10/2/13


FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!
Almanac: Flagstaff:  Week: 40/ Day: 275   
Today: H 69°…L 35°…Ave. humidity: 46%
Wind: ave:   8mph; Gusts:  21mph  
Average High: 69° Record High:  82° (1991)
Average Low: 36° Record Low:  18° (1971)

Quote of the Day



Today’s Historical Highlights
1st cartoon comic strip (The Yellow Kid) is printed in a newspaper…1895
24th Olympic games close at Seoul, Korea…1988
5 school girls are murdered in a shooting at an Amish school in PA…2006
Brigham Young, Mormon leader, arrested for bigamy…1871
George Washington sends Bill of Rights to the States for ratification…1789
J Osterhoudt patents tin can with key opener…1866
NFL plays first regular season game outside US- AZ Cardinals defeat the 49ers 
     in Mexico City…2005
Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz first published…1950
Pres Woodrow Wilson has a stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed…1919
Prototype of modern reflecting telescope completed by Jan Lippershey…1608
San Diego Zoo founded…1916
Thurgood Marshall sworn in as 1st black Supreme Court Justice…1967
US colony Connecticut passes law against Quakers…1656

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



My Free Rambling Thoughts   
Had my teeth cleaning and checkup early this morning. Things are going well. Still need to do a crown sometime in the future.
 
I didn’t watch a lot of news today, since all that was really on was the government shutdown. I did hear some interesting campaign speech excerpts from the 2010 congressional races. In many of the ‘new’ districts that were created after the census, the Republican candidate was already saying that a shutdown was the only way to get what they want. Here is N. AZ we were all reminded of the 1996 shutdown when our Governor showed up at the Grand Canyon with state police officers demanding to let them do the work and reopen the National Park.  He failed, but during the next shutdown, he brokered a deal that allowed the state to pay the salaries of park employees to keep the park open. The Fed repaid all that money. Our current governor was offered the same deal and she declined. There are some 18,000 visitors (mostly foreigners)/day at this time of year. Also one large group of tourists had spent $30,000 for a private trip down the Grand Canyon. They were turned back by rangers at Lee’s Ferry, the entry point, and will probably lose their money, unless they had trip insurance. This is more proof that the shutdown has serious consequences for the vendors at all National Parks by this silly shutdown. No tourists means no jobs, now and in the future. I heard from several currently working former colleagues who have been deemed ‘essential’ who are working but been told they may not get paid. The work still has to be done…but why should they not get paid while the people who caused this shutdown are getting paid. And the latest guess is that a 3 day shutdown will cost the economy $32billion. And good for the WWII vets who moved the barrier at the WWII memorial in DC so they could see the open space memorial.
Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
This deadly 8-letter word can really "put people in a frenzy," and for very good reason. If you drop letter 1 and order the rest of the letters like so [8745623], then you get exactly what the word can do. So, if you are affected by it, you had better get a good [65478], or you could be taking a very long [321]!
Lifestyle  Substance:     
Found on You Tube with some relevance to today

Hmmmm…Fearsome Phobias
If you have an irrational fear of... Eating
You're suffering from... Phagophobia Greek phago 'to eat'
If you have an irrational fear of... Electricity
You're suffering from... Electrophobia Modern Latin electricus "resembling amber" 
Interesting Disney



Harper’s Index    
  • Percentage of all petitions to hear a case the Supreme Court has granted in the past three years: 1
  • Percentage of positions it has granted that were supported by an amicus brief (legal opinion) from the US Chamber of Commerce: 32

Unusual Fact of the Day
The first Star Wars movie (A New Hope) was originally given a movie rating of G. That changed when they added the burning corpses of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. The rating was quickly changed to PG.

Joke-of-the-day
Did you hear about the dead cabbage? There was a big turnip at the funeral.
Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
SELLING BOOKS
Ten percent of bookstore customers buy 90 percent of the books. Ten percent never buy anything.   
Yeah, It Really Happened
MINNEAPOLIS - Thousands of volunteers helped catalog more than 300,000 galaxies, the first time so much galaxy population information was collected, a U.S. researcher said. While computers are good for automatically measuring properties such as size and color of galaxies, the human eye is better for tackling the more challenging characteristics, such as shape and structure, the University of Minnesota said Tuesday in a release. Enter "Galaxy Zoo 2" project, the second phase of a crowdsourcing effort to help categorize the galaxies in the universe, the Minneapolis university said. "This catalog is the first time we've been able to gather this much information about a population of galaxies," said Kyle Willet, one of the researchers. "People all over the world are beginning to examine the data to gain a more detailed understanding of galaxy types." From February 2009 to April 2010, more than 83,000 Galaxy Zoo 2 volunteers worldwide looked at images online gathered from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The participants answered questions about the galaxy, including whether it had spirals, the number of spiral arms present, or if it had galactic bars, which are long extended features representing a concentration of stars. Each image was classified an average of 40 to 45 times to ensure accuracy, the researchers said. Researchers estimate the volunteers' effort represents about 30 years of full-time work if it were done by one researcher, and represents a boon to scientists gathering more information than ever using telescopes. "With today's high-powered telescopes, we are gathering so many new images that astronomers just can't keep up with detailed classifications," said Lucy Fortson, another researcher and a professor of physics and astronomy at the U of M. "We could never have produced a data catalog like this without crowdsourcing help from the public."
Somewhat Useless Information   
Facts About Weather and Nature
  • You may have heard someone say, “It’s raining cats and dogs.” There have been actual documented cases from all over the world of fish, frogs, dead birds, snakes, snails, beetles, worms and jellyfish raining down from the sky in great numbers, but no reports of showers of cats or dogs.
  • Almost two-thirds of the earths surface is covered by water. If the earth were flat, water would cover everything in a layer two miles deep!
  • During a solar eclipse, the shadows of leaves make the same crescent shape of the eclipsing sun. The image is made by light passing through tiny holes in the leaves.
  • Tired of the cold weather? Take a vacation on the hottest planet in the solar system – Venus. At over 800 degrees, it is hotter than Mercury because the clouds and abundant carbon dioxide hold in most of the heat received from the sun.
  • Geologists have discovered there seems to be more water miles deep between the rocks of Earths mantle than in all the oceans of the world. The intense pressure of the tons of rocks above keeps the hot water from turning to steam and escaping.

Calendar Information        
Happening This Week:
1-7
Universal Children's Week
World Dairy Expo

Today Is                                                                      
·        Balloons Around The World Day
·        Country Inn, Bed-and-Breakfast Day
·        Guardian Angels Day
·        Intergeneration Day
·        International Day of Non-violence
·        National Custodial Workers Day
·        Phileas Fogg's Wager Day
·        World Farm Animals Day
~~~~
·        Guinea: Independence Day (1958 from France)

Today’s Events through History  
"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" premieres…1955
"Twilight Zone" premieres on CBS-TV…1959
"Ben Casey" premieres on NBC-TV…1961
~~~
1st Pan American conference (Washington DC) …1889
Jacques Cartier discovers Mount Royal (Montreal)…1535
Steffi Graf becomes the youngest woman to win 500 pro tennis matches…1991

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
Rex Reed, movie critic/actor (Myra Breckinridge) is 75
Don McLean, singer/songwriter (American Pie, Vincent) is 68
Annie Leibovitz, photgrapher (Rolling Stones) is 64
Sting, [Gordon Sumner], rock vocalist (Police-Roxanne)/actor (Dune) is 62
Lorraine Bracco, actress (Sopranos) is 58
Kelly Ripa, actress (Talk Show host/actress) is 43

Remembered for being born today
Nat Turner, Virginia, leader of major slave rebellion [1800-1831]
Mahatma Gandhi [Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi], pacifist and spiritual leader [1869-1948]
Jack Parsons, American rocket scientist, author, and occultist [1914-1952]
Bud Abbott, comedian (Abbott & Costello) [1895-1974]
Groucho Marx, [Julius], comedian (Marx Bros, You Bet Your Life) [1890-1977]
Johnnie Cochran, attorney (OJ Simpson defense attorney) [1937-2005]
Chris LeDoux, country singer (Ridin' for a Fall) [1948-2005]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           
Gene Autry, singer, actor, and entrepreneur…1998…@91
Samuel Adams, US revolutionary (Boston Massacre-Tea Party) and politician…1803…@81
Marcel Duchamp, French painter and sculptor (Nude Descending a Staircase)…1968…@81
Harriet Nelson, actress (Ozzie & Harriet)…1994…@85
Rock Hudson (Roy Harold Scherer, Jr.), actor (MacMillian & Wife)…AIDS…1985…@59
Frank Lovejoy, actor (Man Against Crime, Meet McGraw)…heart attack…1962…@50

Brain Teasers
PANDEMIC
DEM is a Greek root for people. A (PAN- [DEM] -IC) puts people (DEM) in a frenzy (PANIC).
[8745623] = CIDE MAN
Cide is a Latin root for kill. A pandemic "kills mankind."
And of course...if you contract the disease, you need a good [65478] = MEDIC, or you may take a long [321] = NAP (death).

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:

10/1/13


FYI: Any blue text is a link. Click to check it out!
Almanac: Flagstaff:  Week: 40/ Day: 274   
Today: H 71°…L 35°…Ave. humidity: 52%
Wind: ave:   3mph; Gusts:  18mph  
Average High: 69° Record High:  85° (1980)
Average Low: 36° Record Low:  23° (1982)

Quote of the Day



Today’s Historical Highlights
1st baseball World Series, Pittsburgh Pirates vs Boston Pilgrims (Red Sox) …1903
1st postcards are issued (Vienna, Austria) …1869
1st state fair Berkshire Cattle Fair held in Pittsfield Mass…1910
1st Tonight Show w/ Johnny Carson, Joan Crawford guests…1962
Arab forces under T. E. Lawrence (a/k/a "Lawrence of Arabia") capture Damascus…1918
California becomes the 1st US state to ban conversion therapy for minors…2012
California Supreme Court voids state statue banning interracial marriages…1948
Cartoon Cable Network premieres…1992
Closing ceremony of the XXVII Olympics in Sydney, Australia…2000
Congress creates Weather Bureau…1890
Department Of Energy established…1977
EPCOT Center opens in Orlando Florida…1982
Free Speech Movement launched at University of California-Berkley…1964
John Philip Sousa becomes new director of US Marine Corps Band…1880
Little Golden Books (children books) begins publishing…1942
National Geographic magazine publishes for 1st time…1888
Plaza Hotel (5th Av & 59th Str, NY) opens…1907
Roger Maris sets record of 61 HRs (off of Tracy Stallard) …1961
South African President Nelson Mandela visits US…1994
Stanford University opens its doors…1891
Storm breaks Leiden dike Holland; drowns 20,000 Spanish soldiers…1574
University of Chicago opens…1892
Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida opens…1971
Yosemite National Park forms…1890

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



My Free Rambling Thoughts   
A really beautiful day here in Flag…and it’s Monday. Amazing. Had to run over to Home Depot this morning to get a new aerator for my kitchen faucet. The old one had the swivel part fall off so when I turned the faucet on, water just came out and splashed everywhere.
 
Thank you NPR for another great story. As a Federal worker, I never had to deal with a government shut down until 1995. I wondered always wondered why. Well it turns out that before 1995 there were many times the elected leaders didn’t fund the government by Oct. 1, but there was never a shutdown. Prior  to that all workers just kept coming to work and when the budget got worked out, they got paid. It all changed when a Clinton lawyer discovered an old, old statue that stated that only essential workers could remain on the job and if employees that were not essential stayed, they were illegal volunteers and subject to prosecution. So since 1995, no budget, no work. Another weird thing is that it is the President who determines who is essential and not subject to being sent home. This time around Obama has determined that many, including those working on the Affordable Care Act are essential. And of course, the Congress has determined that they should get paid during the shutdown. So it looks like many will get to sleep in tomorrow. One last thing, since the National Parks will be closed, all the vendors who operate within the park will have no customers so will have to close and not pay their employees. What a way to build the economy.

Game  Center (answers at the end of post)
Brain Teasers
The Agents of F.C.I. have amusing anagrams to match their characteristics, for example, AGENT SOUL, whose name anagrams to LANGOUSTE, likes seafood. Try to determine the Anagrams for the following Agents.
AGENT DEE is very young. AGENT YIP specializes in Pharaohs and Sphinxes. AGENT MIC has attractive abilities.

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

Hmmmm…Fearsome Phobias
If you have an irrational fear of... Dryness (and dry places)
You're suffering from... Xerophobia Greek xero ‘dry’
If you have an irrational fear of... Dust
You're suffering from... Amathophobia Greek amathos 'dust'
Interesting Disney



Harper’s Index    
Number of years in prison to which a Texas man was sentenced recently for stealing a $35 rack of pork ribs: 50
Unusual Fact of the Day
While the abacus is commonly associated with the Far East, it was also used in ancient Greece and Rome.

Joke-of-the-day
Embarrassing Situations!
A very shy guy goes into a bar and sees a beautiful woman sitting at the other end. After an hour of gathering up his courage he finally goes over to her and asks, tentatively, "Um, would you mind if I chatted with you for a while?"
To which she responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, "No, I won't sleep with you tonight!"
By now, the entire bar is staring at them. Naturally, the guy is hopelessly and completely embarrassed and he slinks back to his table.
After a few minutes, the woman walks over to him and apologizes. She smiles at him and says, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you. You see, I'm a graduate student in psychology and I'm studying how people respond to embarrassing situations."
To which he responds, at the top of his lungs, "What do you mean $200!"

Rules of Thumb:   
Easy shortcuts to make an ‘educated’ guess
THROWING A KNIFE
If your knife balances more than one inch from the tang on the handle side, it is handle heavy and should be thrown from the blade. Likewise, if it balances more than one inch from the tang on the blade side, it is blade heavy and should be thrown from the handle.   
Yeah, It Really Happened
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A 7-year-old boy is suing a Pennsylvania school district over its weapons policy after he was suspended for having a novelty pen on a bus, his lawyer said. Officials in the Derry School District in Dauphin County, Pa., gave the boy -- identified in the federal lawsuit as G.B. -- a four-day suspension and branded him a "weapons offender" for possessing the pen, which emits a small electrical shock when the cap is pressed, the Philadelphia Daily News reported Thursday. G.B. is a second-grader at Hershey Elementary School in Hershey, Pa., the newspaper added.
"A sharpened pencil is probably a more dangerous item than this pen was," said the boy's attorney Aaron Martin, who noted the goal of the suit is to clear the boy's name and to clarify what can be brought to school. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pa., claims the boy is classified as a violator of the school's weapons policy, his disciplinary record is permanently "marred," and he is "relegated to the same category as violent criminals" and terrorists.
Somewhat Useless Information   
  • The first apple trees were planted by Pilgrims in Massachusetts Bay Colony.
  • An apple tree will start bearing fruit 8-10 years after it is planted. A dwarf tree starts bearing in 3-6 years.
  • Apples are not self pollinating. They need bees to pollinate the flowers to form the fruit.
  • Most apple blossoms are pink when they open but gradually fade to white.
  • Apples are a member of the rose family of plants along with pears, peaches, plums and cherries.
  • Twenty five percent of an apple's volume is air; that is why they can float.


Calendar Information        
Happening This Month:



Happening This Week:
1-7
Universal Children's Week
World Dairy Expo

Today Is                                                                      
·        CD Player Day 1982 first commercial compact disc
·        Fall Astronomy Day
·        Fire Pup Day to recognize canine firefighters
·        International Day of Older Persons
·        Model T Day introduced in 1908 for $825
·        National Lace Day
·    World Card Making Day Celebrate the creativity of handmade cards and the personal connection that they create between friends and family
·        World Vegetarian Day
~~~~
·        China: National Day (founded 1949)
·        Cyprus: Independence Day (1960 from UK)
·        Nigeria: Independence Day (1960 from UK)
·        South Korea: Armed Forces Day since 1950 with 38th parallel treaty

Today’s Events through History  
1st Hawaiian stamps issued…1851
2nd (and current) Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is opened in New York…1931
Bonnie Prince Charlie flees to France…1746
Generalissimo Francisco Franco establishes state of Spain…1936
Pullman Co formally recognizes Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters…1937
Russian army ends a millennium of Muslim domination in Armenia…1827
SF cable cars declared a national landmark…1964

Today’s Birthdays                                                           
Jimmy Earl Carter, Plains Ga, 39th Pres is 89
Julie Andrews, Surrey, actress/singer (Sound of Music, Mary Poppins) is 78
Stella Stevens, actress (Girls! Girls!, Manitou) is 75
Rod Carew, baseball slugger (AL Rookie of Year 1967) is 68
Randy Quaid, actor (Midnight Express, Vacation, Saturday Night Live) is 63
Esai Morales, actor is 51
Mark McGwire, 1st baseman (AL rookie of year 1988, Oakland A's, Cards) is 50

Remembered for being born today
James Lawrence, naval hero (War of 1812-"Don't give up the ship!") [1781-1813]
Bonnie Parker, outlaw (Bonnie and Clyde) [1910-1934]
Ahmad Amin, Egyptian historian/author [1886-1954]
George Peppard, actor (Banacek, A-Team, Blue Max) [1928-1994]
Walter Matthau, actor (Odd Couple, Bad News Bears) [1920-2000]
Richard Harris, Irish actor (Man Called Horse)/singer (MacArthur Park) [1932-2000]
Roger Williams, pianist [1924-2001]
William Rehnquist, Supreme Court/chief justice [1924-2005]
James Whitmore, White Plains NY, actor (Give 'em Hell Harry) [1921-2009]
Tom Bosley, actor (Howard-Happy Days, Murder She Wrote) [1927-2010]

Today’s Historical Obits                                                           
E. B. White, US author (New Yorker, Charlotte’s Web)…1985…@86
Curtis E LeMay, USAF General/VP candidate…1990…@83
Walter B Cannon, US physiologist (Traumatic Shock)…1945…@73
Louis Leakey, English anthropologist…heart attack…1972…@68

Brain Teasers
AGENT DEE, who is TEENAGED, is very young. AGENT YIP, who is EGYPTIAN, specializes in Pharaohs and Sphinxes. AGENT MIC, who is MAGNETIC, has attractive abilities.
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  §
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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.