Mosquitoes are Killers

The mosquito emerged 190 million years ago. During 2018 mosquitoes killed 850,000 people, but the annual average is around 2 million. Sharks, by contrast, killed 10.

There are 110 trillion mosquitoes stalking the world at this time (with only a few places, like Antarctica, the Seychelles and a few French Polynesian islands outside the range). These insects harbor at least 15 lethal diseases. The most deadly are malaria and yellow fever, but mosquitoes also transmit other lethal viruses, like West Nile and Zika, worms, and parasites.

Mosquitoes on average kill more humans than any other animal, including man himself. The annual average number of deaths worldwide caused by:
    Mosquitoes: 2 million
    Humans: 475,000
    Snakes: 50,000

Google Lens

Google Assistant has an option called "Google Lens" which can recognize almost any flower, plant, insect, animal, logos, landmarks, etc. that you point it at. It can also translate text into other languages.

Open the Google Assistant and tap the camera icon to the left of the four colored dots at the bottom. This will open Google Lens, which is an AI able to recognize almost anything you point the camera at. You can even load pictures you have already taken by tapping the picture icon in the top right corner.


The free app is available to download for iPhone and Android. Great for getting the names of flowers and plants in your yard that you forgot the name of.

Coffee Bag Holes

The little holes in coffee bags are there to release carbon dioxide. After roasting, coffee beans can release carbon dioxide for two weeks and without the one-way hole the bag would swell up and burst.

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.”