June 26

 

 

Daily Almanac for Flagstaff
Week 27 Day: 177 \ Ave. Sky Cover: 50% \ Visibility: 10 miles Flagstaff Today 77° \51° 
Wind: 5mph \ Gusts: 4mph  Air Quality: FAIR
High Risk of fire \ Nearest active fire: 12mi \ Nearest Lightning: 4mi
June Averages for Flagstaff: 80° \ 43° (1 day of moisture)
 

Today’s Quote

Weekly Observations

Thru Sep.5 National Marina Days (From Memorial Day to Labor Day)  Link

17-30   National Little League Week: Link

20-26   National Pollinator Week: Link  National Insect Week

23-26  Watermelon Thump Seed Spitting Week

26-7/2  Windjammer Days Link

Daily Observations

My Sometimes-Long-Winded Thoughts

Monsoon continues. Flash flooding is possible in burn scare areas. Lightning caused fire outside Flag area near Leupp. Small [1/10 acre] and contained by multiple fire units.

I changed the linens and flipped the mattress today…do it every season change. Put out a new toothbrush too. Easy to remember.

So glad that Biden signed the Gun Reform Act…not all of what was wanted, but a good start.

The Climate Change articles for tonight’s discussion group were very good. One of them talked about the increase in forest fires around the world. The SW-US is not alone…there have been some devastating fires in Siberia, in Brazil, and in China. So sad.

Favorite Memes

Earth’s Secrets

Earth Is a Heat Engine

"Earth is a giant heat engine. Heat from the Sun is absorbed where it is warm (the low latitudes and the surface) and heat is radiated as infrared where it is cold (the higher latitudes and the atmosphere)," Andy Ingersoll, a planetary scientist at Caltech, tells Popular Mechanics. "The work of the heat engine goes into the kinetic energy of winds and storms."

But...Not An Efficient One

"The Earth is not a very efficient heat engine," says Ingersoll. "The temperature difference between the warm parts and the cold parts is a few tens of K, so the theoretical Carnot efficiency is about 10 percent. But most of that is wasted by the warm parts radiating their heat to the cold parts, creating entropy. The heat engine is about 1 percent efficient in generating kinetic energy, but that creates more entropy when the winds dissipate."

Trivia

Top Hot Peppers

10. Ghost Pepper. The Bhut Jolokia, more commonly known as the Ghost Pepper, was one of the first super-hot modern peppers. Though it's been surpassed by new hybrids, it still packs a punch at 1 million heat units.   

9. Barrackpore. The Barrackapore variant of the 7-pot pepper has a sweet, tropical flavor, but also brings the heat, with 1.3 million Scoville heat units.

8. Naga Viper. At 1.35 million heat units, the Naga Viper is nearly as dangerous as its namesake.

Historical Events

  Ë 1498 – The bristle toothbrush was invented in China.
Ë 1807 – Lightning struck a gunpowder factory in Luxembourg, killing more than 300 people.
Ë 1819 – The first US patent (#X003115) for a velocipede, a predecessor of the bicycle, was issued to William K. Clarkson Jr. of New York.
Ë 1870 – Christmas was declared a federal holiday in the United States.
Ë 1906 – 1906 French Grand Prix, the first Grand Prix motor racing event was held. Ferenc Szisz, driving for the Renault team, won the two-day event.
Ë 1926 – Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises novel was released.
Ë 1927 – The Cyclone roller coaster opened on Coney Island.
Ë 1934 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Credit Union Act, which established credit unions in the US.
Ë 1945 – The United Nations Charter was signed, in San Francisco.
Ë 1963 – US President John F. Kennedy gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.
Ë 1974 – The Universal Product Code was scanned for the first time to sell a package of Wrigley’s chewing gum at the Marsh Supermarket in Troy, Ohio.
Ë 1988 – Astro Ricky Gutierrez set the Major League Baseball record for seeing the most pitches in a single at-bat (20) against Cleveland pitcher Bartolo Colon.
Ë 1997 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Communications Decency Act violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Ë 2000 – The completion of a working draft reference DNA sequence of the human genome was announced at the White House by President Bill Clinton and representatives from the Human Genome Project (HGP).
Ë 2013 – The US Supreme Court ruled, 5–4, that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Birthdays Today

@91 – Eleanor Parker, American character actress (d. 2013)
@87 – Colonel Tom Parker [Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk], Dutch American talent manager (d. 1997)
@80 – Pearl S. Buck, American novelist and writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1973)
@73 – Abner Doubleday, American general (d. 1893; heart disease)
@59 – Peter Lorre [László Löwenstein], Slovak-American actor (d. 1964; stroke)
52 – Sean Hayes, American actor
52 – Nick Offerman, TV Actor
48 – Derek Jeter, American baseball player
30 – Jennette McCurdy, American actress
29 – Ariana Grande, singer