Monday, April 30, 2012
MENSA Q & A
Which Shakespeare play features the following lesser-known characters: Cassio, Roderigo, Emilia?
(click below for the answer)
TODAY IN HISTORY
APRIL 30
1952:The diary of Anne Frank comes to light with the English language publication of The Diary of a Young Girl, telling the story of young Jewish teen Anne Frank’s experiences hiding in Amsterdam during the Holocaust.
1900: Locomotive engineer John “Casey” Jones loses his life in an effort to save passengers during an Illinois Central Railroad train wreck near Vaughan, Miss. The legend of heroic Casey Jones has been immortalized in “The Ballad of Casey Jones,” recorded by the likes ofJohnny Cash, Pete Seeger, and the Grateful Dead.
1900: Locomotive engineer John “Casey” Jones loses his life in an effort to save passengers during an Illinois Central Railroad train wreck near Vaughan, Miss. The legend of heroic Casey Jones has been immortalized in “The Ballad of Casey Jones,” recorded by the likes ofJohnny Cash, Pete Seeger, and the Grateful Dead.
1952:The children's toy Mr. Potato Head is the first toy to be advertised on television.
1789:George Washington takes oath of office to become first elected US President.
1975 :Fall of Saigon to Communist forces, with surrender of South Vietnamese president Duong Van Minh
Sunday, April 29, 2012
A DRIVE DOWN THE HIGHWAY OF HISTORY
From a frenzy over tail fins to the politics of pickup trucks, cars tell the story of postwar America
The AMC Gremlin was designed on the back of a Northwest Airlines airsickness bag and launched on April Fools' Day, 1970. The plug-ugly car perfectly suited the American "crisis of confidence" that President Jimmy Carter declared at the decade's end. (click below to read more)MEETING PROGRAM APRIL 26, 2012
Rotary District 6460 Director Kathy Wahl explains the New Generations program.
TODAY IN HISTORY
APRIL 29
1968:James Rado and Gerome Ragni’s counterculture musical Hair, with music by Galt MacDermot, premieres on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre in New York City for the first of 1,750 performances. Authors Rado and Ragni star in the lead roles of Claude and Berger for the premiere of the “American tribal love-rock musical,” which is the first Broadway show to feature actors nude onstage.
1925: Johns Hopkins University professor and medical researcher Dr. Florence Sabin is the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences. A statue of Sabin represents her home state of Colorado in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection.
1986: Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox pitches a Major League Baseball record, becoming the first pitcher to throw 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game, a 3-2 win against the Seattle Mariners at Fenway Park. Clemens will tie his own 20 strikeout record a decade later.
1925: Johns Hopkins University professor and medical researcher Dr. Florence Sabin is the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences. A statue of Sabin represents her home state of Colorado in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection.
1986: Roger Clemens of the Boston Red Sox pitches a Major League Baseball record, becoming the first pitcher to throw 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game, a 3-2 win against the Seattle Mariners at Fenway Park. Clemens will tie his own 20 strikeout record a decade later.
2004:Oldsmobile builds its final car ending 107 years of production.
1992:Riots in Los Angeles, California, follow the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 54 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.
1967:Aretha Franklin releases her famous hit song, "Respect"
1913:Gideon Sundback, an American electrical engineer, patents the first zipper
1852:First edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus published
1992:Riots in Los Angeles, California, follow the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. Over the next three days 54 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.
1967:Aretha Franklin releases her famous hit song, "Respect"
1913:Gideon Sundback, an American electrical engineer, patents the first zipper
1852:First edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus published
Saturday, April 28, 2012
TODAY IN HISTORY
 |
| Kon-Tiki |
1947:Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and five crew members set off from Peru on the balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki, in an anthropological effort to prove that the Polynesian Islands could have been settled by ancient South Americans. The Kon-Tiki raft was built using pre-Columbian materials and crosses the Pacific Ocean in 101 days.
1967: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, citing pacifist religious objections and the fact that “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” He is immediately stripped of his boxing title and will later be convicted of refusing to be inducted into the military.
1980: Cyrus Vance officially resigns as U.S. Secretary of State over his opposition to Operation Eagle Claw, a risky attempt ordered by President Jimmy Carter to rescue the 52 American hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. As Vance had predicted, the mission ultimately failed, costing the lives of eight American servicemen without rescuing the hostages.
1967: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, citing pacifist religious objections and the fact that “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.” He is immediately stripped of his boxing title and will later be convicted of refusing to be inducted into the military.
1980: Cyrus Vance officially resigns as U.S. Secretary of State over his opposition to Operation Eagle Claw, a risky attempt ordered by President Jimmy Carter to rescue the 52 American hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran. As Vance had predicted, the mission ultimately failed, costing the lives of eight American servicemen without rescuing the hostages.
1789:Mutiny on the HMS Bounty.
1820:Azerbaijan Democratic Republic joins the Soviet Union.
1965: One of the most popular musicals ever, "The Sound Of Music" wins five Academy Awards.
HELPING HUNGER
Two new service partnerships announced this month by Rotary International will support humanitarian efforts by clubs and districts.
RI will combine resources with the Global FoodBanking Network to alleviate hunger worldwide. And Rotary and YSA (Youth Service America) will work together to encourage young people to participate in service projects in their communities. (click below to read more)
READING FEAR AND ANGER
A study suggests that East Asians perceive emotion in faces differently from Westerners, casting doubt on the thesis that human facial expressions are largely universal across cultures.
Fifteen white European students and 15 East Asians rated nearly 5,000 randomly generated facial expressions, presented via 3-D computer animation. They chose one of six emotions—happiness, surprise, fear, disgust, anger or sadness—and rated the intensity, or chose "don't know." Those six emotions have long been thought to be the building blocks of human facial communication.
Though the Europeans reacted with relative uniformity to the six categories, the East Asian students showed far more disagreement, especially where fear, disgust, anger and surprise were concerned. These displayed substantial overlap, suggesting that those categories aren't fundamental to the Asian way of "reading" faces. In contrast, muscle movements signifying happiness and sadness were cross-cultural.
Another distinction was that East Asians looked more to muscles around the eyes as early indicators of strong emotion.
"Facial Expressions of Emotion Are Not Culturally Universal," Rachael E. Jack, Oliver G.B. Garrod, Hui Yu, Roberto Caldara and Philippe G. Schyns, PNAS (April 16 online)
Friday, April 27, 2012
MENSA Q& A
What is the English name for the country the natives call Nippon?
(click below for the answer)
(click below for the answer)
TODAY IN HISTORY
APRIL 27
1521:Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in a fight with natives of the Philippines.
1805:The U.S. Marines captured Derna, on the shores of Tripoli.
1865:The worst steamship disaster in the history of the United States occurred when there was an explosion aboard the Sultana; more than 1,400 people were killed.
1956:Rocky Marciano retired as undefeated world heavyweight boxing champion.
1961:Sierra Leone gained independence from Great Britain.
1983:Pitcher Nolan Ryan surpassed Walter Johnson’s strikeout record—one that had held since 1927.
1987:Austrian president Kurt Waldheim was barred from entering the United States. He was accused of aiding in the execution of thousands of Jews in World War II.
1993:Eritrea declared itself independent.
CLIMBING UP TO BRING POLIO DOWN
In September, I will be leading a party of Rotarians from District 7680 (North Carolina, USA) up Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, to raise money and awareness for Rotary’s End Polio Now campaign. (click below to read more)
Thursday, April 26, 2012
TUNE IN TONIGHT
TCM, 10:15 p.m. ET
In 1954, director Akira Kurosawa made this magnificent action movie, about a desolate village hiring out-of-work samurai to protect them from marauding bandits. Six years later, Hollywood presented this Americanized remake, setting the action in the Old West and making it work just as entertainingly. Stars include Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughan, James Coburn and, in the iconic role he reprised in robot form in Michael Crichton’s Westworld, Yul Brynner.
KLUMPH AWARDS
The Rotary Foundation recently inducted five couples into the Arch C. Klumph Society, which honors donors who give at least US$250,000 to the Foundation.
Past District Governor Albert Alley and his wife, Virginia; Past District Governor Terry N. Phillips and his wife, Anne; Past District Governor Charles Reinhart and his wife, Yolanda; Al and Ruth Braswell; and Allen D. and Patsy M. Orr were honored during ceremonies held at the end of March at RI World Headquarters in Evanston, Illinois, USA, where their portraits now hang in the Arch C. Klumph Gallery. (click below to read more)
THE BUSINESS OF LYING
Have you ever been tempted to lie to a company? Consumers who fib are more satisfied than truth-tellers when a dispute with a firm works out to their advantage—and more unhappy when it doesn't. A study involving nearly 600 people put many of them in situations where they were prompted to lie to a "service provider," in order to gain a prize, or invited to do so. They leapt at the chance. In one scenario, students had the option of lying about computer habits to someone on the phone, in order to receive a USB flash-drive key ring; three-fourths chose to do so. In these lab scenarios, confirmed by interviews about real-world behavior, liars showed more polarized reactions than people who pleaded their case without embellishment. Lying demands substantial cognitive effort, the researchers explained, and that makes it harder for liars to notice cues about how a negotiation is going. So the resolution comes as more of a (pleasant or unpleasant) surprise."The Labor of Lies: How Lying for Material Rewards Polarizes Consumers Outcome Satisfaction," Christina I. Anthony and Elizabeth Cowley, Journal of Consumer Research (forthcoming)
MENSA Q & A
Who said it? "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
(click below to read more)
TODAY IN HISTORY
APRIL 26
1952:Patty Berg shoots a 64—six under the men’s par for the course—setting a record for the best round of competitive golf played by a woman, at the Richmond Country Club in California. Berg was an early women’s golf pioneer, having won the first U.S. Women’s Open in 1946 and help found the Ladies Professional Golf Association.
1865: John Wilkes Booth, the Confederate-sympathizing actor who had assassinated President Abraham Lincoln 12 days earlier, is shot to death by Union Sgt. Boston Corbett in a barn on Richard Garrett’s farm near Bowling Green, Va. He was 26.
2000: Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signs the nation’s first law allowing civil unions between same-sex couples.
1865: John Wilkes Booth, the Confederate-sympathizing actor who had assassinated President Abraham Lincoln 12 days earlier, is shot to death by Union Sgt. Boston Corbett in a barn on Richard Garrett’s farm near Bowling Green, Va. He was 26.
2000: Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signs the nation’s first law allowing civil unions between same-sex couples.
1467:The miraculous image of Our Lady of Good Counsel appears in Genazzano, Italy.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
AND I QUOTE
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.- Mark Twain
WHAT SHAPE IS YOUR NOODLE?
In Mac-and-Cheese Wars, Al Dente Can't Compete With SpongeBob SquarePants
It May Sound Cheesy, but at Kraft, Noodling Around With Novel Shapes Is Key; the Hot-Water Test
GLENVIEW, Ill.—In architecture, form follows function. In pasta, shape follows sauce. Margherite, farfalle and lumache may look like daisies, butterflies and snails, but taste is what counts: which shape combines with which sauce to taste best.
It counts in Italy, that is. In America, the rule has evolved a variation: Shape follows tie-in. That's why macaroni from Kraft Foods looks like Super Mario, Spider-Man and Marvin the Martian—and why Guillermo Haro is the nation's best-selling pasta architect. (CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE)
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