Thursday, June 30, 2011
PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE
The Columbus, Ohio, school board accepted principal Kimberly Jones' resignation in May following revelations by The Columbus Dispatch that she, though earning $90,000 a year, swore on federal forms that she made just $25,000 -- so that her own two children would qualify for reduced-price school lunches. [Columbus Dispatch, 5-4-2011]
TODAY IN HISTORY
JUNE 30
1997:J.K. Rowling's first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is published by Bloomsbury in the United Kingdom. Fourteen years later, Philosopher's Stone (retitled the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States) and six subsequent novels about the world's most famous boy wizard have sold roughly 450 million copies.
1859: French daredevil Charles Blondin, born Jean-François Gravelet, crosses Niagara Falls by tightrope for the first time, bravely walking across the falls over 160 feet in the air. Blondin will outdo himself in subsequent crossings, in which he will cook an omelet, carry his manager on his back and push a wheelbarrow.
1905: Twenty-six year old Albert Einstein introduces his theory of special relativity with the publication of On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, written while Einstein was working as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
NOT YOUR EVERYDAY HIKE
The most iconic hike in Yosemite National Park opened this past week when the Park Service announced that the cables are now in place on Half Dome, the giant slab of granite that is one of the most recognizable landmarks in that park. (click below to read more)
SMILE
A motorist was mailed a picture of his car speeding through an automated radar and a $40 speeding ticket was included.
Being cute, he sent the police department a picture of $40.
The police responded with another mailed photo-of handcuffs.
Being cute, he sent the police department a picture of $40.
The police responded with another mailed photo-of handcuffs.
AIRPORT THRILL RIDE
Thousands of feet above sea level, Toncontín International Airport boasts a short (6,132-foot) runway. Due to the surrounding mountains, the approach resembles a zigzag. Pilot Anonymous explains, “With the advent of GPS, the approach into Tegucigalpa is no longer straight. We weave between the mountains as we land.” To line up with the runway, planes must make a last-second 45-degree turn. Talk about sweaty palms!
COMING TO A STORE NEAR YOU-DESIGNER BARCODES
Package design has become so artful, it has come to this: Even the barcode, the style runt of product labeling, is getting gussied up.
Beer, granola, juice and olives are sporting barcodes that integrate famous buildings, blades of wheat and bubbles into the ubiquitous black and white rectangle of lines and numbers. Consumer-goods companies hope these vanity barcodes will better connect with customers.
The trend is popular with smaller companies, and even one of the world's largest food companies, Nestle SA, is trying out vanity barcodes on its smaller brands. (click below to read more)
Beer, granola, juice and olives are sporting barcodes that integrate famous buildings, blades of wheat and bubbles into the ubiquitous black and white rectangle of lines and numbers. Consumer-goods companies hope these vanity barcodes will better connect with customers.
The trend is popular with smaller companies, and even one of the world's largest food companies, Nestle SA, is trying out vanity barcodes on its smaller brands. (click below to read more)
TODAY IN HISTORY
JUNE 29
1974:Isabel Perón is sworn in as interim president of Argentina, accepting power from her mortally ill husband, Juan Perón, who will die two days later. Isabel Perón, formerly the Argentine vice president, becomes the first female head of government in the Western Hemisphere.
1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Federal Aid Highway Act, allocating $25 billion to modernize the nation's highways and create gigantic coast-to-coast interstates. The new interstates will fulfill many of the technological predictions of the Futurama exhibit made by General Motors for the 1939 New York World's Fair.
1974: Soviet-born ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov defects while on tour with the Kirov Ballet in Toronto.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
WHAT'S A VEHICLE VANITY PLATE WORTH TO YOU?
Image via WikipediaWhat Drives People to Take a Creative License?Facing Budget Crunches, States Appeal To Vanity; 'Territory Markers' and Honking
To boost state coffers, Texas sold a Dallas doctor a "PORSCHE" for $7,500.
Then it sold him "AMERICA" for $3,000.
Both were license plates, sold at auction. "I will get my American citizenship next month, so it means a lot to me," says Salman Waheed, an intensive-care physician. He also wanted "FERRARI," but dropped out when bidding for that one went too high—eventually netting $15,000, the top price paid.
After years of selling vanity plates as a modest sideline—charging as little as $5—states think there's more money to be made in whatever drives people to buy them. Facing budget crunches, states are raising surcharges or proposing annual fee hikes for custom plates. (click below to read more)
TODAY IN HISTORY
JUNE 28
1919:President Woodrow Wilson is among the leaders signing the Treaty of Versailles in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, France, formally ending World War I and imposing harsh reparations on Germany. The spark that ignited the Great War occurred exactly five years earlier, when Bosnian-Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip murdered Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in Sarajevo.
1846: Belgian-born musician and inventor Adolphe Sax patents his eponymous instrument, the saxophone, in Paris.
1969: Police conduct an early-morning raid on the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay club in Greenwich Village, and are met with violent resistance from patrons and local sympathizers. In the following days, demonstrations will spread through New York City, and the Stonewall riots will be frequently regarded as the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States.
CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF FROM SPACE?
Space nerds, get your browsers ready -- UrtheCast will soon be streaming HD video of Earth straight from the ISS. The system will actually consists of a pair of cameras, one still and one video, that will be mounted on the Russian arm of the station. The still shots will be very wide, covering about 30 miles with a resolution of 18-feet per pixel. Much more exciting will be the three feet per-pixel stream of 3.25fps video that will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The feeds won't be your typical boring NASA fare either -- you'll be able to search, rewind, and tag objects or events. The service launches today.
GLOBAL GRANT HELPS WITH MALARIA PREVENTION
Last year, malaria claimed the lives of almost 750,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa, 85 percent of them young children. Some of the region’s poorest residents live in Yirimadjo, Mali, and are receiving protection from the disease through a Rotary Foundation Global Grant project supported by Rotarians in four countries. (click belwo to read more)
Monday, June 27, 2011
SMILE
The graveside service just barely finished, when there was massive clap of thunder, followed by a tremendous bolt of lightning, accompanied by even more thunder rumbling in the distance...
The little old man looked at the pastor and calmly said, 'Well, she's there.'
The little old man looked at the pastor and calmly said, 'Well, she's there.'
WHAT'S IN YOUR NAME?
Dr. Chopp, Meet Congressman Weiner
In March, at the Congressional Correspondents' Dinner, Rep. Anthony Weiner made cracks about his surname.
"It's part of me, it's part of the campaign slogans," he said. "Vote for Weiner. He'll be frank. Vote for Weiner. He's on a roll." Although he'd been teased about it as a kid, the New York congressman said he'd learned to embrace his name. (click below to read more)
In March, at the Congressional Correspondents' Dinner, Rep. Anthony Weiner made cracks about his surname.
"It's part of me, it's part of the campaign slogans," he said. "Vote for Weiner. He'll be frank. Vote for Weiner. He's on a roll." Although he'd been teased about it as a kid, the New York congressman said he'd learned to embrace his name. (click below to read more)
TODAY IN HISTORY
JUNE 27
1898:At age 54, Nova Scotia-born sailor Joshua Slocum completes the first solo circumnavigation of the globe, steering the Spray on a 46,000-mile voyage that lasts more than three years.
1829: British scientist James Smithson dies in Genoa, Italy, having stated in his will that if his nephew dies without any heirs, Smithson's entire estate should go toward creating "under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an Establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge" in Washington. The Smithsonian now includes 19 museums and galleries and the National Zoological Park.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
AND I QUOTE
- "When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'"-Don Marquis
TODAY IN HISTORY
JUNE 26
1963:On the 15th anniversary of the start of the Berlin airlift, President John F. Kennedy expresses his support for democracy in Germany. Decrying the East German communist regime, Kennedy proclaims: "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a citizen of Berlin").
1819: W.K. Clarkson Jr. of New York City receives a patent for his new and improved velocipede, a bicycle with two similarly sized wheels.
1870: Conceived of by railroad conductor Alexander Boardman and hotel owner Jacob Keim, the first section of the Atlantic City boardwalk opens, attracting visitors to Absecon Island, N.J., for sun, sand and, of course, salt water taffy.
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