Oct 30, 2015

Happy Friday

“When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them.” ~ Evelyn Waugh

I never place limitations on enjoying a Happy Friday!

Daylight Saving

Finally the US catches up with the rest of the world. In the US, 2am Sunday morning, November 1. Remember to "fall back." Also, replace your smoke and fire detector batteries.

Keeping Pumpkins Fresh

It is that time of year again and we all know pumpkins can turn mushy after a few days.

Here are a few hacks to keep it fresh longer. After your pumpkin has been carved, rinse it out with water to get rid of excess strings and gunk. Take a large bucket or tub and fill it with a few gallons of water.
Stir in three teaspoons of bleach, dunk in the pumpkin. Be sure to hold it down as it will try to float. Let it sit in the solution for two minutes, remove and let dry.

Spray the whole thing, inside and out with WD40 to keep it fresh and shiny.

If you want to spend a bit more, you can now buy a product, Pumpkin Fresh to spray the whole thing. Of course, you need to apply daily.

Vaseline or any oil you might have in your kitchen applied to the inside and cut edges will keep it fresh, but are all a bit messy.

Boat Truck

Very cool video of special boat truck. Surprise ending, two minutes. LINK

Helpful Happiness Hack

At the end of the day just before you go to bed, write down something good that happened to you, or something that made you happy, or made you smile that day. Put the note where you will find it in the morning as you are getting ready. It also helps if you look in the mirror and smile when you read the note in the morning.

Do this for seven days and you will be at least 20% happier - and it will last for another week, even if you stop doing it.

If you want to stay happy, date the notes and save them. You will be amazed when you go back and look at them, the smallest things keep you happiest the longest.

Cara Mia

Gomez (Bubeleh) Addams' pet name, 'cara mia' for Morticia means 'my beloved'. It is also the title of a song made popular by Jay and Americans. This 2011 update to a 1965 hit from Jay Black, 73 years young then and still making people happy after all these years. LINK

Lasgna vs. Lasagne

North American English speakers use lasagna. English speakers from outside North America usually use lasagne. The word comes from Italian, of course. In that language, lasagna is the singular noun and lasagne is the plural, but this does not carry over into the words’ treatment in English. Both the plural and the singular forms are usually treated as mass nouns, taking singular verbs.

Beer Benefits and Sexual Performance

Moderate beer drinking decreases risk of heart disease by 31 percent (the same as wine). A study published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology also found that moderate consumption of beer reduces the risk of developing kidney stones by 41 percent, and is one of the few plant sources of vitamin B12.

It makes you last longer. The phytoestrogens in beer can help delay premature ejaculation.

Dark brews can help get you in the mood better, because they increase both red blood cells and overall circulation. Dark contains more iron than pale beers.

Beer increases stamina and is good for heart health.

Guinness is great for stomach issues, low in calories and alcohol content, and is rich in vitamins, minerals, and probiotics. It contains only 128 calories and 11 grams of carbohydrates per serving.

50 Shades of Green beer is like green juice and Viagra combined. It is specifically engineered to enhance performance. It contains ginseng, ginkgo biloba, and damiana to achieve increased sexual desire, blood flow, and nerve stimulation. Gives a whole new meaning to 'Bottoms up!'

Grammagrams

A Grammagram is a word, made of letter sounds which are pronounced aloud. Great way to code things. Here are a few interesting ones:
DEVIOUS - DVS (say each letter quickly D V S)
EFFENDI - FND
ENEMY - NME
ENVIOUS - NVS
ESCAPEE - SKP
ODIOUS - ODS
OPIUM - OPM
TEDIOUS - TDS
EXCELLENCY - XLNC

Weather Patterns

As we begin another change of season, the weather changes dramatically from day to day. Seems like many of us check the weather to see what to wear, should we take an umbrella, etc. The Weather Company owns the fourth-most used mobile app in the U.S., and their cloud handles 26 billion requests a day.

IBM just made a bid to buy the digital assets for a few billion dollars and will feed the info into Watson for even more analysis.  IBM said, "Weather is probably the single largest swing factor in business performance - it impacts 1/3 of the world's GDP and in the US alone; weather is responsible for about half a trillion dollars in impact." Next spring we might see a battle between Punxsutawney Phil and Watson.

Oct 23, 2015

Happy Friday

"Doing what you like is freedom. Liking what you do is happiness." Frank Tyger

I am free to do what I like and I like smiling and celebrating a Happy Friday!

Daylight Saving

"Daylight Savings Time" is incorrect, but is commonly used, especially in Australia, Canada, and the United States. Officially, it is Daylight Saving Time.

The US and Great Britain used DST during World War I and II and reverted to standard time during peace years. It was not until the energy crisis of the 1970s that Daylight Saving Time was made permanent in many areas.

The US Energy Policy Act of 2005 was signed into law on August 8, 2005. Among other things, the Energy Policy Act extended the Daylight Saving Time period by starting DST several weeks earlier (second Sunday in March) and ending it one week later (first Sunday in November).

- Countries and territories which do not observe DST    161, including China
- Countries and territories where at least one location observes DST    79
- Countries and territories where all locations observe DST some part of the year    68
- Countries and territories where many, but not all locations observe DST part of the year    11, including United States
- Countries and territories where at least one location observes DST all year    2

The majority, including Europe end DST on Sunday Oct 25. In the US, it ends 2am Sunday, November 1. Some other countries end it on other dates, such as: March 8, March 22, April 5, April 25, April 26, January 18, February 22, September 22, September 26, October 23, October 30, and November 8. Must be interesting for the global airlines to change the flight times almost monthly for beginning and ending DST.

On 31 October 2007 in a Press Release, Western Power researched and reported DST caused "a 0.6% increase in electricity consumption in Washington's main grid". It also stated that "The daylight saving research showed slightly less power was used on days when the temperature went below 30 degrees, and slightly more power when the temperatures went above 30 degrees."

National Greasy Foods Day

Only in America do we celebrate greasy foods day. It is on Oct. 25. This might be a good day to try something different, like a breakfast dog, with a hotdog topped with a fried egg, bacon, hash browns, and cheese, wrapped in bacon. Time to think outside the box and go crazy for grease. If time change and greasy foods are not enough, October 25 is also Mother-in-Law day.

Visual Puzzle

This one is more simple than meets the eye, but is very interesting about 4 minute video. LINK

Vitamin C Myth

Thought it might be worth replaying this one as this is the beginning of the cold and flu season.

Hundreds of studies have now concluded that vitamin C does not treat the common cold. The results of many studies of various types, involving hundreds of thousands of people from around the world have all arrived at the same conclusion - vitamin C has no effect to prevent or cure colds or cancer.

The FDA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, the Center for Human Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services do not recommend supplemental vitamin C for the prevention or treatment of colds. Vitamin C does have other benefits and the studies did not say vitamin C is bad for you, it just does not provide the cancer and common cold remedies claimed.

Social Media Explained

Social media is now an essential part of doing business. That does not mean you need to be on every social media platform to get results. Ideally, with one or two focused networks, your message can reach your target audience in no time.
The question is which ones to use and how to maximize your visibility.

If you are clear about your social media goals, it will not be a challenge to determine which channels would work best for your business. Thing to keep in mind when you are deciding - Where are your customers? Before you think of creating your business profile on a site, you need to think: Are my customers here? There is much variation in the demographics of social networks and you need to find out where your customers are so you can reach them effectively.

According to a Pew survey in 2015:

  • Facebook has wide, global usage, but fewer young people are staying active.
  • Instagram is a favorite among teens and young adults.
  • Twitter is home to many information junkies and tech savvy people.
  • LinkedIn has higher income, educated professionals.
  • Pinterest has a user base which is 80% female dominated, most of whom have a higher income background.
  • Google+ is a network with a predominantly older male user base.
  • Vine is also a youth oriented platform.
  • YouTube has an equal number of men and women, but men are more active users with wider preferences.
Instagram — art, food, retail, lifestyle
Twitter — news, gossip, tech updates
LinkedIn — B2B, recruitment agencies
Pinterest — Retail, DIY, culinary skills, art
YouTube — Luxury products, DIY, Home improvement, music,
Google+ — SEO, IT

Sushi vs. Sashimi

Sushi means 'sour rice' and does not always feature fish.
Sashimi means 'raw' - but is not just fish.

Background Sounds

This simple site provides some ambient sounds to soothe your soul as you scramble around the internet. There are also apps for iPhone and Android to take the sound with you. It has birds, rain, waves, fire, thunder, and more. Now you can think pleasant thoughts with pleasant sounds in the background to keep you company as you do your work or surf the net. Alas, there was no bacon sizzle sound. LINK

Scientific Proof Isn't

There is no such thing as scientific proof. Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis.


Proof is incompatible with science which, by its nature should be provisional and self-correcting. Karl Popper (generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science in the 20th century) once wrote that "In the empirical sciences, which alone can furnish us with information about the world we live in, proofs do not occur, if we mean by 'proof' an argument which establishes once and for ever the truth of a theory." Only Math has proofs.

Free Friday Smile


Oct 16, 2015

Happy Friday

Happiness cannot be accumulated, but it can be divided.

I always try to share a slice of happiness while enjoying a Happy Friday!

Most Important Crops

The order varies by study, but these are generally agreed to as the top ten crops harvested, not by revenue. Cannabis is the top revenue producing crop and sugar cane is the most popular.


They are, in order, Corn, Wheat, Rice, Potatoes, Cassava, Soybeans, Sweet potatoes, Sorghum, Yams, and Plantains.

National Hospital and Health-System Pharmacy Week

It is celebrated Oct 20-26. Pharmacists are the unsung heroes of the medical system. They keep doctors honest, and patients as well as possible. They are the last stop before a patient ingests something that can do great good or grave harm.

Laser Razor

Here is a new invention that has been a long time coming. It was a kickstarter campaign and garnered US $4 million. The goal was $160,000. If it makes it, a whole industry will change forever, just like it did when Gillette came up with the disposable razor blade. This one is non-disposable and requires a battery to operate.

Kickstarter has suspended funding because it is, “in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that are offered as rewards.” Should be fun to watch for the next round. See for yourself at LINK.

Email Study Results

A recent study by USC Viterbi School of Engineering researchers found that speed of email responses depend on a variety of factors including age, platform, volume, and timing.

The paper, "Evolutions of Conversations in the Age of Email Overload," was presented at the World Wide Web Conference. The paper is the largest study of email to date, measuring how the volume of incoming email affects behaviors of recipients and the length of time it takes them to reply to emails. The study was conducted in accordance with privacy standards: individuals opted in to the study, the data was anonymized, and the emails were not read by humans.

The researchers said ninety percent of people respond within a day or two of receiving an email to which they plan to respond. Half of responders will respond in just under an hour.

Age is also an indicator for email response time. Younger people reply faster, but write shorter replies. Teens were the quickest, with an email response time average of 13 minutes. Young adults aged 20-35 years responded on average of 16 minutes of receiving an email. 35 to 50 years tended to respond in 24 minutes, on average. Those over 51 years of age, on average took 47 minutes to respond.

Women typically respond four minutes longer than an email response from a man. The platform also plays a critical role: If someone is working from a laptop, on average it will take them almost twice as long to respond than if using a mobile phone.

Emails with only five words are the most common. More than half the email replies are less than 43 words, and only 30 percent of emails are longer than 100 words.

Younger users can cope with the increased email load more than older email users. When younger users become more overloaded they tend to send shorter and faster replies to cope with the increased load. On the other hand, older people respond to an increased load of emails by replying to a smaller fraction of emails.

It is no surprise that people are more active on email during the day than at night. Emails on weekends get shorter replies than weekdays. If you want a longer and perhaps more thoughtful reply, email someone in the morning. The researchers found that emails sent in the morning tend to get longer replies than those in the afternoon.

Wine is Better than Exercise

A recent study found that a glass of red wine is the equivalent to an hour at the gym. Also, drinking red wine could help burn fat, says another study.

The health benefits of red wine have been well documented. Studies have revealed that those who drink a glass of red wine a day are less likely to develop dementia or cancer, that it is good for your heart, it is anti-aging and can regulate blood sugar.

Research conducted by the University of Alberta in Canada has found that health benefits in resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, are similar to those we get from exercise.  Resveratrol was seen to improve physical performance, heart function and muscle strength in the same way as they are improved after a gym session. Other sources of resveratrol are blueberries, peanut butter, red grapes, and dark chocolate.

Segway Causes Segway

In 2010, Jimi Heselden, the mufti-millionaire owner of the company that makes Segway motorized scooters died in an accident while riding one of his vehicles.

He was riding a rugged country version of the two-wheeled Segway when he lost control of the machine as he traveled along a bridleway close to his estate near Boston Spa, West Yorkshire. He was found dead in a river after plunging 80 feet over a limestone cliff. The Segway was found in the river near his body, indicating that he was still riding the scooter when he drove over the cliff.

Segways are banned on British roads for safety reasons, but are legal on private land. Heselden bought the Segway company nine months earlier and planned to further develop the machine.

Free Books Online

Thought I would share a few sites that offer free books for your reading pleasure.

Doctor Codes

"Doctor" codes are often used in hospital settings for announcements over a general loudspeaker or paging system to avoid panic or endanger a patient's privacy. Most often, "Doctor" codes take the form of "Paging Dr. _____", where the doctor's name is a codeword for a dangerous situation or a patient in crisis. These are used in the same way as code blue, code red, etc., are used

Doctor Brown:  To alert security staff of a threat to personnel. If a nurse or doctor is in danger from a violent patient or non-staff member, they can page Doctor Brown to their location and the security staff will rush to their aid. In some hospitals

Dr. Allcome: Serious emergency. "Doctor Allcome to Ward 5." indicates all medical staff not presently occupied are needed.

Dr. Firestone: Fire in the hospital. If a fire's location can be isolated, the location of the fire is included in the page, e.g. "Paging Dr. Firestone to 3 West" indicates "Fire in or near west stairwell/wing on third floor" (William Beaumont Hospitals, MI).

Dr. Pyro: Fire in the hospital. "Paging Dr. Pyro" indicates a fire and its origin or current location, e.g. "Paging Dr. Pyro on 3" means "Fire on third floor" (Kaiser Permanente, system-wide).

Dr. Strong: Patient needs physical assistance or physical restraint. "Paging Dr. Strong ..." indicates that any physically capable personnel (orderlies, police, security officers, etc.) in the proximity should report and be prepared either to move a patient who fell down and cannot get back up or to capture and restrain an uncooperative patient.

Staying Young

It does not need to take a lot of effort. John Morley, M.D., director of the division of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University outlines a ten step program to improve quality of life as we age.

He suggests little changes that involve good eating, such as including dark chocolate in your diet, drinking wine, socializing, adding simple exercises, fidgeting in your office chair to burn calories, spending time walking from your car to the store rather than driving to find a close parking space, working in your garden, walking up stairs instead of using the elevator, or going dancing once a week. I can fidget, plus adding wine, chocolate, and dancing, how can this be bad.

Free Friday Smile

What's more fun than a wheelbarrow full of monkeys.

Oct 9, 2015

Happy Friday

Happiness is not infinite, but can be infinitely shared.

I always share my happiness infinitely while having a Happy Friday!

Happy Birthday Confucius

“What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” Confucius formulated the Golden Rule 2,500 years ago. This year we celebrate his birthday 9 October 2015 (Eighth Moon, Day 27).

Confucius is one of the most influential of China’s philosophers. He left a world-famous legacy of teachings and ethical principles that stress self-enlightenment through the Five Virtues of charity, justice, propriety, wisdom, and loyalty. His teachings, emphasizing proper behavior and loyalty to friends and family, shaped Chinese culture and continue to influence Japan, Korea, Vietnam and more to this day.

International Day for Failure

October 13th is International Day for Failure. A holiday intended for people to share stories of failure and learn from them. The goal of the people organizing the event is to have it be an internationally-recognized holiday by 2020. Without the possibility of failure there is no success, they go hand-in-hand. On this day you can admit some stupidity, error estimation, awkward moments, and other fails to the world. Facebook has a page dedicated to it.

The holiday was created in Finland in 2010. In 2012 it expanded to over 17 different countries. You can share your failures at this LINK   It will be interesting to see if their failure campaign will be a success.

More October Holidays

On October 12 we celebrate Columbus Day and Canadian Thanksgiving day. Of course they have nothing to do with each other, just coincidence this year.

Nine Gartner Technology Predictions

Gartner has released its technology predictions for the year.

By 2018, twenty percent of all business content, one in five of the documents you read, will be authored by a machine. "Robowriters" are already producing budget reports, sports, and business reports, and this trend is sneaking in without notice.

By 2018, six billion connected things will be requesting support. These non-human “things” are customers requesting services and data, and other methods of support.

By 2020, autonomous software agents outside of human control will participate in 5% of all economic transactions. Smart algorithms are already beginning to perform transactions without human help.

By 2018, more than three million workers globally will be supervised by a roboboss. "The problem with this is that robot bosses don't have human reactions," it said. "The reality is we have to see if robots can get human mannerisms right."

By 2018, twenty percent of smart buildings will have experienced digital vandalism. As buildings, both commercial and residential, get smarter and more connected, there is greater potential that these buildings can be attacked. We need to develop a way to detect and correct these intrusions.

By 2018, fifty percent of the fastest-growing companies will have less smart employees and more smart machines. Smart systems will be analyzing how a factory is being run, or deciding whether people are completing a task at an appropriate speed.

By 2018, digital assistants will recognize individuals by face and voice. Passwords are unworkable and good ones are hard to memorize. Biometrics have been around for a long time, but will get stronger.

By 2018, two million employees will be required to wear health and fitness tracking devices as a condition of employment. One benefit is that insurance costs may be lower for those companies with healthy employees. The use of such devices also raises significant issues about whether an employee keeps a job based on fitness level.

By 2020, smart agents will facilitate forty percent of mobile interactions. This is based on the belief that the world is moving to a post-app era, where assistants such as Cortana, Siri, and Google Now act as a type of universal interface.

Water on Mars

Came across one of my old blog posts from way back in February 2009. It is a picture of water on Mars. How prescient I must have been.

Happy Emergency Nurses Day

On October 14, 2015 we celebrate Emergency Nurses. Each year on the second Wednesday in October we take this day to say “thank you” to the emergency room nurses for their hard work, dedication, service, and commitment to their patients and families and their loyalty to the emergency nursing profession. National Emergency Nurses Day is part of Emergency Nurses Week. To all ED nurses, thank you and we hope you have a great day.

Shower Power

Easy way to remember benefits of showering, in addition to getting clean.

Selfie Mania

Taking selfies has killed more people so far during 2015 than shark attacks (12 to 8). The majority have actually been tourists trying to take pictures of themselves in unfamiliar places. There has also been a noticeable increased incidence of pedestrian accidents due to people looking down at their phone screens while attempting to walk. I presume there is some overlap with those who also had difficulty walking while chewing gum.

Condom Facts

For most of their history, condoms have been used both as a method of birth control, and as a protective measure against sexually transmitted diseases. Condoms have been made from a variety of materials. Prior to the 19th century, chemically treated linen and animal intestine or bladder were used. The oldest condoms ever excavated were found in a cesspit located in the grounds of Dudley Castle and were made from animal membrane, the condoms dated back to as early as 1640s. Condoms during the Renaissance were made out of intestines and bladder. Cleaned and prepared intestine for use in glove making had been sold commercially since at least the 13th century.

The story of the Earl of Condom, a knighted personal physician to England’s King Charles II in the mid-1600’s, who was requested to produce a method to protect the King from syphilis is completely false.

Oct 2, 2015

Happy Friday

Contentment may be the bread, but happiness is the wine of life.

I love to break bread, pour happiness, and share with friends on a Happy Friday!

World Smile Day

Today, October 2, 2015 we celebrate World Smile Day. It is always celebrated on the first Friday in October. Show the world a big smile and use #WorldSmileDay to post on social media.

The idea of World Smile Day was initiated by Harvey Ball, a commercial artist from Worcester, Massachusetts. He created the Smiley Face in 1963. The World’s first World Smile Day was held in the year 1999 and has been held annually since.


After Harvey died in 2001, the “Harvey Ball World Smile Foundation” was created to honor his name and memory. The slogan of the Smile Foundation is “improving this world, one smile at a time.” The Foundation continues as the official sponsor of World Smile Day each year. Likely no coincidence this year it happens on a Happy Friday. Harvey wants us to have a ball.

National Vodka and Golf Lovers Day

Celebrated since at least 2009, National Vodka Day on October 4, 2015 has been mentioned by Wine Enthusiast Magazine and has also been noted in news websites such as CBS. The versatile beverage accounts for about 20 to 25 per cent of spirits sold today in North America, making it the most popular libation.

Totally unrelated, but celebrated on the same day, October 4 in 2015 is National Golf Lovers Day. National Golf Lovers Day, also referred to as National Golf Day. Since 1952, the PGA has held a charitable event each year for National Golf Day, which is held on varying days within the year. We can celebrate a tipple and tip-in on the same day (and watch football).

Malarkey

We do not hear this word much these days, but it certainly was versatile. Here are some synonyms: balderdash, baloney, bilge, blah-blah, blarney, blather, blatherskite, blither, bosh, bull [slang], bunk, bunkum, claptrap, codswallop [British], crapola [slang], crock, drivel, drool, fiddle-faddle, fiddlesticks, flapdoodle, folderol, folly, foolishness, garbage, guff, hogwash, hokeypokey, hokum, hoodoo, hooey, horsefeathers [slang], humbuggery, jazz, nonsense, muck, nuts, piffle, poppycock, rot, rubbish, senselessness, silliness, slush, stupidity, taradiddle, tommyrot, tosh, trash, trumpery, twaddle. That certainly is a bunch of malarkey. Hope I did not miss any.

Unique Honda Commercial

This is a unique commercial that I might actually watch without changing stations or muting. It is about all the products Honda makes and is done with paper folding.

Here is a video of how they put it together. It was done without animation, just people and paper. A fun two minutes LINK.

Cisco Internet Predictions 2015

Each year Cisco gets its best and brightest minds together to make some predictions. The following are for the 2015 predictions.

Annual global IP (internet) traffic will surpass the zettabyte (1000 exabytes) threshold in 2016, and the two zettabyte threshold in 2019.

Global IP traffic has increased more than fivefold in the past 5 years, and will increase nearly threefold over the next 5 years. Overall, IP traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23 percent to 2019.

Content delivery networks will carry 62% of Internet traffic by 2019, up from 39 percent in 2014.

Over half of all IP traffic will originate with non-PC devices by 2019, up from 40 percent in 2014.

Personal computer-originated traffic will grow at a CAGR of just 9 percent, while TVs, tablets, smartphones, and machine-to-machine (M2M) modules will have traffic growth rates of 17 percent, 65 percent, 62 percent, and 71 percent, respectively.

By 2019, Wi-Fi and mobile devices will account for 66 percent of IP traffic and wired devices will account for just 33 percent.

Global Internet traffic in 2019 will be equivalent to 64 times the volume of the entire global Internet in 2005.

The number of devices connected to IP networks will be three times the global population in 2019.

By 2019, global fixed broadband speeds will reach 43 Mbps, up from 20 Mbps in 2014.

It would take an individual over 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2019. Every second, nearly a million minutes of video content will cross the network by 2019.

Population Density

If everyone lived as densely as they do in Manhattan, the whole human race could fit in New Zealand. If everyone lived as densely as they do in Manilla, the human race could fit in Tunisia. If everyone lived as densely as they do in Canada, we would need fourteen globes to fit the human race.

Zipf's Law

During 1949, the American linguist George Zipf noticed something odd about how often people use words in a given language. He found that a small number of words are used all the time, while the vast majority are used rarely. He ranked the words in order of popularity and a striking pattern emerged. The number one ranked word was always used twice as often as the second rank word, and three times as often as the third rank, and on, into the thousands with the same frequency.

In American English text, "the" is the most frequently occurring word, and accounts for nearly 7% of all word occurrences (69,971 out of slightly over 1 million). The second-place word "of" accounts for slightly over 3.5% of words (36,411 occurrences), followed by "and" (28,852). Only 135 vocabulary items are needed to account for half the most common words used. The Zipf principle also holds true for other languages.

He did not claim to have originated it. The French stenographer Jean-Baptiste Estoup and German physicist Felix Auerbach called this a rank vs. frequency rule, and found that it could also be used to describe corporation sizes, income rankings, ranks of number of people watching the same TV channel, popularity of opening chess moves, etc.

Later dubbed Zipf's law, the rank vs. frequency rule also works if you apply it to the sizes of cities. The city with the largest population in any country is generally twice as large as the next-biggest, and so on. Zipf's law for cities has held true for every country in the world, for the past century.

It almost streamlines the Pareto Principle, which describes the 80/20 rule, such as 20% of the actions represent 80% of the consequences. Twenty percent of the customers represent eighty percent of the profits, etc. I presume 80% of you enjoy most of this stuff and 20% tolerate it, with hopes of enjoying some part.

Chinese Glass Suspension Bridge

China's first high-altitude suspension bridge made of GLASS opened in Hunan.

The 984 foot (300-meter) long bridge spans the gap between two cliffs at the Shiniuzhai National Geological Park in Pingjiang County. It's 590 feet (180 meters) to the ground below. The glass floor panels are 24mm (about .9 inch) thick and 25 times stronger than normal glass. Click the link to see pictures.  LINK

Moms and Dads

A word extremely similar to “mom” occurs in almost every language on Earth and they are surprisingly similar across nearly all of the most commonly spoken languages. For example, if you wanted to address your mother in Dutch you would say “moeder”, in Germany “mutter”, in Italy “madre”. Here are a few more:
Chinese: Mãma
Hindi: Mam
Afrikaans: Ma
Swahili: Mama
French: Mère, Maman
Irish: Máthair
Italian: Madre, Mamma
Norwegian: Madre
Spanish: Madre, Mamá, Mami
Ukrainian: Mati
Romanian: Mama, Maica
Russian: Mat'
Welsh: Mam
Yiddish: Muter

The word “Papa” is present in several languages including Russian, Hindi, Spanish and English, while slight variations appear in German (Papi), Icelandic (Pabbi), Swedish (Pappa) and a number of other languages. In Turkish, Greek, Swahili, Malay and several other languages the word for dad is “Baba” or a variation of it.

It has been observed that babies, regardless of where in the world they are born, naturally learn to make the same few sounds as they begin to learn to speak. It has also been noted that during the babbling stage, babies will create what is known as “protowords” by combining combinations of consonants and vowels. These protowords are consistent across different cultures. The words babies make in this early babbling stage tend to use the softer contestants like B, P and M, often leading to the creation of otherwise non-words like baba, papa, and mama by the children.

It is theorized that since these are often the first sounds babies are able to make consistently, parents tended to use them to refer to themselves, which explains why words like “mama”, “papa,” “dada”, “tata” and “baba” are present in so many languages as a way of addressing parents.

These sounds are usually less complex to say than parent’s real names. Popular belief among many is the gibberish phrase da-da may have transposed to the use of the word Dad. Aroana tadi, Aztec tahtil, ta, Basque aita (father) and aitatxo (dad) and  aitaita  (grandfather),  Czech, Irish and Latin daid, German Vati, Greek tata, Inca tayta, Inuit ataatak, Hungarian atya, Polish tatus, Quechua tayta, Rumanian tata,  Russian dyadya, Sanskrit Tatah, Sumerian ada, Tagalog tatay, Turkish ata, Welsh tad.

Old English fæder, Proto-Germanic fader, Old Saxon fadar, Old Frisian feder, Dutch vader, Old Norse faðir, Old High German fatar, German vater, Greek pater, Latin pater, Old Persian pita. Seems children are very intelligent. They teach us to use the names they give us.

Free Friday Thought