Oldest Photos

In 1839, Robert Cornelius, a Dutch chemist who immigrated to Philadelphia, took a daguerreotype portrait of himself outside of his family’s store and made history: he made the world’s first human photograph.

The oldest known color photograph was taken by Louis Ducos du Hauron in 1872. The photo is of a view of Angouleme in Southern France.

In the 1920s, a brass birdie was often used by photographers to grab the attention of children during a portrait session. A rubber hose and squeeze bulb were connected to the short length of open brass tubing. The brass base was filled with water. Squeezing the rubber bulb caused the bird to make a whistling and warbling sound. Watch the birdie. . .

Five More Google Goodies

The quotes are only used to show a sample.
To find the time anywhere, type time and the city name, "time Dallas".
To exclude something, type a dash in front of the word, "football -lions".
To find the current currency exchange rate, "usd euro".
To find the weather, "weather, detroit".
To find a number, "phonebook: jones chicago".

Can You Hear Me Now

Remember the old adage, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it. . . Have you ever thought about space? Sound is vibrations of air particles, and it only can travel through a solid, liquid, or gas, so there is no sound in space. Sound travels fastest through solids, a bit less fast through liquids, and slowest through gases.

Light waves and radio waves, which are a part of the electromagnetic spectrum, can be interpreted by radio equipment and then be translated into sound, but not the sound itself.

Even though explosion of stars, collision of asteroids, etc. can cause sound, it does not travel to be detected as we hear sound here on Earth. Space, as an almost perfect vacuum, is not an efficient medium for sound to travel and be heard by us. Although, extremely sensitive instruments can pick up sound (almost perfect vacuum, being the key). Astronauts talk to each other when space walking, by using radio waves.

Sounds can travel by air in the spacecraft and through the metal. If something exploded outside the craft, you would not hear it until something hit your craft, then the sound would travel from the metal, through the air inside to your ears. Hollywood does not follow natural laws, so you only hear sounds from space in movies and TV. . . as well as a many other unnatural things emanating from CA.

Stimulating

Have you wondered how the stimulus dollars are being spent? Here is a site that has the up-to-date news.  http://stimuluswatch.org/2.0/     Pick your city or state to find out where the money is going. Do not go there if you are easily upset at the billions being spent on nonsense projects.

Where did They Get That Name

I sometimes wonder where those crazy names originated, so I went looking.

CVS - When the pharmacy chain was founded in Lowell, MA in 1963, it was known as Consumer Value Stores. Over time the name became abbreviated to CVS.

K-Mart - Sebastian S. Kresge opened his first larger store in Garden City, Michigan, in 1962. The store was named Kresge's, then shortened to K-Mart.

IKEA - The Swedish furniture giant takes its name from found Ingvar Kamprad’s initials joined with a the first initial of the farm where he grew up, Elmtaryd, and the parish he calls home, Agunnaryd.

JBL - The speaker company is named after its founder, James Bullough Lansing. He was born James Martini in 1902, but when he was 25, he changed his name to James Lansing at the suggestion of his then future wife.

BVD - The men’s underwear maker was originally founded by Bradley, Voorhees, and Day to make women’s bustles. Eventually they branched into knitted union suits for men, and their wares became so popular that “BVDs” has become a generic term for any underwear.

How Deep is That Oil Well

Nice graphic that puts it into perspective. LINK

Deforestation

Fire occurrence rates in the Amazon have increased in 59% of areas with reduced deforestation and risks canceling part of the carbon savings achieved by UN measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Research from University of Exeter, published in June, 2010, in Science, analyzed deforestation and fire data from the Amazon. It found that carbon savings achieved by avoiding deforestation would be partially offset by increased emissions from fires. So, if we don't cut the trees down, nature will take care of itself. Another reason to not fool with Mother Nature.

Historypin

Here is an interesting web site that allows you to add historical pictures to Google Street Maps. Now you can put yourself on the map. HISTORYPIN Very Cool Stuff.

Clowning Around

The tradition of painting clown's faces on eggs began in the U.K. around 1946 at what was then the International Circus Clowns Club, now called Clowns International.

A member named Stan Bult started recording clown images on chicken eggs with the insides blown out. It started as a hobby, and, like many hobbies, it just grew. The collection continued to be lent out after Mr. Bult's death but sadly most of the eggs were destroyed in an accident at one such exhibit around 1965.

Clown Bluey became chairman of Clowns International in 1984 and resurrected Mr. Bult's practice of recording clown members' faces on eggs. This time a professional artist was used and the faces were painted on china-pot eggs instead of chicken eggs. Over the years, many of the lost older eggs have been reproduced, and new eggs are added frequently.

The eggs are a miniature portrait. In addition to paint, the artist uses samples of the clown's costume material and wig-hair to produce an exact match. A photo of the egg collection may be seen at the Clowns International website. LINK

Here is a sample egg of Emmett Kelly.

Leon "Buttons" McBryde  heard about the British practice of registering clown makeup using eggs. He and his wife Linda eventually met the caretaker of the British clown egg registry, and started a similar registry for clowns in the US. This collection shows clowns of all types from around the world. It grew to contain thousands of eggs, and became an almost official way to lay claim to a unique appearance. There is at least one documented court case where the egg was involved to prove intellectual property of a pilfered make-up design. I have to stop clowning around and get back to work.

Top Five Candies of 2010

Who says older is not better? Here are four oldies and one new one. All of them are still dominated by Mars and Hershey. Of the top ten candies, five are gum and five are chocolate.

1 M&Ms - Named after its two inventors, Forrest E. Mars Sr. and R. Bruce Murrie, M&Ms originally were packaged in a tube in 1941.
2 Reese's Pieces - H.B. Reese was a former dairy employee of Milton S. Hershey who began selling "penny cups" of peanut butter dipped in Hershey's chocolate in 1923. Hershey bought his company 40 years later.
3 Hershey's - Milton S. Hershey began making his milk-chocolate bar in 1900.
4 Snickers - Snickers has been around since 1930 and was the Mars family's second product. It was named after their favorite horse.
5 - Orbit Gum - Orbit hit the U.S. market in 2001, but the brand goes back in Europe to 1976, when it was introduced as Wrigley's first sugarless gum. Mars took over Wrigley in 2009.

Where Did Calories Come From

Rotund Dr. Lulu Hunt Peters introduced a new word, calorie, to the world in 1918. Peters’ book, 'Diet and Health, With a Key to Calories', which included a phonetic spelling of the word “calorie,” because so many people were unfamiliar with it. It probably sold more than a million copies and established calorie-counting as the framework of a good health.

The diet regime gave a dangerous tool to those looking for a way to quantify and reduce their food intake. The Scarsdale Diet of 1979, a strict 700-calorie a day diet that works, because you are starving.

British Papers Go Online

The British Library has announced a project to make 40 million pages from its newspaper archive available online. It has more than 300 years of information, including coverage of the Crimean and Boer Wars. The plan is to complete the digitization of more than 4 million pages within the first two years.

With journalism standards as they are today, the world will get a totally different view of reality, if it depends only on newspapers.

Hot Stuff

To Be a Bee

A queen bee is selectively bred in a special "queen cell" in the hive and fed royal jelly by worker bees to induce her to become sexually mature. A virgin queen that survives to adulthood without being killed by her rivals will take a mating flight with a dozen or so male drones. During mating, their genitals explode and snap off inside the queen.

The snapped-off penis acts as a genital plug to prevent other drones from fertilizing the queen. Ouch!