New 4K TV Coming

Television manufacturers are always eager to shore up their business with new technology and are gearing up to roll out sets with what's known as 4K screen resolution. These TVs, which should start to hit store shelves in the United States later this year, have about four times the resolution of 1080p screens, the current standard for high-definition sets.

Regardless of the size of its screen, a 1080p TV has about 2 million pixels arrayed across 1,920 vertical columns and 1,080 horizontal rows. Although electronics manufacturers haven't yet settled on a standard, 4K resolutions generally have at least 7 million pixels - and sometimes many more - arranged across about 4,000 columns and 2,000 rows. All those extra pixels allow 4K televisions to display images in much finer detail than HDTVs.

On bigger screen sizes at close distances, the difference between 1080p and 4K is stunning. At a close viewing range, HD video on a big screen can look pixilated, and colors and images can blur into the background. By contrast, 4K video looks super sharp and almost lifelike. At a further distance the difference tends to be less noticeable.

You might want to wait for 4K. The first 4K TVs will likely be outrageously expensive. Toshiba's 55-inch 4K television is already available in Japan for $10,000 or so. Another reason to wait is that no shows are being produced in 4K yet. In fact very few are produced in 3D so far, but ESPN is betting that many will love the 3D sports events it will be producing.

The 4K video processor should only add about $10 to the cost of a TV, but the big cost issue is the display technology. The ability to cram that many pixels into a relatively small space is on the cutting edge of display manufacturers' capabilities.

Manufacturers will only sell about 5,000 4K TVs this year worldwide and won't sell more than a million per year until 2015. 3D TV should be selling more units by then, also.

Five Fun Food Facts

Several states used to require margarine to be dyed pink to appease the dairy lobby and keep butter sales strong.

The Quaker Oats guy's name is Larry.

Twinkies originally had banana-flavored filling. Hostess switched to vanilla after bananas were rationed during World War II.

Oklahoma’s official state vegetable is the watermelon.

The eight juices in V8 are tomato, spinach, celery, carrot, beet, lettuce, watercress and parsley.

Antibiotics and Drinking Myth

With the advent of antibiotics to treat sexually transmitted diseases came a word of advice: don’t drink while taking the pills. The reason given for this was (and still is) that it will stop the medication working.

This is not true. Most antibiotics are not hindered in any way by the consumption of alcohol, though it may cause a stomach upset depending on the type. In fact, only five of the more than one hundred types of antibiotics really do have adverse effects when taken with alcohol.

The real reason for telling people not to drink is that people suffering from STDs would most likely be the type to have casual sex when drunk. Stopping them drinking for a short period of time would often help to prevent them from spreading their illness before others caught it.

Because of high costs and low profitability, very little research is done these days in the field of antibiotics. It has been nine years since a new form of antibiotic has been developed.

Happy Friday

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, and faithfulness the best relationship.

I am content with my good health and and always faithful to having a Happy Friday!

Atlas Obscura Day

It will be celebrated tomorrow, April 28, 2012. Obscura Day is an international celebration of wondrous, curious, and esoteric places that is organized by Atlas Obscura, a website that catalogs bizarre and curious attractions around the world, both natural and manmade.

Here is a list of the 10 most popular places for 2011 LINK

Interesting Number

If you multiply 21978 by 4 the result is the same number backward, 87912.

Seven Interesting Cracker Facts

The first cracker was made in 1792 by John Pearson. He was looking to make a type of biscuit that would last longer than traditional sailor’s biscuits without spoiling. He eventually mixed just flour and water, baked it, and called his invention 'Pearson’s Pilot Bread'. This later became known as hardtack or sea biscuit and was popular among sailors due to its long shelf life without spoiling.

The name cracker came to be when Josiah Bent accidentally burned a batch of what we now call crackers.  As they burned, they made a crackling noise, which inspired the name.  He invented soda crackers, which were precursors to saltine crackers we enjoy. Some folks still call saltines soda crackers. In 1810 Bent’s cracker business was acquired by the National Biscuit Company (Nabisco).

Crackers have holes for a reason, because the holes allow steam to escape during cooking. This keeps the crackers flat and the holes also help crisp the crackers. If the holes are too close together, the cracker will become extra dry and hard, due to too much steam escaping. If the holes are too far apart, parts of the cracker will rise a bit forming little bubbles on the surface of the cracker, which is undesirable in most types of crackers, except Cheez Its. There are hundreds of varieties of crackers now and sales are over $10 Billion a year.

Just Words

Green Eggs and Ham contains just fifty words. Doctor Seuss' publisher, Bennett Cerf bet him fifty dollars he could not write a book using just fifty words. Cerf lost. Forty nine of the fifty words are one syllable words.

The U.S. Constitution has 4,543 words, including signatures. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address contained 271 words. The US Tax Code has about 3,800,000 words, but is constantly being updated.

Knock Off Work

The phrase, which means to quit work for the day, originated in the days of ships propelled by oarsmen. To keep the oarsmen rowing in unison, a man with the gift of perfect rhythm would beat time on a block of wood; when it was time to rest or change shifts, he’d give a special knock. The term to knock off  became popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

What's in a Name, Beverly Hills

The area we now call Beverly Hills was a series of ranches until it was purchased in the 1880s by two men named Charles Denker and Henry Hammel. Their ultimate ambition was to turn the area into a “North-African themed subdivision called Morocco.” Severe drought and an economic collapse forced them to sell the land in 1900 to the Amalgamated Oil Company. After the company failed to find oil under the land, they changed their name to Rodeo Land and Water Company and called the area Beverly Hills, after Beverly Farms in Massachusetts.

Beverly Farms itself is named after the town of Beverly, which it skirts. The town was once a popular tourist resort; President Taft had a summer house there. It also claims to be the birthplace of the U.S. Navy, although this is debated. In 1668, English settlers named the town after the village of Beverley in Yorkshire, England.

So why was this English town called Beverley? Because in the 700s, a bishop named John founded a monastery in the town of Inderawuda and called it Beverlac, possibly after a colony of beavers in a nearby river.

Eventually a slightly altered version of the name came to stand for the whole town, and Bishop John became known as St. John of Beverley after his canonization in 1037.

There you have it: Beverly Hills is actually named after some medieval English beavers.

Bacon Sundae

Received this one from Tim, Burger King Bacon Sundae. Thanks.
LINK

Awesome

Eight Regional Slang Words

English is bad enough without more words, but it seems some parts of our great country have come up with some words of their own.
whoopensocker (n.), Wisconsin - Whoopensocker can refer to anything extraordinary of its kind, from a sweet dance move to a knee-melting kiss.

wapatuli, (n.), Wisconsin - Nearly everyone who has been to college in America has either concocted a homemade alcoholic drink with any combination of hard liquors or other beverages. A wapatuli can also refer to the occasion at which that stuff is consumed. In Kentucky, the word for terrible liquor is splo, while in the mid-Atlantic, moonshine is ratgut or rotgut.

jabble (v.), Virginia - When you are standing at your front door rifling through your purse for fifteen minutes because you can’t find your keys it is because all the stuff in your purse is all jabbled up. It means 'to shake up or mix', but can also be used  as 'to confuse'.

sneetered (v.), Kentucky - If you’ve ever been hoodwinked, duped, swindled, fleeced, or scammed, you have been sneetered. The noun version, sniter, refers to that treacherous person responsible for your unfortunate sneetering.

chinchy (adj.), South, Midwest - This useful word perfectly describes your stingy friend who is too cheap to split the bill or pay his fair share.

mizzle-witted (adj.), South - This word means 'mentally dull', but depending on where you are in the country, mizzle can also be used as a verb meaning 'to confuse', 'to depart in haste' or 'to abscond'. 

mug-up (n.), Alaska - When Alaskans take a break from work to grab a cup of coffee, they are enjoying a “mug-up” or coffee break.

bufflehead or bufflebrain (n.), Pennsylvania - This word means a fool or idiot. I guess calling someone a mizzle-witted bufflehead would be doubly unkind.

Reading and Viewing Tip

When you are looking at any page on your computer screen, including email, there is an option to hold down the CTRL key and move the scroll wheel on a mouse forward or back to make the size larger or smaller. If you do not use a mouse, you can hold down the CTRL key and click on the + (plus sign) or - (minus sign) to make what you see larger or smaller.

Happy Friday

There is the beauty of infancy, the beauty of youth, the beauty of maturity, and the beauty of age.

It is also true that young, old, and mature all agree on the beauty of a Happy Friday!