Nov 30, 2019

Pluto TV Free

Pluto TV has been adding new content and now has 244 free channels. It has mostly live TV shows with ads, but also has news, sports, movies, viral videos, cartoons, and more. The streaming service also has on-demand content, but focuses heavily on live TV. If you get bored with your cable or streaming service some evening, try Pluto. You may be pleasantly surprised at all the new free stuff to watch.

The Pluto TV app is available on smart TVs and all the boxes, like Fire TV, Roku, Apple, Chrome, etc.

Fake Meat vs. Real Meat

Big names in real meat products, including Tyson, Perdue, Hormel, Smithfield, and Nestlé, are all trying to get a cut of the fake and alternative-meat products. Following the success of Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat, real meat producers have developed their own plant-based versions of burgers, chicken nuggets, sausages, and more.

In April, Nestlé served up its Awesome burger, made with soy and wheat protein, plus extracts from beetroot, carrot, and bell pepper. Tyson followed with its own plant-based and blended products of nuggets and burgers, as well as sausage and meatballs made with both chicken and plant-based ingredients.

Perdue introduced nuggets, patties, and tenders made with chicken, cauliflower, chickpeas, and plant protein.

Big pork producer Smithfield Foods announced an entire line of plant-based meat and dairy alternatives. Also, Hormel announced its own plant-based and blended products, including plant-based beef.


To me, it is still easy to discern the difference between all of the real vs. fake meats - Real is cheaper and tastes better. Plus, it is better for the climate to eat a methane producer.

Neighborhood Sex Offenders

That is enough to get your attention. There is a site that you can go to that will identify sex offenders in your neighborhood. It has scary information in some areas. Type in street, city, etc and you will see a map. Click on an icon to see a picture of person and other information. LINK

Happy Friday

We first become happy, then our happiness becomes us.

We can celebrate both on a Happy Friday!

Presidential Turkey Pardon

The presidential turkey pardon tradition might have stemmed from Abraham Lincoln, who made Thanksgiving an official U.S. holiday in 1863. According to White House reporter Noah Brooks, Lincoln’s son Tad got upset when he found out someone was going to kill the live turkey that had been brought for the presidential family’s Christmas dinner in 1865. Eventually, the turkey’s life was spared.

The first president to throw a ceremony rescuing a bird from being doomed to the Thanksgiving table may be John F. Kennedy in 1963, according to the White House Historical Association. That year, the turkey had a “Good Eating, Mr. President!” sign around its neck. Reportedly, JFK said, “We’ll just let this one grow,” and had the bird sent back to the farm. The Los Angeles Times ran an article about the event calling it a “presidential pardon” so the presidential turkey pardon tradition began.


Incidentally, though the residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is painted white, it was known as the Executive Mansion and the President’s Palace until October 1901, when President Theodore Roosevelt referred to it as the White House. He made the name official when he had it engraved on his stationery.

What's in a Name, Mach

Ernst Waldfried Josef Wenzel Mach (d.1916) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher, noted for his contributions to physics such as study of shock waves. The ratio of one's speed to that of sound is named the Mach number in his honor.


Mach's main contribution to physics involved his description and photographs of spark shock-waves and then ballistic shock-waves. He showed when a bullet or shell moved faster than the speed of sound; it created a compression of air in front of it. Using schlieren photography, he and his son Ludwig were able to photograph the shadows of the invisible shock waves.

In homage, his name was given to: Mach, a lunar crater; Mach bands, an optical illusion; Mach number, the unit for speed relative to the speed of sound.

During the 1860s he discovered the physiological phenomenon that has come to be called Mach’s bands, the tendency of the human eye to see bright or dark bands near the boundaries between areas of sharply differing illumination.

More Google Search Tips

A search for “What is the who” is going to summon results about the English rock band. Search instead for “What is a who” and you see top results around the whimsical characters in Dr. Seuss’ “Horton Hears a Who!”
Word order - Leave common terms in the correct order. Typing “blue sky” yields very different results from “sky blue.”
It is better to ask, “What is the average length of an octopus” rather than “Is the average length of an octopus 21 inches" You may see search results confirming 21 inches, but maybe other sources are wrong. When you include the answer in a search query, you bias results, which may not be correct.

Add a minus sign to that same search along with the thing you want to eliminate from your results. So you might type “kitchen remodeling -stainless” to leave out stainless steel. Or “kitchen remodeling -stainless -granite” to eliminate both stainless and granite. Add a space before the -.


If you are searching for a specific quote, but one of the words slips your mind, put an asterisk in its place, such as "Four score and * years ago."         

Climate Change

Climate change describes changes in the state of the atmosphere over time scales ranging from decades to millions of years. These changes can be caused by processes inside the Earth. e.g. volcanoes and forces from outside, e.g. variations in sunlight intensity. Other significant factors include: temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind, solar irradiance, humidity, precipitation, and topography.
The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect; carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; and ozone (O3), which causes 3–7%.


A 2012 United Nations report revealed that the earth’s cattle population produces more carbon dioxide than automobiles, planes, and all other forms of transport combined. Also, the cow pies they drop and the gas they produce equals a third of the world’s methane emissions, which traps 84 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

In the summer of 2016, EcoWatch published an article confirming that greenhouse gas emissions from livestock actually account for a higher percentage of total global emissions than the world’s 1.2 billion automobiles.

Real ID Act

Starting October 1, 2020, every US state and territory resident will need to present a Real ID-compliant license/ID or another acceptable form of identification (like a passport or passport card) for accessing federal facilities — including boarding commercial airplanes.
If it is Real ID compliant, there will be a star in the top right corner; many drivers may not realize they already have one, since some states have been issuing them for a few years.

You need a Real ID if:
• You want to fly with only your state-issued ID
• You do not have a passport or another TSA-approved ID
• You need to visit a secure federal facility, such as a military base, and do not have a military ID

Incidentally, a Real ID is not a substitute for a passport for international travel.

Wordology, Fall and Autumn

Although both words refer to the same season, Americans often say “fall” more than “autumn.” Fall and autumn were both once known as “harvest,” according to Dictionary.com and “harvest” is technically the earliest name for this season. The phrase was a bit confusing, because it refers to both the time people usually harvest crops and the actual harvesting of crops. Because of this, “Autumn,” a word dating back to the late 1300s, became popular as an alternative.

The word “fall” likely stems from “falling of the leaves,” phrases poets liked, according to Merriam-Webster. Not long after, people shortened the phrase to “fall” in the 1600s.

Although both fall and autumn stem from Britain, autumn was the more popular word for a long time. Both have had their ups and downs in popularity. It was not until the 1800s that American English and British English took unofficial stances on these words: fall is the word of choice in the U.S. and autumn in Britain.

Happy Friday

Happiness is more colorful than all of mother nature's blooms.

I always enjoy the kaleidoscope, especially on a Happy Friday!

What's in a Name, Hubble

Edwin Hubble (d 1953), for whom the Hubble Telescope is named, used the largest telescope of his day in the 1920s at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, to discover galaxies beyond our own.

Hubble, the observatory, is the first major optical telescope to be placed in space. Hubble has an unobstructed view of the universe. Scientists have used Hubble to observe the most distant stars and galaxies as well as the planets in our solar system.

Hubble's launch and deployment in April 1990 marked the most significant advance in astronomy since Galileo's telescope. Thanks to five servicing missions and more than 25 years of operation, our view of the universe and our place within it has never been the same.

Incidentally, The telescope is able to lock onto a target without deviating more than 7/1000th of an arcsecond, or about the width of a human hair seen at a distance of 1 mile, and also like being able to shine a laser beam on President Roosevelt’s head on a dime from 200 miles away.

It has made more than 1.3 million observations since its mission began in 1990.


Hubble has circled Earth and gone more than 4 billion miles along a circular low earth orbit. Its primary mirror is 2.4 meters (7 feet, 10.5 inches) across. It was so finely polished that if you scaled it to be the diameter of the Earth, you would not find a bump more than 6 inches tall.

Phone Number Substitute

You can put 000-000-0000 as a phone number on a website that will not let you proceed without a number. It does not work on every site, but worth a try if you do not wish to give out your real phone number. Of course you can also use a dummy number, but you probably do not want your info tied to someone else's number.

Alzheimer's vs. Dementia

There are about fifty million people living with dementia worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are often used interchangeably, but there are differences.
Alzheimer’s disease is a specific type of dementia and is the most common. Alzheimer’s is a brain disease marked by deposits of beta-amyloid plaques and proteins called tau that damage cells in brain regions that control functions like thinking, memory, and reasoning. With Alzheimer’s, you may forget new information or find that you need to ask family members to remember important facts you should be able to remember for yourself. It is not where you cannot remember the name of your barber and then it comes to you later.

Dementia is an umbrella term for symptoms like impaired memory and thinking that interferes with daily living. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, in order for a person to be diagnosed with dementia, two of the following must be “significantly impaired”: memory, communication and language, the ability to focus and pay attention, reasoning and judgment, and visual perception. A medical illness, metabolic issue (like a nutritional or thyroid problem), vascular disease (like a stroke), or infectious diseases can affect brain cells, causing dementia.
There are no FDA-approved therapies for dementia, but there are four medications that target Alzheimer’s. These drugs do not stall disease progression or cure the disease, but they can help control symptoms.


All Alzheimer's is dementia, but not all dementia is Alzheimer's.