Jack Benny

Jack Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago on Valentine’s Day, 1894. His parents lived in nearby Waukegan. Jack worked there as a violinist in the pit band of a local Vaudeville house and that was his beginning in show business.

He toured working with a female pianist in an act known as "Salisbury and Kubelsky - From Grand Opera to Ragtime", but when concert violinist Jan Kubelik’s lawyer objected to the comedic violin-playing and similarities in name, Benjamin changed his name to Ben Benny.

With a new partner, “Benny and Woods” continued, but when World War I broke out, Benny enlisted, working in a Navy-sponsored revue touring the Midwest. After the war, Benny went back to vaudeville, doing a monologue as “Ben K. Benny, Fiddleology and Fun.”

Although he changed the spelling to “Bennie,” Ben Bernie, an entertainer (also a violinist-bandleader who did monologues), had been doing a similar act longer, so his lawyer contacted young Kubelsky objecting to the similar names. This time, Benjamin changed his stage name for the last time to Jack Benny.

Notice To Die

True - When Arthur Zissen died in his Florida apartment in late September 2007, he failed to give the landlord 60 days advance notice he was going to die.

The manager at the Sun Harbour Yearly Residences sent the family a bill demanding rent for October, November, and December, and telling them Art forfeited his security deposit and last month's rent for failing to give 60 days notice.  It said it was "just following the letter of the lease."

The family took the case to court and won, but then the landlord appealed and the family had to wait for another decision from the judge in the appellate court. A $2,000 bill for court costs and lawyers fees of $17,000 was added.

Luckily, the family was awarded attorney fees in the first case and asked for attorney fees in the appeal. The entire estate was on hold until the case is resolved. Finally the landlord lost the appeal in 2008. Might be a good idea to check your lease or ask your landlord, so your estate doesn't have this problem when you die.

Quotable

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Name That Tune

Did you ever forget the name of a tune, or the words to a song, or you can't remember the artist. Midomi is a site that will help you. Sing the words and it will tell you the tune and artist.

Question

Did you ever stop to think that memes are just mini morēs.

Tissue Dispenser

Here is a unique Kleenex dispenser.

Human Filters

Generally speaking, the key is sensory awareness. Humans have kind of evolved to fit into their environment by filtering out information they don't need. If you actually look at the amount of data coming in through all your senses, there's something like 100 million bits of information coming in every second through your visual system and another 10 million bits coming through your auditory system and another one million bits coming through your tactile system.

We are at any given time, absorbing hundreds of millions of bits of data per second through our senses. We can manage this, because our conscious stream is only aware of a very tiny fraction of that sensory input, maybe a few hundred bits per second. Most of our intelligence is really a filtering process, determining which of those bits are most relevant at any instant. Our sensory awareness is really much higher than we perceive. I knew that I knew more than I thought I knew.

Quotable

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested." - Sir Francis Bacon 

Bacon Cookies

Never thought of it until I read the quote above, but you can think of my books like bacon cookies, sweet and salty. Mmmmm!

Swiss Steak

Swiss steak, the bane of school cafeterias everywhere, has nothing to do with Switzerland. Instead, the term “Swiss steak” refers to the meat having gone through a process called “swissing” before being cooked.

Swissing, which also has applications for textiles, refers to a process of hammering, pounding, or rolling a material to soften it up. With Swiss steak, butchers take tough cuts of beef and pound them or roll them to make them tender and more palatable.

Talk to Your Coffeepot

Voice Interactive Coffee Maker.

This is the first voice-interactive coffee maker that asks, "Would you like to set the clock or set the coffee brewing time?" and operates in response to your verbal commands. Simply saying, "Set the coffee brewing time," or "Set the clock," will prompt the machine to reply, "Please say the time, including AM or PM."

It uses an advanced voice recognition system to identify any time of day you speak, eliminating the hassle of fussing with buttons. It brews up to 10 cups at once and allows you to remove the carafe during brewing to pour a cup. For the Luddites, it can also be operated manually. Of course, why would you buy it to operate it manually. Talk about a deal, it cost less than a hundred bucks.

Chameleon

Here is a great short video of a chameleon changing colors. A guy puts different colored sunglasses in front and each time the chameleon touches one, the color changes.

Stimulating Stimulus Study

As part of the stimulus this past Spring, Kaiser Permanente received 25 million dollars and is embarking on a two year genetic analysis of 100,000 older Californians. Genetic data from a diverse group of California patients will be gleaned from samples of saliva.

Doesn't look like any new jobs were created, but researchers will be able to study the data and seek insights into the interplay between genes, the environment, and disease, along with access to detailed electronic health records, patient surveys, and records of environmental conditions where the patients live and work.

The object is to produce a very large amount of genetic and phenotypic (what organisms look like) data that investigators and scientists can begin asking questions of. Researchers will look for genetic influences that determine why some people suffering from cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes deteriorate more rapidly than others, and find which genetic factors reduce the effectiveness of various drugs or make them hazardous. How stimulating. I thought the stimulus money was to be spent to stimulate jobs?

Pork

The term, pork is sometimes used to describe legislative appropriations meant to favor specific projects, to gain favor, or repay political debts for legislators. Now we have something new - stimulated pork.

The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service spent $24.3 million of stimulus funds for pork. It bought $16.9 million of canned pork, $2.6 million of ham, and $4.8 million of sliced ham. The Agriculture Department is sending the meat to food banks as part of a $150 million effort to feed hungry Americans.