I thought today I would add a few little known Science facts. With all of the space related science discussions of late I thought this would be a good time to join in. Enjoy!
In five years, a woman who wears lipstick will use enough to draw a line equal to her height.
Beards are the fastest growing hairs on the human body. If the average man never trimmed his beard, it would grow nearly 30 feet long in his lifetime.
A general rule of thumb for distinguishing fruits from vegetables: For fruits, seeds are on the inside; for vegetables, seeds are on the outside.
Tomatoes are native to the Americas and were initially cultivated by Aztec Indians as early as A.D. 700. They are also a common source of allergies.
The roller coaster was invented and patented in Ohio by a toboggan designer, John Miller in 1926. It featured small cars sliding down incline ramps.
The barcode was patented in 1952 by Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver. In June of 1974, the first barcode scanner was installed at a Marshes supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The first product to carry a barcode was Wrigley’s gum.
IBM called its first laptop computer “The Convertible”. It was the size of a suitcase.
On April 12, 1934, the highest surface wind speed ever recorded occurred over Mount Washington, New Hampshire. It was clocked at 231 miles per hour.
The 400 mg of nicotine that an average pack-a-day smokers inhale in a week would instantly kill them if ingested in a single hour.
Six-year-olds laugh on average of 300 times a day.
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Here’s a favorite tongue twister that is considered the most difficult in the English language due to the complex brain and motor coordination it requires,
My father, a former USN sailor, absolutely loved Bermuda. His ship made numerous stops there during the war and he told me on many occasions how he wished he could live there. I’ve never been lucky enough to visit Bermuda but it certainly looks like a wonderful place. Here’s a short historical story you might enjoy.
Fact: Bermuda has a robust history of pirating.
Seven supply ships sent out for Virginia in June 1609. It was the maiden voyage of the London Companies flagship Sea Venture, the first British merchant vessel designed to transport passengers. Battered for days by a hurricane, the fleet was scattered, and construction flaws caused the Sea Venture to leak badly. Spotting land, company Adm. Sir George Somers deliberately steered the ship onto the reefs, enabling his crew and passengers to escape. Stranded on a desert island, the survivors built two boats and finally reached Jamestown nine months later.
Based on that shipwreck, England laid claim to Bermuda, which was incorporated into the London Company’s charter. And a later account by Sea Venture survivor William Strachey reached England and became the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s final play, the Tempest.
Fact: Rainwater captured from the roofs of its buildings is Bermuda’s only source of fresh water.
A poem of Bermuda:
wings catch the wind’s plea, ancient calls across the miles, new lands greet the sun.
I thought today I’d share a few samples of poetry written by children. I love good poetry, but it seems to me that the poems written by the young are much more genuine that some of the not-so-wonderful professional poets. I prefer simple and beautiful poetry like the following. The subject of these poems is SUMMER.
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By Gillian Sellers, Age 9, England
Summer is golden,
Summer is green,
The freshly cut grass.
Down, down, down, we go, from the peak of the hill,
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really dislike Christmas, but I certainly dislike the never-ending and relentless commercialization of what is supposed to be a religious celebration. I have to credit Amazon for doubling down on the holidays like never before because they’ve made it entirely too easy for people to overspend which in turn requires me to discipline myself like never before. Just too many gadgets, too many commercials and an endless supply of scammers who may be the hardest workers of all during the holidays. For every email I get from friends and family members, I get 100 from scammers and spammers. I’ve slowly been turned into a paranoid person like never before. It feels good to have the holiday over so I can get back to what I call normal (and I use that term loosely).
The post today will be taking a sharp left turn from the holidays to celebrate three things I love: poetry, young children, and Winter. Here are a few samples of great poetry by a few up-and-coming young poets.
Since we’re now in the first weekend in October and the Summer is over, everyone is feeling a little down. Here’s my attempt to make all of you smile just a bit. The old saying, “laughter is the best medicine”, remains true to this day. So, here’s some humor. It costs nothing to smile.
Two identical twin brothers died at around the same time. One was happily married, did charitable works and generally lead a blameless life; the other was a drunken womanizer, a serial liar and a cheat. The bad twin went to hell and the good went to heaven, from where he was able to look down on his bad brother. The good twin was dismayed that hell was not as bad as he had hoped. Indeed, his brother seem to be having the time of his life, drinking, partying and enjoying the company of beautiful women. Eventually the good twin complained to St. Peter: “Heaven is very nice and peaceful, but my brother appears to be having plenty of fun in hell. He has his own beer keg and just look at that gorgeous woman he’s been given. St. Peter said: “Fear not, my son. All is not as it seems. The keg has a hole in it; the woman doesn’t.”
A man walked into his doctor’s office and said: “Doctor, I have five penises.” “I see,” said the doctor. “How do your trousers fit”? “Like a glove.”
For his birthday a little boy asked for a 10-speed bicycle. His dad said, “We’d let you have one, but the mortgage on this house is $140,000 and your mother just lost her job. There’s no way we can afford It.” The next morning the father saw the boy heading out of the front door carrying a suitcase. “Where are you going?” he asked. The boy answered: “I was walking past your bedroom last night and heard you tell mom you were pulling out. Then I heard her tell you to wait because she was coming too. And I’ll be damned if I’m staying here by myself with $140,000 mortgage and no bike”!
A man and woman were having sex in a very dark forest. After fifteen minutes of fumbling around the man said: “Man, I wish I had a flashlight.” The girl said: “So do I you ass. You’ve been eating grass for the past ten minutes!”
A man looked out his window late one night and saw a gang of thieves breaking into his garden shed. He called the police immediately, but the station sergeant said there was no one available to respond. “OK”, said the homeowner, and he put the phone down. Five minutes later, he telephoned the station again “Don’t worry about sending anyone out to deal with the shed burglars at 53 Larch Avenue., I just shot them”. Within two minutes the road was swarming with police cars. The officers caught the burglars red-handed, but the sergeant was furious. He said to the homeowner, “I thought you said you shot them!” The homeowner immediately countered: “I thought you said there was nobody available.”
Do you like hot, humid, and sticky weather? Do you really and truly love having everything you own covered in green pollen? I’ve spent most of my life dreading the arrival of Spring and Summer and hay fever season. I have no known allergies to food or medicines but the one allergy I do have is the worst, Pollen. I spent many summers playing baseball in all kinds of weather and suffered through pollen attacks every year. Over the years doctors have tried every medicine known to man to help me with this allergy with absolutely no positive results.
Just as an example, I cut the grass yesterday, and I was partially incapacitated for a couple hours after I was done because I couldn’t catch my breath, and I couldn’t stop sneezing. I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands of people out there with the same allergy and they have my sympathies because no matter what you’re told nobody has a clue on how to properly deal with it. I guess that’s why the company that makes Benadryl has done so well through the years. I have a large jar of Benadryl in my nightstand and for about two weeks every Spring I eat them like jellybeans (and sleep a lot).
The only good thing that comes out of this allergy is my ability to sneeze 20-25 times a day. This might sound a little weird, but I love sneezing. I had a dear friend explain to me many years ago that one sneeze equals approximately 1/8 of an orgasm. So, if I sneeze 24 times a day I get three free orgasms, no charge. You know what they say, when life gives you free orgasms, smile and enjoy them. Here are a few things you might also want to know about sneezing . . .
The Greeks believed if you sneeze to the left, bad luck was in your future. If you turn to the right during the sneeze, you will prosper.
Ancient people believed a sneeze could give you an advantage in an argument. If your opposer believed evil spirits escaped the body during a sneeze, you could easily ‘spook‘ him by sneezing near him. This would throw him off guard and help you win the argument.
Good luck is in your future if you sneeze when going to bed. But don’t sneeze on your partner. Otherwise, good luck or not, you will not have a partner for long.
If you feel a sneeze coming on, but you don’t sneeze, watch out! That means you are going to lose someone or something dear to you.
There are some ‘cures’ for sneezing. Press your upper lip hard and recite the alphabet backwards. No particular alphabet is recommended.
You can stop a sneeze just by pressing on your lip, just below your nostrils. That apparently deactivates the sneeze mechanism.
Every culture has the custom of invoking some god or spirit after a sneeze. The “God Bless You” originated with the Christians. But it’s a carryover from the Romans who took to invoking Jupiter to preserve them every time they sneezed.
A Zulu child is taught to say “Grow.” To the Zulus, sneezing is a sign of good health. In Persian culture, everyone in the presence of someone who sneezes prays. The Arabs avoid sneezing entirely by washing out their noses with water each evening.
Sneezes have even inspired a rhyme. It even matters what day of the week you sneeze. Here’s the rules . . .
I think today I’ll keep this post rather short. I’m actually celebrating the fact that after two and half days of having no electric, no Internet, no phone service, and just generally cold and crappy weather, the storm has ended, and things are beginning to normalize. This ice storm destroyed most of southern Maine by damaging trees, adjacent homes, and dangerous conditions for any traveling. We have trees down everywhere and there’s still a few hundred thousand people in Maine with no power. I guess I got lucky that my street was repaired only after we sat in the dark and cold for two days. This is the second such storm in as many months totaling eight solid days of no utilities Internet, power, etc. etc. etc. It just brings home the fact that we rely on technology for damn near everything. Unfortunately, it’s also the first thing to fail.
I’ll probably be spending a great deal of time in the next few days trying to clean up the property because in my backyard alone I have three trees down and they have to be removed. I know that sounds bad but compared to most of the neighbors in this area I got off with minor damage. I thought I had all of the contingencies covered with storm preparation by installing a generator to carry the load when the electric goes out. Unfortunately, when the generator was supposed to kick in and turn on the electric it failed to work. Trying to find service people during a storm crisis is ridiculously difficult but I did get lucky. I made one call requiring that I travel 2 miles from my house, stand on my car roof and wave my hands in the air to get a signal in the midst of all this chaos. I guess I have to believe in miracles because within a half an hour of making that call, I returned home to find the electrician, his son, and a truck load of parts in my driveway. They dismantled my generator and immediately corrected the problem. As I write this, I’m still amazed. Things like that almost never happen but I’m certainly glad they did.
After all of that aggravation the power was fully restored this morning and now the cleanup begins. I hope and pray there are no more surprise spring storms showing up. Nothing good comes of these storms except if you own a Home Depot or Lowe’s, then you’re making a damn fortune. More to come in the next day or so and hopefully I can get this blog back to normal by then. Meanwhile . . . .
It’s another gray and rainy day here in Maine. We had a bit of sunshine yesterday and I had my first hour of deck time without freezing my ass off. But unfortunately, today things have returned to what is normal for March. I just needed something today to make me smile and these jokes were just what the doctor ordered so I thought I’d share them with you.
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A trucker had driven his fully loaded rig to the top of a steep hill and was just starting down the equally steep other side when he noticed a man and woman lying naked in the center of the road, making love. He blew his horn several times as he was bearing down on them. Realizing that they were not about to get out of his way, he slammed on his brakes and stopped just inches from them. Getting out of the truck, madder than hell, the trucker walked up to the two, still in the road, and yelled, “What the hell’s the matter with you two? Didn’t you hear me blowing my horn? You could’ve been killed!” The man on lying on the highway, obviously satisfied and unconcerned, looked up and said, “Look, I was coming, she was coming, and you were coming. You were the only one with brakes.”
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Q. How do you get four old ladies to shout “Fuck”?
A. Get a fifth old lady to shout “Bingo”.
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The rescue squad was called to the home of an elderly couple for an apparent heart attack. When the squad got there it was too late because the man had died. While consoling the wife, one of the rescuers noticed that their bed was a mess. He asked the lady what symptoms the man had suffered and if anything had precipitated the heart attack. The lady calmly replied, “Well, we were in bed making love and he started moaning, groaning, thrashing around the bed, panting, and sweating. I thought he was coming, but I guess he was going.”
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Q. How do you make 5 pounds of fat look good?
A. Put a nipple on it.
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Two guys are camping. They are having a little conversation, when all of a sudden one guy yells, “I just got bitten by a snake on the tip of my penis.” The other guy says, “Don’t worry, I’ll go into town and ask a doctor what to do.” So, the guy goes to the nearest town and after 30 minutes finds a doctor. He asks the doctor, “Doctor, my friend just got bitten by a snake. What should I do?” The doctor says, “All you have to do is suck the poison out.” So, the friend returns to the campsite where his friend is lying on the ground whimpering. He asks, “So what did the doctor say?” The friend says, “I’m sorry but the doctor says you’re going to die!
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Q. What’s the ultimate rejection?
A. When you’re masturbating and your hand falls asleep.
Well, it’s Sunday and the Steeler game has been canceled until Monday due to weather concerns. It’s a little annoying but not all that surprising for anyone who’s ever been in Buffalo during the winter. In my previous life as a regional manager for a national chain I was assigned stores in Buffalo and Niagara Falls. I swear to God that every time I made a trip there during the winter, I ended up getting snowed in and spending an extra day or two in order to give the citizens time to clean up the snow, open the roads, and allow me to fly the hell out of there. Buffalo is a nice town (sarcasm) but not a place I’d like to spend any extra time in. I’ve been to Niagara Falls and unfortunately if you’ve seen one waterfall you’ve seen them all. With that being said and since my day has been interrupted, I thought I’d get a little silly. Everyone seems to love the limericks I post so I offer you a few odd ball limericks today. These are tongue twister limericks written by a gentleman named Lou Brooks in 2009 in a book of the same name. Enjoy . . .
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Nosy Rose got closed in a closet of clothes,
The clothes closet closed on Rose’s red rosy nose,
She tweaked on her beak,
For over a week,
Rose’s nosy red nose now hangs close to her toes.
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Walt walked and talked on his wife’s walkie-talkie,
Walt’s wife’s walkie-talkie made Walt’s talky-talk squawky.
Wide awake while Walt walked,
Was what Walt was while he talked,
While Walt’s wife walked her way to Milwaukee.
Two of these should be sufficient. Trying to get a computer program to type these as I speak is ridiculous. Here’s a description of my day in a nutshell.
For most of my life I’ve loved the winter and snow and cold weather. That being said this may have been the worse winter ever with continual losses of electric power, telephone coverage, and internet and that doesn’t even include my fractured ankle and finally being exposed to Covid-19. As global warming continues to wreak havoc on the weather patterns, there’s no normal anymore. Maybe it’s time for me to move further north and live above the arctic circle. The snow, ice, and cold remain consistent there.
Here are a few items of weather-related trivia that you might find interesting.
The Antarctic ice is forced out over the Ross Sea – a large inlet into Antarctica – in a layer hundreds of feet thick. It is called the Ross Ice Shelf (see above) and it’s area is about that of France.
At the height of various ice ages of the last million years, as much as thirty percent of all the land of the planet was covered with a thick layer of ice.
The first mention of an iceberg in world literature did not come until 800 A.D. An account of the travels of the Irish monk, St. Brendan in the north Atlantic, three centuries before, appeared around then and mentioned having sighted a “a floating crystal castle”,
An iceberg larger than Belgium was observed in the South Pacific in 1956. It was 208 miles long and 60 miles wide – the largest ever seen.
The temperature can become so cold in eastern Siberia that the moisture in a persons breath can freeze in the air and fall to the earth.
The most recent ice age reached it’s peak in 16,000 B.C., and it wasn’t until 8000 B.C. that the ice began it’s final retreat. In 6000 B.C. the Great Lakes were clear, and for the first time in 25,000 years Canada began to lose its ice cover. It was not until 3000 B.C. that the ice retreated to its present location; by then human beings were establishing cities throughout the Middle East.
After reading all of that, maybe this wasn’t such a bad year after all.
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