Wednesday, April 30, 2014
PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE
A British judge ordered a father involved in a custody case to stop emailing his children in all capital letters, because it was the same as shouting. The dad will work with a social worker to make his emails more “child-friendly.”
EAT YOUR VEGGIES
The price of beef in America has hit a 27-year high just before the start of grilling season, with an average retail cost of $5.28 a pound. The price spike was caused by increased export demand from China and Japan, and a severe Western drought, which has reduced the size of many ranchers’ herds.
USA Today
USA Today
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POVERTY'S GENETIC IMPACT
Poverty can leave lasting psychological scars, but new research indicates that it may also inflict genetic damage on children. Researchers from Penn State University found that the genes of disadvantaged kids can resemble those of a middle-aged person, LATimes.com reports. Scientists measured the telomeres—tiny caps on the ends of chromosomes—of 40 9-year-old African-American boys. Half of the boys came from affluent backgrounds, half from disadvantaged homes. They found that the poorer boys’ telomeres were an average of 20 percent shorter than those of their privileged counterparts. Children whose mothers changed partners, which may undermine stability, had telomeres that were 40 percent shorter. Telomere shortening is linked to aging, and might increase vulnerability to mental and physical illnesses. The genetic link could help researchers discover how stress shortens telomeres while underlining the urgent need for intervention programs to reduce the stresses of chronic poverty on children.
TRIVIA Q & A
Red wines are generally perceived best when served chambré. What does that French word mean?
(click below for the answer)
(click below for the answer)
THE FIRST WORD
gird
PRONUNCIATION:
(guhrd) 
MEANING:
| verb tr.: | 1. To encircle or bind with a belt or band. | |
| 2. To surround. | ||
| 3. To prepare for action (especially as "to gird one's loins"). | ||
| verb tr., intr.: | 4. To jeer. | |
| noun: | 5. A sarcastic remark. |
ETYMOLOGY:
For 1-3: From Old English gyrdan. Ultimately from the Indo-European root gher- (to enclose or grasp), which is also the source of such words as orchard, kindergarten, court, choir, courteous, French jardin (garden), Hindi gherna (to surround), yard, horticulture, curtilage, and garth. Earliest documented use: 950.
For 4-5: From Middle English girden, to strike. Earliest documented use: 1275.
For 4-5: From Middle English girden, to strike. Earliest documented use: 1275.
USAGE:
"Metallic rings girded the weapon's shaft."
Greg Cox; Star Trek: The Weight of Worlds; Simon & Schuster; 2013.
"Both sides have been unwilling to compromise, and their supporters appear to be girding for more violence by forming militias and armed gangs."
Thailand at the Brink; The New York Times; Feb 27, 2014.
"Falstaff: Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent any thing that tends to laughter."
William Shakespeare; Henry IV.
Greg Cox; Star Trek: The Weight of Worlds; Simon & Schuster; 2013.
"Both sides have been unwilling to compromise, and their supporters appear to be girding for more violence by forming militias and armed gangs."
Thailand at the Brink; The New York Times; Feb 27, 2014.
"Falstaff: Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me: the brain of this foolish-compounded clay, man, is not able to invent any thing that tends to laughter."
William Shakespeare; Henry IV.
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
SERIOUS CRIME. SERIOUSLY?
A South Carolina construction worker was fired and hit with a $525 fine for “theft of government property” after failing to pay 89 cents for a soda refill. Christopher Lewis said he didn’t know he had to pay extra for his second cup at the VA Medical Center in Charleston, where he worked. “I never had the option to make right what I had done wrong,” he said.
THE SCIENCE OF PUTTING IT OFF
Chronic procrastination can feel like a character flaw, but a new study indicates that rather than lamenting your lack of will power, you can just blame your parents. Researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder, surveyed pairs of identical and fraternal twins about their tendency to procrastinate and to set and meet goals, and their level of impulsiveness. Identical twins were much more likely to match answers than fraternals, showing that genetics plays a significant role in forming these habits. “Learning more about the underpinnings of procrastination may help develop interventions to prevent it,” study author Daniel Gustavson tells NatureWorldNews.com. Researchers also believe impulsiveness, which overlaps with procrastination tendencies, may have given our ancestors an evolutionary advantage by helping them focus on day-to-day survival rather than long-term goals. Procrastination could be a by-product of that thinking, showing how behavioral traits that evolved millennia ago can clash with the demands of modern life.
TODAY IN HISTORY
April 29
| 1289 | Qala'un, the Sultan of Egypt, captures Tripoli. | |
| 1429 | Joan of Arc leads French forces to victory over English at Orleans. | |
| 1624 | Louis XIII appoints Cardinal Richelieu chief minister of the Royal Council of France. | |
| 1661 | The Chinese Ming dynasty occupies Taiwan. | |
| 1672 | King Louis XIV of France invades the Netherlands. | |
| 1813 | Rubber is patented. | |
| 1852 | The first edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus is published. | |
| 1856 | Yokut Indians repel a second attack by the 'Petticoat Rangers,' a band of civilian Indian fighters at Four Creeks, California. | |
| 1858 | Austrian troops invade Piedmont. | |
| 1859 | As the French army races to support them and the Austrian army mobilizes to oppose them, 150,000 Piedmontese troops invade Piedmontese territory. | |
| 1861 | The Maryland House of Delegates votes against seceding from Union. | |
| 1862 | Forts Philip and Jackson surrender to Admiral Farragut outside New Orleans. | |
| 1913 | Gideon Sundback of Hoboken patents all-purpose zipper. | |
| 1916 | Irish nationalists surrender to the British in Dublin. | |
| 1918 | America's WWI Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker, scores his first victory with the help of Captain James Norman Hall. | |
| 1924 | Open revolt breaks out in Santa Clara, Cuba. | |
| 1927 | Construction of the Spirit of St. Louis is completed. | |
| 1930 | The film All Quiet on the Western Front, based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel Im Western Nichts Neues, premiers. | |
| 1945 | The German Army in Italy surrenders unconditionally to the Allies. | |
| 1945 | The Nazi concentration camp of Dachau is liberated by Allied troops. | |
| 1946 | Former Japanese leaders are indicted in Tokyo as war criminals. | |
| 1975 | The U.S. embassy in Vietnam is evacuated as North Vietnamese forces fight their way into Saigon. | |
| 1983 | Harold Washington is sworn in as Chicago's first black mayor. | |
| 1992 | Four Los Angeles police offices are acquitted of charges stemming from the beating of Rodney King. Rioting ensues. |
AND I QUOTE
"There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”-Robert Louis Stevenson
Monday, April 28, 2014
"JUICE" FROM SALIVA
Tiny new medical devices could soon be fueled by, of all things, human spit.
Miniature health gadgets have sparked great interest in recent years, but powering them is a perennial challenge. Now researchers at Penn State University and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia have developed a microbial fuel cell that can generate small but usable amounts of power from saliva. (click below to read more)
APPS FOR LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE
Duolingo can’t match Rosetta Stone for helping you attain language mastery, but it’s free and offers solid, beginner-level lessons in Spanish, French, Italian, German, or Portuguese. (Android or iOS)
Anki is a flash-card-based memorization app designed to efficiently build long-term memory. You can tailor its language programs by adding your own flash cards. (Free for Android, $25 for iOS)
Waygo excels at “just one thing”: It translates written Chinese or Japanese into English, using a smartphone camera as a scanner. (Free, iOS)
Vocre is one of many translation apps, but it’s “far more fun” than most. When you’re trying to converse with a foreign-language speaker, it translates both sides of the conversation into both audio and text. ($1 for Android, $5 for iOS)
Source: Financial Times
Source: Financial Times
THE NEXT BIG THING?
TODAY IN HISTORY
April 28
| 357 | Constantius II visits Rome for the first time. | |
| 1282 | Villagers in Palermo lead a revolt against French rule in Sicily. | |
| 1635 | Virginia Governor John Harvey is accused of treason and removed from office. | |
| 1760 | French forces besieging Quebec defeat the British in the second battle on the Plains of Abraham. | |
| 1788 | Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the constitution. | |
| 1789 | The crew of the HMS Bounty mutinies against Captain William Bligh. | |
| 1818 | President James Monroe proclaims naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. | |
| 1856 | Yokut Indians repel an attack on their land by 100 would-be Indian fighters in California. | |
| 1902 | Revolution breaks out in the Dominican Republic. | |
| 1910 | The first night air flight is performed by Claude Grahame-White in England. | |
| 1916 | British declare martial law throughout Ireland. | |
| 1919 | Les Irvin makes the first jump with an Army Air Corps parachute. | |
| 1920 | Azerbaijan joins the Soviet Union. | |
| 1930 | The first organized night baseball game is played in Independence, Kansas. | |
| 1932 | A yellow fever vaccine for humans is announced. | |
| 1945 | Benito Mussolini is killed by Italian partisans. | |
| 1946 | The Allies indict Tojo on 55 counts of war crimes | |
| 1947 | Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl and five others set out in a balsa wood craft known as Kon Tiki to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia. | |
| 1953 | French troops evacuate northern Laos. | |
| 1965 | The U.S. Army and Marines invade the Dominican Republic. | |
| 1967 | Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is stripped of boxing title. | |
| 1969 | Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France. |
TRIVIA Q & A
What choreographer revolutionized African-American participation in concert dance with his namesake dance theater in New York?
(click below for the answer)
(click below for the answer)
THE FIRST WORD
petulant
PRONUNCIATION:
(PECH-uh-lent)
MEANING:
adjective: Bad-tempered; cranky.
ETYMOLOGY:
[From Latin petere (to seek, assail). Ultimately from the Indo-European root pet- (to rush or fly), which also gave us feather, petition, compete, perpetual, propitious, pteridology, pinnate, and lepidopterology. Earliest documented use: 1598.
USAGE:
"Idol, like the petulant child who can't understand that her antics have ceased to be entertaining, kept trying to sell it."
Sunday, April 27, 2014
CHARITY OF THE WEEK
More than 59 million people worldwide are in desperate need of a wheelchair but don’t have access to one. UCP Wheels for Humanity (ucpwheels.org) works in developing countries around the world donating fitted wheelchairs to children and adults with physical disabilities. Founded in 1996 as a subsidiary of United Cerebral Palsy of Los Angeles, UCP Wheels has so far improved the lives of more than 313,000 people in 72 countries. Beyond giving the gift of mobility, UCP Wheels builds lasting support for the disabled by educating rural communities to foster inclusiveness, advocating for wheelchair accessibility, and creating community support networks by training physical therapists and other caregivers.
The charity has earned a four-star overall rating from Charity Navigator, which rates not-for-profit organizations on the strength of their finances, their control of administrative and fundraising expenses, and the transparency of their operations. Four stars is the group’s highest rating.
TOO SAFE?
While a spate of studies indicate that the majority of Millennials recognize the importance of saving, many may be playing it too safe. Just 14 percent of workers in their 20s said they participate in high-growth investment strategies.
Time.com
Time.com
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE EVERYTHING
$60,000, hammacher.com
Source: Gizmag.com
TODAY IN HISTORY
April 27
| 1296 | Edward I defeats the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar. | |
| 1509 | Pope Julius II excommunicates the Italian state of Venice. | |
| 1565 | The first Spanish settlement in Philippines is established in Cebu City. | |
| 1773 | British Parliament passes the Tea Act. | |
| 1746 | King George II wins the battle of Culloden. | |
| 1813 | American forces capture York (present-day Toronto), the seat of government in Ontario. | |
| 1861 | President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus. | |
| 1861 | West Virginia secedes from Virginia after Virginia secedes from the Union. | |
| 1863 | The Army of the Potomac begins marching on Chancellorsville. | |
| 1865 | The Sultana, a steam-powered riverboat, catches fire and burns after one of its boilers explodes. At least 1,238 of the 2,031 passengers–mostly former Union POWs–are killed. | |
| 1909 | The Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II, is overthrown. | |
| 1937 | German bombers of the Condor Legion devastate Guernica, Spain. | |
| 1941 | The Greek army capitulates to the invading Germans. | |
| 1950 | South Africa passes the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races. | |
| 1961 | The United Kingdom grants Sierra Leone independence. | |
| 1975 | Saigon is encircled by North Vietnamese troops. | |
| 1978 | The Afghanistan revolution begins. | |
| 1989 | Protesting students take over Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. |
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