Jun 19, 2020

CDC Covid Tracker

Here is an interesting site from the CDC with various statistics by state. Interesting. LINK

History of the Hawaiian Shirt

During 1916, Hawaiian records outsold all other genres. During the Great Depression, Americans added another piece of Hawaiian culture: the aloha shirt. The aloha shirt first appeared in Hawaii in the 1920s or ’30s, probably when local Japanese women adapted kimono fabric for use in men’s shirting. The shirts achieved some popularity among tourists to Hawaii and found greater commercial success when they hit the mainland.

After Pearl Harbor service members returning to the mainland from the Pacific made the signature apparel more popular than ever. In the past five years, fashion magazines have been heralding a comeback, and high-end labels like Gucci are taking the aloha shirt to new heights, with prints that draw on Japanese designs favored in the garment’s early days. Meanwhile, some shirt makers from Hawaii’s old guard are still going strong.

Happy Friday

Make happiness a family trait you pass along.

It is a good habit to exhibit often, especially on a Happy Friday!

What's in a Name, Pegman

Pegman is the name of the little yellow figure in Google maps. Drag him to a location on the map and it changes to street view.

Google Maps Street View

You can travel back in time with Google Maps using Street View. You can see what a landmark looked like over the years as part of a digital timeline.

Look for the clock icon in the upper left-hand portion of many Street View images. Click on it and move the slider that pops up left and right to travel through “time” to see images of a structure in the past and in present. There are various thumbnails you can look through to see how it looked in the past.

Wordology, Altitude vs. Elevation

Altitude is used to describe a point above sea level in the air. Pilots use altitude. Elevation is a point above sea level on land.

National Monument vs. National Park

Enacted in 1906, the American Antiquities Act established the protection of "natural and cultural resources" in the United States, paving the way for national monuments and parks. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed four national monuments in that same year. The first of those was Devils Tower in Wyoming. This massive column of igneous rock attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors per year.

The first official national park is Yellowstone in Wyoming, established by President Grant in 1872. The difference between a national monument and a national park is that parks are set aside by Congress for their scenic or natural significance, while monuments can have historic or scientific significance of any kind and are created via executive order. Buildings and ruins, for instance, can be monuments, not parks.

What's in a Name, Mount Rushmore

This famous of American landmarks did not get its name from the mountain it is built on nor is it named after the man who sculpted it. In 1884, an attorney named Charles Edward Rushmore visited the Black Hills area to verify some legal titles. According to the National Parks site, Rushmore asked a local guide what the name of the mountain was. The guide replied, "We will name it now, and name it Rushmore."

Two More Myths Debunked

A camel’s hump does not store water. Camel humps store fat. The fat allows the animal to remain nourished during long periods between eating, an attribute for which camels are less well-known. As the fat is burned by the animal’s metabolism, the humps sag, replenished when the camel again has access to food. Camels drink massive amounts of water, up to 20 gallons at a time, which is stored in their bloodstream, not in their humps. In truth, a camel’s hump holds little water, and none as storage for long desert journeys.
Gum remains in the stomach no longer than any other food ingested. For most people is 30 minutes to two hours. For most healthy people, the stomach is emptied within that time period. Chewing gum is not intended to be swallowed, but the idea that it remains in the stomach indefinitely, growing into a larger mass, is totally false.

Browser Tip

If you are frustrated with sites that open a link on top of the page you are reading, you can hold down the CTRL key and left mouse click on the link and it will open in a new tab so you can finish reading the page you are on and then switch to the linked page.


Another way is to right mouse click and choose Open Link in New Tab.

Sayings From the Bible

"By the skin of my teeth"
This is one of the many proverbs that owe their origin to the colorful language of the Book of Job. The tormented hero Job is complaining about his woes. He has become, he says, so emaciated that “my bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.” The proverbial meaning is that he has missed death by a tiny margin—as narrow as the (non-existent) skin on a person’s teeth. Biblical scholars have argued endlessly about what the phrase originally signified. Some argue for a more literal interpretation: that Satan kept Job’s mouth—the skin of his gums, jaws, and lips—healthy in order to encourage him to blaspheme against God.


"A drop in the bucket"
Stuck between the mighty pharaohs on one side, and a succession of great Mesopotamian empires on the other, Israel was always destined to be a small fish in a big and dangerous pond. By the middle of the sixth century BC, the Jewish kingdoms had been conquered repeatedly, and a decent chunk of the population was living in painful exile in Babylon. Amid all this geopolitical gloom, the Book of Isaiah had some words of comfort. Compared to God, says the prophet, “the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance.”

Jun 7, 2020

Happy Friday

Happiness is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

I like to hand out gifts, especially on a Happy Friday!

National Doughnut Day

National Doughnut Day is celebrated each year on the first Friday in June. Doughnut lovers all rise to celebrate a wonderful circle of sweet, doughy goodness that has a day set aside holey in its honor.
Smoky Bones features a 3/8th-inch thick slice of Applewood smoked bacon, hand-carved and then candied in brown sugar and black pepper. The chunk of meat is then roasted until crispy and shaped into a traditional doughnut ring. The sugary, peppery and crispy slice is then dipped in the restaurant’s “signature vanilla cake batter and cooked until perfectly golden brown.” On top of that goes a second glaze of confectioner’s sugar and maple sugar. It is then topped with even more smoked bacon pieces. Smoky Bones is a nationwide BBQ restaurant.


Incidentally, donut is the spelling from Dunkin Donuts.

Online Tips

Here are a few interesting sites to help you use up some of the Covid extra stay-in-place time.

Is it down for you or the entire world?
The video conferencing service Zoom recently experienced audio and video issues that left many virtual Sunday church goers without weekly service. While confused users flooded social media to try to fix their computers, phones, or tablets, they could have used this site. There was nothing they could do.
Zoom was experiencing a service outage. If a site you use is experiencing issues, Downdetector will display a live outage map, information on where the outage occurred, the time it happened, and the most reported problems. 
Tap or click here for this smart trick to use when a site or service is down.
See life in numbers
You can use this site when it is someone’s birthday to give the celebrator some fun facts about his or her life so far. Try it for yourself. At Life Stats, enter your date of birth and you instantly see the number of times your heart has beaten, how many days you have spent asleep, what a dollar was worth when you were born, and more facts including life expectancy statistics.
Tap or click here to get your life stats.
Try a custom ambient sound maker
We all have preferences when it comes to sound. Would you rather get something done in a bustling coffee shop or a silent room? Do you prefer gentle white noise or complete quiet when sleeping?
A Soft Murmur is beautiful, useful and endlessly customizable. Here’s how it works. Visit the site and choose your background noise of choice from basics like rain, thunder, waves and wind to crickets, birds, fire and coffee shop chatter. Set the level for each sound to create your perfect mix. Maybe it's a coffee shop and rain or waves, wind and birds for a more calming effect.
Tap or click here to create your perfect background noise.
Cook based on your fridge and pantry
Right now, most of us are stocking up on groceries to avoid going back to the store every few days. This makes it difficult to whip up fun new recipes.
If you are stuck in a rut, try MyFridgeFood. Check off the items in your fridge and pantry, and find recipes based on what you have on-hand.

Tap or click here to get delicious recipes using what you have at home.