Four Bonnie and Clyde Facts

Bonnie was a 4’11” and Clyde was 5’4”.

Clyde was just six days away from being released from a labor camp and cut off two of his toes with the hope of forcing a transfer to a less harsh facility. He severed his left big toe and a portion of a second toe with an axe. At the time, he had no idea his mother persuaded the judge to let him out on parole. As a result, he walked with a limp for the rest of his life and could not drive while wearing shoes.

Bonnie also had a severe limp caused by an auto accident, where the car battery spilled acid on her leg and burned much of it, some down to the bone. Sometimes Clyde (who was driving and caused the accident) would need to carry her.

Bonnie and Clyde are buried in separate cemeteries in Dallas, Texas, USA.

Kissing the Blarney Stone in Texas

Shamrock, Texas has a piece of the original Irish Blarney Stone encased in a local monument.

The fragment of the original Blarney Stone is immured within a concrete monument on Main Street in Shamrock, Texas. This genuine chunk from the ruins of Blarney Castle was accidentally knocked off of the original Stone according to the Shamrock official who brought it to Shamrock in 1959. The landmark is a theft-proof, pickup-truck-crash-proof cylinder, regularly painted solid green, standing on an empty street corner.

The small town east of Amarillo holds a festival each year and crowns a Miss Irish Rose. Kissing the Blarney Stone is supposed to endow the kisser with the gift of gab . . . with great eloquence.

Google Prank

When the Google Streetview vehicle passed by an auto mechanic’s shop in England, the shop’s owner playfully staged a murder scene. A year later, a user browsing Streetview spotted the mechanic brandishing a pickaxe, standing over a man lying prostrate on the ground, and  informed police of what looked like a potential homicide. Police showed up and questioned the shop owner who quickly explained and apologized for the prank.

Happy Friday

Happiness is an agreeable interlude that never ends.

It is nice to enjoy an agreeable interlude, especially on a Happy Friday!

Google Factoid

If you type “google in 1998” into Google search bar, it will take you to what the site looked like the year it was created. Google originally only included text results. This changed in 2000, when the top search result on Google was of Jennifer Lopez in an exotic green Versace dress at the 42nd Grammy Awards. Soon after, Google created Google Images to search criteria. By 2010, more than ten billion images were indexed to the search engine.

Spider Makes a Web

Short closeup video of spider making a web. Fascinating. LINK

Vocal Fry and Upspeak

These are both manufactured speech patterns used by certain groups. Although they often run together, vocal fry and upspeak should not be confused. Think Valley girls and the Kardashians. Fry is like the low, croaky voice you have when you are sick and drop to your lowest register. The easiest way to understand is to have an example, so there are links for each below. Personally, they both drive me crazy. Like, totally!

Upspeak or uptalk or Valleyspeak is a rising inflection, interrogative, or high rising intonation of some variants of English where declarative sentences or clauses end with a rising-pitch intonation. It is usually accompanied with heavy doses of the word 'like'. It is like when you like end a like declarative sentence like in a raised tone. It makes a statement “We are going to the mall for fun” sound like a question “… for fun?”. LINK 


Vocal fry is making croaky, graveled vocal styling emissions while speaking. Women tend to use this much more than men. Here is an example of vocal fry. LINK

Bee Fact

One in every three bites of food around the world depends on bees who pollinate around eighty percent of the Earth’s flowering plants.

Six Netflix Facts

Netflix is one year older than Google, 1997 vs. 1998.
In 2016, Netflix reported it was available in 190 countries and had more than 74 million subscribers.

About two billion hours of Netflix content gets streamed around the world every month.
Netflix has about 33 million subscribers in the country, outpacing regular old cable.
During 2017, Netflix spent six billion dollars on original content. During 2018, it plans to spend eight billion dollars.

According to the website CordCutting.com, a Netflix subscriber will get an extra 158 hours of content during the same watch time by having no commercials.

Gobs and Smidgens

A gob is a general term meaning a large amount. It is often used in its plural form: gobs. So, if you had gobs of fun, you had much fun.
A smidgen refers to a very small amount and it also has a specific, measurable meaning. Many cooks believe that a smidgen is equal to 1/32 teaspoon. Others believe it may be 1/25 teaspoon.


Below are unique measurements for very small amounts:
tad = 1/8 teaspoon
dash = 1/16 teaspoon
pinch = 1/24 teaspoon
smidgen = 1/32 teaspoon
drop = 1/60 teaspoon
hint = a trace.

What's in a Name, Scandinavia

Scandinavia is an area of Northern Europe that shares a common historical, cultural, and linguistic Germanic heritage. This area includes the modern countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It is a cultural term often confused with the geographical term: Scandinavian Peninsula.

The Scandinavian Peninsula is made up of Norway, Sweden, and Finland (plus a bit of Russia). Denmark is physically separate from the peninsula.

The Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are similar and can mostly be understood by people in each of the Scandinavian countries. Finnish is unrelated to the Scandinavian languages.

Finland, although a part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, is not usually considered a Scandinavian country. Despite its close location to Sweden and Norway, it does not share the same Germanic cultural and linguistic heritage as those countries.

Thoughts

The average person has about 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day. That is about 35 to 48 thoughts per minute, per human being. One group described a thought as "a sporadic single-idea cognitive concept resulting from the act of thinking, or produced by spontaneous systems-level cognitive brain activations".

One writer summed up his thoughts. "Just typing that last sentence was a long series of thoughts, including tapping the keys and spelling the words - during which I also noted a squeaking noise, decided I liked a song that was playing, and glanced at the clock."

Happy Friday

Anyone who keeps the ability to be happy never grows old.
I feel young and invigorated, especially on a Happy Friday!

National Cut the Cord Day

Roku began celebrating 'National Streaming Day' a few years ago and now national retailers and others are celebrating 'Cut the Cord Day' with big sales and giveaways. Seems like creative advertising, rather than days for celebration. Oh, and Amazon is coming up with Amazon Prime day later this month. It is devoted to having us buy stuff from Amazon. Wow, what a concept, have a special day for us to buy stuff.