Jul 20, 2019

Happy Friday

You cannot learn a deep appreciation of happiness if you do not dive in.

I always dive in to appreciate a Happy Friday!

Historical Facts and Time Perception

When we think of historical facts, we often confuse the sequence of events in history.
The Coliseum in Rome, Italy, was unveiled in 80 A.D., about the same time the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible were written.
Oxford University in England was created before the emergence of the Aztec Empire in modern Mexico.
Tiffany & Company is older than the nation of Italy. The Italian Republic did not happen until 1861 and Tiffany was founded in 1837.
The Titanic sank the same month that Boston’s Fenway Park opened during 1912 and the same year vitamins and Oreos were invented.

The fax machine was invented the same year the first wagon crossed the Oregon Trail in 1843.
The Brooklyn Bridge was being built during the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.
Nintendo was founded when Jack the Ripper was still on the loose in 1889.
Buffalo Bill Cody was alive at the same time the Germans were bombing with Zeppelins in 1916.

Cowboy Wyatt Earp was a movie consultant in his later years and knew William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin, Jack London, and more. He died in 1929.

Marilyn Monroe, Chuck Berry, Queen Elizabeth, Don Rickles, and Fidel Castro were born the same year in 1926.
Prisoners arrived at Auschwitz just days after the original McDonald's was founded in May, 1940.

The guillotine was still in use when Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, the year the first Star Wars was released, the year Charlie Chaplin Died, and Apple was incorporated. The last person was beheaded by the device in France during 1977.
The first man to achieve powered flight lived to see it accomplished at speeds faster than sound. Orville Wright lived until 1948, a year after a plane passed the speed of sound during 1947, and a few years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed in 1945.
The last eligible Civil War widow and American pensioner from the Civil War died in 2008. Pensions payable to surviving children and their spouses continued until at least 2017. That means the United States was continuing to incur costs related to the Civil War over 150 years after it ended.
Woolly mammoths were still roaming the earth when the pyramids were built at Giza. The great mammals coexisted with humans for several thousand years and the date of their final demise is several centuries after the construction of the pyramids.

Americans were on the moon in July, 1969, before women in Switzerland were allowed to vote in October, 1969.

Cure Brain Freeze

According to Johns Hopkins University, a bout of radiating pain in your head after eating cold food is known as cold neuralgia or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia. It is likely caused by your body entering survival mode when it detects a freezing temperature on the roof of the mouth: our system constricts blood vessels in the palate to preserve our core temperature. When they rapidly open back up, a pain signal is sent to the brain via the trigeminal nerve. Since that nerve leads directly to the midface and forehead, your face bears the brunt of the referred pain from the mouth.

A brain freeze typically lasts less than five minutes, but when your head is throbbing, that can feel like forever. To minimize the pain, the best strategy is to warm the palate up. You can do this by pressing your tongue or a thumb against the roof of your mouth, by drinking a warm liquid, or both. Covering your face and breathing into your hands can also warm the air inside your mouth that was chilled by the ice cream.

Wordology, Eke

If we see the word eke these days, it is when we "eke out" a living, but it comes from an old verb meaning to add, supplement, or grow. It is the same word that gave us eke-name for additional name, which later became nickname.

Robocalls

During May, 2019 robocallers rang Americans' smartphones an estimated 4.7 billion times, according to YouMail, a company that makes an app that helps users block suspected spam calls. That is nearly double the amount from two years ago, reflecting the extent to which fraudsters have outwitted carriers such as AT&T and Verizon, lawmakers on Capitol Hill and the government's chief robocall cops, including the Federal Communications Commission.

At Tufts Medical Center, administrators registered more than 4,500 robocalls between about 9:30 and 11:30 a.m. on April 30, 2018.

Testifying in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, it stressed robocalls represent a "serious threat" to the Tampa-based facility, which serves more than 60,000 patients each year. Over a 90-day period, robocallers rang more than 6,600 times using numbers that mimicked its own, which it estimated had consumed 65 hours of hospital response time. That came in addition to about 300 robocalls that appeared to be coming from numbers affiliated with the U.S. Department of Justice. Callers sought to swindle physicians into surrendering critical information that might make it easier for scammers to obtain prescription drugs fraudulently.

Robocall Popular Area Codes

The list from the app HIYA shows popular area codes and number of unwanted calls. Looks like Texas is popular.


area code, area code region, estimated unwanted calls
214 Dallas, TX 210,590,643
817 Fort worth, TX 177,353,949
210 San Antonio, TX 167,494,351
512 Austin, TX 141,493,980
832 Houston, TX 125,617,537
404 Atlanta, GA 104,613,003
205 AL 98,239,446

Veggie Cutting Tip

Place your cutting board in a sheet pan to keep your table clean when dealing with messy veggies.

Five Canadian Inventions

Here are a few things many do not know were invented in Canada.
Peanut Butter - Although American agricultural pioneer George Washington Carver is often credited for inventing peanut butter, the first patent for the spreadable substance was actually given to Montreal, Canada’s Marcellus Gilmore Edson in 1884.
IMAX - Canadian filmmakers Graeme Ferguson and Roman Kroitor first pioneered the technology of high-resolution images on huge screens at Montreal’s Expo ’67.
Hockey Mask - No surprise with this one. The hockey mask, which has helped keep many a goaltender’s face intact, was first worn regularly by Montreal Canadiens player Jaques Plante in 1959.
World Time Zones - Canadian railroad engineer Sandford Fleming came up with the idea of creating 24 time zones across the entire globe, which would form “international standard time.” In 1884 at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C., his ideas were eventually adopted worldwide.

Trivial Pursuit - During 1979, Montreal Gazette picture editor Chris Haney and sports journalist Scott Abbott came up with Trivial Pursuit, which became the biggest phenomenon in game history, with over 100 million copies of the game sold.

Making with Steel

Interesting short video. LINK

Sashimi vs. Sushi

Sashimi is thinly sliced raw meat, usually fish, such as salmon or tuna, that is served without rice. Sashimi always contains fresh raw meat or seafood. Sashi mi ("pierced flesh" in Japanese).

Sushi is not raw fish, but rather vinegared rice that is mixed with other ingredients, which may or may not include raw fish. Raw fish is one of the traditional ingredients in sushi, but it may also be made without meat or with cooked seafood as long as it uses vinegared rice. Sushi ("it is sour" in Japanese).

Jul 12, 2019

Happy Friday

Smiles are beneficial to the body, happiness to the soul.

I keep my body and soul happy with both, especially on a Happy Friday!

National French Fry Day

July 13 National French Fry Day on July 13 is a great opportunity to take the time to sample some golden-brown potato slices. Estimates say Americans eat about 20 to 30 pounds per person per year. survey of 1,000 Americans)

AMERICA’S ULTIMATE RANKING OF FAST FOOD FRIES

#1: McDonalds (35%)
#2: Chick-fil-A (13%)
#3: Five Guys (12%)
#4: Wendys (11%)
#5: Arbys (11%)

Bottled Water

Bottled water is now the largest beverage category by volume in the US. Food & Water Watch explains that 64 percent of bottled water comes from municipal tap water sources, sometimes further treated and sometimes not.


The plastic that seals bottled water uses petroleum, which raises environmental concerns and causes a negative environmental impact. Discarded one-time-use plastic water bottles turn up everywhere and are more negative than plastic straws. The plastic used to make single-use water bottles also contains chemicals called endocrine disruptors such as bisphenol A. BPA and other endocrine disruptors alter the way the body makes and uses certain hormones, which could have negative health consequences.

National Yellow Pigs Day

July 17 is the day we celebrate Yellow Pigs Day (not to be confused with national pig day in March). Yellow Pigs Day is a mathematician's holiday celebrating yellow pigs and the number 17. It is celebrated annually since the early 1960's, primarily on college campuses, and primarily by mathematicians. On campus, Yellow Pig Cake and Yellow Pig Carols, along with parades and general revelry are tradition. The mythical yellow pig has 17 toes, 17 teeth, 17 eyelashes, etc. Incidentally, fear of the number 17 is called heptadecaphobia.