4/6/13

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Flagstaff Almanac:  Week: 14/ Day: 96   Today: H 63°…L 32°

Averages: H  55° L 26° Records: H 75°(1959)…L 6°(1956)

Wind: ave:   21mph; Gusts:  38mph  Ave. humidity:  42%

Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

1st credit union forms in US…1909

1st plastic, Celluloid, patented…1869

City of Vancouver BC incorporated…1886

Hostess Twinkies invented by bakery executive James Dewar…1930

Rwandan Genocide begins…1994 

Teflon invented by Roy J Plunkett…1938

TV Dinner was 1st put on sale by Swanson & Sons…1954

♪  ♪   Happy Birthday To: ♪. ♪   

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

Free Rambling Thoughts   

Really nice day here in Flag-town. A little windy part of the day, but cloudless sky and warm temps.

 

Symbolically the Pope is making some good moves. Sadly they are only symbolic. It is still early in his leadership, so time will tell if his actions speak as loud as his words.

 

I have g-mail, yahoo, and aol email accounts. Lately I have been very frustrated with AOL. Most of the time it doesn’t open the stories, email is slow to send. I would close the accounts, but have everything arriving in the correct address boxes. Many time when I have to give an email address to do something, I use one of the AOL accounts, just in case it starts sending me too many things. And honestly, some of my friends are not very good at changing email addresses in their own address books and I don’t want to miss out on their jokes or news. Guess I will just keep using it and be frustrated.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

One snowy night, Sherlock Holmes was in his house sitting by a fire. All of a sudden a snowball came crashing through his window, breaking it. 

Holmes got up and looked out the window just in time to see three neighborhood kids who were brothers run around a corner. Their names were John Crimson, Mark Crimson and Paul Crimson. 

The next day Holmes got a note on his door that read "? Crimson. He broke your window." 

Which of the three Crimson brothers should Sherlock Holmes question about the incident?

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Top Twenty Raphael Sanzio Paintings

•  André Previn's Trio Jazz - It Could Happen To You

Origins of Phrases

The bee's knees

Meaning

Excellent - the highest quality.

Origin

It's difficult to know if we need an etymologist or an entomologist for this one.

Bees carry pollen back to the hive in sacs on their legs. It is tempting to explain this phrase as alluding to the concentrated goodness to be found around a bee's knee, but there's no evidence to support this explanation. It is also sometimes said to be a corruption of 'business', but there's no evidence to support that either.

Nor is there any connection with another earlier phrase, 'a bee's knee'. In the 18th century this was used as a synonym for smallness, but has since disappeared from the language, replaced more recently by the less polite 'gnat's bollock':

Mrs. Townley Ward - Letters, June 1797 in N. & Q. "It cannot be as big as a bee's knee."

'Bee's knees' began to be used in early 20th century America. Initially, it was just a nonsense expression that denoted something that didn't have any meaningful existence - the kind of thing that a naive apprentice would be sent to the stores to ask for, like a 'sky-hook' or 'striped paint'. That meaning is apparent in a spoof report in the New Zealand newspaper The West Coast Times in August 1906, which listed the cargo carried by the SS Zealandia as 'a quantity of post holes, 3 bags of treacle and 7 cases of bees' knees'. The teasing wasn't restricted to the southern hemisphere. The US author Zane Grey's 1909 story, The Shortstop, has a city slicker teasing a yokel by questioning him about make-believe farm products:

"How's yer ham trees? Wal, dog-gone me! Why, over in Indianer our ham trees is sproutin' powerful. An' how about the bee's knees? Got any bee's knees this Spring?"

There's no profound reason to relate bees and knees other than the jaunty-sounding rhyme. In the 1920s it was fashionable to use nonsense terms to denote excellence - 'the snake's hips', 'the kipper's knickers', 'the cat's pyjamas/whiskers', 'the monkey's eyebrows' and so on. Of these, the bee's knees and the cat's whiskers are the only ones to have stood the test of time. More recently, we see the same thing - the 'dog's bollocks'.

The nonsense expression 'the bee's knees' was taken up by the socialites of Roaring 20s America and added to the list of 'excellent' phrases. A printed reference in that context appears in the Ohio newspaper The Newark Advocate, April 1922, in a piece on newly coined phrases entitles 'What Does It Mean?':

"That's what you wonder when you hear a flapper chatter in typical flapper language. 'Apple Knocker,' for instance. And 'Bees Knees.' That's flapper talk. This lingo will be explained in the woman's page under the head of Flapper Dictionary." [an 'apple knocker' is a rustic]

Clearly the phrase must have been new then for the paper to plan to take the trouble to define it. Disappointingly, they didn't follow up on their promise and 'the lingo' wasn't subsequently explained. Several U.S. newspapers did feature lists of phrases under 'Flapper Dictionary' headings. Although 'bee's knees' isn't featured, they do show the time as being a period of quirky linguistic coinage; for example, from one such Flapper Dictionary:

Kluck - dumb person.

Dumb kluck - worse than a kluck. 

Pollywoppus - meaningless stuff. 

Fly-paper - a guy who sticks around.

One tenuous connection between the bee's knees and an actual bee relates to Bee Jackson. Ms. Jackson was a dancer in 1920s New York and popularised the Charleston, being credited by some as introducing the dance to Broadway in 1924. She went on to become the World Champion Charleston dancer and was quite celebrated at the time.

It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that the expression became popular in reference to her and her very active knees, but 1924 post dates the origin of the phrase.

Ok, then?

Harper’s Index    

• Average number of square miles by which Arctic sea ice decreased each day summer 2012: 36,000

• Date on which it reached its lowest size on record: 9/16/2012

Picture of the Day: Rainforest Primates

Unusual Fact of the Day

No matter how flexible a person is, there is no such thing as being “double jointed." Most extreme contortionists suffer from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. 

Joke-of-the-day

A woman decided to have her portrait painted. She told the artist, "Paint me with diamond rings, a diamond necklace, emerald bracelets, a ruby broach, and gold Rolex."

"But you are not wearing any of those things," he replied.

"I know," she said. "It's in case I should die before my husband. I'm sure he will remarry right away, and I want his new wife to go crazy looking for the jewelry."  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

REACHING A GAS STATION

 If your tank is on empty and you're trying to make it to the next gas station, cut your speed to 35 miles per hour.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

 Sheriff's deputies say that an 84-year-old shot pepper-spray at a security guard during a retirement community bingo event in central Florida, WESH reported.

The guard, 67-year-old Michael Burke, told investigators that he used crates to reserve two handicapped parking spaces for women attending the game. Other handicapped spaces were open and available, yet Donald Handa set his sights on the ones Burke had saved, according to Click Orlando.

Burke said Handa moved the crates, then parked his car and headed toward the building. It is unclear whether Handa had a handicapped sticker on his vehicle.

When Burke tried to stop Handa and get him to move his car, he says Handa whipped out a can of pepper spray and sprayed him with it.

Marion County Sheriff's deputies say Handa told them that he'd had problems with Burke for two weeks, and sprayed him because he felt threatened when Burke started chasing after him.

Burke admitted that the two had squabbled recently. He chose not to press charges.

According to a report obtained by Click Orlando, Handa agreed to "leave the parking spot vacant for the less fortunate" in the future.

Seriously though, don't get between a senior citizen and his or her bingo game.

In March, a teen was arrested after falsely yelling "Bingo" at a Kentucky bingo parlor, and was ordered to not even say the word for six months.

The month before, an all-out brawl erupted at a New Hampshire bingo game when a woman selling beauty products was disrupting the event.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

Somewhat Useless Information   

•  
It is hard to grasp just how small the atoms that make up your body are until you take a look at the sheer number of them. An adult is made up of around 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (7 octillion) atoms.

• It might seem hard to believe, but we have about the same number of hairs on our bodies as a chimpanzee, it's just that our hairs are useless, so fine they are almost invisible.

• Goose-pimples are a remnant of our evolutionary predecessors. They occur when tiny muscles around the base of each hair tense, pulling the hair more erect. With a decent covering of fur, this would fluff up the coat, getting more air into it, making it a better insulator. But with a human's thin body hair, it just makes our skin look strange.

• Depending on how old you are, it's pretty likely that you have eyelash mites. These tiny creatures live on old skin cells and the natural oil (sebum) produced by human hair follicles. They are usually harmless, though they can cause an allergic reaction in a minority of people.

• If you take a look on a very clear night at the constellation of Andromeda, a little fuzzy patch of light is just visible with the naked eye. If you can make out that tiny blob, you are seeing as far as is humanly possible without technology. 

• In the 1920s, an American engineer investigated whether animals could live without bacteria, hoping that a bacteria-free world would be a healthier one. James "Art" Reyniers made it his life's work to produce environments where animals could be raised bacteria-free. It was possible, but many of Reyniers's animals died and those that survived had to be fed on special food. This is because bacteria in the gut help with digestion.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:

31-4/6

National Week Of The Ocean

1-7

The APAWS Pooper Scooper  Week
Explore Your Career Options
*Golden RuleWeek 
*Laugh at Work Week
*Medication Safety Week
4-10

Testicular Cancer Awareness Week*Hate Week

6-8
Just Pray No! Worldwide Weekend of Prayer and Fasting

Today Is                                                                      

Army Day 
Drowsy Driver Awareness Day
International Pillow Fight Day

National Day of Hope

National Love Our Children Day
National Student Athlete Day 
Paraprofessional Appreciation Day

Sorry Charlie Day

Tartan Day 
Teflon Day

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Day [1830 founding]
Thailand: Chakri Day (founding dynasty)

Today’s Events through History  

1st animated cartoon copyrighted…1906

Black Horse in one of several Southern CHEYENNE Indians being sent to prison 

     from the Cheyenne and Arapaho Agency (later called Fort Reno) in west-central 

     Indian Territory, to St.Augustine, Florida, for his part in the uprisings in Indian 

     Territory, and Texas…1875 

Cape Colony, the 1st European settlement in South Africa, established by Dutch…1652 

John Jacob Astor incorporates the American Fur Company…1808

Pakistan tests medium-range missiles capable of hitting India…1998

Scots reaffirm their independence by signing the Declaration of Arbroath…1320

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

In their 80’s

James Dewey Watson, chemist (co-discovered structure of DNA) is 85

Andre Previn, Berlin Germany, conductor (London Symphony)/pianist is 83

In their 70’s

Merle Haggard, country singer (Death Valley Days) is 76

Billy Dee Williams, Harlem NYC, actor (Chiefs, Empire Strikes Back) is 76

Roy Thinnes, actor (Invaders, Falcon Crest, Gen Hospital) is 75

In their 60’s

Marilu Henner, actress (Taxi, Man Who Loved Women, Eve Shade) is 61

In their 40’s

Paul Rudd, actor (Clueless, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) is 44

In their 30’s

Zach Braff, actor (Dr. John Dorian-Scrubs) is 38

Remembered for being born today

James Mill, Scotland, philosopher/historian (Hist of British India) [1773-1836]

Gustave Moreau, French painter [1826-1898]

Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, French playwright/poet (Sacred Odes & Songs) [1671-1741]

Lowell Thomas, newscaster (High Adventure) [1892-1981]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Isaac Asimov [Isaak Yudovich Ozimov], Sci-Fi author (I Robot)…kidney failure…1992…at 72

Greer Garson, actress (Goodbye Mr Chips)…1996…at 91

Thomas Kinkade, artist…OD…2012…at 54

Raphael [Sanzio], artist (Sistine Madonna)… a night of excessive sex with Luti, after which he fell into a fever…on his 37th birthday

Richard I, the Lion-hearted, King of England…murdered…1199…at 41

Tammy Wynette, country singer…blood clot…1998…at 55

Answer: Brain Teasers

Mark Crimson  = question MARK, so the note on the door reads "Question Mark Crimson. He broke your window." 

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  §