8/14/13



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Almanac: Flagstaff:  Week: 33/ Day:  226 
Today: H 80°L 44°
Wind: ave:   8mph; Gusts:  29mph  Ave. humidity:  60%
Average Low      Average High
50°                        80°    
Record Low        Record High
39° (1999)           90° (2002)

Quote of the Day




Today’s Historical Highlights
10,000 Northern Ireland women demonstrate for peace in Belfast…1976
10th Olympic Games at Los Angeles closes…1932
14th Olympic games close at London, Great Britain…1948
1st allied air raid on Borneo…1943
1st Olympic basketball game (Berlin)…1936
6th Olympic Games open in Antwerp…1920
2,000 marines land to capture Beijing, ending Boxer rebellion…1900
Japan's first patent is issued to the inventor of a rust-proof paint…1885
Mount Rushmore 1st proposed…1925
Oldest known exactly dated printed book (c 3 years after Gutenberg)…1457
Seminole War ends; Indians removed from Florida to Oklahoma…1842
Social Security Act becomes law…1935
US ends secret bombing of Cambodia…1973

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



My Free Rambling Thoughts   
Technology has been slowly destroying common sense in our world. I complained about my eye drops last month, and today I took the new prescription in to get the drops that were generic and cheaper. Low and behold, the pharmacist filled the script with the non-generic and more expensive brand. They now claim that the prescription of last month that led to the discovery on my part of the generic brand was not the same as the new one. The company quit producing the original expensive drops when the patent was about to run out and used the same name but added some unimportant ingredient and added the infamous ‘-Z’ to the brand name, extending the patent. The Drs. Office had sent a prescription for the previous now non-existent drug, without the Z. It took 25 minutes to work it out, only to find out that all the pharmacy had was the small bottles of the generic. So they gave me a small free bottle of the generic and I can get the big bottle of the generic tomorrow. How one computer at the doctor’s office would put out a script for a non-existent drug and the pharmacy would fill it with a generic is beyond my comprehension. How the pharmacy could fill the new script without wondering why it changed is also beyond me. oops, No it's not...'this is what the computer spit out.'
 
So with all the confusion about my script and the mess with my financial advisor, I am going to start again, as I did years ago to check documents very carefully…including but not limited to store receipts, any documents that come in the mail…no longer trusting anyone to watch out for my ‘stuff’ except me. Technology is making way to mistakes in our lives.
All American citizens of voting age are expected to have jury duty sometime in their lives. Now a judge has decided that a juror does not have to speak English to serve on a jury. Naturalized citizens must pass a English proficiency exam, but may not use English in their daily lives. The judge has overturned a conviction because a juror was dismissed before the trial for not having English skills. Does this mean that now all courtrooms will have to have a translator on duty to translate for certain jurors. This sure opens up a can of worms.  As a linguist I say yes, the juror really needs to understand the trial. But after sitting on a Grand Jury once a week for 3 months I have to say, our three or four hours each week would certainly have been extended a lot as our jury had Navajos, Hopis, and Spanish speakers that I was aware of.  Side note: while I was standing in line at the pharmacy, the tech was helping another customer next to me. She commented that the woman had an slight accent and asked where she was from. The customer said she was German. The tech and the customer carried on a little conversation in German. Then the tech returned to help me and she had no apparent accent. Interesting for sure.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
I am a rock group that has 4 members, all of whom are dead, one of which was assassinated. What am I?
Lifestyle  Substance:     
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Hmmmm…Tongue Twisters
N    
Nine nice night nurses nursing nicely.
Nine nice night nurses nursing nicely.
Ever wonder where the name came from?
Toshiba
Quite possibly the world’s oldest consumer electronics company, Toshiba started life in the late 19th Century as two separate companies - first in 1875 as telephone engineering firm Tanaka Seizo-Sho, and then with light bulb maker Hakunestu-sha five years later.
In the following years both companies changed their names again - first Hakunestu-sha became Tokyo Denki (aka Tokyo Electric Co) in 1899, while Tanaka Seizo-Sho morphed into Shibaura Engineering Works. These proved to be the foundation for the Toshiba name when the companies merged to form the Tokyo Shibaura Electric company in 1939.
Ok, then?



Harper’s Index    
  • Number of Falkland Island residents who voted in favor of remaining part of the UK in a recent election: 1513
  • Who voted against: 3

Songs with Double Meanings:
  • Suffragette City - David Bowie
  •  Key Double Lyric of song: "Henry, don't be unkind, go away (hey man), I can't take you this time, no way (hey man), droogie don't crash here, there's only room for one and here she comes, here she comes" (1) A guy is kicking out his friend so he can make it with a hot chick who is visiting; (2) Same meaning as (1) except the guy is bisexual and is kicking out his male lover for a fling with a female; (3) Unlikely meaning: "Henry" is used as a drug slang word for heroin, and the dude isn't willing to share his drug fix with his roommate.
  • Ticket to Ride - The Beatles
  •  Key Triple Lyric of song: "She's got a ticket to ride" (1) His girlfriend is leaving and she has a ticket to board a bus or a train; (2) His girlfriend is leaving him and she is heading to Ryde, England; (3) Describes health cards indicating a clean bill of health carried by Hamburg, Germany prostitutes (where the Beatles lived in the early '60s) with "ride" in this case meaning slang for having (or about to have) sex.

Unusual Fact of the Day
Although the word "earthling" today conjures visions of science-fiction stories, it is actually the Old English word for a farmer.
Joke-of-the-day
An airline ticket office in Copenhagen reminds you:
WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS
Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
AVOIDING A CRASH IN A CAR RACE
At high speed, nothing stays in the same place for long. Aim your car at the spot where you see an accident start. Chances are the accident will have moved by the time you get there.   
Yeah, It Really Happened
Ulysses Corwin Nevermissashot -- yes, that's his real name -- was arrested Tuesday in connection to the November robbery of a U.S. Bank teller at gunpoint in Quilcene, Wash. No shots were fired in the alleged robbery, but Nevermissashot fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, according to the Peninsula Daily News.Forensic evidence tied him to the crime, police said, adding that a smoldering hand-rolled cigarette found near the bank carried his DNA. A black plastic bag he dropped at the scene also carried his finger print, UPI reports.
It was the first time the bank branch had ever been robbed. Nobody was injured.
Nevermissashot's bail reduct request was denied by a judge. The suspected robber was accused in 2007 of sexually assaulting a girl in Poulsbo, over the course of several years. He was charged with second-degree rape in September of that year, and pleaded guilty to domestic violence and third-degree assault, according to the Kitsap Sun.
Investigators think that there may have been accomplices in the bank robbery.

Interesting Info:
  • Dr. Joel Poinsett, the 1st US ambassador to Mexico, brought the poinsettia to US in 1828. The plant, called "flower of the blessed night" in Mexico was renamed in Poinsett's honor.
  • Eggplant is a member of the thistle family.
  • From 70 to 80 percent of all ripe olives are grown in California's approximately 35,000 acres. In the 1700s, Franciscan monks brought olives to Mexico and then into California by way of the missions. The first cuttings were planted in 1769 at the San Diego Mission. Commercial cultivation of California olives began in the late 1800s. Today, anywhere from 80,000 to 160,000 tons of olives are produced in California each year.
  • From the 1500's to the 1700's, tobacco was prescribed by doctors to treat a variety of ailments including headaches, toothaches, arthritis and bad breath.

Calendar Information        
Happening This Week:
10-16
Elvis Week
Feeding Pets of the Homeless Week
Weird Contest Week

Today Is                                                                      
·        National Navajo Code Talkers Day
·        V-J Day [Victory in Japan Day 1945]
^^^
·        China: Festival of Hungry Ghosts
·        Pakistan: Independence Day (1947 from British Raj)

Today’s Events through History  
"Field & Stream" begins publishing…1873
Democratic Convention in NYC nominates Jimmy Carter & Walter Mondale…1980
Denver vote for a 1% sales tax to pay for a baseball franchise…1990
Lewis and Clark first reach a Minnetaree and Mandan village…1806
Mass colonists challenge British rule by an Elm (Liberty Tree)…1765
Queen Victoria recieves Zulu chief Cetewayo…1882
Wide scale power blackout in the northeast United States and Canada…2003

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
Halle Berry, Miss World USA (1986)/actress (Boomerang) is 47
David Crosby, rocker (Crosby, Stills & Nash-Southern Cross) is 72
Antonio Fargas, Bronx, actor (Huggy Bear-Starsky & Hutch) is 67
Buddy Greco, jazz singer (Away We Go, Broadway Open House) is 87
Gary Larson, cartoonist (Far Side) is 63
Steve Martin, comedian (Parenthood, Jerk, Roxanne) is 68
Susan Saint James, [Miller], LA CA, actress (McMillian & Wife) is 67
Danielle Steel, novelist (Wanderlust, The House) is 66
Tim Tebow, American football player is 26

Remembered for being born today
Alice Ghostley, actress (Bewitched, Designing Women) [1926-2007]
Letitia Elizabeth Landon, England, poet (Heath's Book of Beauty) [1802-1838]
Hans Christian Oersted, Denmark, physicist/chemist (View of Chemical Law) [1777-1851]
John Ringling North, circus director (Ringling Bros) [1903-1985]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                            
David Farragut, Admiral (Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!)…heart attack…1870…at 69
William Randolph Hearst, newspaper publisher…1951…at 88
Ron Palillo, actor (Arnold-Welcome Back Kotter)…heart attack…2012…at 63

Brain Teasers
Mt. Rushmore
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  §

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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.