Nov 24, 2012

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Flagstaff Almanac:  Week: 47/ Day:    

Today: H   61°…L 21° Averages: H  48° L 21°

Records: H   69°(1954)…L -4°(1931)

Wind: ave:   3mph; Gusts:  12mph

Quote of the Day:

Today’s Historical Highlights:

1st live murder on TV-Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald—1963

1st observation of transit of Venus occurred—1639

400 die of respiratory failure & heart attack in killer NYC smog—1966

Agatha Christie's "Mousetrap" opens in London (still running) —1952

Air Force One, 1st US Presidential airplane, christened—1954

 Brady bill passes establishing 5-day waiting period for handgun sales—1993

Charles Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species"—1859

Dan "DB" Cooper parachutes from a Northwest AL 727 with $200,000—1971

FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens—1932

Ireland votes to end 70-year-old ban on divorce (50.28% to 49.72%)—1995

John Steinbeck's novel "Pearl" published—1947

US admits troops in Vietnam were exposed to the toxic Agent Orange—1979

Wilt Chamberlain pulls down 55 rebounds in a game (NBA record) —1960

♪  ♪   Happy Birthday To: ♪. ♪   

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

 Returns tomorrow

Free Rambling Thoughts:   

A nice day…again…here is Flag. I skipped all the Black Friday mayhem. Nothing I needed was on sale and no desire to check out the crowds. Still recovering from all that food yesterday by taking a nice walk. A friend from Tuba stopped by, after dropping his wife at the mall. Nice visit. He told me his wife had come in Flag last night for the sales. She said the mall and WalMart were packed at 10pm. She got what she wanted, then came back today, husband in tow, to check out the late day sales. Both are retired and have lots of grand and great grand kids so I guess it is worth it for them.  

I got my Verizon bill and had a $3 charge for roaming. I checked at it is when I went to lunch in Cameron. I did get a short call, but I have nationwide calling. It took the phone guy 10 minutes to figure out that Navajo/AZ was in the US. He was in Atlanta. I actually had to look up the zip code and tell him. He finally deleted the charge, but informed me I hadn’t updated my ‘roaming services’ in 6 months and that was the problem. I told him I would update, but that wasn’t the problem since Cameron had always been in the US since AZ became a state…100 years ago. Oh, well…just have to keep educating people.

 

I read a very good article today about ‘news’ in our time. Back in the day there were several shows on each of several channels that would debate issues…usually a conservative and a liberal. *Note remember ‘Point-Counterpoint’ on 60 minutes. Well over the past decade all of the shows have disappeared. Now the cable channels are locked into sharing news from their perspective. The alphabet channels aren’t doing any real issues programs either. 60 Minutes has continued some investigative journalism, but the other shows are more fluff than actually educating the public on real issues we face today. Seldom do any of these shows show both sides. Such a shame as we need a truly educated populous and without hearing both sides, it is hard to learn. For example, no news source has really followed both sides of the Twinkie mess. We also don’t really know what is going on in the Middle East or Egypt. We get short news clips regarding the bombing, but the news isn’t telling us the back story.

Game  Center: (answers at the end of post)

Duplicate Letter Puzzles

Find common words with certain letters duplicated in the given positions. V stands for a duplicated vowel, C stands for a duplicated consonant, and _ stands for any letter

C C V _ V

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Unusual Uses for Everyday Things: White Vinegar

Pinch-hit for lemon in a savory recipe. Use 1/2 teaspoon of vinegar in place of 1 teaspoon of lemon juice. 

Remove coffee or tea stains from the bottom of a cup. Swish 2 tablespoons of vinegar around in the cup, then wash as usual. 

• Treat oily hair. Vinegar is a good degreaser for oily hair because it helps adjust pH levels. Shampoo your hair as usual, rinse, then pour 1/4 cup over it and rinse again. 
• Wipe salt stains off boots. Dip a cloth or an old T-shirt into vinegar, then wipe away the white residue. 
• Make wool sweaters fluffier. Drop in a couple of capfuls of vinegar during the rinse cycle for an extra-soft feel. 
• Deodorize a garbage disposal. Make vinegar ice cubes and feed them down the disposal. After grinding, run cold water through the drain. 
• Clean a teakettle or a coffeemaker. Boil a mixture of water and vinegar in a teakettle, then wipe away the grime. Fill the reservoir of a coffeemaker with a mixture of vinegar and water and run it through a brewing cycle. Follow this with several cycles of water to rinse thoroughly. 
• Clean a dishwasher. Once a month, with the machine empty, run a cup of vinegar through an entire cycle to reduce soap buildup on the inner mechanisms and glassware. 
•  Remove stubborn price tags or stickers. Paint them with several coats of vinegar, let the liquid soak in for five minutes, then wipe away the residue. 
• Kill weeds between cracks in paving stones and sidewalks. Fill a spray bottle with straight vinegar and spray multiple times. (Be careful not to get any on the surrounding grass, as it will kill that too.)

Old Saying Explained:

FLY IN THE OINTMENT…This old saying comes from the Bible. In Ecclesiastes 10:1 the writer says that dead flies give perfume a bad smell (in old versions of the Bible the word for perfume is translated 'ointment').

Ok, then?

TV Theme Songs you may remember:

Star Trek:The Next Generation - Alexander Courage and Jerry Goldsmith

Read This Headline Carefully!!

Miners Refuse to Work After Death

America’s Historical Buildings:

Prairie Home Companion:

Garrison Keillor drives around Downtown Saint Paul  

Harper’s Index:         

Chances that an op-ed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Washington Post is written by a woman: 1 in 5

Ruminations:

Notice how writes doen’t rewrite books, how about we stop remaking movies?

Unusual Fact of the Day:

The Jaws of Life were invented by George Hurst, who was a mechanical engineer and auto racing enthusiast. He conceived the idea after witnessing an accident at the Indy 500 where the driver died because he couldn’t be extracted from his car in time.

Found on You Tube: 

• Pat Morita discusses getting cast as Mr. Miyagi

• Conservative Icon William F. Buckley

Joke-of-the-day:

A husband was having great difficulty getting along with his wife – nothing but arguing and friction – so he decided to consult a marriage counselor. After they had talked for a while, the counselor said, “I suggest that you run five miles each day for a week. Then please call me back.”

A week later the counselor received a call from the husband, “Well,” asked the counselor, “how are things going with you and your wife?

“How should I know?” said the husband. “I’m thirty-five miles away.”

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

PLANTING A SEED…When planting seed, don't cover it deeper than three times its diameter.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

An animal rights group called Showing Animals Respect and Kindness, or SHARK, is in the midst of a campaign against the Wing Pointe commercial hunting grounds in Hamburg, Berks County and its live pigeon shoots. Recently SHARK began to use a remote-controlled "Octocopter" equipped with a high tech video camera to secretly record the pigeon shoots as they happen.

This did not "fly" well with the hunting club members.

You can imagine what happened to an unwanted spy drone flying over private property filled with men with guns.

"The pigeon shooters are basically going into hiding," said Steve Hindi, president of SHARK. "So they're using a ring that's up a hill and completely surrounded by trees. So the only way you can get to it is through the air."

Hindi said he heard a single gunshot before they lost the camera feed and the drone went down. The police are investigating the incident.

Unfortunately for SHARK, the pigeon shoots are perfectly legal, and since this is the fourth time this kind of thing has happened with no results whatsoever, it looks like the only thing SHARK is accomplishing is giving the hunters something else to shoot at in addition to pigeons.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• Butterflies range in size from a tiny 1/8 inch to a huge almost 12 inches.
• Butterflies can see red, green, and yellow.
• The top butterfly flight speed is 12 miles per hour. Some moths can fly 25 miles per hour!
• Monarch butterflies journey from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of about 2,000 miles, and return to the north again in the spring.
• Butterflies cannot fly if their body temperature is less than 86 degrees.
• Many insects can carry 50 times their own body weight. This would be like an adult person lifting two heavy cars full of people.  

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

18-24

National Bible Week►National Family Week►National Game & Puzzle Week ►Better Conversation Week

21-28

National Deal Week

22-26

Church/State Separation Week

Today Is                                                                      

Ashura: the 10th day of Muharram in the Islamic calendar and marks

     the climax of the Mourning of Muharram.

Small Business Saturday

Celebrate Your Unique Talent Day

D.B. Cooper Day

International Aura Awareness Day

Use Even If Seal Is Broken Day

Today’s Events through History  

1st Lutheran pastor ordained in America, Justus Falckner at Phila—1703

1st US absentee voting law enacted by Vermont—1896

Abel Janzoon Tasman discovers Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania)1642

American Woman's Suffrage Association forms (Cleveland) —1869

Egyptian commandos storm captured Boeing in Malta, 60 killed—1985

Gerald Ford & Leonid Brezhnev signs SALT-2-treaty—1974

Italian parliament gives Benito Mussolini dictatorial powers "for 1 year"—1922

Joseph F Glidden patents barbed wire—1874

Lt William L Calley, charged with massacre of over 100 civilians in My Lai Vietnam in March 1968, ordered to stand trial by court martial—1969

Monica Seles, sets female tennis record winning $2,457,758 in a year—1991

National Rifle Association organized (NYC) —1871

Spemicalawba (called Captain Logan or High Horn), s a young boy, is captured by General James Logan. General Logan raises him until he is returned to the Shawnee during a prisoner exchange—1812

Un-American Activities Committee finds "Hollywood 10" in contempt—1947 

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

In their 70’s

Pete Best, drummer (Beatles) is 71

Oscar Robertson [The Big O], NBA guard (Cin, Milwaukee, Olympic-gold-1960) is 74 

In their 60’s

Dwight Schultz, actor (A-Team-TV) is 65

Linda Tripp, Clinton scandal is 63

In their 50’s

Denise Crosby, Hollywood California, actress (Tasha-Star Trek: Next Gen) is 55

In their 30’s

Katherine Heigl , actress (Grey's Anatomy) will be 34

Remembered for being born today

William F. Buckley Jr, conservative author and commentator (National Review, Firing Line) (1925-2008)

Ted Bundy, Burlington VT, serial murderer (1946-executed-1989)

Dale Carnegie, author (How to Win Friends & Influence People) (1888-1955)

Thomas Dick, Scottish scientific teacher and writer (1774-1857)

Scott Joplin, US, entertainer/composer (The Entertainer) (1868?-1917)

Kirby Grant, Butte Mont, actor (Sky King) (1911-1985)

John V Lindsay, (Mayor-R/D-NY, 1965-73) (1921-2000)

Charles "Lucky" Luciano, Sicily, NYC Mafia gangster, (1897-1962)

Zachary Taylor, (Whig) 12th Pres (1784- cholera in office-1850)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Arthur Hailey, British-born novelist—2004—at 84

James J Kilroy, tank inspector (Kilroy was here)—1962—at 60

John Knox, Scottish preacher—1572—at about 67

Freddie Mercury, British singer (Queen)—AIDS—1991—at 45

Pat Morita, American actor (Karate Kid)— kidney failure—2005—at 73

Margaret Tudor, wife of James IV of Scotland—stroke—1541—at 52

Answer: Duplicate Letter Puzzles

 llama

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  §