2-13-14


FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!
Flagstaff Almanac:
Week: 07 / Day: 044   
Today: L 19°…H 61°… Ave. humidity: 43%
Wind: ave:   15mph; Gusts:  31mph  
Average Low: 19° Record Low:  -18° (1905)
Average High: 45° Record High:  68° (1977)

Quote of the Day
 
Today’s Historical Highlights
1566 - St Augustine, Florida founded
1692 - Glencoe Massacre : about 78 MacDonalds are killed early in the morning 
     by rival Campbell clan members, allegedly for not promptly pledging allegiance 
     to the new king, William of Orange.
1693 - College of William & Mary opens in Virginia
1795 - 1st state university in US opens, University of North Carolina
1832 - 1st appearance of cholera in London
1866 - Jesse James holds up his 1st bank, Liberty, Missouri ($15,000)
1867 - Johann Strauss' "Blue Danube" waltz premieres in Vienna
1907 - English suffragettes storm British Parliament & 60 women are arrested
1924 - The tomb of King Tutankhamun tomb opened
1955 - Israel acquires 4 of 7 Dead Sea scrolls
1972 - 11th Winter Olympic games close at Sapporo, Japan
1974 - Dissident Nobel writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn expelled from USSR

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


My Free Rambling Thoughts   
A tad windy today and very strange to have such warm temps here at 7000’.  Now the weatherman is saying that we will probably break some warm temp records in the next few weeks. This is not good news for our forest, as not only are there record temps, there is also no moisture in the forecast.
 
Got a call from Mary, of our retirement group. She got a call from a former teacher who lives in Casa Grande. This lady has to be in her late 80’s and lives with her grandson. She seems to be suffering from dementia. She wanted to know if Mary, who retired 5 years ago, was still attending staff meetings and said she didn’t want to call me because she knew how busy I was at school. She and Mary share the same financial advisor and always talk about her when they get together to review Mary’s finances. Seems that the numerous grandkids and great grandkids have just about drained her finances. The finance guy says that he has called the police several times regarding her welfare after he gets a call from her. He also said that when she comes in, it’s always with four or five grand or great grandkids telling her how much money to withdraw from her accounts. None of us has any idea what to do to help this poor lady. I saw some elderly abuse when I was working, with grandkids coming over to grandma’s house on the first or second of the month, taking her to town, and spending her check on themselves. Sad stories abound and there are not that many laws to protect the elderly from abuse. Our local paper even had an article about an elderly woman who fell for a scam and sent over $40,000 to a guy who had called and said she had won an brand new Mercedes and $750,000 but she needed to send processing fees…small at first. When her son noticed that this was happening, he told his mom it was a scam, but she continued to send money. Finally the police were involved but there is no hope of getting her money back.
 
Nobody likes lots of snow, but the storm going through the South right now shows that many are not prepared. Hard for me to understand how people get frostbite when the walk a mile or so from their car to their home…it is a wind chill of 24°. They must be walking with no covering on their hands.
Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
The letter S is added to pluralise most words in the English language.
Letter to Letters, Word to Words and Language to Languages
There is a word however that is pluralized with the addition of the letter C. What is it?

Lifestyle  Substance:     
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Remembering TV’s great shows:
"The X-Files": The truth is still out there for Chris Carter's cosmically suspenseful thrill ride. Mulder and Scully were ground zero for shippers.
Words Shakespeare invented
it smells to heavenHamlet Act 3 Scene 3CLAUDIUS
Thanks, dear my lord.Oh, my offence is rank. It smells to heaven.It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t,A brother’s murder. Pray can I not.
OK Then…
 
Harper’s Index 
Minimum annual revenue of Silk Road, an e-commerce site for illegal drugs: $48million
Unusual Fact of the Day
Tom Selleck was tapped to play Indiana Jones, but due to a contracted commitment to Magnum PI, he decided to do the honorable thing and keep the agreement. Ironically, an ensuing writers strike delayed production long enough that he could have acted in Indiana Jones.
Joke-of-the-day
Guy: Haven’t I seen you someplace before? Girl: Yes, that’s why I don’t go there anymore.
+++Bonus+++
A guy walks into a post office one day to see a middle-aged, balding man standing at the counter methodically placing "Love" stamps on bright pink envelopes with hearts all over them. He then takes out a perfume bottle and starts spraying scent all over them.
His curiosity getting the better of him, he goes up to the balding man and asks him what he is doing. The man says, "I'm sending out one thousand Valentine cards signed, 'Guess who?'"
"But why?" asks the man.
"I'm a divorce lawyer," the man replies.
Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
USING PUBLIC WASHROOMS
In a public washroom, always use the toilet farthest away from the door. It is normally cleaner and less used than the ones closer to the door.    
Yeah, It Really Happened
NEWARK, Ohio (AP) — A central Ohio woman who loathed being named Sheila and wanted a moniker that reflects her personality has legally changed her first name to Sexy.
A Licking County judge on Tuesday approved the request from the 41-year-old Pataskala (puh-TAS'-kuh-luh) woman formerly named Sheila Ranea Crabtree.
In her application, Crabtree called her given name "the ugliest one out there." She says that if the court didn't allow the switch to Sexy, she'd try to become known legally by her middle name, which she has used for years.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that Crabtree told a judge that her husband and teenage daughters approve of the change. When the judge asked why she chose Sexy, Crabtree said she's fun and free-spirited and thought the change would make her complete.
Somewhat Useless Information   
  • Martin Luther King, the African-American Civil Rights Movement leader, clergyman, and national icon had something in common with Anne Frank, the Jewish Holocaust victim whose diary describes her family’s evasion of the Nazi SS during WWII. Both of them were born in 1929, so if they were still alive today they would be 84 years old. Other famous people in 1929 are also Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Dick Clark and Arnold Palmer.
  • Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur during sleep. However the purpose of dreams has always been a topic for investigation, as well as a matter of philosophical and religious interest. One theory as to why we sleep is that dreams work hand in hand with sleep to help the brain sort through everything it collects during the waking hours, as humans’ brain collects hundreds of thousands, if not millions of inputs each day. During sleep, the brain works to organize all of this information and decide what to hang on to and what to forget.

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 
Today Is                                                                       
·        Employee Legal Awareness Day
·        Get a Different Name Day
·        Madly In Love With Me Day
·        World Radio Day

Today’s Events through History  
1258 - Baghdad falls to the Mongols, and the Abbasid Caliphate is destroyed.
1633 - Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei arrived in Rome for trial before Inquisition 
     for professing belief that earth revolves around the Sun
1826 - American Temperance Society, forms in Boston
1971 - Golfing VP Spiro Agnew hits 2 tee shots into crowd, injuring 2

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
Chuck Yeagar, US test pilot (1st man to break sound barrier) is 91
Kim Novak, [Marilyn], actress (Vertigo, Of Human Bondage) is 81
George Segal, actor/banjo player (Carbon Copy, Fun with Dick & Jane) is 80
Jerry Springer, London England, talk show host (Jerry Springer Show) is 70
Stockard Channing, actress (Grease, Big Bus, Without a Trace) is 70

Remembered for being born today
1766 - Thomas Malthus, UK, economist and demographer (Law of Malthus)
1919 - Eddie Robinson, winningest college football coach (Grambling)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           
Lillian Bassman, American photographer and painter, 2012, @94
Brooks Adams, US philosopher (New Empire), 1927, @78
Martin Balsam, actor (Archie's Place), stroke, 1996, @76
Cotton Mather, American Puritan minister, 1728, @65 
Waylon Jennings, American musician, diabetes, 2002, @64
David Janssen, [Meyer], actor (Fugitive, Harry O), heart attack, 1980, @49

Brain Teasers
Dice A singular Die becomes Dice when pluralized.
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  §
Posted by No comments:

2-12-14


FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!
Flagstaff Almanac:
Week: 07 / Day: 043   
Today: L 31°…H 53°… Ave. humidity: 66%
Wind: ave:   8mph; Gusts:  18mph  
Average Low: 18° Record Low:  -16° (1965)
Average High: 45° Record High:  58° (2002)

Quote of the Day

 Today’s Historical Highlights
1541 - Santiago, Chile founded
1709 - Alexander Selkirk, Scottish seaman rescued after 4+ years-Fernandez Island (inspiration for Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe")
1733 - Georgia founded by James Oglethorpe, at site of Savannah
1832 - Ecuador annexes Galapagos Islands
1855 - Michigan State University was established.
1876 - Al Spalding opens his sporting good shop
1879 - 1st artificial ice rink in North America (Madison Sq Garden, NYC)
1914 - In Washington, DC, the first stone of the Lincoln Memorial is put into place.
1955 - Pres Eisenhower sends 1st US advisors to S Vietnam
1964 - Beatles 1st NYC concert (Carnegie Hall)
1994 - 17th Winter Olympic games opens in Lillehammer, Norway
1999 - President Bill Clinton is acquitted in his impeachment trial.
2002 - US Secretary of Energy decides Yucca Mountain is suitable to be the US nuclear waste repository.
2004 - San Francisco, California begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples

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


My Free Rambling Thoughts   
An interesting day with bureaucrats today. I got a bill from the anesthesia person for my second cataract surgery. As usual with medical bureaucracy getting answers to questions is virtually impossible. My first eye was $35 for anesthesia; the second eye was $65 after my insurance. The first eye was $490, the second eye was $630. The first eye was done by a local independent, while the second eye was done by a big group with billing offices in PA.  Eye Doctor’s office says that the use the only big company because the doc does many surgeries in a day and needs to have multiple anesthesia persons and only uses the local independent lady when no one is available from the big company. They have nothing to do with the billing by the anesthesia person. So I call the billing company and they say that they charge by the minute and that I was ‘under’ for 21 minutes on the second surgery. So I call the independent lady and she to bills by the minutes I was ‘under’ and that time I was ‘under’ for 28 minutes. I will be filing a complaint with my eye doctor the next time I go in. The lesson here is ‘buy local’. My local v WalMart comparison with the big company…that when you buy local you usually pay more, and when you buy from a big corporation you usually pay less…fell on deaf ears.
 
Foot is slowly getting better with the med for inflammation. Very little pain walking today. Sure just wish I knew what I did so I won’t do it again.
Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
You are touring an island, but it is not any old island. All the residents here are either a type T or L person.
Type T people ALWAYS tell the truth.
Type L people ALWAYS lie.
Now a person comes up to you and says, "I am a Type L person."
What type of person are they?
Lifestyle  Substance:     
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Remembering TV’s great shows:
"60 Minutes" The stopwatch continues to tick for the pioneering news program, which set the standard for compelling nonfiction storytelling.
Words Shakespeare invented
heart of goldHenry V; Act 4. Scene I
PISTOL  The king's a bawcock, and a heart of gold, A lad of life, an imp of fame; Of parents good, of fist most valiant. I kiss his dirty shoe, and from heart-string I love the lovely bully. What is thy name?
OK Then…
 
Harper’s Index 
Portion of the hundred tallest building currently under construction worldwide that are in China: 3/5
Unusual Fact of the Day
If the tracks on a typical compact discs ran in a straight line, they would travel about 3 miles  
Joke-of-the-day
One day while walking down the street a highly successful HR Director was tragically hit by a bus and she died. Her soul arrived up in heaven where she was met at the Pearly Gates by St. Peter himself.
"Welcome to Heaven," said St. Peter. "Before you get settled in though, it seems we have a problem. You see, strangely enough, we've never once had a Human Resources Director make it this far and we're not really sure what to do with you."
"No problem, just let me in," said the woman. "Well, I'd like to," replied St. Peter, "but I have higher orders. What we're going to do is let you have a day in Hell and a day in Heaven and then you can choose whichever one you want to spend an eternity in."
"Actually, I think I've made up my mind, I prefer to stay in Heaven," said the woman.
"Sorry, we have rules..." And with that St. Peter put the executive in an elevator and it went down-down-down to hell. The doors opened and she found herself stepping out onto the putting green of a beautiful golf course. In the distance was a country club and standing in front of her were all her friends - fellow executives that she had worked with and they were all dressed in evening gowns and cheering for her. They ran up and kissed her on both cheeks and they talked about old times. They played an excellent round of golf and at night went to the country club where she enjoyed an excellent steak and lobster dinner. She met the Devil who was actually a really nice guy (kinda cute) and she had a great time telling jokes and dancing. She was having such a good time that before she knew it, it was time to leave. Everybody shook her hand and waved good-bye as she got on the elevator. The elevator went
up-up-up and opened back up at the Pearly Gates and she found St. Peter waiting for her.
"Now it's time to spend a day in heaven," he said. So she spent the next 24 hours lounging around on clouds and playing the harp and singing. She had a great time and before she knew it her 24 hours were up and St. Peter came and got her. "So, you've spent a day in hell and you've spent a day in heaven. Now you must choose your eternity," he said. The woman paused for a second and then replied, "Well, I  never thought I'd say this, I mean, Heaven has been really great and all, but I think I had a better time in Hell." So St. Peter escorted her to the elevator and again she went down-down-down back to Hell.
When the doors of the elevator opened she found herself standing in a desolate wasteland covered in garbage and filth. She saw her friends were dressed in rags and were picking up the garbage and putting it in sacks. The Devil came up to her and put his arm around her.
"I don't understand," stammered the woman, "yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and a country club and we ate lobster and we danced and had a great time. Now all there is, is a wasteland of garbage and all my friends look miserable."
The Devil looked at her and smiled. "Yesterday we were recruiting you, today you're staff..."
Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
RUNNING A DAIRY
The average useful life of a dairy cow is five to seven years.    
Yeah, It Really Happened
 A Florida resident said he thinks a monkey photographed in his neighborhood might have been behind a pair of car break-ins. The monkey in the Mirabay neighborhood of Apollo Beach was photographed recently by a neighborhood resident, and experts said it appears to be a rhesus macaque.
Corey Beckman, a photojournalist, said he spotted the monkey a couple weeks ago while relaxing at his home and soon came to suspect the primate of being behind two car break-ins the previous week.
Beckman said the cars were ransacked, but nothing was taken.
"You'd think anybody breaking into a car wound find it nice seeing a GPS there an iPod but they just left it all sitting here," Beckman said.
"Maybe it didn't like my music," Beckman joked.
The monkey hasn't caused any injuries and neighbors said they would like to see it relocated without being harmed.
  • Somewhat Useless Information   
  • The climate of the Sahara has undergone enormous variations and it was not always the hottest desert in the world, actually it was not even a desert! The Sahara used to be green and wet around 9,000 years ago and will possiby be again after 15, 000 years. The Neolithic Subpluvial was the most recent of a number of periods of “Wet Sahara” or “Green Sahara”, during which the region was much more moist and supported a richer biota and human population than the present-day desert.
  • ‘Tootsie pops’ are hard candy lollipops filled with chocolate-flavored chewy Tootsie Roll and were invented in 1930 by Lukas R. “Luke” Weisgram. The company changed its name to Tootsie Roll Industries in 1969 and it is said that in 2002, sixty million Tootsie Rolls and twenty million Tootsie Pops were produced every day. According to several tests it became known that it takes 142,18 licks for someone to reach the center of a tootsie pop!
  • Big Ben, whose chimes are one of the best -known sounds in London, is the huge clock situated in the Houses of Parliament in London and it first rang in 1858. This bell, whose diameter is 2,7 meters, weighs 13 tons. It is the largest bell that has ever been made in England. There are several explanations about the name of Big Ben. The most popular is that the bell was named after Sir Benjamin Hall, who was a tall, rather fat member of the Parliament.

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

Today Is                                                                       
·        Darwin Day
·        Lincoln's Birthday
·        NAACP Day founded in 1909
·        Oglethorpe Day
·        Paul Bunyan Day
·        Safety Pup Day

Today’s Events through History  
1502 - Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal on his second voyage to India.
1908 - NY to Paris auto race (via Alaska & Siberia) begins in NYC 
1931 - Vatican Radio begins broadcasting with the call sign HVJ
1950 - Albert Einstein warns against hydrogen bomb
1987 - Survivors of a black man murdered by KKK members awarded $7 M damages
2007 - A gunman opens fire in a mall in Salt Lake City, killing 5 people in the Trolley Square shooting.

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
Joe Garagiola, sportscaster/host (Today Show) is 88
Charles Van Doren, American quiz show contestant is 88
Bill Russell, Monroe La, NBAer (Boston Celtics, Oly-gold-56) is 80
Joe Don Baker, actor (Eischied, Walking Tall) is 78
Maud Adams, Sweedish actress (Octopussy, Rollerball, Tattoo) is 69
Joanna Kerns, [de Varona], actress (Maggie-Growing Pains) is 61
Arsenio Hall, comedian (Alan Thicke, Arsenio, Coming to America) is 58
Chynna Phillips, vocalist (Wilson Philips-Hold On) is 46
Josh Brolin, actor (Johnny-Private Eye, Jimmy Hickok-Young Riders) is 46
Christina Ricci, actress (Wednesday-Addams Family, Mermaids, Casper) is 34

Remembered for being born today
1663 - Cotton Mather, witchcraft authority
1809 - Abraham Lincoln, Kentucky, (R) 16th US President (1861-65)
1809 - Charles Darwin, England, discovered evolution (Origin of the Species)
1893 - Omar Bradley, General of Army WW II (GI General)
1904 - Ted Mack, Denver Colorado, TV host (Original Amateur Hour)
1915 - Lorne Greene, Ottawa Canada, actor (Bonanza, Battlestar Galactica)
1919 - Forrest Tucker, actor (O'Rourke-F Troop, Dusty Trail)

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           
Eubie Blake, ragtime-composer/pianist (Memories of You), 1983, @96
Charles M. Schulz, American cartoonist, cancer, 2000, @77
Tom Landry, American football coach, leukemia, 2000, @75
Sidney Toler, actor (Charlie Chan, Dark Alibi), cancer, 1947, @72
Oliver, American pop singer, cancer, 2000, @54
Ethan Allen, American patriot, stroke, 1789, @51
Grant Wood, US painter (American Gothic), cancer, 1942, @50
Sal Mineo, actor (Exodus, Rebel Without a Cause), stabbed, 1976, @37
Jane Grey, queen of England for 9 days, beheaded, 1554, @17

Brain Teasers
A tourist.
A type T could not say that, because he would be lying. A type L couldn't say it, because he would be telling the truth. So the person couldn't be either. Also, since you are touring the island, there are probably others too. And a tourist could either lie or tell the truth. In this case, he would be lying.
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  §
Posted by No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Followers

Total Pageviews

Blog Archive

About Me

My photo
Flagstaff, Arizona, United States
I retired in '06--at the ripe old age of 57. I enjoy blogging, photography, traveling, and living life to it's fullest.