It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.
I plan to stand tall and carry on with a Happy Friday!
Dec 2, 2011
Satellites
If you have about ten minutes to waste, this site shows what can be seen on earth from Google earth satellite. LINK Amazing and quick paced. It is also scary with the level of detail to show someone laying out in their yard. Fascinating pictures of our earth from space. The Singularity web site occupies way too much of my time.
Chewing Gum
Gum has a long history from many countries and civilizations. For centuries the ancient Greeks chewed mastic gum, the resin obtained from the bark of the mastic tree, a shrub-like tree found on the island of Chios, Greece. Grecian women especially favored chewing mastic gum to clean their teeth and sweeten their breath.
In the Middle Ages, mastic was used in the Middle East by the Sultan's harem both as a breath freshener, cosmetics, and for its healing properties.
The Mayan people chewed chicle, which is derived from the sap of the Sapodilla tree, a tropical evergreen native to Central America. Chicle was enjoyed for its high sugar content and sweet flavor.
American Indians of New England chewed gum, made from the resin of spruce trees. The custom of chewing gum grew until the early Nineteenth Century when lumps of spruce gum, were sold commercially. Spruce gum was gradually replaced by paraffin wax-based gum. It was eventually replaced by other substance. Sweetened and flavored paraffin wax is still used in the production of novelty chewing products.
Former Mexican political leader Antonio de Santa Anna went into exile and boarded with Thomas Adams in his Staten Island home. Santa Anna brought with him a large quantity of chicle. He felt chicle would be in high demand among Americans because he believed it could be used as an additive to natural rubber, which could make rubber a less expensive material and could be used to manufacture all kinds of things, such as tires. He asked Adams to experiment with it.
Adams spent over a year trying to make rain boots, toys, masks and bicycle tires, but found chicle unsuitable as a rubber substitute. Adams decided to experiment with chicle as a gum base and found that chicle-based gum was smoother, softer and superior in taste to the paraffin gums available at that time. Adams produced a batch of chicle-based gum and persuaded a local druggist to carry it. Soon Adams opened the world’s first chewing gum factory.
By February 1871, Adams New York Gum could be found on sale in drug stores for a penny per piece. In 1888, a Thomas Adams' chewing gum called Tutti-Frutti became the first gum to be sold in a vending machine. The machines were located in a New York City subway station.
The firm was the nation's most prosperous chewing gum company and built a monopoly in 1899 by merging with the six largest and best-known chewing gum manufacturers in the United States and Canada, and achieved great success as the maker of Chiclets, named after chickle.
Also in 1899, Dentyne gum was created by New York druggist Franklin V. Canning. A few years later, in 1906, Frank Fleer invented the first bubble gum called Blibber-Blubber gum, which never sold. Still a few years later in 1914, William Wrigley, Jr. and Henry Fleer added mint and fruit extracts to a chicle-based chewing gum and created Doublemint gum.
In 1928 the first commercially successful bubble gum based on Frank Fleer’s 1906 creation was manufactured and was called Double Bubble. The Wrigley Company was a prominent user of chicle until the 1960s, when it was replaced by a less expensive material that made chewing gum cheaper to manufacture. There are only a few companies today that still make chewing gum from natural chicle and other natural gums. That's a lot to chew on.
In the Middle Ages, mastic was used in the Middle East by the Sultan's harem both as a breath freshener, cosmetics, and for its healing properties.
The Mayan people chewed chicle, which is derived from the sap of the Sapodilla tree, a tropical evergreen native to Central America. Chicle was enjoyed for its high sugar content and sweet flavor.
American Indians of New England chewed gum, made from the resin of spruce trees. The custom of chewing gum grew until the early Nineteenth Century when lumps of spruce gum, were sold commercially. Spruce gum was gradually replaced by paraffin wax-based gum. It was eventually replaced by other substance. Sweetened and flavored paraffin wax is still used in the production of novelty chewing products.
Former Mexican political leader Antonio de Santa Anna went into exile and boarded with Thomas Adams in his Staten Island home. Santa Anna brought with him a large quantity of chicle. He felt chicle would be in high demand among Americans because he believed it could be used as an additive to natural rubber, which could make rubber a less expensive material and could be used to manufacture all kinds of things, such as tires. He asked Adams to experiment with it.
Adams spent over a year trying to make rain boots, toys, masks and bicycle tires, but found chicle unsuitable as a rubber substitute. Adams decided to experiment with chicle as a gum base and found that chicle-based gum was smoother, softer and superior in taste to the paraffin gums available at that time. Adams produced a batch of chicle-based gum and persuaded a local druggist to carry it. Soon Adams opened the world’s first chewing gum factory.
By February 1871, Adams New York Gum could be found on sale in drug stores for a penny per piece. In 1888, a Thomas Adams' chewing gum called Tutti-Frutti became the first gum to be sold in a vending machine. The machines were located in a New York City subway station.
The firm was the nation's most prosperous chewing gum company and built a monopoly in 1899 by merging with the six largest and best-known chewing gum manufacturers in the United States and Canada, and achieved great success as the maker of Chiclets, named after chickle.
Also in 1899, Dentyne gum was created by New York druggist Franklin V. Canning. A few years later, in 1906, Frank Fleer invented the first bubble gum called Blibber-Blubber gum, which never sold. Still a few years later in 1914, William Wrigley, Jr. and Henry Fleer added mint and fruit extracts to a chicle-based chewing gum and created Doublemint gum.
In 1928 the first commercially successful bubble gum based on Frank Fleer’s 1906 creation was manufactured and was called Double Bubble. The Wrigley Company was a prominent user of chicle until the 1960s, when it was replaced by a less expensive material that made chewing gum cheaper to manufacture. There are only a few companies today that still make chewing gum from natural chicle and other natural gums. That's a lot to chew on.
American Drinking
Sixty four percent of American adults drink alcohol. Of those who imbibe, 36% prefer wine, 35% beer and 23% hard liquor.
What's in a Name, Jukebox
The first Jukebox, or ‘Nickel-in-the-Slot’ was placed in service in 1889 in the Palais Royal Saloon in San Francisco, California.
Juke was a slang African word for a disorderly house, or house of ill repute, then a juke joint became a place where they had jukebox music. Now it is a name for a Chicago dance, and also means to fake, as in football. Some diners still have juke boxes
The unit, developed by Louis T. Glass and William Arnold contained an Edison tinfoil phonograph with four listening tubes. There was a coin slot for each tube. 5 cents bought a few minutes of music. After receiving a coin, it unlocked a mechanism, allowing the listener to turn a crank which simultaneously wound the spring motor and placed the reproducer's stylus in the starting groove. The new device took in $1,000 in six months.
The more modern, but still classic jukebox has buttons with letters and numbers on them that, when entered in combination, are used to play a specific selection.
Juke was a slang African word for a disorderly house, or house of ill repute, then a juke joint became a place where they had jukebox music. Now it is a name for a Chicago dance, and also means to fake, as in football. Some diners still have juke boxes
The unit, developed by Louis T. Glass and William Arnold contained an Edison tinfoil phonograph with four listening tubes. There was a coin slot for each tube. 5 cents bought a few minutes of music. After receiving a coin, it unlocked a mechanism, allowing the listener to turn a crank which simultaneously wound the spring motor and placed the reproducer's stylus in the starting groove. The new device took in $1,000 in six months.
The more modern, but still classic jukebox has buttons with letters and numbers on them that, when entered in combination, are used to play a specific selection.
Nov 29, 2011
Honest Abe
As election seasons go on, many like to quote the great presidents from the past. Here is something about Abraham Lincoln. He delivered his Gettysburg Address on November 19 1863. The speech was considered so insignificant at the time that coverage was not even front page news.
A few months before, the fields outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania had one of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War between the states. The Union forces held their positions against Confederate advances. The Confederates, under Robert E. Lee, retreated to Virginia, ending their attempt to invade the North. The battle was the turning point of the war.
President Lincoln traveled to the site of the battle to designate it as a national cemetery. While on the train, he wrote his speech on a small piece of paper. It only took three minutes to deliver the entire speech, which is now considered one of the greatest speeches in American history.
“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war - testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated - can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people - by the people - for the people - shall not perish from this earth.”
A few months before, the fields outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania had one of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War between the states. The Union forces held their positions against Confederate advances. The Confederates, under Robert E. Lee, retreated to Virginia, ending their attempt to invade the North. The battle was the turning point of the war.
President Lincoln traveled to the site of the battle to designate it as a national cemetery. While on the train, he wrote his speech on a small piece of paper. It only took three minutes to deliver the entire speech, which is now considered one of the greatest speeches in American history.
“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war - testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated - can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow this ground.
The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people - by the people - for the people - shall not perish from this earth.”
Google+
Google(plus) is like the new Facebook. It has new and different features, like circles. Circles lets you segregate your friends, family, business associates, etc so that your postings can be sent to one or more groups, rather than everyone sees all. It reached 50 million subscribers in 88 days. Facebook took two years to reach that number. Also, since Google+ has been open to the public, it has been adding about two million new users a day.
Hand Held Super Computer
ASCI Red supercomputer, the first computer capable of doing one trillion calculations per second. Now Intel says that it can put the processing power of ASCI Red in the palm of your hand. Literally.
Intel does this with a new chip, code-named Knights Corner. It crams more than 50 general-purpose Pentium microprocessor cores onto a single chip. All by itself, Knights Corner can perform about 1 trillion mathematical calculations per second. In 1996, it took 72 cabinets of servers for ASCI Red to pull off the same feat.
In June 2011, 17 of the world’s top 500 supercomputers used these graphical processing units, but now that number has jumped to 39
Intel is building a massive 10 petaflop (10 thousand trillion calculations per second) supercomputer called Stampede, out of these next-generation Intel chips. It takes server cards that have a Xeon and Knights Corner processor and slides them into specially designed 7 inch tall server boxes. They expect to get 8 petaflops of performance from the Knights Corner chips and another 2 from the Xeons when Stampede goes live. The 4U servers hold just one card now, but they are designed to eventually hold two, which means Stampede could double its power.
When it goes online in January 2013, Stampede will have 10,000 times the processing power of ASCI Red. As Tim Allen used to say, "Arrrgh, More Power!" Isn't technology wonderful!
Intel does this with a new chip, code-named Knights Corner. It crams more than 50 general-purpose Pentium microprocessor cores onto a single chip. All by itself, Knights Corner can perform about 1 trillion mathematical calculations per second. In 1996, it took 72 cabinets of servers for ASCI Red to pull off the same feat.
In June 2011, 17 of the world’s top 500 supercomputers used these graphical processing units, but now that number has jumped to 39
Intel is building a massive 10 petaflop (10 thousand trillion calculations per second) supercomputer called Stampede, out of these next-generation Intel chips. It takes server cards that have a Xeon and Knights Corner processor and slides them into specially designed 7 inch tall server boxes. They expect to get 8 petaflops of performance from the Knights Corner chips and another 2 from the Xeons when Stampede goes live. The 4U servers hold just one card now, but they are designed to eventually hold two, which means Stampede could double its power.
When it goes online in January 2013, Stampede will have 10,000 times the processing power of ASCI Red. As Tim Allen used to say, "Arrrgh, More Power!" Isn't technology wonderful!
Rocky Musical
I don't even know why this deserves mentioning, but I can't help thinking how odd it is. Sylvester Stalone was in Germany for the announcement that he is producing a Rocky musical to be debuted in Hamburg next year.
Why a musical and why Hamburg are the questions that make it so strange. It might be in case it bombs, we will never hear about it in the States. Of course, you did read it here.
Why a musical and why Hamburg are the questions that make it so strange. It might be in case it bombs, we will never hear about it in the States. Of course, you did read it here.
Flush This
I am not a greenie or enviro agitator, but this caught my eye last week. It turns an ordinary toilet into a dual flush toilet, like those costing hundreds of dollars. The article had an eight-year-old install one in a few minutes with no tools. In full disclosure, I have no financial interest in this product.
The dual-flush technology allows lower water volumes for liquids and paper. A second, full-flush uses the standard amount of water for solids. It is estimated that 80 percent of flushes do not need the full amount of water. This thing costs $19.00 on Amazon. It has a piece that replaces the flapper and an extension that replaces the handle.
Read the customer reviews. It is not a panacea, but seems like it is worthwhile to consider saving a few bucks on your water bill. It is called HydroRight. LINK
The dual-flush technology allows lower water volumes for liquids and paper. A second, full-flush uses the standard amount of water for solids. It is estimated that 80 percent of flushes do not need the full amount of water. This thing costs $19.00 on Amazon. It has a piece that replaces the flapper and an extension that replaces the handle.
Read the customer reviews. It is not a panacea, but seems like it is worthwhile to consider saving a few bucks on your water bill. It is called HydroRight. LINK
Nov 26, 2011
Happy Friday
Impromptu thoughts are like mental wild-flowers.
I just occurred to me that I need to have a wild and Happy Friday!
I just occurred to me that I need to have a wild and Happy Friday!
Does Size Matter
You might not care one iota about size, but we live with small things every day. For instance, an iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet. Maybe you have wondered why Yoda, in the movies was so small. A Yodh or Yodr is the smallest letter in the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabets.
The phrase 'not one jot or tittle' comes from the 15th century bible translation. A tittle is the small mark above the letters i and j. Tittles have been around since the 11th century Latin manuscripts to distinguish those letters from the ones next to them and making reading text easier. The Irish may tipple, but do not bother with small things like tittles and do not use them for their letter i. A jot is the name of the least letter of an alphabet or the smallest part of a piece of writing. So, jots and tittles are small things. We have a thought and jot it down. We dot an i, but Chaucer would have tittled his. Size matters and small is important.
The phrase 'not one jot or tittle' comes from the 15th century bible translation. A tittle is the small mark above the letters i and j. Tittles have been around since the 11th century Latin manuscripts to distinguish those letters from the ones next to them and making reading text easier. The Irish may tipple, but do not bother with small things like tittles and do not use them for their letter i. A jot is the name of the least letter of an alphabet or the smallest part of a piece of writing. So, jots and tittles are small things. We have a thought and jot it down. We dot an i, but Chaucer would have tittled his. Size matters and small is important.
Vending Machines
Did you know the first vending machines were invented in the first century in the city of Alexandria. The only goody sold was holy water. When a coin was dropped into a slot, its weight would pull a cork out of a spigot and the machine would dispense a trickle of holy water.
During the early 1880s, the first commercial coin-operated vending machines were introduced in London, England and dispensed post cards. An English publisher and bookshop owner invented a vending machine for selling books.
In 1888, the Thomas Adams Gum Company introduced the first vending machines to the United States and installed them on the elevated subway platforms in New York City. Naturally they sold Tutti-Fruiti gum. Round candy coated gumballs and gumball vending machines were introduced in 1907.
Polyvend introduced the first glass front snack machines in 1972 and the first frozen food vending machines are introduced in 1987. Coffee machines didn't appear until 1991.
Today vending machines sell everything from live bait to hot and cold full meals, including one that actually mixes ingredients and bakes a pizza while you wait. Australians love the machines that make fresh french fries while you watch. Mmmm!
Japan has the highest number of vending machines per capita, with about one machine for every twenty-three people.
During the early 1880s, the first commercial coin-operated vending machines were introduced in London, England and dispensed post cards. An English publisher and bookshop owner invented a vending machine for selling books.
In 1888, the Thomas Adams Gum Company introduced the first vending machines to the United States and installed them on the elevated subway platforms in New York City. Naturally they sold Tutti-Fruiti gum. Round candy coated gumballs and gumball vending machines were introduced in 1907.
Polyvend introduced the first glass front snack machines in 1972 and the first frozen food vending machines are introduced in 1987. Coffee machines didn't appear until 1991.
Today vending machines sell everything from live bait to hot and cold full meals, including one that actually mixes ingredients and bakes a pizza while you wait. Australians love the machines that make fresh french fries while you watch. Mmmm!
Japan has the highest number of vending machines per capita, with about one machine for every twenty-three people.
Ineptocracy
A system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.
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