8/17/13

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Almanac: Flagstaff:  Week: 33/ Day: 229   

Today: H 83°…L 53°

Wind: ave:   8mph; Gusts:  30mph  Ave. humidity:  57%

Average Low      Average High

49°                        80°    

Record Low        Record High

37° (1968)           89° (1939)

Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

1st ascent of Mt Rainier, Washington…1870

1st bank in Hawaii opens…1858

1st Compact Discs (CDs) were released to the public in Germany…1982

1st public bathhouse with showers opens in NYC (People's Bath)…1891

3 members of Russian punk band Pussy Riot are jailed for two years…2012 

Francis Gary Powers U-2 spy trial opens in Moscow…1960

Gay pride events are banned for a century in Moscow…2012

Joe Pulitzer donated $1 million to Columbia U & begins Pulitzer Prizes…1903

Kennedy administration establishes Alliance for Progress…1961

Koreas divided on 38th parallel with US occupying the southern area…1945

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Really warmed up today…then a huge storm wandered in and cooled off everything…even had a little steam coming off the drive in front of my house. Then the storm was gone and while a little humid it turned into a nice day. All that is needed now is a breeze.

 

Oops…No matter which side of the Snowden leaks one stands, it is very interesting to learn this stuff. Today we learned that the NSA….the super secret spy agency…made a little mistake. While trying to spy on phone calls in Egypt, they were actually spying on Washington DC phone calls and didn’t realize it for some time. How could this happen? Easy…the country code of Egypt is ‘020’ and the area code for DC is 202.  A simple transition of numbers. Could happen to anybody. But wouldn’t one think that after listening to a few dozen phone calls, all in English, that some low level listener might want to let the boss know that suddenly the calls in Egypt are now in English. Certainly gives me pause.

 

I don’t speak Arabic, but it is interesting how things get translated. For the past few days all the networks have been telling the world that after Friday Prayers the Muslim Brotherhood is calling for a ‘Day of Rage’ about the overthrow of the elected government. Now, today, during the ‘Day of Rage’ CNN and others are now calling it a ‘Day of Anger’. This sure shows how important it is to have a good translator when dealing with foreign languages of any kind. Rage seems to be quite a few degrees more intense than Anger. Sadly, no matter what it is called, too many people are being slaughtered on some of the streets. It is also important to realize that there are 54million citizens in Egypt, and the violence is limited to a very small portion of the population. CNN had two amazing photos on its news…one was a picture drawn by an 8 year old child showing two Coptic Christian churches with little faces crying and a Mosque, also crying wrapping an arm around one of the Coptic churches. The other photo showed a beach, packed with sunbathers and swimmers in the foreground and a city with thick black smoke in the background. While all this violence is very real, not all…not even most…Egyptians are involved. It is small minorities on both sides with the rest of the 54 million population living their lives.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

When you curtail a word, you remove the last letter and still have a valid word. You will be given clues for the two words, longer word first.
Example: Begin -> Heavenly body               Answer: The words are Start and Star.

1. Position; observe -> Compete 2. Introductory textbook -> First in rank 3. School subject -> Floor covering 4. Written composition -> Show displeasure 5. Make again -> A colour 6. What person (objective) -> What person (subjective) 7. Close together; slow to learn -> Lairs 8. Therefore -> Unit of energy Bonus: Take the eight curtailed letters and form a one-word anagram; you will find an assignment.

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• John F. Kennedy at the first Anniversary of Alliance for Progress

• The best of Mae West

• Floyd Red Crow Westerman - "Missionary"

• Floyd Red Crow Westerman - "They Didn't Listen"

• Pearl Bailey on "What's My Line?"

Hmmmm…Tongue Twisters

Q    
Quick kiss. Quicker kiss.
R    
Red leather, yellow leather.
^^
Red lorry, yellow lorry.
^^
Ruby Rugby's brother bought and brought her back some rubber baby-buggy bumpers.
Quick kiss. Quicker kiss.R      Red leather, yellow leather. ^^ Red lorry, yellow lorry. ^^ Ruby Rugby's brother bought and brought her back some rubber baby-buggy bumpers.

Not a Fan of Faux News, but this is crazy.

Harper’s Index

Estimated number of minutes needed to fill out the benefit paperwork required by Obamacare: 45   

Ok, then?

Song Titles:

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida - Iron Butterfly: "In-a-gadda-da-vida, honey, don't you know that I love you" No, these lyrics don't make sense and really, they aren't suppose to. This is one of those songs that we have been given the answers to as to why it was written that way. The song's title (and the lyrics) were originally "In The Garden Of Eden", but according to the liner notes from a latter day CD compilation release: .....  The band's drummer, Ron Bushy, when the band was working on the song, asked singer Doug Ingle what he was singing, because he could not make out the words. He heard "in-a-gadda-da-vida", and after that the band liked the jumbled, misunderstood lyrics better, and kept them.

Unusual Fact of the Day

In 1835, John Wilkes Booth’s father Junius threatened to kill President Andrew Jackson.

Joke-of-the-day

When Mozart passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noises coming from the area where Mozart was buried.

Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it.

The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Mozart's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."

He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling."

So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the

Sixth...the Fifth..." Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery. "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Mozart decomposing."

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

ESTIMATING THE AGE OF A RIVER

 The more curves in a river, the older it is.   

Yeah, It Really Happened

Most people are aware of "ass crack". That is where a smuggler attempts to hide crack cocaine up his or her butt. The more hard core smugglers will actually ingest it, sealed in a balloon or a condom, for excretion and retrieval later.

Now in the United States, if authorities suspect someone of having secreted drugs in this way they will lock them up and observe them for as long as it takes for certain natural processes to occur, and then examine the results.

That is too slow for the Russians. When Russian police in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk suspected someone of swallowing drugs, they hired a doctor to surgically extract the drugs from the suspect's stomach.

Now, you may think using "ass crack" is bad. Russian police actually arrested the surgeon who did the operation, accusing that he stole some of the drugs he had been called on to extract. Heroin in this case.

They searched the doctor and found 5 grams of heroin hidden in his clothing. "The doctor was under the influence of narcotics at the time of detention," police said in a statement.

If convicted of stealing the heroin, the doctor faces up to 15 years in prison.

Somewhat Useless Information   

• Harrison Ford was fitting a door for Francis Ford Coppola when a studio exec asked him to take a break to read some lines for Star Wars with actresses who were testing the film. The force was with him to land the role of Han Solo.

• Sir Alec Guinness, who played Ben "Obi-Wan" Kenobi in the film, made a fortune. He had negotiated a deal for 2% of the box office revenue.

• George Lucas had planned to have the film score sound like the classical music in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey before Steven Spielberg introduced him to composer John Williams.

• When writing the script, George Lucas briefly considered making the characters of Luke Skywalker and his aunt and uncle dwarves.

• George Lucas' friend Francis Ford Coppola was the inspiration for the character of Han Solo.

• George Lucas once said that the Millennium Falcon's shape was modeled after a hamburger.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

15-21

National Aviation Week
18-24

Little League Baseball World Series
Minority Enterprise Development Week
25-31

Be Kind To Humankind Week
National Safe at Home Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        International Geocaching Day

·        International Homeless Animals Day

·        Meaning of "Is" Day

·        National Thrift Shop Day

^^^

·        Gabon: Independence Day (1960 from France)

·        Indonesia: Independence Day (1945 from Netherlands)

Today’s Events through History  

1st air mail (in a balloon) took off from Lafayette Ind…1859

1st meeting of Narcotics Anonymous in Southern California…1953

Monty Python's "Life of Brian" premieres…1979

Pontiac and the British sign a treaty…1765

President Bill Clinton admits in taped testimony that he had an "improper 

     physical relationship" with intern Monica Lewinsky…1998

Robert Fulton's steamboat Clermont begins 1st trip up Hudson River…1807

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Robert De Niro, actor (Bang the Drum Slowly, Taxi Driver) is 70

Maureen O'Hara [Fitzsimmons], Irish actress and singer (Miracle on 34th St) is 93

Sean Penn, actor (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) ia 53

Remembered for being born today

Glenn Corbett [Glen Edwin Rothenburg], actor (Route 66, Shenandoah) [1933-1993]

Davy Crockett, frontiersman/adventurer/politician (Alamo) [1786-1836]

Samuel Goldwyn, [Goldfish], movie producer (MGM) [1879-1974]

Ted Hughes, Mytholmroyd Yorkshire, British Poet Laureate [1930-1998]

Francis Gary Powers, US spy (USSR captures him in 1959 U-2 incident) [1929-1977]

Frederick Russell, developed 1st successful typhoid fever vaccine [1870-1960]

Mae West, actress (She Dine him Wrong) [1893-1980]

Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Native American musician-actor [1936-2007]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Pearl Bailey, actress (Landlord)/singer…heart attack…1990…at 72

Frederick II (the Great), King of Prussia (1740-86)/composer…1786…at 74

Ira Gershwin, lyricist…1983…at 86

Rudolph Hess, Nazi (46 years in Spandau Prison)…suicide…1987…at 93

Jose de San Martin, South American revolutionary hero and general…1850…at 72

Vivian Vance, actress (Ethel Mertz-I Love Lucy)…bone cancer…1979…at 70

Brain Teasers

1. View -> Vie 2. Primer -> Prime 3. Math -> Mat 4. Book -> Boo 5. Redo -> Red 6. Whom -> Who 7. Dense -> Dens 8. Ergo -> Erg Bonus: HOMEWORK

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  §