12/10/13

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 50 / Day: 344   

Today: L -9°…H 20°… Ave. humidity: 78%

Wind: ave:   20mph; Gusts:  27mph  

Average Low: 17° Record Low:  -9° (2013)

Average High: 44° Record High:  65° (1939)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

1st Nobel Peace Prizes (to Jean Henri Dunant, Frederic Passy)…1901

Pres Theodore Roosevelt (1st American) awarded Nobel Peace Prize…1906

Nobel peace prize awarded to US President Wilson…1919

Ralph J Bunche (1st black American) presented Nobel Peace Prize…1950

Albert Schweitzer receives Nobel Peace Prize…1954

Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Dr Martin Luther King Jr…1964

Danuta Walesa, wife of Lech Walesa, accepts his Nobel Peace Prize…1983

Nobel prize awarded to Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres & Yasser Arafat…1994

Nobel Peace Prize 2002 to Jimmie Carter...2002

Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Barack H. Obama…2009

Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nelson Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk..1993

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

How many can you identify? Answers in Today’s Birthdays

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

OK…it was officially C-O-L-D this morning. When I got up about 6:30 it was -6°. Our little mountain town was frozen more than solid. Looks like it will be cold for the next few days. Come on, I need to do some Christmas shopping. And these cold temps are too cold to put me in the mood. It is a whole lot colder in other parts of the country, but I am not in those areas…for a reason.

 

I guess I’m not the only one not in the Christmas mood…Iran is upset and threatens to pull out of talks, Russia sez we shouldn’t have out-ed their spies. Come on, it’s the Christmas season.

 

So, now we learn that NSA has been busy…very busy. Not only do they collect data for gamers who play on-line they have also paid their spies to play the games and get into conversations with other players. All looking for terrorists. I just watched a CNN show on how video games and gun ownership relate to violence around the world. Japan has the most violent video games and the most gamers per capita. They also have strict gun laws and one of the lowest gun ownership rates in the world. I know a few late-teen or early twenties guys who play these violent games. None are planning terrorist attacks or knew that their conversations were being monitored and/or recorded or that they might be playing with real spies. Neither did the parents who were paying much of the bills. Guess we are never not being watched, checked up on, or being recorded.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

They use me to build castles, but I'm not a brick.

They use me to make hands, but I'm not a finger.

I'm international, and cosmopolitan. I'm very often in Monte Carlo, Las Vegas, Atlantic City and even in Punta del Este.

I'm not alive but I have 81 hearts.

What am I?

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Old Yeller Theme Song

• Tribute to Dan Blocker

• Patch Adams (3/10) Movie CLIP

• Charles Rennie Mackintosh - A Video Portrait

• Eugene McCarthy speaks 1968

Very Strange Laws…New Hampshire

• Any cattle that cross state roads must be fitted with a device to gather its feces.

• It is considered an offense to check into a hotel under an assumed name.

• It is illegal to pick seaweed up off of the beach.

• On Sundays citizens may not relieve themselves while looking up.

• You cannot sell the clothes you are wearing to pay off a gambling debt.

• You may not run machinery on Sundays.

• You may not tap your feet, nod your head, or in any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.

• Claremont--
In cemeteries it is illegal to: get drunk, picnic, enter at night, and enter by one’s self if that person is younger than 10.

• White Mountain National Forest--
If a person is caught raking the beaches, picking up litter, hauling away trash, building a bench for the park, or many other kind things without a permit, he/she may be fined $150 for ”maintaining the national forest without a permit”.

OK Then…

Harper’s Index 

Date on which Mississippi became the last state to legalize the brewing of beer at home: 7/1/2013

Unusual Fact of the Day

Heil Honey I'm Home!, a British show about the escapades of Hitler, Eva Braun, and their Jewish neighbors, was canceled after one episode in 1990.

Joke-of-the-day

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and George Bush are in a plane.

The pilot says that the passengers must lighten their load. so the three presidents decide to drop one item

George Washington drops a quarter

Abe Lincoln drops a penny

George Bush drops a grenade

When the presidents land, they find someone holding their head and cursing.

George Washington asks the man what's wrong.

"I was walking down the street when a quarter falls from the sky and hits my head!"

So the presidents continue down the road and find someone hopping on one foot, holding the other, cursing. Abe Lincoln asks "What happened?"

"I was standing on my porch barefoot when a penny falls from the sky and hits it!"

The presidents continue once more and find a young boy laughing hysterically.

George Bush asks "What's so funny?"

The boy replies "I farted and my house exploded!!!"

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

BOSTON - Professional announcers and linguists may not agree but MIT researchers say "pad kid poured curd pulled cod" is among the toughest tongue twisters around. The phrase - which must be repeated 10 times as fast as possible - is designed to trigger speech errors, its creators told Boston Daily. "If anyone can say this 10 times quickly, they get a prize," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychologist Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, who helped come up with the repetitive verbal challenge. She and her colleagues presented their research on misspoken sounds Thursday at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in San Francisco. Their research indicates there are two types of combinations of alternating words: simple lists and full sentences of same sounds that are inverted. Verbal slip-ups occur more frequently on strings of similar sounding words. That's how they came up with the phrase "pad kid poured curd pulled cod." Say that 10 times, fast.  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• Superglue is so strong that a single square-inch bond can lift a ton of weight.

• Superglue doesn't stick to the bottle because it needs moisture to set, and there is no moisture in the bottle.

• Cyanoacrylate products are a $325-million-a-year industry. Approximately 90 percent of U.S. homes have at least one tube.

• During the Vietnam War tubes of superglue were put in U.S. soldiers' first-aid kits to help seal wounds.

• Special kinds of superglue are now used in hospitals worldwide, reducing the need for sutures, stitches, and staples.

• Superglue is now used in forensic detection. When investigators open a foil packet of ethyl-gel cyanoacrylate, the fumes settle on skin oils left behind in human fingerprints, turning the invisible smears into visible marks.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

10-17: Human Rights Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        Dewey Decimal System Day

·        Human Rights Day

·        Nobel Prize Day

·        International Shareware Day

·        National Day of the Horse

~~~~~

·        Thailand: Constitution Day (1932)

·        US: Mississippi: Admission Day (1817—20th)

Today’s Events through History  

Martin Luther publicly burned papal edict demands he recant…1520

France begins use of Gregorian calendar…1582

Mass Bay becomes 1st American colonial government to borrow money…1690

Bonnie Prince Charlie's army reaches Manchester…1745

Metric system established in France…1799

1st traffic lights are installed outside the Palace of Westminster in London…1868 

Women suffrage (right to vote) granted in Wyoming Territory (US 1st)…1869

Spanish-American War ends; US acquires Philippines, PR & Guam…1898

Edward VIII signs Instrument of Abdication, giving up British throne to marry 

     Wallis Simpson…1936

William H Rehnquist confirmed as Supreme Court justice…1971

1st "planet" outside our solar system discovered…1984

IM Pei receives $5 million for design of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame…1991

Google begins selling US$99 laptops…2012

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Tommy Kirk, actor (Old Yeller) is 72

Nia Peeples, [Vernia], Hollywood, dancer/host (Fame, Party Machine) is 52

Bobby Flay, American celebrity chef and restaurateur is 49

Raven-Symoné, American actress and singer is 28

Remembered for being born today

King James I of Scotland, Dunfermline Palace, Fife, [1394-1437]

Emily Dickinson, poet (Collected Poems) [1830-1886]

Melvil[le Louis K] Dewey, created Dewey Decimal System for libraries [1851-1931]

Dan Blocker, actor (Tiny-Cimarron City, Hoss-Bonanza) [1928-1972]

Chet Huntley, newscaster (NBC Huntley-Brinkley Report) [1911-1974]

Dorothy Lamour, [Mary Kaumeyer], actress and singer (Road to Bali) [1914-1996]

Harold Gould, Schenectady NY, actor (He & She, Martin-Rhoda, Big Bus) [1923-2010]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Eugene McCarthy, U.S. Senator…2005…@89

Red Cloud, Lakota Sioux chief…1909…@87

Freeman "Amos" Gosden, US radio actor (Amos 'n' Andy)…1982…@83

Richard Pryor, American comedian and actor…heart attack…2005…@65

Alfred Nobel, Swedish Nobel Prize…stroke…1896…@63

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish architect, designer…cancer…1928…@60

Horace Elgin Dodge, American automobile manufacturing pioneer…cirrhosis…1920…@52 

Faron Young, country singer/actor (Hidden Guns)…suicide…1996…@34

Otis Redding, singer (Dock of Bay)…plane crash…1967…@26

Brain Teasers

I'm a deck of cards.

Because there are 52 cards plus two jokers in a deck, the total is 54. If you count all the hearts drawn in the 13 cards of hearts, you'll find 81.

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  §