2-25-14

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Flagstaff Almanac: Day: 056   / Week: 08  

Today: L 21°…H 57°… Ave. humidity: 43%

Wind: ave:   11mph; Gusts:  21mph  

Average Low: 20° Record Low:  -10° (1919)

Average High: 47° Record High:  70° (1986)

Quote of the Day

 

Today’s Historical Highlights

529: Palenque Maya Lord Kan - Xul I ascends the throne

1751 - 1st performing monkey exhibited in America, NYC (admission 1 cent)

1793 - 1st cabinet meeting (At George Washington's home)

1803 - 1,800 sovereign German states unite into 60 states

1839 - Seminoles & black allies shipped from Tampa Bay Florida, to West

1859 - 1st use of "insanity plea" to prove innocence

1862 - Congress forms US Bureau of Engraving & Printing

1862 - Paper currency (greenbacks) introduced in US by Pres Abraham Lincoln

1875 - Kiowa Indians under Lone Wolf (Guipago) surrender at Ft Sill

1901 - US Steel Corp organized under J P Morgan


 

1919 - Oregon is 1st state to tax gasoline (1 cent per gallon)

1932 - Immigrant Adolf Hitler gets German citizenship

1951 - 1st Pan American Games opens (Buenos Aires Argentina)

1952 - 6th Winter Olympic games close at Oslo, Norway

♫  Today’s Birthdays: ♫   

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

My Free Rambling Thoughts   

Typical Monday.  Nice weather, clear blue sky. So hard to believe it is February.   Got my travel insurance to Cuba today. What a great number of hoops.

 

Really enjoyed most of the Olympics from Sochi…and the closing ceremonies were great. Cute that they even poked fun of the Opening misplaced snowflake that didn’t finish the Olympic symbol. I have to day this is another reminder that the media, and much of our US government is so friggin’ arrogant. Before the games, Putin said he had security under control. The US kept offering our help and he kept saying it wasn’t necessary. Ships and planes were moved into place to help evacuate US athletes if necessary. Thankfully none of these measures were necessary. The Russian Federation did just fine.

 

I kinda see the hoops to get to Cuba as much the same thing. US travel agencies want the money to get US tourists to Cuba, and seem to be overdoing the paperwork, just to be sure. We do have to keep a journal, but learned today it is for the US Dept. of Treasury, not the Cuban government. Something about proving that it was an educational visit rather than some other reason. And the journal has to be kept for 5 years…for some reason. The medical insurance is needed because US health insurance companies don’t cover travel to Cuba and the Cuba medical profession has to be paid if their services are needed.

 

AZ stays in the National/International news with it’s crazy new law…still awaiting our infamous governor’s decision as to sign or veto. Our national legislators issued a joint statement today against the bill. Flag had a march of between 500-1000 at city hall against the bill. Let’s hope the governor is getting an earful in DC at the governor’s get together.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)

Brain Teasers

A magazine competition invited people to come up with "invented" inventions of the cyber-age. 

For example, a solar powered clothes drier (a rope) and a hand-held word processor (a pencil). Can you guess what this is?

It's a graphic media emulator. High-resolution, thin-screen monitor that produces near-perfect emulations of all graphical media. Used as cosmetic analyzer.

What is it?

Lifestyle  Substance:     

Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

• Carrot Top stand up

• Enrico Caruso - O Sole Mio

• George Harrison-My Sweet Lord

• Jim Backus, RIP

• Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting (1915)

Remembering TV’s great shows:

"Your Show of Shows"--The skit-com's on-camera talent (Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner) was equaled only by its behind-the-scenes geniuses (Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, etc.).

Bizarre Punishments

The Monster Closet

A teacher in Houston is under fire after locking several of her students in a pitch-black custodial closet known as the “Monster Closet.” After the class read a story about monsters that hide in closets, the Pre-K teacher thought it would be good punishment for four-year-old Kelon Chaney. As his classmates began laughing at Chaney’s punishment, the teacher also proceeded to stuff three other children alongside Chaney in the cramped, dark closet. Chaney himself was so frightened by the incident that he ended up vomiting.A similar instance of children being locked in pitch-black rooms as punishment has also been reported in Idaho. A teacher at Washington Elementary School allegedly locked five-year-old Tanner Cagle in a small dark closet for over an hour—and eventually forgot about him altogether before leaving for home. After becoming worried when he didn’t return from class, Cagle’s parents went to the school themselves—where they found their son locked in the closet, having urinated on himself from fear.

Strange Obsessions of famous people

Arthur Schopenhauer--His Poodles

Even though Arthur Schopenhauer’s (1788–1860) family was financially well-off, homelessness became the theme for his life. An intellectual vagabond, Schopenhauer took the perspective that he belonged to no place and to no person. Even his birthplace, Danzig, Germany, meant nothing to Schopenhauer, since he and his family had to quickly abandon their home when Prussia annexed the city. Schopenhauer was only five years old at the time. No city thereafter managed to capture Schopenhauer’s loyalties. Similarly, after the loss of his father just as Schopenhauer entered adulthood, Schopenhauer could find little affection for other people, including his own mother. Expressions of this disconnection from humanity can be seen in his pessimistic philosophy.

Schopenhauer’s pessimism and personality led him to fill his human need for companionship with pet poodles. Starting in his schooldays and not ending until his death, Schopenhauer kept a flow of poodles, all of which had the same name, Atma, and the same nickname, Butz. The oddity of calling all of his poodles by the same name was intended as a compliment, because the word “Atma” is a Hindu concept developed in the Bhagavad Gita from Sanskrit meaning “inner self,” or the transcendent soul. To Schopenhauer, each of his pets, rather than being an individual animal with its own personality, expressed the highest and most fundamental reality of “poodle.”

Look back at History

Manhattan Project

It is risky to take pride in weaponry, lest doing so lead people to believe that the proud are villains. America is not a land of evil people. But like all nations of peoples, Americans are warlike, and proud of their almighty ability to defend themselves “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

To that end, scientists, led by Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, labored diligently for some 6 years developing nuclear physics to an understanding requisite to crank out a weapon of unfathomable power. The whole project was given a big headstart by Dr. Albert Einstein, who signed a letter written by Leo Szilard, which was sent to F. D. Roosevelt, advising him that the Nazis were probably trying their best to invent a nuclear weapon, which they would certainly use on the civilian population of some large city, probably London or Moscow (or on a large population of Jews).

It is, therefore, on the books that America became the first nation to complete the understanding of nuclear fission and developed the first weapon using this technology. Harry Truman’s decision, in 1945, to use it on the civilian population of Japan, the only serious threat to Allied safety at the time, remains extraordinarily controversial, but it did its job: putting a final end to the mightiest, deadliest war in human history. Japan was largely intent on fighting to the last man, which would have lasted years more. The atomic bombs Fat Man and Little Boy changed their minds in 4 days. A time of great evil, but this list is not about evil or good events, only those that are important.

OK Then…

 

Harper’s Index 

Portion of US births from unintended pregnancies that are paid for my Medicaid: 2/3

Unusual Fact of the Day

On March 1^st, 1912, Captain Albert Berry became the first person to parachute from an airplane...and walk away.

Joke-of-the-day

A dog thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed me, love me, provide me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me... They must be Gods! 

A cat thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed me, love me, provide me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me... I must be a God!  

Rules of Thumb:   

Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess

FITTING A SHOE

You should have a thumb's width of space between the longest toe and the tip of your shoe.    

Yeah, It Really Happened

 -- Oregon inmate Sirgiorgio Clardy, 26, filed a handwritten $100 million lawsuit in January against Nike for inadequately marketing its Air Jordans. Clardy, a convicted pimp, had received an "enhanced" penalty for using a "dangerous weapon" to maim the face of a john, i.e., he had stomped and kicked a man after accusing him of skipping out on a payment, and the "dangerous weapon" was apparently his shoe. Clardy said Nike bears at least some responsibility for his incarceration because it failed to label the shoe a "dangerous weapon." [The Oregonian, 1-10-2014]

Bonus:

-- Ed Forchion sits in a jail in Burlington County, N.J. (where he will reside for a few more months), serving a term for possession of marijuana. However, for 10 days each month until his release, the same judge who sentenced him has promised to allow him to go smoke medical marijuana in California to relieve pain from his bone cancer. (Forchion was convicted of possession before New Jersey legalized medical marijuana.) (Update: Four days after a Trentonian columnist's story about "Weedman" Forchion, and the subsequent Internet frenzy it wrought, Forchion's judge commuted the final 130 days of his sentence and freed him.) [The Trentonian, 1-26-2014, 1-30-2014]

Somewhat Useless Information   

Quetzalcoatlus 'KWET-zal-koh-AT-lus'.It is named after a legendary feathered serpent god of Mexico.They were flying reptiles - not dinosaurs.They lived in the Late Cretaceous Period.They were the size of a small aircraft.Scientist believe it may have walked with its wings

Calendar Information        

Happening This Week:
☼22-28☼

National FFA Week
Read Me Week
Bird Health Awareness Week 
National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
National Secondhand Wardrobe Week 
Peace Corps Week 

Today Is                                                                      

·        Spay Day USA

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·        National Day (Kuwait-1991-from Iraq)

Today’s Events through History  

1634 - Irish captain Walter Devereaux kills Duke Wallenstein

1950 - "Your Show of Shows" with Sid Caesar & Imogene Coca premieres

1982 - Final episode of "The Lawrence Welk Show" airs

Today’s Birthdays                                                           

Sally Jessy Raphael, TV talk show host (Sally) is 79

Bob Schieffer, newscaster (CBS Weekend News) is 77

Diane Baker, actress (Diary of Anne Frank) is 76

Karen Grassle, actress (Caroline-Little House on Prairie) is 72

Carrot Top, [Scott Thompson], comedian is 49  

Tea Leoni, NYC, actress (Flying Blind, Naked Truth) is 48

Remembered for being born today

1778 - Jose de San Martin, liberated Argentina, Chile and Peru from Spanish rule

1841 - Pierre Auguste Renoir, Limoges France, Impressionist painter/sculptor

1873 - Enrico Caruso, Naples Italy, operatic tenor (Faust)

1888 - John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State (1953-59)

1901 - [Herbert] Zeppo Marx, comedian/actor (Marx Brothers)

1907 - Mary Coyle Chase, playwright (Harvey-Pulitzer Prize)

1913 - Jim Backus, actor (Mr Magoo, Thurston Howell III-Gilligan Is)

1918 - Robert Lorimer "Bobby" Riggs, US tennis star (US Open 1939, 41)

1943 - George Harrison, rocker (Beatle/ My Sweet Lord)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           

C. Everett Koop, US Surgeon general, 2013, @96

Darren McGavin, actor (Kolchak), 2006, @83

Elijah Muhammad, leader of Nation of Islam, heart failure, 1975, @78

Thomas Moore, writer (Utopia), stroke, 1852, @72

Tennessee Williams, playwright and writer (Streetcar Named Desire), OD, 1983,@71

James Coco, actor (Joe-Dumplings), heart attack, 1987, @58

Brain Teasers

A mirror

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  §