Soupy Sales Dies

Soupy Sales, born Milton Supman was one of the wackiest characters on television, especially during the 50s and 60s. He had a number of shows on TV. He did eleven hours a week while in Detroit, with his sidekicks Black Fang and White Tooth. He had a morning show, a lunch show, and later he had a weekend evening show for adults that was hilarious. Of course, all of the shows were live.

The character seen here with Soupy is Pookie, the Lion.

One of his enduring bits was to hear a knock on the door, open it, and be hit in the face with a pie. Some accounts say he was hit by as many as twenty thousand pies during his TV career.

After Detroit, he went on to have shows in LA and New York, but many Detroiters still claim him as their own, even though he was born in North Carolina.

You can go here to see some of his hilarious comedy bits. No kidding Soupy, We'll miss ya.

I started a wikizine about Soupy Sales on Zimbio. You can check it out here.

Government Attic

Here is an interesting site. It is a compilation of documents that have been released under the 'Freedom of Information Act'. The home page says that it contains historical documents, reports on items in the news, oddities, fun stuff, and government bloopers. The site motto is Videre licet (to be able to see).

Glass of Bacon

Ummm! It is true that pork and bacon cannot cause swine flu.

Quotable

Consider this scary thought - The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

James Dyson

You probably all know about the Dyson vacuum cleaner, invented by the British inventor, James Dyson. He is at it again and has come up with a bladeless fan.

It pulls air into the machine's cylindrical base with an impeller that draws from jet-engine technology. The air rushes up into a hollow ring and is then forced out of a slit that is less than 1/16th of an inch. The slit runs all around the ring.

As the air exits through the slit, it flows over the inner edge of the ring, which was modeled after an airplane wing. As the air exits the loop, the lower pressure pulls air from behind along with it, and air around the front of the fan also gets pulled into the stream.

The fan runs with a small motor, and airflow can be fully regulated with a dimmer switch. A 10-inch fan costs $299. Cool technology,  kid safe, and would look great under my Christmas tree.

Hunting Wolf Picture of the Year

This picture has won the prestigious Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 award. It was taken by Jose Luis Rodriguez and won out over 40,000 entries.

Horsing Around

We all know about Paul Revere's famous ride. Did you know his horse's name - Brown Betty. Now you do.

Did you know that the horse ridden by James Arness (Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke) was the same one ridden by Lorne Greene (Ben Cartwright on Bonanza)? Its name was Buck on both series, but its real name was Dunny Waggoner and Greene bought the horse after his series ended.

Ulysses S. Grant's horse was named Cincinnati, and Custer's horse was Vic, who died with his master at Little Big Horn.  OK, I am finished horsing around.

Comments Welcome

Sure could use some comments, so I know folks are reading this stuff. In the words of Maxine -

Get Your Swine Flu Shot

Or you could end up looking like this.

Pigs Using Mirrors

More pig news from another stupid study. A study of domesticated pigs has found that with some experimenting they can find food based on a reflection in a mirror.

In the study, four pairs of domesticated pigs were allowed to familiarize themselves with a mirror for five hours. The study was conducted at Cambridge University in the U.K. and found that, given a chance to familiarize themselves with a mirror, many pigs can find food based only on its reflection in the mirror. The findings will be published in the journal 'Animal Behaviour'.

After familiarization, each pig was placed in a pen with an angled mirror and a partition, behind which were treats such as apple slices or M&Ms. Seven of the eight pigs immediately looked behind the partition and found the food. A control group of pigs that had never seen a mirror before searched behind the mirror for the food.

A researcher said the study shows pigs have a high degree of assessment awareness, or the ability to use memories and observations to quickly learn to assess a situation and act on it. It is hoped the conditions in which pigs are raised, including overcrowding, which do not meet the needs of the animal, may be improved as a result of the study. Yeh, and maybe pig farmers will also be adding brushes and lipstick in the pig sties. Do you think this proves eating bacon makes you smart?

PS - Did you know the mirrors on motorcycles are called pig spotters?

Heads Up

In the last few years, head-up displays (HUDs), which project information onto the driver's view of the road, have started appearing in a few high-end cars, but one small enough to fit inside a rearview or outside wing mirror, could make this kind of display available on more cars.

A head-up display overlays information on a normal view of the road so the driver does not have to look away from the road.

 
The new projection device, developed by Light Blue Optics, based in Cambridge, UK, uses a technique called holographic projection that allows it to be put into a rearview mirror, wing mirror, or even the windshield.

Details of the prototype were presented at the Society for Information Display's Vehicles and Photons 2009 symposium, in Dearborn, MI.

Holographic projection uses constructive and destructive interference of light to make up the picture. They use liquid crystal on silicon to modulate beams of red, green, and blue laser light to create a complete image. It does not actually create a hologram, but rather uses principles of holography to create a projected image through optical interference. It could be on new cars within a few years.

Quotable

Discovery consists of seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no-one else has thought.

Father of the Internet

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, born 1955, and inventor of the Web’s software standards in 1989, tends to be fast-paced and nonlinear. He is currently director of the World Wide Web Consortium and a professor at M.I.T.

When asked if he were do it over again today, would he do anything differently, he admitted he might make one change. He would get rid of the double slash “//” after the “http:” in Web addresses. He said the double slash, a programming convention at the time, turned out to not be really necessary. Amazing to think the web is only twenty years old and how much it has changed the world. In fact, the world wide web (WWW) was first mentioned in print in the New York Times in 1993.

Here's a tip, when typing in a site name, just type the name, such as 'shubsthoughts' then hold down the 'ctrl' key and hit 'enter'. Your web browser will fill in the rest for you and send you to the site.

Quotable

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true, and the tendency to miss lunch. Tim Berners-Lee