WEATHER...OR NOT

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

An Oklahoma teenager whose drunk driving led to the death of a friend has been sentenced to attend church for 10 years. Tyler Alred, 17, pleaded guilty to manslaughter after the crash that killed his passenger, John Dum. The judge set church attendance as a condition for Alred to avoid prison. “My client goes to church every Sunday,” said Alred’s lawyer. “That isn’t going to be a problem.”

CHRISTMAS DINNER

IS FLAT A DIMENSION?

AND HOW WAS YOUR THANKSGIVING?

TODAY IN HISTORY

NOVEMBER 30
1887: Exuberant football fans celebrating the Yale Bulldogs' victory over the Harvard Crimson initiate the first known game of softball (then dubbed "indoor baseball"), using a broomstick as a bat and a boxing glove as a ball, at the Farragut Boat Club in Chicago.

1940: American comedienne Lucille Ball and Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, best known as the stars of the classic sitcom I Love Lucy, are married in Greenwich, Conn. The successful show-biz couple would divorce in May 1960 after a 20-year marriage, only two months after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.

1993: President Bill Clinton signs the Brady Bill (formally known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act) into law, enforcing background checks for firearm buyers. The legislation came about following the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in March 1981, which left press secretary Jim Brady partially paralyzed.


1966:Barbados, an island country located in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

1886:George Westinghouse's first successful US alternating current (AC) power plant opened in Buffalo, New York

1872:First international soccer game takes place - England & Scotland play to a 0-0 tie.

MENSA Q & A

What is the more common name for what was advertised as “An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music” ?
(click below for the answer)

THE FIRST WORD

ace
In surf lingo, Billabong director Paul Naude is an ace—a surfer who goes solo. The company's stock shot up 10% Monday after Billabong said Mr. Naude, a former pro surfer, is considering a buyout bid.

Other surf-lingo terms for people include "gremmie" or "grommet" (an inexperienced surfer), "kook" (someone who doesn't follow surfing etiquette), "barn waller" (a surfer with poor style) and "ho-dad" (a hanger-on who has a habit of annoying surfers).

KEEP IT QUIET

Financial experts argue for a great variety of investment strategies, but these approaches all have one thing in common: Once the word is out about them, their returns shrink. (CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE)

VINTAGE ADVERT-1924

TODAY IN HISTORY

NOVEMBER 29

1961: NASA launches a Mercury-Atlas 5 spacecraft with a very special passenger aboard — Enos, a 5-year-old chimpanzee. Enos would orbit the Earth twice before successfully splashing down near Puerto Rico. The mission is in preparation for astronaut John Glenn's first orbital flight in February 1962.


1929:U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole.

1963: President Lyndon B. Johnson establishes the Warren Commission, chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy a week earlier in Dallas, Texas. Nearly a year later, the commission concludes that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating the president.

1972: Atari releases the table tennis-inspired video arcade game Pong, created by Al Alcorn. The first coin-operated Pong machine is installed at Andy Capp's Tavern in Sunnyvale, Calif., and quickly would become a huge success.

1947:The U.N. votes to partition Palestine and create and independent Jewish state.

1777:San Jose, California, is founded as el Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe.

COKE LIGHTS IT UP

AND I QUOTE

"Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine."
Lord Byrom

THE FIRST WORD

Porkopolis
The city of Cincinnati—whose population grew to 160,000 in 1860, from 2,500 in 1810—became known as "Porkopolis" because of the number of hogs its slaughterhouses processed annually.

Meatopolitan monikers are fairly popular: there is a Baconopolis event in Seattle (and Cincinnati has also been called Baconopolis); the city of Napier in New Zealand has been called Muttonopolis, and Long Point, Ontario, on Lake Erie, has been called Duckopolis (for the quality of the duck-hunting).

TRAVELING SNOWMAN

RUNNING THE GOOD RACE

By Sam Bwaya, a member of the Rotary Club of Kampala, Uganda

If you had told me a couple of months ago that I would be taking part in an international marathon, I would have had a hearty laugh and said, “not in my lifetime.” At 49, my running experience had been limited to a few laps around a sports field in college three decades earlier. (CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE)

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

When Black Rock Coffee Bar in Tigard, Ore., suffered two armed robberies in as many weeks, regular customer Jenifer DeWolfe decided the shop could do with a little pick-me-up. She organized a “cash mob,” and soon hundreds of customers descended on the kiosk to buy drinks and shower the baristas with generous tips of up to $100. The coffee shop plays a big role in Tigard, sponsoring local sports teams and helping to organize food drives. “We try to connect with the local communities,” said shop owner Daniel Brand. “So it’s awesome to see people coming out like this.”

PERFECT TIMING

MY NAME IS NOT THE SAME

So you think you're special? Actually you probably do—and that feeling, shared by others, may be why people think their own first names are less usual than others do. (click below to read more)

TODAY IN HISTORY

NOVEMBER 28

1919: American-bon Nancy Astor, wife of Viscount Astor, is the first woman to sit in the British House of Commons. Lady Astor, running on a platform of temperance and the rights of women and children, is elected as a Member of Parliament after her husband inherits a seat in the House of Lords. She would continue to serve in the House of Commons until retiring in 1945.

1960:Mauritania: independence from France

1963: President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that Cape Canaveral, site of NASA's space center and launchpad, would be renamed Cape Kennedy in honor of slain President John F. Kennedy, who had been a strong advocate of space exploration.

1994: Notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is killed along with another prisoner while serving time at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisc., by a fellow inmate. Dahmer committed 17 grisly murders between 1978 and 1991.

1861:Missouri is admitted by Confederate congress into Confederate States of America.

MENSA Q & A

That strangely distorted text that you are asked to type in as security on some Web sites — what’s the word for it?
(click below for the answer)

THE FIRST WORD

spezzato
Not to be confused with sprezzatura, which is the art of unstudied elegance, spezzato literally translates as "broken in two." Quite simply, it describes a combination of jacket and trousers that's not a matching suit.
The word "spezzato" is also used in the musical term coro spezzato, or "broken choir," which is used for the practice of having choirs separated across large spaces, singing alternately for a kind of stereo effect. St. Mark's in Venice has double choir lofts used for this kind of singing.

SPACE

Dark Sand Cascades on Mars 
Image Credit: HiRISE, MRO, LPL (U. Arizona), NASA Explanation: They might look like trees on Mars, but they're not. Groups of dark brown streaks have been photographed by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on melting pinkish sand dunes covered with light frost. The above image was taken in 2008 April near the North Pole of Mars. At that time, dark sand on the interior of Martian sand dunes became more and more visible as the spring Sun melted the lighter carbon dioxide ice. When occurring near the top of a dune, dark sand may cascade down the dune leaving dark surface streaks -- streaks that might appear at first to be trees standing in front of the lighter regions, but cast no shadows. Objects about 25 centimeters across are resolved on this image spanning about one kilometer. Close ups of some parts of this image show billowing plumes indicating that the sand slides were occurring even when the image was being taken.

ARE WE GETTING DUMBER?

As a species, we’re not as smart as we used to be. That’s the theory of a Stanford University researcher who believes that human intelligence started to decline when civilization made life easier and allowed dimmer individuals to survive and pass on their genes.(click below to read more) 

LEARNING TO LOSE WEIGHT

Practicing weight-watching skills before you start a diet may be the key to keeping weight off for good. A new Stanford University study suggests that learning how to maintain your current weight—without trying to shed pounds—helps prevent you from gaining back lost pounds later. (click below to read more)

SNAPSHOT

JOSHUA TREE (California) TIMELAPSE

THE CHRISTMAS SEASON STARTS NOW

DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS

ABC, 8:00 p.m. ET

The first 2012 showing of Chuck Jones’ 1966 animated treatment of the Dr. Seuss classic.

TODAY IN HISTORY

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Broadway in the upper 40s, 1979. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NOVEMBER 27

1924: The tradition of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade begins when the department store stages its first Christmas-themed parade between Central Park West and Herald Square in New York City, featuring hundreds of employees, floats, live animals, bands, balloons and Christmas window displays. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade is still going strong nearly 90 years later.

1927:Penn Station opens in NY

1973: Gerald R. Ford is confirmed as vice president in a 92-3 vote by the U.S. Senate; the House of Representatives approves as well, and Ford would be sworn in on Dec 6. Ford replaces former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who resigned after pleading guilty to income tax evasion. Only nine months later, Ford would assume the presidency after the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

1978: San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay politicians to hold prominent elected office, and Mayor George Moscone are murdered at City Hall by Dan White, a disgruntled former member of the Board of Supervisors.

1948:Honda Motors opens a location in the United States for the first time.

AND I QUOTE

"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."-Madeleine L'Engle

THE PAIN OF MATH

Difficulties with math, from balancing a checkbook to tallying a tip, can cause some people to feel genuine pain. That’s the finding of a new study that examined the brains of people with high levels of math anxiety as they performed algebra problems. (click below to read more)

A RIDE TO REMEMBER

Ninety Rotarian cyclists from clubs throughout the United States took part in the El Tour de Tucson on 17 November in Arizona, raising more than US$375,000 for polio eradication.
RI General Secretary John Hewko and his wife, Marga, were among the Rotarians, friends of Rotary, and family members who hit the pavement along with 9,000 riders from around the world in the charity bike ride, sponsored by the University Medical Center in Tucson, Arizona, completing distances of 42, 60, 85 or 111 miles. The Hewkos also exceeded their goal of $111,000 in pledges, raising more than $200,000 for the ride. (click below to read more)

PERFECT TIMING

TODAY IN HISTORY

NOVEMBER 26

1862: Charles Dodgson sends a handwritten manuscript entitled "Alice's Adventures Under Ground" as a Christmas present to 10-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of one of Dodgson's mathematician colleagues. Under the pen name Lewis Carroll, Dodgson would publish the story of young Alice's adventures down a mysterious rabbit hole as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865. 


1922:Technicolor film is introduced with the release of "Toll of the Sea"


1922: British archaeologist Howard Carter and his patron, Lord Carnarvon, enter the tomb of Tutankhamen in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, where it had been preserved, untouched, for more than 3,300 years. 

 1942: Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman star as Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund in Casablanca, which premieres at the Hollywood Theater in New York City.


1842:The University of Notre Dame is founded.

1825:1st fraternity forms: Kappa Alpha Soc.

FAMILIAR FACES?

MENSA Q & A

What was Annie Oakley’s real (birth) name?
(click below to read more)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Financial Times
Technological and scientific progress has stalled, said Garry Kasparov and Peter Thiel, and we’d better get it moving again if we want real economic growth. Over the past 40 years, we have abandoned a “culture of risk” and “replaced it with a cautiousness far too satisfied with incremental improvements.”  (click below to read more)

JUST FOR PUN

 I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. 
Then it dawned on me.

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

South Korean tourists are flocking to a new toilet-themed amusement park. The “Restroom Cultural Park” in the city of Suwon is dedicated to the city’s former mayor, Sim Jae-duck, who, after being born in a toilet, spent his life campaigning for better local sanitation while living in a toilet-shaped house. Park spokeswoman Lee Youn Souk said the goal was to promote healthier bathroom habits. “We already know upon waking in the morning we should go to the toilet,” she said, “but people don’t want to talk about this.”

CHARITY OF THE WEEK

City Harvest (cityharvest.org) is feeding more New Yorkers than ever in the wake of Super-Storm Sandy. Even in normal times, the charity collects some 115,000 pounds of surplus food each day from restaurants, wholesalers, grocers, and farmers throughout the city, then allocates it among nearly 600 community food programs. Since 1982, the charity has distributed more than 300 million pounds of surplus food. When the storm hit, City Harvest quickly identified the hardest-hit neighborhoods and targeted them for aid. Even though their facilities lost power at one point, the charity moved nearly 900,000 pounds of food to those who needed it most in the week following the storm.
The charity has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which ranks not-for-profit organizations on the strength of their finances, their control of administrative and fund-raising expenses, and the transparency of their operations. Four stars is the group’s highest ranking.

TODAY IN HISTORY

NOVEMBER 25

1952: Agatha Christie's murder mystery play The Mousetrap opens at Ambassadors Theatre in London's West End, featuring Richard Attenborough as Detective Sergeant Trotter. With over 25,000 performances to date, The Mousetrap is the longest-running play in modern history.

1940:Cartoon character Woody Woodpecker first appears with release of Lantz's "Knock Knock"

1984: Forty-four top musicians, including members of U2, Culture Club and Duran Duran, and the likes of David Bowie and Phil Collins, come together as Band Aid at a London studio to record "Do They Know It's Christmas?" The song, written by Bob Geldoff and Midge Ure, is released four days later in an effort to raise money for famine-stricken Ethiopia.

2002: In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush signs legislation to create the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, with Tom Ridge as its first Cabinet-level secretary.


1975:Suriname: independent from Netherlands

1958:French Sudan gains autonomy as a self-governing member of the French Community.

1758:Name in honor of British statesman William Pitt - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is founded.

THE FIRST WORD

gull
Similarly, Sweet Tooth will subsidize passably right-thinking British writers under the guise of a grant from a fake foundation. Serena's "gull," as she guiltily thinks of him, is Tom Haley, an undiscovered novelist...
Gull, used to mean someone easily fooled, may come from the "fledgling bird" sense of the word and has been in use in English since the late 1500s.

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

A couple's home in eastern China has been turned into a roundabout after a road was built around it, when they refused to move out. Luo Baogen and his wife are the only residents left in a neighbourhood of once-connected homes that was demolished to make way for a major road. The thoroughfare leads to a newly built railway station on the outskirts of the city of Wenling in Zhejiang province. Mr Baogen said the house cost 600,000 Yuan (around £60,000) to build, but the authorities have offered substantially less to relocate him.

THE BIG SWING

AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS

SNAPSHOT

TUNE IN TONIGHT

BEN-HUR

TCM, 10:00 p.m. ET

There’s a lot more to this 1959 biblical epic than its famous chariot race – but oh my, there’s a reason why that chariot race, in this version, is so famous, and so iconic. And if you have a wide-screen, high-definition TV, you can see why, in a big way. A big way, and a wide way, too.

ROTARY-UN DAY

By Sakuji Tanaka

After the RI Board meeting in November, I attended a memorable Rotary-UN Day in New York City.
While this annual event is important because it reinforces the long-standing relationship between the United Nations and Rotary International, this year was different from past Rotary-UN Days. Less than a week before the event, Hurricane Sandy hit, knocking out power and flooding parts of the area. The city was still struggling to get back on its feet during our event. Yet 950 people of the 1,300 who registered for the event were able to attend. (click below to read more)

TODAY IN HISTORY

NOVEMBER 24

1859: British naturalist Charles Darwin's groundbreaking research On the Origin of Species, is published, proposing the scientific theory of natural selection, the process behind biological evolution. Nov. 24 is celebrated as Evolution Day.

1642:Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) is discovered by Dutch explorer Abel Janzoon Tasman

1963: Nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shoots Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy two days earlier. The shooting is seen on national television, live from the basement of Dallas police headquarters.

1974: Building on Darwin's work, American anthropologist Don Johanson and graduate student Tom Gray discover the 3.2 million-year-old remains of a female Australopithecus afarensis later nicknamed "Lucy." At the time of her discovery, Lucy, who stood 3 feet 6 inches tall and walked upright, is the oldest direct human ancestor ever found, and has a profound impact on the study of human evolution.

1932:In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially opens.

MENSA Q & A

Wally Byam is famous for developing and promoting what mode of transportation?
(click below for the answer)

THE FIRST WORD

kaffeeklatsch

PRONUNCIATION:

(KAH-fee-klach) 

MEANING:

noun: An informal social gathering for coffee and conversation.

ETYMOLOGY:

From German Kaffeeklatsch, from Kaffee (coffee) + Klatsch (gossip). Earliest documented use: 1888.

NOTES:

The word has many spelling variants: kaffeeklatch, kaffee klatch, kaffee klatsch, coffeeklatsch, coffeeklatch, coffee klatsch, coffee klatch.

USAGE:

"I can always count on my monthly kaffeeklatsches with my fellow scribes to surface the news items that really matter."
Ruth Walker; The Real Regular and the New Normal; The Christian Science Monitor (Boston, Massachusetts); Jun 8, 2010.

ophidiophobia
If you suffer from a crippling case of ophidiophobia and then go spend your life in Ireland, it's easy to imagine you've gotten over your fear of snakes.

Ophidiophobia comes from Greek roots meaning "serpent" and "fear." Herpetophobia is a more general word that includes the fear of other reptiles as well as snakes.