Happy Friday

"Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier." ~Mother Teresa
Always try to make people happier, especially on a Happy Friday!

National French Fry Day, July 13, 2020

During 1802 Thomas Jefferson served "potatoes served in the French manner" at a White House dinner. Jefferson originally knew them as pommes de terre frites à cru en petites tranches (potatoes deep-fried while raw, in small cuttings). Incidentally, the average American eats 29 pounds of French fries a year

Chewing the Fat

Before ships were equipped with refrigerators, salted beef, which was cheap, would keep well, and was standard fare for men at sea. One piece of the jerky could often be chewed for hours. Now, the phrase means to have an informal chat with someone, something the sailors likely did while “chewing the fat.”

Laughter

Laughter does have positive psychological, physiological, and immunological impacts on our health. The term for the study of laughter and laughing and the examination of its effects on the human body is “gelotology” — from the Greek gelos, meaning  “laughter.”

In their study “Humor and Laughter May Influence Health” in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Mary Payne Bennett and Cecile A. Lengacher report that a sense of humor influences psychological and physiological well-being. Among their findings:

Laughter leads to increased heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen consumption, similar to aerobic exercise. After intense laughter, body muscles relax.
Like other strong emotions, humor seems to activate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which shows an increase in such hormones as urinary epinephrine and norepinephrine, but blood pressure remains stable. (Sad emotional stimulus results in higher blood pressure.)
Exposure to a humorous stimulus decreased self-reported anxiety.
Laughter in response to humorous stimuli correlates with improvement of natural killer (NK) cell activity — the immune cells that kill cancerous cells and prevent some types of viral illnesses.

Laughing has social benefits. Since much laughter is a social response rather than a reaction to jokes, laughing facilitates social reaction.

Laughter is also contagious. If you see someone laughing, you will probably laugh, too. One reason is because the sound of laughter is contagious: Researchers recently found that we often mimic one another’s behavior, copying words or gestures due to the mirroring system in the brain.

Here are some laughing exercises for you to try.

Smile with stretching: First breathe in and out through your mouth. When you exhale, smile. Repeat few times, and then do it while stretching. Breathe in and stretch your body, and breathe out, smile, and relax.
Facial release: Move your facial muscles. Stretch and squeeze or make a dance with your face. You will find your face becomes much more relaxed and ready for laughing.
Create laughing sounds: Make laughing sounds like ha-ha-ha while shaking your body a little bit or gently tapping your body parts or clapping hands. Imagine all the stress is released.
Laugh out loud: Start with small laughing sounds and a little motion, and then create bigger motions and louder laughter.

Wordology, Draw a Blank

According to 'English Language Centres', “draw a blank” originated in Tudor England when Queen Elizabeth I set up the first national lottery in 1567.

For this lottery, there were two pots. One pot contained slips of paper with the names of all of the participants. The other pot contained the same number of slips, only some bits of paper had prizes written on them while others were blank. One slip of paper was pulled from each pot at the exact same time and if the person matched with a prize, then they would win the prize. However, if the person’s name was drawn with a piece of paper with no writing, then they would not win anything. They were unsuccessful and “drew a blank.”

Ten Interesting Internet Facts

37% of the internet is porn.
Porn websites attract more visitors each month than Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter combined.
15% of American adults do not use the internet.
Over 100,000 .com domains are registered each day.
Internet users send 204 million emails per minute.
China has more internet users on mobile devices than on PCs.
"LOL" used to mean "lots of love" before the internet.
The first thing ever bought and sold across the internet was a bag of marijuana around 1971. (Back when it was an academic network Arpnet.)
In 1973, the entire internet consisted of only 42 computers.
India has more people using the internet than the entire population of the U.S.

Online Fax

Many of us have long since abandoned our home fax machines, due to lack of use. For that rare occasion we need to send a fax, because email attachment will not do, there is a free internet service called Faxzero. You can go to the site add your document and send a fax for free. Some limitations, but quick and easy when you need it. LINK

Pronounce This

Route, The pronunciation of the word "route" is a little bit complicated. Though Northeasterners tend to pronounce it so it rhymes with "hoot" and Midwesterners tend to pronounce it so it rhymes with "out," just over 30 percent of respondents in the Harvard Dialect survey noted that they can (and do) pronounce it both ways.
Get, "The word get does not rhyme with yet here in the South," writes Sarah Johnson, a South Carolina native and Southern accent specialist. "We say it like 'git.' There is a common rhyme teachers use at school when students complain about not getting their first choice. In the North, you might say: 'You get what you get, so don't be upset.' We say, 'You git what you git, so don't throw a fit.'"

Can't, according to Johnson, "the word can't in many small towns in the South rhymes with paint."

What's in a Name, Donald Weder

If you have ever enjoyed an Easter basket with plastic eggs and grass, then you can thank Donald Weder, the man who invented both. Weder not only holds the patents on these holiday staples, he also holds a total of 1,413 U.S. patents, including ones for water-based inks, flower-pot covers, and decorative wrappers. That is more than Thomas Edison, who held just 1,093 U.S. patents.

Happy Friday

"Do not run after happiness, but seek to do good, and you will find that happiness will run after you." ~ James Freeman Clarke
If you are chased by happiness, turn around and embrace it, especially on a Happy Friday!

July 4

After the members of the Second Continental Congress approved and signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, John Adams wrote about the occasion in a letter to his wife Abigail: "I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding Generations as the great anniversary Festival." Adams went on to suggest that it should "be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty." He then added: "It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shows, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this time forward forever more."

Reading these words, you might describe Adams as prescient, except he was talking about July 2, 1776, when the document was approved and signed, and not July 4th, when it was formally adopted by the Continental Congress. For the remainder of his life, Adams considered the Second of July to be America's true Independence Day, and he was so miffed when the Fourth became the accepted holiday that he refused to participate in any celebrations on that date.

Wordology, Under the Weather

Originally, sailors used the phrase “under the weather bow,” referring to the side of the ship that would get the brunt of the wind during storms. To avoid getting seasick when the waves got rough, they would bunker down in their cabins, literally under that bad weather, to let the storm pass.

Georgia Peaches

Georgia may be known as the Peach State, but according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, California grew 541,000 tons of peaches in 2017. Meanwhile, Georgia was not even in the top three, even though peaches are its official state fruit. New Jersey was second and Pennsylvania was third.

Baking Powder vs. Baking Soda

Difference between baking powder and baking soda.

Baking soda and baking powder both leaven baked goods. Baking expert Zach Young explains the difference during his Cranberry Scones class. Baking soda is activated by the acid in the recipe (like yogurt or buttermilk). Baking powder, on the other hand, is typically activated twice: first when it is added to a wet batter and second when you put it in the oven.

Oldest Grapevine

Located in Maribor, Slovenia, the oldest grapevine in the world that still produces grapes—and in turn, wine—has been around since the 1500s. Each year approximately 100 small, 250-milliliter bottles are made from the fruits produced from the vine. Incidentally, each bottle of wine and grape variety is different, but on average, there are about 736 grapes in a single bottle of wine.

Windows Key Tips

Use the first combination to get the desired size, then the second to take a screenshot to print or email it.

Win + “+” and “-” keys — Zooms in and out with the magnifier tool (you can zoom in on any app, desktop, or folder).

Shift + Win + S — Selects any desired area of the screen and takes a screenshot of it.

Grow Mint Reduce Bugs

Mint prefers well-drained, but moist ground, tolerates shade, and needs minimal care. Mint is the plant that we love thanks to its strong fragrance. Some animals and bugs just can’t stand the smell of mint. It can repel ants, mosquitoes, slugs, snails, and mice.

What's in a name, Grapefruit

“The fruits are borne usually in clusters of from 3 to 15,” explains the Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, published 1901, “hence the name Grape-fruit (in clusters or bunches like grapes), by which it is known by in Jamaica.”

Even back then, however, at least one expert took issue with that answer. Here’s the editor of The American Botanist grousing back in 1902: Another horticultural magazine gravely informs its readers that the grape-fruit (Citnis decumana) receives its common name from the fact that it grows ‘in grapose clusters.’ Everybody that has seen the grape-fruit growing knows that the fruits hang singly, like their near relatives the orange and lemon. ‘Grapose clusters’ favors facts manufactured to fit the explanation.

American Flag Facts

A few years after welcoming Vermont and Kentucky, states 14 and 15 into the union (in 1791 and 1792, respectively), a new version of the flag was created that had 15 stars and 15 stripes. As the U.S. continued to add new states, there was concern about having to continually add additional stripes. The solution: revert to 13 to represent the original 13 colonies, and let the stars represent the States.

Incidentally, there have been 27 official versions of the U.S. flag, each with a different number of stars.