Friday, August 31, 2012
CHEETO MOUNTAIN
NOW YOU KNOW
Even a fake grin can make you feel better. That’s the finding of University of Kansas researchers, who asked more than 150 volunteers to hold chopsticks in their mouths in one of three ways: one that kept their facial expressions neutral, one that caused them to smile with only their mouths, or one that engaged the facial muscles people use when producing a genuine grin. (click below to read more)
PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE
A Canadian man nearly blew off his own head while trying to kill a mouse with a rifle. Dale Whitmell, 40, tried to crush the scampering rodent with the butt of his rifle, but when he slammed the weapon on the ground, it discharged. The bullet grazed his forehead but did not badly wound him. After being released from a hospital, Whitmell was charged with careless use of a firearm. “He was very lucky,” a hospital spokesman said.
TODAY IN HISTORY
AUGUST 31
1887:Thomas Edison received a patent for his "Kinetoscope," and moving pictures were born.
1888:Mary Ann Nicholls, considered to be Jack the Ripper's first victim, was found murdered in London.
1962:Trinidad and Tobago gained independence from Great Britain.
1980:Poland's Solidarity labor movement had its beginnings when an agreement ending a 17-day strike was signed in Gdansk.
1994:Russia officially ended its military presence in the former East Germany and the Baltic states.
1997:Princess Diana and her companion Dodi al-Fayed were killed in a car accident in Paris.
1870:The telephone is invented independently by Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell. Bell is able to patent his invention before Gray.
1887:Thomas Edison received a patent for his "Kinetoscope," and moving pictures were born.
1888:Mary Ann Nicholls, considered to be Jack the Ripper's first victim, was found murdered in London.
1962:Trinidad and Tobago gained independence from Great Britain.
1980:Poland's Solidarity labor movement had its beginnings when an agreement ending a 17-day strike was signed in Gdansk.
1994:Russia officially ended its military presence in the former East Germany and the Baltic states.
1997:Princess Diana and her companion Dodi al-Fayed were killed in a car accident in Paris.
1870:The telephone is invented independently by Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell. Bell is able to patent his invention before Gray.
AND I QUOTE
"You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you." – Mary Tyler Moore
Thursday, August 30, 2012
ARE YOUR ETHICS SLIPPING?
The Mendacious Middle
People tend to let their ethical guard—and their standards—down during the middle of a series of events, a new study suggests.
In one experiment, 100 students proofread, one after the other, 10 different prose passages. Before each of the 10 sessions, they determined by flipping a coin whether they'd get a long passage, featuring multiple errors, or a short one, with just a couple of mistakes.
Coin-flipping was unsupervised, but the researchers afterward analyzed the pattern of results for signs of cheating. In the middle sessions, but not the early or late ones, students got the "short" result an improbably high number of times—strong evidence the students lied to save themselves work.
"The End Justifies the Means, but Only in the Middle," Maferima Touré and Ayelet Fishbach, Journal of Experimental Psychology (August)
TODAY IN HISTORY
AUGUST 30
30 B.C.:Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, committed suicide.
1862:The Second Battle of Bull Run took place during the Civil War.
1905:Ty Cobb made his major league batting debut, playing for the Detroit Tigers.
1941:The two-year siege of Leningrad during World War II began.
1963:A hot line between the Kremlin and the White House went into operation to reduce the chances of an accidental war.
1967:Thurgood Marshall was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the first African American Supreme Court justice.
1999:East Timor residents voted to secede from Indonesia.
30 B.C.:Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, committed suicide.
1862:The Second Battle of Bull Run took place during the Civil War.
1905:Ty Cobb made his major league batting debut, playing for the Detroit Tigers.
1941:The two-year siege of Leningrad during World War II began.
1963:A hot line between the Kremlin and the White House went into operation to reduce the chances of an accidental war.
1967:Thurgood Marshall was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the first African American Supreme Court justice.
1999:East Timor residents voted to secede from Indonesia.
MENSA Q & A
Name the oldest continuously occupied city settled by Europeans in the continental United States, and the state where it is located.
(click below for the answer)
(click below for the answer)
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
TEAMWORK
Interspecies cooperation, after three kangaroos escaped from a German zoo with the help of a fox and a wild boar. The ’roos got free of their pen through a hole dug by the fox, then breached the zoo’s exterior fence through a hole dug by the wild boar.
ROTARY ACTION GROUP EXPANDS MATERNAL HEALTH PROJECT
In Nigeria, one out of every 18 women dies as a result of childbirth. The country has the second-highest maternal mortality rate in the world.
That’s why the Rotarian Action Group for Population Growth and Sustainable Development targeted the northern Nigerian states of Kaduna and Kano with a pilot program aimed at reducing maternal mortality by preventing and treating obstetric fistula, a serious birth injury. From 2005 until 2010, the project, partly supported by a grant from The Rotary Foundation, reduced maternal death by 60 percent in participating hospitals, reached 1 million women of childbearing age, and repaired obstetric fistulas for 1,500 Nigerian women. (click below to read more)
PUT THIS ON YOUR CALENDAR
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| RC Cola (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
RC Cola And Moonpie Festival
Bell Buckle, Tennessee
The RC Cola and Moonpie Festival happens annually on the third Saturday in June. Here you'll find a craft fair, 10-mile run, bluegrass music, and clog dancers, as well as quirkier fare like deep fried Moon Pies, the cutting of the world's largest Moon Pie, parades featuring people dressed up as RC Colas and Moon Pies, a Moon Pie toss, a watermelon seed spitting contests, a "Moon Pie Song Contest" and an RC dash where runners balance a full soda can on their heads.
TODAY IN HISTORY
AUGUST 29
1533:Atahualpa, the last ruler of the Incas, was murdered as Francisco Pizarro completed his conquest of Peru.
1786:Shays's rebellion, an insurrection of Massachusetts farmers against the state government, began.
1842:The Treaty of Nanking was signed, ending the Opium Wars and ceding the island of Hong Kong to Britain.
1877:Brigham Young died in Salt Lake City, Utah.
1949:The U.S.S.R. tested their first atomic bomb.
1957:Strom Thurmond ended the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history. He spoke for more than 24 hours against a civil rights bill; the bill passed.
1966:The Beatles played their last major live concert at Candlestick Park, California.
1991:The Supreme Soviet, the parliament of the U.S.S.R., suspended all activities of the Communist Party, bringing an end to the institution.
2005:Hurricane Katrina slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast, destroying beachfront towns in Mississippi and Louisiana, displacing a million people, and killing more than 1,000.
1533:Atahualpa, the last ruler of the Incas, was murdered as Francisco Pizarro completed his conquest of Peru.
1786:Shays's rebellion, an insurrection of Massachusetts farmers against the state government, began.
1842:The Treaty of Nanking was signed, ending the Opium Wars and ceding the island of Hong Kong to Britain.
1877:Brigham Young died in Salt Lake City, Utah.
1949:The U.S.S.R. tested their first atomic bomb.
1957:Strom Thurmond ended the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history. He spoke for more than 24 hours against a civil rights bill; the bill passed.
1966:The Beatles played their last major live concert at Candlestick Park, California.
1991:The Supreme Soviet, the parliament of the U.S.S.R., suspended all activities of the Communist Party, bringing an end to the institution.
2005:Hurricane Katrina slammed into the U.S. Gulf Coast, destroying beachfront towns in Mississippi and Louisiana, displacing a million people, and killing more than 1,000.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
THE NEXT BIG THING?
POP-UP BEE-BOTS
Along the way toward creating robotic bees, Harvard University researchers devised a manufacturing process that could revolutionize the building of objects at this scale—a technique inspired by pop-up books. Engineers had been painstakingly assembling these 2.5-millimeter tall, 18-mm-long robo-bees by hand, a finicky, error-prone process. Now they use computer-design software to fashion thin sandwiches of carbon fiber, plastic, titanium, adhesive and other materials. The resulting contiguous part looks like a squashed version of the robo-insect. Then an exterior scaffolding reaches in and gently hoists the bee up into a full three dimensions, where glue and solder lock it into place. The creators hope their origami-engineering could be used for many types of small electromechanical objects.
GOOD LOOKING CORN
This looks like a glass bead craft you could buy at some souvenir shop in, say, New Mexico. But this is real corn, and it's not the result of patient injections of dye, either. It grows this way.They call it glass gem corn, for obvious reasons, and it's specially bred to have such a variegated kernel-by-kernel color scheme.
PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE
An Australian man lost his savings when he hid $15,000 in cash in the oven, on the mistaken belief his wife never used it. The man had just sold his beloved sports car to make a mortgage payment. But after he put the money in the oven for safekeeping, his wife turned it on to cook chicken nuggets for their children. She didn’t realize what was wrong until the burned bills filled the kitchen with smoke. “It was everything I had,” the man sighed. “I’ve got nothing to my name.”
TODAY IN HISTORY
AUGUST 28
1609:Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay.
1850:Richard Wagner's opera, Lohengrin, premiered at Weimar, Germany.
1922:The first commercial to be broadcast on radio aired on station WEAF in New York City. The ten minute advertisement for the Queensboro Realty Company cost $100.
1963:Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial to civil rights demonstrators.
1968:Anti-Vietnam war protesters and police clashed in the streets of Chicago while the Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert H. Humphrey for president.
1609:Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay.
1850:Richard Wagner's opera, Lohengrin, premiered at Weimar, Germany.
1922:The first commercial to be broadcast on radio aired on station WEAF in New York City. The ten minute advertisement for the Queensboro Realty Company cost $100.
1963:Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial to civil rights demonstrators.
1968:Anti-Vietnam war protesters and police clashed in the streets of Chicago while the Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert H. Humphrey for president.
THE FIRST WORD
lulu
PRONUNCIATION:
(LOO-loo) 
MEANING:
noun: A remarkable person, idea, or thing.
ETYMOLOGY:
Perhaps from the nickname for Louise. Earliest documented use: 1886.
USAGE:
"I told my students about an incident from my boyhood, my first-ever interaction with a fungus, and it was a lulu."
Robert Klose; The Three-Legged Woman and Other Excursions in Teaching; University Press of New England; 2010.
Robert Klose; The Three-Legged Woman and Other Excursions in Teaching; University Press of New England; 2010.
Monday, August 27, 2012
NOW YOU KNOW-TOUCHSCREENS
Resistive touchscreens – which are used on some Samsung, HTC and LG phones, and are typical of ATMs, supermarket checkout stations and the electronic signature doodad the UPS guy carries – have a glass panel that’s covered with conductive and resistive metallic layers. These two layers are held apart by spacers, and an electrical current runs through them when the screen is operational. When a user touches the screen, the two layers make contact in that spot. The change in the electrical field is noted and the device coordinates the point of contact so a device driver can translate user touches and movements into something that the OS can understand. (click below to read more)
CLINICS HELPING THOUSANDS IN NIGERIA
By Suman Ramesh, president of the Rotary Club of Lagos-Palm Grove Estate, Lagos State, Nigeria
My club organizes six health camps a year. During these camps, patients line up beginning very early in the morning for free consultations. Young women bring their children, and receive iron supplements, vitamin tablets, anti-malaria medication, and sometimes de-worming medicines. We see them smiling as they return home after their health checks, carrying their supplements and medicines. (click below to read more)
YOUR NEW LOO?
SEATTLE – These aren't your typical loos. One uses microwave energy to transform human waste into electricity. Another captures urine and uses it for flushing. And still another turns excrement into charcoal (click below to read more)
TODAY IN HISTORY
AUGUST 27
1859:Edwin Drake drilled the first successful U.S. oil well near Titusville, Pa.
1883:A massive volcanic eruption on the island of Krakatoa blew up most of the island and resulted in tsunamis that killed over 36,000 people.
1945:U.S. troops began landing in Japan after Japan's surrender in World War II.
1962:The U.S. launched the Mariner II space probe.
2003:Mars made its closest approach to earth in 60,000 years.
1859:Edwin Drake drilled the first successful U.S. oil well near Titusville, Pa.
1883:A massive volcanic eruption on the island of Krakatoa blew up most of the island and resulted in tsunamis that killed over 36,000 people.
1945:U.S. troops began landing in Japan after Japan's surrender in World War II.
1962:The U.S. launched the Mariner II space probe.
2003:Mars made its closest approach to earth in 60,000 years.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
NOW YOU KNOW
More than 3 billion people on the planet are under the age of 25—the largest generation in human history. Even if these young people choose to have smaller families than their parents, the world’s population will still rise from 7 billion now to 9.3 billion by 2050—the equivalent of adding another India and China to the world.
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