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

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  §
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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  §
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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.