Valentine's Day 2014

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Flagstaff Almanac:

Week: 07 / Day: 045   

Today: L 30°…*H 64°… Ave. humidity: 47%

Wind: ave:   8mph; Gusts:  23mph  

Average Low: 19° Record Low:  -15° (1949)

Average High: 46° Record High:  *64° (1957)

    Tied record high

Quote of the Day

Today’s Historical Highlights

1630 - Dutch fleet of 69 ships reaches Pernambuco, Brazil

1776: The first Spanish arrive at what eventually becomes Needles, California

1849 - In New York City, James Knox Polk becomes 1st serving US President 

     to have his photograph taken (by Matthew Brady).

1872 - 1st state bird refuge authorized (Lake Merritt CA)

1883 - 1st state labor union legislation; NJ legalizes unions

1899 - US Congress begins using voting machines

1903 - US Dept of Commerce & Labor forms

1919 - United Parcel Service forms

1941 - One millionth vehicle traverses the NY Midtown Tunnel

1949 - 1st session of Knesset (Jerusalem Israel)

1952 - 6th Olympic winter games open at Oslo, Norway

1962 - 1st lady Jacqueline Kennedy conducts White House tour on TV

1978 - 1st "micro on a chip" patented by Texas Instruments

1980 - 13th Winter Olympic games open in Lake Placid, NY

1989 - The first of 24 satellites of the Global Positioning System are placed into orbit.

2008 - Northern Illinois University shooting: 6 fatalities (including gunman) and 18 injured.

2013 - Oscar Pistorius, South African amputee runner, charged with the murder girlfriend

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

 

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

No winter here in Flagstaff…watching the national weather reports makes me feel bad, because we are having great weather. I’ve never heard of ‘thunder-sleet’ or ‘thunder-snow’ so maybe it is tougher than I think back there. I do get that the southern states don’t see snow very often, but the weather reports remind me of Phoenix weather when everyone is to get out their heavy coats as the overnight temperature will drop to 55°. If you don’t know how to drive in snow…stay home. If you don’t have a heavy coat and gloves and waterproof shoes/boots…stay home. Very little sympathy for some of the idiots that are on the road during this unusual storm. 

We got together for our weekly lunch and welcomed two from IHS who worked there while we were at the Boarding School. One was the child psychologist, and his wife worked with Head Start. I knew him but not her. However, we had many mutual friends. Very nice couple, living in Sedona since retirement who also have a house in RI. Some great conversation about travel, the joy of retirement, and a little politics. Cheryl was good friends with them in Tuba and has kept up their friendship over the years. Nice to have them add some new perspectives to our little group. They don’t come to Flag very often, so they won’t be with us a lot, but promised to meet up again in the future.

 

I woke up this morning and my modem wasn’t working….only a flashing green light. So I called CenturyLink help line. It must be in India or Manila. The guy was hard to understand, and really had no answers. Trying to take him off script was impossible. I played his ‘unplug-replug’ game with every possible connection. Finally he came back and said my modem was very old…I knew that since I have had it since I moved here some 8 years ago. He said he would send me a new up-to-date modem…and since I was such a loyal customer, there would be no charge (I had paid $50 for the one I have), and that it would be delivered tomorrow. Then he gave me a username and password to set it up. Then he said that if I had any more problems I could go to the internet while in front of my computer and there would be step by step instructions for most common problems. I could do that, with my phone, I guess, but seemed a little strange.

 

About 2 hours later I came into my office and all the green lights were on so I turned on the computer and was back on line. Guess I just won’t turn off the modem tonight and hope that everything is working tomorrow while I await the arrival of the new modem.

Happy birthday to my adopted state…AZ!

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

They say I came from Africa. I suppose that may be true. But the type I am was mostly played In a place where grass is blue. Of wood and pearl, skin and steel, You could say I am high strung. My neck looks like a ladder, With brass on every rung. What am I?

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• DINNER FOR THE PRESIDENT - 1953 - Thelma Ritter

• Florence Henderson

• Jack Benny - Mel Blanc Classic Routine

• Vic Morrow - Naked City

Best TV

"The Cosby Show": The warmth and wisdom of Bill Cosby's parenting philosophy made the Huxtables America's first family.

Words Shakespeare invented

it’s Greek to meJulius Caesar: Act I, Scene II “Those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but for mine own part, it was Greek to me”.

OK Then…

 

Harper’s Index 

Estimated factor by which the amount of ‘stuf’ in a DoubleStuf Oreo exceeds the amount in a regular Oreo: 1.84

Unusual Fact of the Day

Duct tape was developed in 1942 for use by the U.S. Army as a waterproof sealing tape for ammunition boxes.

Joke-of-the-day

A guy was meeting a friend in a bar, and as he walked in he noticed two pretty girls looking at him. He heard one girl say to the other; “Nine.” Feeling pleased with himself, he swaggered over to his buddy at the bar and told him that the girl in the corner had just rated him a nine out of ten.

“Sorry to spoil your evening,” said his friend, “but when I walked in they were speaking German”  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

FINDING DIRECTIONS

Tall, pointed trees such as spruce usually have their tips leaning slightly to the north of east.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

SAN FRANCISCO - Researchers in California say analysis of how speech sounds are identified by the human brain offers insights into the basis of human language. While scientists have known for some time the location in the brain where speech sounds are interpreted, little has been understood about how exactly the process works, neuroscientists at the University of California, San Francisco, said. Writing in the online journal Science Express, they say they've found the brain does not respond to the individual sound segments known as phonemes -- such as the b sound in "boy" --but is instead exquisitely tuned to detect simpler elements, which are known to linguists as "features." "Features" are distinctive acoustic signatures created when speakers move the lips, tongue or vocal cords. For example, consonants such as p, t, k, b and d require speakers to use the lips or tongue to obstruct air flowing from the lungs, then release a brief burst of air linguists call "plosives." Others, such as s, z and v, are grouped together as "fricatives," because they only partially obstruct the airway, creating friction in the vocal tract. An area of the brain known as the superior temporal gyrus is precisely tuned to robustly respond to these broad, shared features rather than to individual phonemes like b or z, the UCSF researchers said. This improves the brain's ability to interpret speech, they said, since the articulation of phonemes varies considerably across speakers and even in individual speakers over time, making it advantageous for the brain to employ a sort of feature-based algorithm to reliably identify phonemes. "It's the conjunctions of responses [to features] in combination that give you the higher idea of a phoneme as a complete object," neuroscientist and lead study author Edward F. Chang said. "By studying all of the speech sounds in English, we found that the brain has a systematic organization for basic sound feature units, kind of like elements in the periodic table."  

Somewhat Useless Information   

• The speed of light is generally rounded down to 186,000 miles per second. In exact terms it is 99,792,458 m/s (meters per second – that is equal to 186, 287.49 miles per second).

• It takes 8 minutes 17 seconds for light to travel from the Sun’s surface to the Earth.

• Every second around 100 lightning bolts strike the Earth.

• Every year lightning kills 1000 people.

• The currently accepted value is 299 792 km/s based on several measurements.

• Red, green and blue are the primary colors of light. Mixing them in various ways will make all other colors, including white.

• Light is a form of energy which our sense of sight can detect. It is made of electro-magnetic radiation and travels in a straight path.

• The bending of light as it passes from one transparent substance to another, like air to water, is called refraction.

• When sunlight is intercepted by a drop of water in the atmosphere, some of the light refracts into the drop, reflects from the drop’s inner surface, and then refracts out of the drop. The first refraction separates the sunlight into its component colors, and the second refraction increases the separation. The result is a rainbow.

• There are different colors of light because they are light waves which have different wavelengths. Red light has the longest wavelength while violet light has the shortest wavelength.

• The light bulb was invented in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison.

• When you turn on a light bulb only 10 per cent of the electricity used is turned into light, the other 90 per cent is wasted as heat.

• Low energy light bulbs last on average up to 12 times longer than traditional fluorescent bulbs. A heavy coat of dust can block up to half of the light.

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week
☼7-14☼

Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week 
Have A Heart for A Chained Dog Week  
Risk Awareness Week
Winter Olympics
Love Makes the World Go Round; But, Laughter Keeps Us From Getting Dizzy Week
☼9-15☼

Celebration of Love Week
Children of Alcoholics Week
Jell-O Week
Freelance Writers Appreciation Week
Random Acts of Kindness Week 
International Flirting Week
Love a Mench Week
National Green 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

Today Is                                                                       

·        Ferris Wheel Day

·        Frederick Douglass Day

·        Pet Theft Awareness Day

·        Library Lovers Day

·        National Have A Heart Day

·        National Condom Day

·        League of Women Voters Day

·        National Women's Heart Day

·        National Call In Single Day

·        Race Relations Day

·        National Donor Day

·        Quirky Alone Day

·        Valentine’s Day

·        (World) Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Day

·        World Marriage Day

+++++

·        Admission Day (Arizona-1912-48th)

·        Admission Day (Oregon-1859-33rd)

Today’s Events through History  

1009 - First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg.

1778 - "Stars & Stripes" arrives in foreign port for 1st time (France)

1803 - Chief Justice John Marshall declares any act that conflicts with the Constitution is void.

1951 - Sugar Ray Robinson defeats Jake LaMotta & takes middleweight title

1967 - Aretha Franklin records "Respect"

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Hugh Downs, TV journalist (20/20, Concentration) is 93

Florence Henderson, actress/singer (Carol-Brady Bunch) is 80

Carl Bernstein, Washington Post investigative reporter (Watergate) is 70s

Teller, magician (Penn & Teller) is 66

Pat O'Brien, reporter (Entertainment Tonight) is 66

JoJo Starbuck, American ice skater is 63

Meg Tilly, [Margaret], actress (Big Chill, Impulse) is 54

Drew Bledsoe, NFL quarterback (NE Patriots) is 42

Remembered for being born today

1864 - Robert E Park, US, sociologist (human ecology, marginal man)

1894 - Jack Benny, [Benjamin Kubelski], Waukegan Ill, "Oh! Rochester!"

1905 - Thelma Ritter, Brooklyn, American actress (Miracle on 34th Street)

1913 - Woody Hayes, [Wayne], college football coach (Ohio, 1968 coach of the year)

1913 - Jimmy Hoffa, Teamsters leader who disappeared in 1975

1922 - Murray "the K" Kaufman, NYC DJ (5th Beatle)

1929 - Vic Morrow, Bronx, actor (Combat, Twilight Zone the Movie)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

St. Valentine, executed, 270 or 269, or 273, age unknown

Dory Previn, American singer-songwriter, 2012, @86

John Ehrlichman, Watergate presidential advisor, diabetes, 1999, @73

William Tecumseh Sherman, Union Civil War General, 1891, @71

William Blackstone, English lawyer, gout, 1780, @56

James Cook, British explorer, killed by Native Hawaiians, 1779, @50

Dolly the sheep, 1st cloned mammal, lung disease, 2003, @6

Brain Teasers

A 5-string banjo

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  §