Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys, who began play in the NFL in 1960, were originally nicknamed the Steers. The team’s general manager, Texas E. Schramm, decided that having a castrated ox as a mascot might subject the team to ridicule, so he changed the name to Rangers. Then he feared that people would confuse the football team with the local minor league baseball team nicknamed the Rangers and finally changed the nickname to Cowboys shortly before the season began.

Greenland Ice Loss - Not So Bad

Estimates of the rate of ice loss from Greenland and West Antarctica, should be halved, according to Dutch and US scientists.

Several teams have estimated Greenland and West Antarctica are shedding billions of tons of ice per year. However, according to the new study, published in the September issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, those ice estimates fail to correct for a phenomenon known as glacial isostatic adjustment.

"We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted. If the figures for overall sea level rise are accurate, icesheet loss would be contribute about 30 percent, rather than roughly half." The rest would come mainly from thermal expansion, meaning that as the sea warms it rises. Darn, now we have to wait another few hundred years to swim in the Los Angeles Basin.

Book Sizes

I know everyone sits up at night wondering why books are the size they are. Well, I went looking to find out. Books are as big as they are because medieval sheep were as big as they were.

Medieval books were constructed of parchment, mainly sheep skin. If you take an average sheep and skin it and trim off the odd parts, like legs, etc., you get one gigantic sheet of parchment. When it is folded in half, it makes two pages of an old book. Fold it in half again and you get the size of an encyclopedia. In half again and you get the current hardback book size.

Next time you're squinting at your copy one of my books (you do have one, don't you), wishing the pages were just a bit bigger, blame the medievals for not having bigger sheep. Kind of reminds me about the width of railroad tracks and horses behinds, but that is for another day.

Cyberchondriacs

They have increased from 50 million in 1998 to 175 million today, according to market research firm Harris Interactive. And they are also getting more active. 32% of all adults who look for health information 'often', is up from 22% last year.

A cyberchondriac is a person who looks for healthcare information online. The net is replete with medical information (and anything else you can possibly imagine). Just as with wikipedia, it is all not good information, but the masses of contributors level it out, so the good overcomes the bad.

People in record numbers use the web to look up information about a condition, treatment, a physician's credentials, or alternative forms of treatment, along with successes and failures of each.

PS - Some doctors do not like being questioned, so tread lightly with your new found information and questions. It is never a good idea to upset a waiter or a doctor.

Windows Top Tip

This works with almost any program you are working in. When you think you have made a mistake, or deleted a file, or forget what you last did, or screwed something up, just hold down the 'Ctrl' (control) key and hit the letter Z. The ctrl keys are on the bottom left and bottom right of most keyboards. It will undo the last action you took. It is the universal undo command for Windows computers.

Personal Kleenex

 Here is an interesting gift for the hypochondriac in the family. My Kleenex  provides users with the opportunity to get their favorite unlicensed photo or drawing printed on their Kleenex box. Customers can create their own designs and styles, can choose from dozens of backgrounds, add their own personal digital photo, and then generate a 3D preview to see what the box will look like.

The boxes are $4.99 each.  Think of the many occasions you could use this. 'I heard you been cryin, because I been lyin, Cheer up. . .' 'Heard you are getting married, divorced, having a baby, etc.' 'The next time you sneeze, think of meez.'  I'm sorry, I'll quit now.

Electronic Medical Records

Only a small number of hospitals in the United States have comprehensive electronic health record systems currently in place. The biggest obstacle to adopting such systems are costs, which can run as high as $20 million to $100 million, plus the reluctance of doctors to change their ways. The report is published in the March online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers questioned 3,049 US hospitals about their electronic health record systems. They found that only 1.5 percent had comprehensive systems. A comprehensive system was defined as hospital-wide clinical documentation of cases, test results, prescription and test ordering, plus support for decision-making that included treatment guidelines.

Eight percent of hospitals have electronic records that include physician and nursing notes, but these systems do not have decision support.

The new healthcare bill aims to change all that within the next five years, by offering incentives for implementing electronic medical records systems. Some see difficulties remaining, with the incentives falling way short of costs. In addition, it can take multiple years to implement a comprehensive system.

Bureau of Communication

This site has a collection of fill-in-the-blank forms, from an apology, to events, like birthdays, etc., and even a last will. The forms have spaces to type in information, then can be emailed to anyone. Fun diversion.    http://bureauofcommunication.com/

Origin of Frisbee

Walter Fred Morrison, like most other college kids in the 1930s, spent a great deal of time throwing around pie pans from the Frisbie Baking Company. But it wasn't until he joined the Air Force that he learned about aerodynamics and he realized he was doing science during those pan-flinging sessions.

So, Fred took what he learned about basic aerodynamics from the Air Force and made a prototype of a better flying disc, that didn't have bits of pie crust stuck to it. And instead of tin, he went with plastic. He dubbed his creation the "Pluto Platter," which was ultimately renamed the "Frisbee" and went on to provide hardcore leaping motivation for extreme college kids everywhere.

September 10

The only thing more painful than learning from experience, is not learning from experience.

I have learned from experience to always have a Happy Friday!

Timex Nail Watch

 This cool watch for your nails was actually announced in 2008, but is lately getting some new press. It snugly fits on your nail and lights up in the dark. Press the end of your thumbnail, and the watch will light up for you.

The watch is the runner up result of the recently organized Timex Watches competition with the code name Timex 2154. It is an extremely thin digital watch made up of translucent material and comes in different color lighting which rhyme in mood with the ambient lighting. No specific release date or cost has been announced.

Google Realtime Search

For those news junkies, or tweet followers, or just those who want an up to the minute (or look back in time) look at breaking stories or topics, Google has a new tool.

You can access Google Realtime Search at its own address, www.google.com/realtime There is a link just under the search box "Learn more about realtime search" that has a video and some tips for using the new feature.

On the new homepage you’ll find some great tools to help you refine and understand your results. First, you can use geographic refinements to find updates and news near you, or in a region you specify. So if you’re traveling to Las Vegas this summer, you can check out tweets from Vegasonians to get ideas for activities happening right where you are. You can check out other things, like earthquakes, etc. and follow the stories from real people in real time.

In addition, there is a conversations view, making it easy to follow a discussion on the real-time web. With the new “full conversation” feature, you can browse the entire conversation in a single glance. Tweets, or other conversations, are organized from oldest to newest and indented so you quickly see how the conversation developed.

There is also an update to Google Alerts, making it easy to stay informed about a topic of your choosing. You can create an alert specifically for “updates” to get an email the moment your topic appears, or you can set alerts to email you once per day or week. The web may have much useless and useful information, but it also provides honesty and truth that is not available from politicians or the media. In the future, it will be difficult to rewrite history when it is available from the web, as it actually happened.