clerk a gun and reached for cash from the register, the owner’s 80-year-old mother-in-law grabbed a box of mangoes and lobbed at least five of them at the men before one of them hit her in the head with the gun. The men fled with cash, but owner Manuel Nogueira gave chase and captured one of them. Police caught the other one.

Somewhat Useless Information…   

• In the United States, pepperoni is the overwhelming favorite addition to a cheese pizza. In Japan, seafood (eel and squid) is a popular choice, while green peas are added to the mix in Brazil. In Costa Rica, pizza pies are often topped with coconut.

• The Pizza Hut restaurant chain got its name when the first location opened in Wichita in 1957. The sign only had space for three more letters besides "Pizza," and because the restaurant building resembled a hut, the choice was a natural one.

• Modern pizza (also known as pizza margherita) is made with tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and basil - though to represent the three colors (red, white, and green) of the flag of Italy.

• Benjamin Salisbury, who found success as son Brighton Sheffield on the sitcom The Nanny, played a Domino's delivery person on a series of TV commercials in 2006, promoting the chain's short-lived Fudgem brownies.

• It's not delivery; it's DiGiornio (introduced nationally in 1996) that stormed onto the scene to become the top-selling frozen pizza in the United States. Its "rising crust" has helped the brand rise to claim nearly 20 percent of the market. Perennial favorites Red Baron and Tombstone are the next biggest brand names.

• Carmela Bitale became an unknown hero to millions in 1983 when she patented her "package saver for pizza and cakes." It's the tiny plastic stand used by pizza take-out and delivery services that helps keep the top of the cardboard box from sticking to the pizza.

Calendar Information…        

Happening This Week:

15-22: National Singles Week / Pollution Prevention Week / Build A Better Image Week / Deaf Awareness Week / National Clean Hands Week  / National Farm & Ranch Safety and Health Week / Prostate Cancer Awareness Week / Substitute Teacher Appreciation Week / Tolkien Week / Turn Off Week / Balance Awareness Week / Constitution Week / National Love Your Files Week

Today Is…                                                                      

Boys'and Girls' Club Day for Kids

Big Whopper Liar Day

Felt Hat Day

Google.com Day

Greenpeace Day

International Coastal Cleanup Day

International Day of Democracy

International Dot Day

International Eat An Apple Day

Puppy Mill Awareness Day

Responsible Dog Ownership Day

~Costa Rica: Independence Day (1821 from Spain)
~El Salvador: Independence Day (1821 from Spain)
~Guatemala: Independence Day (1869 from Spain)
~Honduras: Independence Day (1821 from Spain)
~Nicaragua: Independence Day (1821 from Spain)

~UK: Battle of Britain Day (1940)

Today’s Events Through History…  

2000’s

2000 - Opening ceremony of the XXVII Olympics in Sydney, Australia

1900’s

1989 - The U.S. Congress recognizes Terry Anderson's continued captivity in Beirut

1978 - Muhammad Ali beats Leon Spinks in 15 for heavyweight boxing title

1966 - U.S. President Lyndon B Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the 

            University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to the United States Congress 

            urging the enactment of gun control legislation.

1965 - "Lost in Space" premieres

1963 - 4 children killed in bombing of a black Baptist church in Birmingham

1957 - "Bachelor Father" with John Forsythe premieres

1951 - Emile Zatopek runs world record 20k (1:01:15.8)

1949 - "Lone Ranger" premieres on ABC-TV

1945 - A hurricane in southern Florida and the Bahamas destroys 366 planes 

            and 25 blimps at NAS Richmond

1940 - Tide turns in Battle of Britain in WW II, RAF beats Luftwaffe

1935 - Nuremberg Laws deprives German Jews of citizenship & makes swastika 

            official symbol of Nazi Germany

1904 - Wilbur Wright makes his 1st airplane flight

1800’s

1858 - The Butterfield Overland Mail route begins operation from St. Louis, Missouri 

            and Memphis, Tennessee, through Fort Smith, Arkansas, to San Francisco, 

            California. Contrary to many movie storylines, the mail is attacked by the 

            Apaches only one time.

1853 - 1st US woman ordained a minister, Antoinette Blackwell

1700’s

 1789 - Dept of Foreign Affairs, renamed Dept of State

1600’s

1655 - Esopus Indians attack New Amsterdam in sixty-four war canoes. This retaliatory

           raid is for the killing of an Indian woman by a settler for stealing peaches. It is 

           called "The Peach War" by many, and casualties are slight on both sides as the

           Dutch drive the Indians out of the settlement. Leaving New Amsterdam, the 

           Indians attack Staten Island and the Pavonia settlements in modern Jersey City, 

           New Jersey. Here the casualties are considerably higher. Fifty settlers are killed,

           and almost 100 are captured.

1616 - The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe is opened in Frascati,

            Italy

Today’s Birthdays…                                                           

Under 30

 Heidi Montag, American reality television star will be 26

In their 30’s

Tom Hardy, British actor [Star Trek: Nemesis] is 35

In their 50’s

Dan Marino, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, NFL quarterback (Miami Dolphins) is 51

In their 60’s

Tommy Lee Jones, actor (Executioner's Song, Bloody Monday, Fugitive) is 66

Oliver Stone, director (Wall St, Good Morning Vietnam, Platoon) is 66

In their 70’s

Gaylord Perry, baseball player (1972 AL Cy Young winner) is 74

In their 80’s

Norm Crosby, Boston Mass, comedian/double talker (Liar's Club) is 85

Remembered for being born today

Bob Anderson, English Olympic Fencer, renowned film fight choreographer (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings) b. 1922

Roy Acuff, Maynardville Tenn, country musician (Hee Haw) b. 1903

Jackie Cooper, LA California, actor/director (Hennesey, People's Choice) b. 1922

James Fenimore Cooper, 1st major US novelist (Last of Mohicans) b. 1789

Agatha Christie, Torquay, Devon, mystery writer (Murder on Orient Express) b. 1890

Frank E Gannett, Rochester, newspaper publisher (Gannett) b. 1876

Merlin Olsen, UT, NFL tackle (Rams)/sportscaster/actor (Father Murphy) b. 1940

Marco Polo, Venice, Italian explorer (Il Milione) b. 1254

Nipsey Russell, American comedian b. 1918

Penny Singleton, Phila Pa, voice (Jane Jetsons)/actress (Blondie) b. 1906

William Howard Taft, Cin, (R) 27th pres (1909-13), chief justice b. 1857

Today’s Historical Obits…                                                           

Jumbo, P. T. Barnum's circus elephant--hit by a train—1885—at 24

Brett Somers, Canadian-born American actress and Match Game panelist

      —2007—at 83

Sarah Knox Taylor, wife of Jefferson Davis, daughter of Zachary Taylor

      —malaria—1885—at 21

Answers…                                                                                                                                            

Do you know what this word means?

The spiked revolving wheel at the end of a cowboy's spur.

What is the answer?

Hush thrush

Rebus

Too little too late

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  ☺

Sep 14, 2012

FYI: Click on any blue text for a link to more information!

Flagstaff Almanac…  

Week: 37 / Day: 258 Today: High   70°…Low 55°

Records: High   89°(1990)…Low 26°(1952)

Averages: High  74°…Low 43°

Wind: average:   3mph;  Gusts:  23mph

Today’s average humidity:  73%

Quote of the Day…

Today’s  Historical  Highlights…

2001 - Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for 

            victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on 

            Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation's capital

1994 - All 28 baseball owners vote to cancel rest of 1994 season

1975 - Rembrandts "Nightwatch" slashed & damaged in Amsterdam

1953 - Nikita Khrushchev appointed First Secretary of the Communist Party of

           the Soviet Union 

1960 - Chubby Checker's "Twist" hits #1

1752 - US & England adopts Gregorian calender (no Sept 3-Sept 13th)

1716 - 1st lighthouse in US lit (Boston Harbor)

♪   Happy Birthday To: ♪.. 

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

Free Rambling Thoughts…   

Our retirement group had a great lunch in downtown Flagstaff today. A nice little restaurant called Altitudes. Great waiter, excellent food, nice ambiance. We were going to eat outside, but there was a chilly wind. It’s been there a few years, after the Feed Store moved out. Cheryl will be heading to CA next week to visit her son and his family, Mary is busy working on quilts and doing her CASA work. She can’t really talk about the CASA work, but what she can say makes it sound very interesting. Child custody is such a difficult subject.

The Middle East is certainly in the news, and not much is good. Tomorrow will be a big day as it is the Day of Prayer and demonstrations are common after Prayers. It sounds like the police have identified the movie maker, a Coptic who spent time in prison for fraud and a meth lab. He is in hiding and since he has over a dozen alias, he will be hard to locate. From my point of view, when he redubbed the movie into Arabic and got it on TV in Egypt, he did the same thing as yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and should be held accountable. His hate against Muslims is still not known, but certainly that will be another part of the story.

Game  Center: (answers at the end of post)

What is the rhyming answer?

Answer the following clue in two rhyming words (e.g. an obese feline is a fat cat) If only one number is given, the answer is a word featuring internal rhyme (e.g. voodoo)

lepidopteran [cooking] stock (4,5)

Rebus…

Can you figure out what this means?

Lifestyle  Substance…     

Do you remember this?

Read This Headline Carefully!!

 Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

Do you know what this word means?

What is this not so common name of a common object?

Quinquagenarian

Whitewater Fun…

Great Scenes in Musical Movie History…:

Girl Hunt…The Band Wagon (1953)

Harper’s Index…         

Percentage of African countries in which the median age is 20 or younger: 75

Unusal Fact of the Day…

The sex of an alligator hatchling is dependent on the temperature of the nest during the incubation period. Typically temperatures above 91.4°F produce all males and anything lower than 86° that produces all females.

Found on You Tube… 

Opec--50 years later

Joke-of-the-day…

A poet and a scientist were traveling together on a plane. The scientist was bored and said to the poet, "Hey, you, do you want to play a game? I'll ask you a question, and if you get it wrong, you give me $5. Then, you ask me a question, and if I can't answer it, I'll give you $5." The poet thought about this for a moment, but he decided against it, seeing that the scientist was obviously a very bright man. He politely turned down the scientist's offer. The scientist, who was really bored, tried again. "Look, I'll ask you a question, and if you can't answer it, you give me $5. Then you ask me a question, and if I can't answer it, I'll give you $50." The poet agreed. "Okay," the scientist said, "what is the exact distance between the Earth and the Moon?" The poet, obviously not knowing the answer, didn't stop to think about the scientist's question. He took a $5 bill out of his pocket and handed it to the scientist. The scientist happily accepted the bill and promptly said, "Okay, now it's your turn." The poet thought about this for a few minutes, then asked, "All right, what goes up a mountain on three legs, but comes down on four?" The bright glow quickly vanished from the scientist's face. He thought about this for a long time, taking out his notepad and making numerous calculations. He finally gave up on his notepad and took out his laptop, using his Multimedia Encyclopedia. As the plane was landing the scientist gave up. He reluctantly handed the poet a $50 bill. The poet accepted it graciously, getting ready to stand up. "Wait!" the scientist shouted, "you can't do this to me! What's the answer?" The poet looked at the scientist and calmly put a $5 bill into his hand.  

Rules of Thumb…   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

DESIGNING ROCKET FUELS--A rule of thumb is that for every ten-percent increase in efficiency for rocket fuel, the payload of the rocket can double.    

Yeah, It Really Happened…

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Organizers of the Sioux Falls Marathon in South Dakota said they disqualified a runner as the winner after realizing he only ran half the race. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported that while Olok Nykew, 37, a St. Paul, Minn., resident who is originally from Sudan, crossed the finish line first Sunday morning, officials determined he had run the half-marathon course, not the full 26.2-mile marathon course. The companion events followed separate, but sometimes overlapping, routes through the city before ending at the same spot. The marathoners wore black numbers and the half-marathoners wore red. Nykew who came in 25 minutes faster than the event's record, was wearing a black number but finished among runners wearing red ones. "He registered for the marathon and ended up running the half and came in 25 minutes before the record," assistant race director Jason Richards told the newspaper. "They figured it out and disqualified him." Nykew expressed confusion and said he realized when he reached the finish line so quickly something must have gone wrong. "I thought, what is this? When I got there, I thought it was not long enough. I'm thinking I'm not cheating. I was just confused. It was an honest mistake," he said. The real winner was Justin Gillette, 29, of Goshen, Ind., who broke the event record he set last year with a time of 2 hours, 30 minutes and 10 seconds.

Somewhat Useless Information…   

• Pinball machines and video games were banned in New York City from 1942 until 1976. The city's lawmakers felt they were nothing more than gambling devices that owed more to luck than to skill.

• The only positive aspect of the 1979 film flop Tilt that critics could find was the then-groundbreaking "point of view" photography from the inside of a pinball machine.

• The sequence makes sense. First there were the arcade video games Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, then a pinball machine called "Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man. The next natural step was the 1982 hybrid known as Baby Pac-Man, which was half video game and half pinball machine.

• A pinball machine provides a great example of chaos theory's "butterfly effect." A seemingly unnoticeable variation in the speed or angle of a particular flipper movement can completely alter the result of the game.

• The tilt feature that keeps players from over-manipulating a pinball game by using too much "body English" was originally called stool pigeon.

• While Elton John played a specially constructed machine for his role as the Pinball Wizard in the 1975 film Tommy, Roger Daltrey unleashed his supple wrist on a classic Gottleib game called Kings and Queens.

Calendar Information…        

Happening This Week:

9-13:Dating and Life Coach Recognition Week / National Assisted Living Week / National Historically Black Colleges & Universities Week / Suicide Prevention Week / Line Dance Week  

Today Is…                                                                      

National Kreme Filled Donut Day

Stand Up To Cancer Day

Nicaragua: Battle of San Jacinto Day (1856)

Today’s Events Through History…  

1900’s

1982 - 36" snow (Red Lodge, MT)

1968 - 1st broadcast of "60 Minutes" on CBS-TV

1965 - "F-Troop" premieres

1960 - Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi-Arabia & Venezuela form OPEC

1948 - Milton Berle starts his TV career on Texaco Star Theater

1933 - 2 billion board feet of lumber destroyed in Tillamook Oregon fire

1930 - Nazis gain 107 seats in German election

1800’s

1848 - Alexander Stewart opens 1st US dept store

1700’s

1777 - Spanish Governor Galvez issues an act, in New Orleans. He orders the military,

            and Spanish subjects to "respect the rights of these Indians in the lands they 

           occupy and to protect them in the possession thereof."

1741 - George Frederick Handel finishes "Messiah", after working on it non-stop for 

            23 days

1726 - Land cession agreement is reached by representatives of Great Britain and 

            the Cayuga, Onondaga and the Seneca Indians.

1600’s

1682 - Bishop Gore School, one of the oldest schools in Wales, founded

1607 - Flight of the Earls from Lough Swilly, Donegal, Ireland

  

Today’s Birthdays…                                                           

Under 30

 Jesse James, American actor [As Good as It Gets] is 23

In their 40’s

Faith Ford, actress (Another World, Corky-Murphy Brown) will be 48

In their 50’s

Mary Crosby, actress (Kristin-Dallas, Ice Pirates) is 54

In their 60’s

 Jon "Bowser" Bauman, Queens NY, singer (Sha Na Na) is 65

Sam Neill, Northern Ireland, actor (Jurassic Park, Dead Calm, Piano) is 65

In their 70’s

Walter Koenig,  actor (Checkov-Star Trek) is 74

Remembered for being born today

Lord Cecil of Chelwood, UK, help form League of Nations (Nobel 1937) b. 1864

Clayton Moore, Chicago Illinois, American actor [Lone Ranger] b. 1914

Ivan Pavlov, Russia, physiologist/pioneer in psychology (Nobel 1904) b. 1849

Albert Shanker, American labor leader (Amer Fed of Teachers) b. 1928

Amy Winehouse, Southgate, London, singer ("Stronger Than Me, Rehab) b. 1983

Today’s Historical Obits…                                                           

Dante Alighieri, Italian poet (Divine Comedy)—malaria--1321-- at 56

Mohammed Abdul Hakim Amer, Egyptian vice-PM—suicide after 

        failed coup—1967--at 47

Aaron Burr, 3rd VP—1836—at 80

James Fenimore Cooper, author [The Last of the Mohicans]—dropsy—1851—at 61 

Isadora Duncan, dancer--scarf became entangled in her car's wheel—1927—at 50

Janet Gaynor, silent film actress (Sunrise)--traffic accident—1984--at 77

Henry Gibson, American actor and songwriter [Laugh In]—cancer—2009—at 73

Grace Kelly, princess of Monaco, actress--car crash—1982--at 52

Pres William McKinley, 25^th President of US--gunshot wounds—1901--at 58

Jody Powell, American press secretary to Jimmy Carter—heart attack—2009—at 65

Juliet Prowse, actress/dancer (Mona McCluskey)-- pancreatic cancer—1996--at 59

Beah Richards, actress of stage, screen [Hurry Sundown] and 

           television [Cosby]—2000—at 80

Patrick Swayze, American actor, dancer, and songwriter-- 

          pancreatic cancer—2009—at 57 

Answers…                                                                                                                                            

Do you know what this word means?

The category you fall into at 50. Your tricenarian and vicenarian decades will be forgotten dreams.

What is the answer?

Moth broth

Rebus

To err on the right side

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  ☺