SNAPSHOT

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

An impoverished Paraguayan community located in a landfill is the proud home of an orchestra that uses musical instruments fashioned from trash. The unique ensemble is the brainchild of Favio Chávez, an ecological technician who figured out how to build violins, flutes, and cellos from oil drums, jars, and discarded wood and metal, and encouraged children from the slum town of Cateura to learn music. The orchestra is the subject of a stirring new documentary, Landfill Harmonic. “Even though these students are in extreme poverty, they can also contribute to society,” said Chávez. “They deserve an opportunity.”

YOU CAN'T KEEP A LID ON THIS KIND OF CREATIVITY

Commode Covers Become Platforms for Artists; Swizzle Sticks, Space Shuttle


Barney Smith, 91 years old, a retired master plumber turned artist, recently put the finishing touches on his 1,035th toilet seat lid, which will be displayed with his others in his oversize garage. (click below to read more)

BUGGY

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

 Sabine Moreau, started her journey in her home town of Hainault Erquelinnes, Belgium. She wanted to pick up a friend at a train station in Brussels, just 93 miles north from her point of origin. But instead, she turned on her GPS, which told her to drive south, taking her turn by turn all the way down to Zagreb, in Croatia. Instead of a couple hours in the car, she spent a couple days to cover the 900 miles that separates both points in Europe.

PASS THE SNOW SHOVEL

FROM THE ARCHIVES

During the next few weeks this space will be given over to archival club photos. Here's a great opportunity to see just how gracefully you have aged. Remember, it's just for laughs!

TODAY IN HISTORY

JANUARY 31


1606:Guy Fawkes, a co-conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, was executed.

1865:Robert E. Lee was appointed commander-in-chief of the Confederate forces.

1865:The House of Representatives approved the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished slavery in the United States.

1940:The first social security check was issued to Ida Fuller for $22.54.

1958:The first U.S. earth satellite, Explorer I, was launched.

1990:The first McDonald's opened in Russia.

AND I QUOTE

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."
Oscar Wilde

THE FIRST WORD

quantified self

Welcome to your quantified self. The term was coined in 2007 by a couple of Wired editors who envisioned a collaboration of users and tool makers with a shared interest in self knowledge through self-tracking.

Related ideas are "lifelogging" (where lifeloggers work to continuously capture events in their lives, often through video or audio recording) and geotagging or geotracking (in which devices are used to keep a record of all places visited).

EARTH AT NIGHT

GOOGLE EARTH, ON STEROIDS

VEGEMITE LOSES SOME OF ITS SAVORY APPEAL

Yeasty Spread Is Acquired Taste, but Kids Today Are a Hard Sell; Edgers and Streakers

SYDNEY—Vegemite, Australia's best-known condiment, is leaving a bad taste in little mouths. 


Beloved for generations Down Under, it has been derided elsewhere: Formula One race-car driver Mark Webber travels with it in his kit and actor Russell Crowe eats it with tomato. President Barack Obama once described Vegemite as "horrible."Vegemite's maker is struggling to recruit young Aussies to eat the thick brown salty spread that their parents have always adored. (click below to read more)

NOW YOU KNOW

The average office worker spends 650 hours a year—28 percent of working hours—reading and writing emails. The total number of words in those emails, 41,400, is equivalent to a novel 166 pages long.

DUETS THAT DON'T SING

SNAPSHOT

TODAY IN HISTORY

JANUARY 30


1649:King Charles I of England was beheaded.

1933:Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany.

1948:Gandhi was assassinated.

1968:North Vietnamese forces launched attacks against the South Vietnamese, beginning the Tet offensive.

1972:British troops opened fire on civil rights marchers in Northern Ireland, sparking the "Bloody Sunday" massacre.

1979:The Iranian civilian government announced that the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini would be allowed to return.

TRIVIA Q & A

What non-sports duo is honored in the National Baseball Hall of Fame?
(click below for the answer)

THE FIRST WORD

numismatics

PRONUNCIATION:

(noo-miz-MAT-iks, -mis-, nyoo-) 

MEANING:

noun: The study or collection of currency: coins, notes, and sometimes similar objects, such as medals.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin numisma (coin, currency), from Greek nomisma (current coin, custom), from nomos (custom). Ultimately from the Indo-European root nem- (to assign or take), which is also the source for words such as number, numb, nomad, metronome, astronomy, nemesis, and anomie. Earliest documented use: 1790. Also see notaphily.

USAGE:

"Ron Paul was the middle of five boys and the only one to become fascinated with numismatics. He knew that certain pennies were worth more than their face value because few of them had been minted."
Joel Achenbach; The Alternative; The Washington Post; Dec 15, 2011.

SAY WHAT?

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

A teenager who had just robbed a local store was caught after police followed a trail of Cheetos from the scene which lead them to the culprit's hideout. 
Austin Lee Westfall Presler, 19, was arrested on January 6 in Kershaw County, South Carolina, after allegedly stealing cigarettes, beer, snacks and energy drinks from the local Cassatt Country Store.
While he was there, he accidentally bust open a few bags of Cheetos and did not realize he was leaving a trail of the tasty snack as he fled the scene of the crime.
Store manager Howard 'Buck' Buckholz  told ABCNews.com that Presler only stole $160 worth of goods, but caused upwards of $2,500 worth of damage.

WORKSHOP MUSIC

SNAPSHOT

FADING FRAUD ALERTS

The elderly have long been especially susceptible to fraud, but why? A paper suggests one reason: Getting a "gut feeling" about people's honesty is harder for the aged. A region of the brain seems to be at fault. Researchers showed photos of faces preselected to look trustworthy, neutral or untrustworthy to young adults and seniors. The untrustworthy faces were judged more trustworthy by the elderly. In a paired study involving brain scans, young adults showed activation of the brain's anterior insula when rating faces—and especially untrustworthy faces. But the elderly showed little anterior-insula activation. Among other things, the anterior insula helps the brain understand visceral cues—gut feelings.

"Neural and Behavioral Bases of Age Differences in Perceptions of Trust," Elizabeth Castle, Naomi I. Eisenberger, Teresa E. Seeman, Wesley G. Moons, Ian A. Boggero, Mark S. Grinblatt and Shelley E. Taylor, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

A GALAXY FULL OF EARTHS

As astronomers use new technology to survey the heavens, it’s becoming abundantly clear that our galaxy is teeming with Earth-like planets. (click below to read more)

AND THE 50-50 WINNER WAS NOT BRAD OR BRAD

DO YOU REMEMBER?

“The end of the Civ-il War was near when quite ac-ci-den-tal-ly,
A he-ro who sneezed ab-rupt-ly seized retreat and re-versed it to vic-to-ry,
His med-al of hon-or pleased and thrilled his proud lit-tle fam’ly group,
While pin-ning it on some blood was spilled and so it was planned he’d com-mand,
F Troop!”

Considering the adoration that fans retain for the fine soldiers that made up F-Troop, it seems impossible that the show only ran for a mere two seasons (starting in 1965). And yet, in that short amount of time, the show was filled with so many memorable moments of silliness that it was destined to pick up numerous fans in later syndication. Perhaps the first parody ever produced of the Old West, F-Troop was a groundbreaking sitcom, fondly remembered for its wacky characters and “Anything goes” attitude. (click below to read more)

TODAY IN HISTORY

JANUARY 29


1845:Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven was published.

1850:Henry Clay introduced the Compromise of 1850 to the Senate.

1861:Kansas became the 34th state in the United States.

1886:Karl Benz received a patent for the first successful gasoline-driven car.

1936:Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson were the first players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

1963:Poet Robert Frost died in Boston.

AND I QUOTE

"The people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can’t."-Woody Allen

THE FIRST WORD

epigraph
I have a pet theory about epigraphs. They're an author's reward to herself for years of labor and doubt occasionally relieved by feeble hope (otherwise known as writing a novel).

"Epigraph" comes from a Greek word meaning "inscription." The literary theorist Gérard Genette called the epigraph "a password of intellectuality" by which an author signals which other writers he or she considers peers.

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

In a parental-involvement program with 70 public schools and Walgreen Co., the City of Chicago announced in October that it would give previously uninterested parents $25 gift cards just to come by the schools to pick up their kids' report cards. [Chicago Sun-Times, 10-31-2012]

FOR ALL YOU SCIENTIFIC TYPES OUT THERE

THIS MAY BE A HAZZARD

FOR THOSE THAT HAVE EVERYTHING

It may seem to make little sense that “people are clamoring” to purchase a luxury safe for jewels and watches that’s designed to be toted about with a thin carrying strap. But because “there are very few ways of securely traveling with small valuables,” the customizableGuardian travel safe from Döttling of Germany “actually makes a bit of sense to buy.” Its handcrafted leather or crocodile skin wraps a cylinder of carbon fiber and polycarbonate that’s lightweight and extremely resistant to tampering. That flimsy strap needn’t be a worry: Each case also comes with a GPS tracker.
$13,200, doettling.com

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

DO YOU REMEMBER?

More often than not, a product mascot is a figment of the imagination of some advertising executive. But once in a while, you get the real deal, such as Ettore Boiardi, better known by the phonetic spelling of his last name, Chef Boyardee.
Boiardi opened his first Italian restaurant in 1926, in Cleveland, OH. And apparently his sauce was so good that people started to ask if they could buy portions of it to bring home with them. He complied as best he could, but the demand was great. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t fill the plentiful orders from his meager kitchen so he opened a factory, began offering a complete line of easy-to-make and inexpensive dinners, and altered his name to the version we know today.
If there was one thing that the good chef wasn’t, it was camera-shy. When television became popular, he cheerfully starred in his own commercials, pitching his products for over three decades. Here’s an example:

WHY JAZZ HAPPENED

Behind the Birth of the Cool
How the rise of suburbs and the long-playing record shaped the development of Bebop and West Coast jazz.

Between 1942 and 1972, jazz changed more than it had in all the years before, or would in all the years after. When this period began, Miles Davis was a high-school student, moonlighting in St. Louis dance bands; as it ended, he had become the avatar of a blend of jazz and deep funk that only made real sense to listeners on hard drugs. In between, Davis traced a line from a kind of swing-rooted music heard on "Au Privave," an early number cut as a Charlie Parker sideman, into dalliances with classical forms, R&B and electrified sounds. (click below to read more)

TODAY IN HISTORY

JANUARY 28


1547:King Henry VIII of England died and his nine-year-old son, Edward VI, assumed the throne.

1915:Congress passed legislation creating the U.S. Coast Guard.

1916:The first Jewish Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Louis Brandeis, was appointed.

1986:U.S. shuttle Challenger exploded 72 seconds after lift off, killing all seven crew members aboard, including school teacher Christa McAuliffe.

TRIVIA Q & A

What is the English name for the country the locals call Misr?
(click below for the answer)

THE FIRST WORD

cumshaw

PRONUNCIATION:

(KUM-shaw) 

MEANING:

noun: A gift or a tip.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Chinese (Amoy/Xiamen dialect), kan (to be grateful) + hsieh (thanks). The term was used by beggars in Chinese ports and picked up by visiting sailors during the 19th century. Earliest documented use: 1839.

USAGE:

"All those extra bodies don't necessarily increase the chances for cumshaw, according to some tip recipients."
Sean M. Wood; Tourism Doesn't Fill Their Tip Jar; San Antonio Express-News (Texas); Apr 7, 2006.