JANUARY

What was the first photograph and who took it?

It certainly wasn’t that staple of our culture, the Playboy centerfold. In fact, the first photo would have made a good picture post card. It was a view of the French countryside.

The 8 by 6.5 inch image was taken in 1826 by inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce, who called it “Poin de Vue du Gras.” He took the photo with a device known since the renaissance: a camera obscura. It was basically a dark box with a small opening that admitted light to form an image on the back of the box. The difference was that Niepce added a lens for focus and retained the image by having the light hit drops of light-sensitive bitumen, a substance resembling tar, on a silver pewter plate. It took eight hours to develop the image.

Fortunately, he didn’t drop it off at a drugstore to be developed. Otherwise, it might have been lost forever.

Sources: www.yahoo.com/news and www.washingtonpost.com



Well, he does have the time . . .

Robert Kirkpatrick, of St. Clairsville, Ohio, received an invitation from the National Republican Senatorial Committee to a private, $2,500 a head fundraising dinner featuring President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The invitation had his correct address, including his inmate number at the Belmont Correctional Institution.

Can’t the GOP distinguish between a fat cat and a jailbird?

Source: www.plaind.com



Didja Know...
Termites eat wood twice as fast when listening to heavy metal music? (Source: funtrivia.com)

Did Sigmund Freud use narcotics?

As Bill Clinton might have said about another vice, "no." Freud did not use those addictive substances, narcotics. People often loosely define narcotics as downers that tend to induce stupor. Freud used cocaine, popularly (but mistakenly) regarded only as a stimulant.

In fact, we've got the Father of Psychiatry dead to rights, because cocaine eventually has a narcotic effect and has been used as a local anesthetic. Webster’s Unabridged and the American Heritage Dictionary call it a narcotic.

Freud not only used cocaine, he proselytized for the "gorgeous excitement" it offered. While in his 20s he published a paper lauding the substance, paid for by drug companies that used it in their products. But by middle age, he had seen enough negative evidence to turn up his nose at the white powder. However, he continued to smoke 20 cigars a day until the day he died of oral cancer.

Source: www.straightdope.com



Hmmmmmmmm

They've got a humdinger of a problem in Kokomo, Indiana. People in this otherwise quiet city of 47,000 have been hearing a strange, unidentifiable hum. It’s been making some of them sick and the city has appropriated $100,000 to get to the bottom of it.

Maybe it's giant, mutant humming birds. I just thought I would helpful.

Source: www.nytimes.com



Didja Know...
The fastest wind speed ever recorded is 318 mph in one of the May 3, 1999 Oklahoma tornadoes? (Source: USA Today)

What actually happened in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776?

There were no fireworks. The Phillies did not play. People might have been outdoors grilling something, but they wouldn’t have called it a “hot dog.” And the American colonies did not declare their independence.

The Continental Congress declared America’s independence from Britain on July 2. That should be “Independence Day.” The next day, John Adams wrote to his wife that July 2 “will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.” Yeah, sure.

On July 4, that august body adopted the Declaration of Independence, which was their rationale for what they did on the 2nd. But most delegates did not even sign it till August, despite the painting that hangs in the Capitol in Washington showing a group signing it on the 4th. And it wasn’t until January that the newly minted American public knew who had put their “John Hancock” on the document.

Source: www.historynewsnetwork.org



Hot Dogs, Beer and . . . Rice?

United States fireworks imports in 2001 added up to $128.9 million. About $121.6 million of that came from China. China’s exports of American flags to the U. S. in 2001 were worth $29.7 million, more than half of all the U. S. flags this country purchased from abroad.

Maybe it would have been cheaper if we had just gone to Beijing for July 4th.

Source: www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www



Didja Know...
The first James Bond movies wasn't 'Dr. No' (1962), it was an American television production of 'Casino Royale" (1954)? (Source: The Bond Film Informant)

Did the word "funky" originate in Black English?

You’re in a late night jazz club. The band is good. Through a haze of cigarette smoke (well, some of it is probably tobacco), the saxophonist soulfully wails. Funky!

I meant that the smoky haze was funky. Funky entered English in the 17th century and meant smelly. It probably came from “funkier,” French for puffing smoke on someone. Later it also came to mean a state of panic, possibly from a similar Flemish word, though it may be related to the smell of fear. Eventually it also meant feeling down, as in a blue funk.

It only gained common usage in Black English 80 years ago, meaning sweaty and smelly. But just as “bad” came to mean “good” in the African-American community, funky, too, by the late 1930s, had its meaning mirrored as something earthy, basic and pleasing. Now go dance to that funky music! But first change your socks.

Source: www.worldwidewords.org



There’s one thing worse than price gouging

Americans imported the sport of gouging from England at the beginning of the 19th century. Popular in the Ohio River Valley, on the frontier, the goal was simple: you won when you gouged out your opponent’s eye. It helped if you grew a long thumbnail.

I’m confused. Isn’t that professional hockey?

Source: The Book of Answers



Didja Know...
The names of the three wise monkeys are: Mizaru (See no evil); Mikazaru (Hear no evil); Mazaru (Speak no evil)? (Source: about.com)

How do zookeepers feed anteaters and other animals with exotic diets?

Actually, the anteater’s diet is not as exclusive as its name implies. It also eats termites and several other disgusting, crawling things.

Zookeepers could buy crickets for dinner, but the toothless anteater would be clueless on how to eat them. Fortunately, most of the nutritional value that this tasteless animal derives from lower life forms - let’s be species chauvinists! - is available from something easily available on the supermarket shelf: cat food. (Did you ever see an anteater chase a string?) How about an Armadillo? They also thrive on cat food.

To the diet of the poison-dart frog, which needs color to attract a mate, zoo nutritionists have added foods high in caretenoids. For chicks of the loggerheaded-shrike, which have trouble drinking water, the answer was honeybee larvae, 80 percent of which is water. You know, this is making me hungry!

Source: www.nytimes.com



Crushing news

We’ve been had. The Walt Disney film “Pinocchio” was a sanitized version of the 1881 book on which it was based. In the original, Pinocchio, a juvenile delinquent at the beginning of the story, squishes Jiminy Cricket by stepping on him. Jiminy comes back as a ghost to serve as the puppet’s conscience.

Gee, Disney really pulled the strings on us.

Source: www.tvacres.com



Didja Know...
Humans fondness for chocolate goes back at least 2600 years? (Source: Hershey/Yahoo.com)

What's the origin of the word "infrastructure?"

Haven’t I seen this word in a girdle ad? It does, after all, derive from Latin for the parts of a building that are underground. In other words, its foundation.

So, how did it get to mean the roads, bridges and sewers a city needs to function? No matter how corrupt a municipality might be, an alderman or councilman would never get away with letting a contract to his brother-in-law for an underground bridge. Well, the French military took up the word in the 1920s and applied it to the Maginot Line, its permanent fortifications that were supposed to enable France to continue to function by holding back the German army. So much for that usage.

It was in the 1950s that bureaucrats began to expand the meaning to cover roads, tunnels and other construction that supported the modern city. Typical is the beltway, which, uh, girdles a metropolis.

Source: DICTIONARY OF WORD AND PHRASE ORIGINS by William and Mary Morris



Go for the gold

The Aston Martin DB5 that James Bond drove in the movie “Goldfinger” was equipped with a handy tire-shredder, twin .30 caliber Browning machine guns, a passenger ejection seat, a rear dispensing oil slick and a revolving license plate.

Heck, you need at least that just to get through the rush hour on the Washington, D. C. Beltway on a Friday night.

Source: www.007database.com


Didja Know...
The average baseball player salary in 1977: $51,500; the average baseball players salary in 2002: $2,380,000? (Source:Encarta.com)

What does "fair use" mean in the copyright law?

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," they say. When they say it, they usually don't have to fear a lawsuit from whoever coined it. Why not? They're not using it to make a profit (although indirectly, I am). That's one of four criteria employed to determine fair use.

A second factor is how unique and creative the material is. I’m acknowledging it's special by highlighting and disseminating it. How much of a work one repeats is another criterion. For example, you usually can't quote an entire poem without permission, even if it's brief. But I guess I've quoted the whole expression. And the last factor is how You've affected the potential market for the work. Well, I suppose its originator couldn’t repeat it too soon after my use.

Was that a knock at my front door? Excuse me, I think I’ve got some laundry hanging in the backyard.

Source: www.benedict.com



Sit, eat, pay, leave - and be quick about it

The leisurely restaurant meal is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. In 1993, American restaurants averaged 1.3 seatings a day for dinner. Now they’re doing 1.9. Waiters who grab half-empty plates are rushing diners through dinner -- even at upscale places where the tab can top $100 a person.

"Honey, dress up, we're doing 'fast food' tonight."

Source: www.wsj.com



Didja Know...
The ever pyjama-clad 'Playboy' publisher Hugh Hefner was a psychology student at the University of Illinois?. (Source:Encarta.com)

If you went into a restaurant in Korea, would you really find dog on the menu?

For most of us, the very idea of the canine as cuisine is... well, beastly. I may woof down a meal, but I draw the line at dog as dish.

But they think differently in Korea. Let's put it this way, if you find an out-of-the-way restaurant in Seoul featuring "poshintang," sometimes called "tonic soup," and you have typical Western sensibilities, pass on it. The government banned dog when it hosted the 1988 Olympics, fearing ridicule and outrage from foreigners. But the custom continues surreptitiously. Its defenders have pointed out that what we are willing to eat is culturally determined. Religious Hindus in India, for example, who venerate cows, might be appalled at Americans who eat hamburger.

Do you suppose that if you don’t finish your poshintang and want to take home the leftovers, the waiter would give you a... oh, never mind.

Source: www.prospect.org



The names are in place

There are 11 places in the United States named "Independence." The most populous is in Missouri, which also has the most populated place in the country called "Liberty." There are 5 "Freedoms," but the hamlet of Patriot in Indiana is the only place with that name.

If I'm wrong, they'll send me to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.

Source: www.census.gov



Didja Know...
Mick Jagger majored in business at the London School of economics? He was still a student when he helped form the Rolling Stones. (Source:MSN.com)

Why do we call our little finger a "pinkie?"

Whew! I was afraid somebody would ask, “What do we call the middle finger?” Fortunately, the only use we have for the little finger is to stick it out while holding a cup of tea to show that we are cultured.

There’s nothing politically leftist about your pinkie, since you have one on both hands. In fact, its origin is colorless (yet still interesting). Pinkie began life in the Dutch phrase, 'pinck ooghen,' meaning pink eye, a condition in which your eye is almost shut. The “pink” in this phrase had the sense of “small,” as in a smaller opening. Pinkie was first used in English for the small finger in Scotland in the early 19th century.

The color pink seems to have the same derivation. It appears to come from a flower called the “pink,” because of its petal’s resemblance to what “pink eye” looks like.

Source: www.worldwidewords.org



No bull

There really was a wall on Wall Street at one time. The Dutch built it in the second half of the 17th century. It was meant to protect their New Amsterdam colony from Indians, the British and settlers from other colonies in New England.

It worked at least briefly against all of these, but it has never kept out the bears.

Source: www.mcny.org



Didja Know...
Before earning fame as TV's 'Columbo,' the actor Peter Falk worked for the Connecticut State Budget Bureau as a management analyst? (Source:MSN.com)