Christmas Goat

        In the Swedish town of Gävle, about 100 miles north of Stockholm, residents have been erecting a giant straw goat in the town center since 1966. The Gävle Goat, also known as the Yule Goat and the Gävlebocken, may be a massive Christmas decoration, but there is never any guarantee that it will still be standing for the holiday. That is because there is a second, illegal annual Christmas tradition in Gävle. It is trying to burn down the Yule Goat before Christmas.
Yule goats have been a Christmas-time tradition in Sweden and elsewhere in Scandinavia for many centuries, though how exactly the practice got its start has been lost to history. During 1966, advertising consultant Stig Gavlén developed the idea of constructing a giant straw Yule goat for the holiday season, hoping it would function as something of an attraction to bring business to the shops around it.
The idea was subsequently executed by the town’s fire department. With funding provided by local businessman Harry Ström, they built a 43-foot tall, 23-foot long, 3-ton straw goat in the town center. It was completed on December 1, 1966 and it stood through that month. On New Year’s Eve, a vandal from a nearby town set the goat on fire. Being made of straw with a wood framework, it quickly burned to the ground.
During the following four years local merchants known as the Söders Köpmän (Southern Merchants) took over financing the Gävle Goat. For the first two years, nothing of note happened; the goat was put up and taken down with no issue.  Then in 1969, vandals managed to again set the goat aflame. The following year, they did it again. In fact, in the 1970 burning, drunken teenagers had managed to burn down the goat just six hours after construction of the goat was complete.
Fortunately for Gävle’s Yule Goat tradition, the Natural Science Club from the nearby School of Vasa took charge in 1971 and the Gävle’s Yule Goat lived on. Their first goat made it through the season without incident. However, sabotage in 1972 led to the goat’s collapse. Two years later, the goat was burned down once again and two years after that, it got hit by a drunk driver and was destroyed.
From the ashes of all this, the tradition of attempting to destroy the Gävle Yule Goat was born. Since 1980, the Gävle Goat has only managed to survive through the holiday season 13 times. This is despite the fact that a fire station is incredibly close by and several attempts have been made to make it more difficult for vandals to destroy the giant straw decoration. For instance, they tried spraying flame-retardant on the straw, only to have it wash off and the treated goat easily burned down.
Of course, despite all this and other efforts, half the fun of the tradition for many is seeing if the goat will make it to Christmas.
After years of trying, it appears they may have hit on the right mix of protection for the Gävle Yule tradition in 2014. After adding even better flame retardant chemicals that will not wash away easily, they moved a busy taxi stand to the town center right near the goat. They also positioned security personnel near the goat and had a 24-hour webcam trained on the decoration. Although there were reportedly a few close calls, the 2014 goat ultimately survived the Christmas season and was disassembled on December 29th, a bit earlier than previous surviving goats.

The 2015 Gävle Goat, which was erected on November 26th, made it through 2015’s Christmas but was burned down at approximately 3 am on December 27 by what police described as a heavily intoxicated man in his twenties. The man, who smelled of petrol, was caught red-handed carrying lighters and newspapers shortly after the goat was set ablaze. The man’s clothes were also singed as they briefly caught fire. Ah, fun traditions continue. . .

McDonald's Bacon Cheese Fries

According to some sources on the web, McDonald's might be planning to sell bacon cheese fries sometime in 2019. They are available now in some locations in California and Hawaii. Yea!

Happy Friday

"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." ~Audrey Hepburn

There is always time for more fun, especially on a Happy Friday!

Pig Hearts and Baboons

Some anubis baboons were the recipients of a new heart, courtesy of an international team of researchers. With the new hearts, which came from pigs, the baboons were able to live normal and healthy lives for months.

According to a study published last month in the journal Nature, the researchers managed to keep two of the baboons alive for 90 days before they euthanized them in accordance with the terms of the study. The other two baboons survived for 180 days before the researchers put them down.

Prior to this study, the longest a baboon with a life-supporting pig heart survived was 57 days, and 60 percent of recipients died within just two days.

Bacon Vending Machine

My brother and a friend Deby, both sent this info along to me, almost the same day I came across it on the web (great minds). Ohio State University students have a new vending machine and it is going hog wild for bacon, offering strips and bits for just $1. The machine was courtesy of the Ohio Pork Council.

Located in the Animal Sciences building at the school’s College of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, profits from the vending machine will benefit the meat science program, according to the Ohio Pork Council. The porky contents were donated by Hormel, Sugardale and Smithfield. It is like having your own personal cook in the house. Wouldn't it be nice if it also served up a side of eggs. Yumm!

Photos Fact

Ten percent of all photos in the world were taken within the past twelve months.

Generations

The media is always writing about generations, but many people do not know exactly what ages they represent. Now you do. Some reporting sources vary slightly, causing overlaps.

	start	end
The Interbellum Generation	1901	1913
The Greatest Generation	1914	1924
The Silent Generation	1925	1945
Baby Boomer Generation	1946	1964
Generation X (Baby Bust)	1965	1979
Xennials	1977	1983
Millennials Generation Y, Gen Next	1980	1994
iGen / Gen Z	1995	2012
Gen Alpha	2013	2025

Picture Hanging Tip

The middle of hanging piece of art should be 57 inches from the floor.

    Picture is 20" tall
    Middle is at 10" (this mid point should be at 57" from the floor)
    Wire comes to 2" below the top
    10" - 2" = 8"
    Lightly mark 8" above your first mark or 65" on the wall
    Hang up art. You are welcome.

How To Be Happy

In The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky shares the results of years of research into what makes people happy. She is concerned with “chronic happiness” (as opposed to temporary happiness), with people who maintain an elevated sense of well-being over time. Based on her work, Lyubomirsky believes:

- About half of human happiness is biological. Each of us seems to have a happiness “set point” which accounts for roughly 50% of our level of contentment. Because this set point is genetic, it is tough to change.
- Another 10% of happiness is circumstantial, based on external factors. These include traits like age, race, nationality, and gender, as well as things like marital status, occupational status, job security, and income. Your financial situation is part of this 10%, which means it accounts for a tiny fraction of your total happiness.
- The final 40% of happiness comes from intentional activity, the things you choose to do. A huge chunk of contentment is based on your actions and attitude. You can increase your level of well-being through exercise, gratitude, and meaningful work.

Because circumstances play such a small role in your well-being, and because many of your circumstances are unchangeable, it makes more sense to boost your bliss through intentional activity, by controlling the things you can control while ignoring the things you can't.

You can't wait for someone or something to make you happy. Happiness is not something that just happens; happiness is a byproduct of the the things you think and say and do.

Just as you should become a money boss to take charge of your financial life, you should become a happiness boss to take charge of your emotional life. Believe it or not, you can control your emotional responses. It just takes a bit of knowledge and practice.

Security Advice

Good advice.

Happy Friday

If you moderate your desire for happiness, you moderate your ability to achieve it.
Some things should never be moderated, especially on a Happy Friday!

Aunt Bertha

Aunt Bertha is the largest closed loop referral network for free and reduced cost social services in the United States. Since 2010, it has been connecting people in need and the programs that serve them, with dignity and ease. Go to the site and type in your zip code. Especially great for seniors or others on fixed budgets. LINK

Wordology

If something is run of the mill, it is average, ordinary, not special. It most likely originally referred to a run from a textile mill. It is material that has been manufactured, before it is decorated or embellished.

The expression you have your work cut out for you comes from tailoring. To do a big sewing job, all the pieces of fabric are cut out before they get sewn together. It seems like if your work has been cut for you, it should make job easier, but we do not use the expression that way. It is more that the task is ready to be tackled, but the difficult part is laying out the pieces in order, and doing the actual sewing.

More Proof of Laughter Benefits

Laughter has positive psychological, physiological, and immunological impacts on our health. In fact there is a term for the study of laughter and laughing and the examination of its effects on the human body: gelotology, from the Greek gelos, meaning 'laughter'.

In a study “Humor and Laughter May Influence Health” in the journal Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, authors report that a sense of humor influences psychological and physiological well-being.

- Laughter leads to increased heart rate, respiratory rate, and oxygen consumption, similar to aerobic exercise. After intense laughter, body muscles relax.
- Like other strong emotions, humor seems to activate the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which shows an increase in such hormones as urinary epinephrine and norepinephrine, but blood pressure remains stable. (Sad emotional stimulus results in higher blood pressure.)
- Exposure to a humorous stimulus decreased self-reported anxiety.
- Laughter in response to humorous stimuli correlates with improvement of natural killer (NK) cell activity, the immune cells that kill cancerous cells and prevent some types of viral illnesses.
- Laughing also has social benefits. Since much laughter is a social response rather than a reaction to jokes, laughing facilitates social reaction.
- Laughter is also contagious. If you see someone laughing, you will probably laugh, too. Scientists found that we often mimic other’s behavior, copying words or gestures due to the mirroring system in the brain.