2-16-14

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 08 / Day: 047   

Today: L 27°…H 63°… Ave. humidity: 44%

Wind: ave:   14mph; Gusts:  34mph  

Average Low: 19° Record Low:  -3° (1990)

Average High: 46° Record High:  70° (1977)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

0600 - Pope Gregory the Great decreea saying "God bless You" is the correct 

     response to a sneeze

1659 - 1st known cheque (£400) (on display at Westminster Abbey)

1760 - Native American hostages killed in Fort Prince George, SC

1838 - Kentucky passes law permitting women to attend school under conditions

1857 - Gallaudet College (National Deaf Mute college) forms in Washington DC

1887 - 1st newspaper convention (Rochester NY)

1909 - 1st subway car with side doors goes into service (NYC)

1914 - 1st airplane flight from LA to SF

1936 - 4th Winter Olympic games close at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

1959 - Fidel Castro names himself Cuba's premier after overthrowing Batista

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

A tech support Saturday. After working on the computer for about 30 min this morning, I decided to hook up my new modem. Good news…it’s all hooked up and working great. Bad news…it took over 2 hours of which an hour and 45 minutes was with tech support and tech support supervisor. Did as I was told, didn’t get the expected screen…redo…same thing…finally we got the internet working. However, all of my homepages on my various browsers had disappeared and had some stupid site. They claimed it was not their fault, but the download clearly showed that the download took place during the sign up process. Finally just said good bye (along with a little anger) and worked on it myself. It took about 30 minutes more but got everything working.  Another good thing is that the new modem has its own wifi so I don’t need a separate router to get on the internet. It took a second call to tech support and about 5 min to hook up the wi-fi to my iPad. All happy NOW!

 

Again, stand your ground trial…in Florida…and it looks like the jury can’t decide on the main count. Another young Black teenager is dead and the white guy who killed him says he was afraid for his life. He claims they had a gun, but no one else saw it and no gun or weapon had been found. Too many Americans believe that they have the right to kill someone who is ‘bothering’ them. This guy didn’t like the ‘thug music’ and that started it all. Another guy said the black teenager ‘looked suspicious’ as he walked in the rain. A former cop killed a guy because he was texting during the previews in a movie theater and may have thrown some popcorn at him. Really…life is too precious for these paranoid people to be allowed to carry a loaded gun.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

A group of four brothers did travel the land, with only one steed shared among the whole band.

Though always surefooted, no matter the weather, their mount would go lame if they didn't ride together.

When one of the brothers was thrown and misplaced, he was left where he lay and was quickly replaced.

When the ride became old and the brothers not needed, to a game for all ages they simply retreated.

When many a player would fling them about, and ringing a post was the victory shout.

Name us.

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Dean Martin, Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy

• Elvis Presley - How Great Thou Art

• Smiley Burnette

Remembering TV’s great shows:

"Friends": We were there for them — in droves — turning an irresistible ensemble into instant media phenoms. Could we have been more in love with their rom-comic lives?    

Words Shakespeare invented

leapfrog

Near the end of Henry V, King Henry pledges his love to Princess Katherine of France. The King alludes to his physical dexterity by saying that "If I could win a lady at leap-frog . . . I should quickly leap into a wife" 

Bizarre Punishments

Kneeling On Frozen Peas

Recently, a picture surfaced on the Internet and quickly went viral. At first glance, it seems like two fingers with some sort of odd disease, but on closer examination it’s actually the legs of an Asian schoolgirl who was forced to kneel on frozen peas for a long period of time. This punishment seems to be growing in popularity and more and more schools, especially in Asia, are using kneeling to deal with disobedient pupils. Students have been forced to kneel with their hands raised for hours and their legs resting on frozen peas, corn, or rice. A girl in China was even expelled for taking pictures of the harsh punishment and posting them on the Internet. While you may think that’s bad, even worse are reports of small children being forced to kneel on things like baking hot concrete and cheese graters by their parents. In Florida, Albert and Nancy Cusson took the punishment to the next level by making their grandson kneel for nine hours straight, 10 days in a row. While some forms of kneeling punishment may be legal, there’s a fine line separating it from shockingly cruel and unusual treatment.

Strange Obsessions of famous people

Rene Descartes--Passion For Cross-Eyed Ladies

The Father of Modern Philosophy, Rene Descartes (1596–1650), maintained close friendships and correspondence with powerful and wealthy women, such as Queen Christina of Sweden and the exiled Princess Elizabeth of England. The women in his personal life were a different story. Descartes never married and only had one child, an illegitimate daughter, with one of the servants in his home. And, until early adulthood, Descartes’s greatest passion was reserved for women with crossed eyes.

In a letter to Queen Christina, Descartes explains that, once he finally reflected on his unique attraction toward cross-eyed women, he realized that it stemmed from a youthful crush he had on a girl with crossed eyes. Descartes stated, “I loved a girl of my own age . . . who was slightly cross-eyed; by which means, the impression made in my brain when I looked at her wandering eyes was joined so much to that which also occurred when the passion of love moved me, that for a long time afterward, in seeing cross-eyed women, I felt more inclined to love them than others, simply because they had that defect; and I did not know that was the reason.”

Descartes concluded that this initial crush had left an imprint on his brain and, therefore, it was not a reasoned attraction. Rather, it was his subconscious mind causing the feelings. True to philosophical form, Descartes used his free will to rid himself of the irrational attraction.

OK Then…

 

Harper’s Index 

• Rounds of golf Barack Obama has played since becoming President: 145

• Percentage of those rounds in which he played with a woman: 2

Unusual Fact of the Day

If you want a spot on the beach in Monaco, you'd better get there early. It has only 3.5 miles of coastline, less than any other non-landlocked country.

Joke-of-the-day

YOU LIVE IN CALIFORNIA WHEN - -

1. You make over $250,000 and you still can't afford to buy a house.

2. The high school quarterback calls a time-out to answer his cell phone.

3. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.

4. You know how to eat an artichoke.

5. You drive to your neighborhood block party.

6. Someone asks you how far away something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.

YOU LIVE IN NEW YORK WHEN - -

1. You say "the city" and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan.

2. You have never been to the Statue of Liberty.

3. You can get into a 4-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can't find Wisconsin on a map.

4. You think Central Park is "nature."

5. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multilingual.

6. You've worn out a car horn.

7 You think eye contact is an act of aggression.

YOU LIVE IN ALASKA WHEN - -

1. You only have four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup and Tabasco.

2. Halloween costumes fit over parkas.

3. You have more than one recipe for moose.

4. Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons.

5. The four seasons are: winter, still winter, almost winter, and construction.

YOU LIVE IN THE DEEP SOUTH WHEN - -

1. You get a movie and bait in the same store.

2. "Ya'll" is singular and "all ya'll" is plural.

3. After fifteen years you still hear, "You ain't from 'round here, are ya?"

4. "He needed killin'" is a valid defense.

5. Everyone has 2 first names.

YOU LIVE IN COLORADO WHEN - -

1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car.

2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home, and he stops at the Day Care Center.

3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.

4. The top of your head is bald, but you still have a ponytail.

YOU LIVE IN THE MIDWEST WHEN - -

1. You've never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name.

2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor.

3. You have had to switch from "heat" to "A/C" on the same day.

4. You end sentences with a preposition: "Where's my coat at?"

5. When asked how your trip was to any exotic place, you say, "It was different! " 

YOU LIVE IN FLORIDA WHEN - -

1. You eat dinner at 3:15 in the afternoon.

2. All purchases include a coupon of some kind -- even houses and cars.

3. Everyone can recommend an excellent dermatologist.

4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.

5. Cars in front of you are often driven by headless people

6. You don't know how to vote

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

LOSING YOUR HAIR

The year you start growing dark hair on your chest is the year that the loss rate of your head hair exceeds its growth rate.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

 Returns tomorrow

Somewhat Useless Information   

• The Galileo spacecraft is made of materials that suggest it is much more like a fighter plane than a car. It uses very lightweight materials such as beryllium to house the subsystems, aluminum for the structure, and carbon composites for the booms.

• On its first orbit around Jupiter, the Galileo spacecraft reached a maximum distance from Jupiter of about 20 million kilometers. This is nearly half the distance between the orbits of Earth and Venus, Earth's closest planetary neighbor.

• Batteries only get you so far in outer space. The Galileo orbiter carries two radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs),which are used to generate electrical power on board the spacecraft. There are 7.8 kilograms (17.2 pounds) of Plutonium-238 in each RTG.

• Galileo's roots date back to an early recommendation for an atmospheric probe that would explore Jupiter's atmosphere down to pressure levels 100 times that of Earth at sea level. This proposal eventually became JOP (for Jupiter Orbiter Probe), which then eventually became Galileo.

• When the Galileo Probe entered Jupiter's atmosphere, it was traveling at a speed of 106,000 miles per hour – the fastest impact speed ever achieved by a man- made object.At that speed, one could drive around the Earth at the equator in 14 minutes (assuming there were bridges across all the oceans) or to the Moon and back in only 5 hours!

• On its journey from Earth to Jupiter, Galileo traveled 2.4 billion miles. Along the way, about 67 gallons of fuel from the propulsion system were used to control Galileo's flight path and to keep its antenna pointed at Earth. That's equivalent to getting 36 million miles per gallon! With that kind of mileage, one would use up only 4 tablespoons of gasoline to drive to the Moon and back!

• After traveling 2.4 billion miles in just over 6 years to reach Jupiter, Galileo missed its target at the Jovian moon Io by only 67 miles. That's like shooting an arrow from Los Angeles at a bull's-eye in New York and missing by only 6 inches! 

• Since being launched from Earth on October 18, 1989, Galileo has traveled 2.4 billion miles in just over 6 years to reach Jupiter. That's an average speed of 44,000 miles per hour. At that speed, one could drive around the Earth at the equator (assuming there were bridges across all the oceans) in just over half an hour, or to the Moon and back in only 11 hours!

• Jupiter has some truly high velocity winds-- they blow at speed as high as 260 miles per hour at Jupiter's cloud tops!

• Magnetic fields can be powerful entities. Jupiter's magnetosphere strips away 1 ton of material from Io a second. Io's orbital motion through Jupiter's magnetosphere generates electricity--an electric current of 3 million amps!

• Using Galileo's on board instruments to observe the asteroid Gaspra was a challenge somewhat akin to attempting to spot the Goodyear Blimp through a soda straw from five miles away, while sitting in a car going 90 mph. 

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:
☼13-19☼

World Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Awareness Week9 
☼14-17☼

Great Backyard Bird Count
☼14-21☼

National Condom Week 
National Nestbox Week
NCCDP Alzheimer's & Dementia Staff Education Week
☼16-22☼

Brotherhood / Sisterhood Week 
Build A Better Trade Show Image Week)
Through With The Chew
National Date (fruit) Week
National Justice for Animals Week
National Engineers Week
National Entrepreneurship Week

Today Is                                                                      

·        World Whale Day

+++++

·        Independence Day (Lithuania-1918-from Germany)

Today’s Events through History  

1852 - Studebaker Brothers wagon company, precursor of the automobile 

     manufacturer, is established

1968 - Elvis Presley receives gold record for "How Great Thou Art"

1980 - Eric Heiden skates 5k in 7:02.29 (Olympic Record)

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

LeVar Burton, Landstuhl Germany, (Roots, Star Trek Next Generation) is 57

Ice-T [Tracy Marrow], rapper and actor is 56

John McEnroe, Wiesbaden, Germany, American tennis great is 55

Remembered for being born today

1812 - Henry Wilson, 18th VP (1873-75)

1852 - William S. Scarborough, linguist/author (Birds of Aristophanes)

1903 - Edgar Bergen, ventriloquist (Charlie McCarthy)

1909 - Hugh Beaumont, actor (Ward Cleaver-Leave it to Beaver)

1935 - Sonny Bono, Detroit, vocalist (Sonny & Cher)/(Rep-R-Ca, 1995-98)

1941 - Kim Jong-il, Supreme Leader of North Korea (1994-2011)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

Edmund G "Pat" Brown, 32^nd Gov of CA, 1996, @90

Eddie Foy, SR, American singer and dancer, 1928, @77

Smiley Burnette, cowboy (Charlie-Petticoat Junction), leukemia, 1967, @55

Brain Teasers

Horseshoes

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  §