Things that happened on September 7th
There have been a lot of things that have happened on September 7th throughout history. Here is a quick list of things I found interesting.
1813 “Uncle Sam” was 1st used to refer to U.S. in print. (Troy Post of New York)
1822 Brazil declares independence from Portugal (National Day)
1880 Geo Ligowsky patents device to throw clay pigeons for trap-shooters (This is what you do if you don’t have a thrower.
1889 Start of Sherlock Holmes “Adventure of Engineer’s Thumb”
1896 A. H. Whiting wins 1st automobile race held on a track in Cranston, Rhode Island
1914 New York Post Office Building opens to public
1915 John Gruelle patents his Raggedy Ann doll
1963 Pro Football Hall of Fame dedicated in Canton, Ohio
1995 12th MTV Awards
2004 American military deaths in the Iraq War reach 1,000
There are many other events that happened on today’s date. If you’re interested in what else went down on this date, click here.
High-Five World Record
Josh Dueck set a new Guinness Book of World Records record on Saturday August 28 for the most high-fives slapped in one 24 hour period. Dueck a silver medalist in the Paralympics Games slapped the shit out of the old record, which was 3,131 and is now 9,307 high fives.
Dueck did this to bring attention to workplace safety, which is great. But what I want to know is how do people come up with these nutty ideas for World Records? Who decides, “How many times do you think I can get slapped in the face for one minute? Or better yet, how many times do you think I can slap you in the face in one minute?” The answer my friend would be, 46 and 628—and no I’m not joking.
Here are some other crazy records: Tandem knee slaps in one minute: 592
Most times saying, “Hey,” loudly in 30 seconds while jogging in a grocery store: 41
Most times kissing a dog while wearing a Groucho Marx mask: 77
Most times asking, “Where are my glasses,” to someone tuning a guitar in 30 seconds: 28
Oldest piece of wood used to make a guitar: 35,000 years
When I was growing up Guinness was the Official World Record recorders, now apparently there are two World Record companies. The second called is called The Universal Record Database. These guys, in my opinion, don’t seem as official as GBR, but they do seem more accessible for someone who wants to set or break a world record.
My officemate and I thought of three World Records that we are going to set or break. I won’t tell you exactly what all of them are because we don’t want you to steal our ideas, but I will give you a hint. One involves spelling Mississippi on the Mississippi River, the other involves hugging, and the final record will put Josh Dueck’s high-five shenanigans to shame. But it won’t be the amount of high-fives; it will involve how far the high-fiver starts away from each other. The current record is 2.05 miles away. I ran 19 miles on Saturday so I’m pretty sure I can blow that record out of the water. The only problem is you have to run with one hand raised in the air, so we might look like two eager kids who’s trying to answer the teacher’s question while running down the sidewalk, but it’ll totally be worth it.
Now it’s your turn. Give us some ideas and we might decide to do yours too. You’ll find that thinking of something to try, that hasn’t already been done, is much harder than breaking the actual record.
News of the Wierd
America is one of the craziest places in the World to live. In the U.S we hear about insurgents in Iraq or robbers in Brazil, but the rest of the World hears stories about the stuff below about us.
One of the hot new news-stories is that a preacher in Southern Florida plans on burning Qurans on September 11th. If that happens, you know the World is going to look at all of us like we all are a bunch of ignorant Americans. Well, they already do that, but you know it’s bad when an armed right-winged militia named Right Wing Extreme says, “We’ve decided against helping them because it doesn’t glorify God.”
In other news from the weird:
Least Competent Police
In March, four NYPD officers, acting on department intelligence, went to the home of Walter and Rose Martin in Brooklyn, N.Y., looking for a suspect, and broke a window as they worked their way inside. The Martins, retired and in their 80s, were clean, and a police spokesman later admitted that officers had wrongly visited or raided the Martins’ home more than 50 times since 2002 because of a stubborn computer glitch. When the software was originally installed, an operator tested it by mindlessly typing in a random address, but that happened to be the Martins’ house, and thus the visits and raids began. The Martins say they have been assured several times that the problem had been corrected, but evidently their address has wormed its way too deep into the system. [New York Post, 3-19-10]
Government in Action
A Treasury Department inspector general reported in June that, out of 2.6 million applicants for federal mortgage relief, 14,000 “home buyers” wrongly received tax credits and that in fact, 1,300 of them were living in prison at the time of filing, including 241 serving life sentences. Sixty-seven of the 14,000 received tax credits for the same house, and 87 more potentially fraudulent tax-credit applications were filed by Internal Revenue Service employees. [ABC News-AP, 6-23-10]
Things That Shouldn’t Get Backlogged:
California requires that if a sex offender’s GPS tagging device signals that he’s in a prohibited area, parole agents must immediately respond, but that law was easier to pass than to implement. As of June, according to a San Diego Union-Tribune investigation, the state had fallen about 31,000 responses behind. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 6-16-10]
Thank Goodness for Researchers
After surveying 374 waitresses, professor Michael Lynn, who teaches marketing and tourism at Cornell University, concluded that customers left larger tips to those with certain physical characteristics such as being slender, being blond or having big breasts. Lynn told the Cornell Daily Sun in May that his study was important in helping potential waitresses gauge their “prospects in the industry.” [Cornell Daily Sun, 5-7-10]
And Finally
Perhaps more usefully, University of Central Lancashire (England) researchers writing in a recent Archives of Sexual Behavior reported that women achieve orgasm more often during foreplay than intercourse but that they more frequently emit orgasm-signaling “vocalizations” just before, or simultaneously with, male ejaculation. [PubMed (National Institutes of Health), 5-18-10]
Triathlon
A triathlon is a combination of swimming, biking and running. There are various distances one can do: there’s the Sprint which consists of a 4-500 meter swim, a 13-16 mile bike ride and a 5k-or 3.1 mile run. Double those numers for an Olympic Tri, and keep doubling the numbers for a Half-Ironman and Full-Ironman.
Today I will be doing a Sprint and my goal is A. To finish and B. Not to finish last.
Wish me luck.
Buckeyes Are Boring? Says Who?
Ladies, today is a day in history that most of you probably hate and don’t even know it. That’s because today, in 1920, seven men came together and discussed establishing a professional football league at the Jordan and Hupmobile Auto Showroom in Canton, Ohio. One of these seven men was the legendary Jim Thrope.
I wasn’t aware that the first four professional football teams were in Ohio, but apparently there are a lot of things about Ohio that I didn’t know. Did you know that Ohio is actually the, “Birth place of aviation,” not North Carolina? And did you know that Ohio is also the birthplace of the domestic tomato? And you probably thought Ohio was just another boring state that you never even thought of unless you’re from there, like Iowa or Wyoming. But now, every time you bite into a pizza and taste that yummy tomato sauce, you’ll be forced to remember Ohio. You should also probably fall to your knees and thank the great State for domesticating the elusive, willy-and-wild red tomato.
What’s weird is when I was looking up useless facts about Ohio, I found out that a crazy amount of famous people are from the Buckeye State. Here’s a brief list: Neil Armstrong, Halle Berry, Drew Carey, Dean Martin, William McKinley, Paul Newman, Thomas Edison, Clark Gable, James A. Garfield, Steven Spielberg, John Glenn, Ulysses S. Grant, William Howard Taft, Arsenio Hall, Warren Harding, Ted Turner and Pete Rose*. The reason there’s an * next to Pete Rose’s name is because that’s how it will look like if they ever let him into the Baseball Hall of Fame, which is not in Ohio.
So I jumped from football to famous people, so what? If you want to see what I think the best part about Ohio is, even though I’ve never been there, click here. If you want to see where my wife went in Ohio, and totally left me and home while she had a blast, click here. And I will say in her defense, it was “work” trip and couldn’t be helped.
Friday the 13th
Today is Friday the 13th. It is the only Friday the 13th of this year, but it can happen as many as three times per year. It all depends if the first of the month falls on Sunday.
There are many superstitions surrounding Friday the 13th. One of these superstitions is that if there are 13 people sitting at a dinner table, all of them will die within a year. Another one is that having 13 letters in your name is unlucky. The most famous serial killers have thirteen letters in their name: Charles Manson, Theodore Bundy and Jack the Ripper. One could argue that these names have been manipulated somewhat—Bundy was called Ted, not Theodore and Jack the Ripper obviously isn’t the killer’s real name. But people’s beliefs aren’t always logical. This is why superstitions are around in the first place.
Friday’s, for many cultures, is an unlucky day. Thirteen is seen as unlucky in many cultures because the number 12 is considered complete. There were 12 apostles, there were 12 Tribes of Israel and there were 12 gods of Olympus. Therefore 13 is upsetting that traditional good-luck number by one, making it unlucky.
Believe it or not, most superstitions are rarely referenced in history before the 1800’s. But Friday the 13th can be traced all the way back to October 1066 when King Harold II made the decision to lead his troops into battle the next day instead of letting them rest after a long march from a battle three weeks prior. The day he made that decision seems to be the earliest reference to Friday the 13th being unlucky.
But the best thing about Friday the 13th is the movie. It has scared the bejeezus out of tens-of-millions of kids. The hockey mask, the chainsaw, the screaming girls who run back into the house when you know they should run into the scary woods, or the girls who runs into the scary woods when you know that that’s not going to work either, you got to love it. Here’s a clip.
Unfriending Friends on Facebook
Are you friends with your “work-friends” on Facebook? My guess is that you probably are, or at least have been in the past. If you are in the second group, then you’ve probably had some problems and decided to delete your work-friends. If you’re not in that group and you still have all your work-friends as FB friends, then you might want to start thinking about separating your private life and work life before trouble begins.
Let me start off by saying, I like keeping in touch with my friends. I’m the kind of guy who picks up the phone and calls someone if I haven’t heard from them in a month or two to see what’s going on with them. But now technology is making that unnecessary—or is it?
I’ve been on Facebook for about three years now, collecting a little over 250 friends that I actually know and talk to. I refuse to accept random people who try to friend me just to have more friends. My rule is, I really have to know you for me to accept you as my Facebook friend.
It’s been interesting to watch the Facebook explosion. The service has been around for five years this year. I was invited to join in 2005 but didn’t because I had finally joined MySpace and was just getting used to that. My friends from college kept inviting me to join Facebook and telling me why they thought it was better. Most of those friends had graduated six years earlier from college and they all lived overseas, I decided to join so I could keep in touch with them. I, like everyone else who joins Facebook, began having people pop back into my life that I haven’t seen or thought of in years.
I grew up in Hawaii and am now living in St. Louis. Most of my high school friends still live in Hawaii, so I was pleasantly surprised when Facebook turned into a high school reunion. It was nice to see that my friend was still teaching and it was surprising to learn that my other friend now owns the largest real estate company on the island. I was also shocked to learn that one of the biggest jocks in the school was now a nurse. All these kind of discoveries were the things I loved about Facebook.
Then weird things started happening. A couple years after being on Facebook my mom joined and friended me. It took my three days to accept her. I really wanted to say what I thought and not have it scrutinized by my mom. But I accepted her friend request and sent her a lengthy email on FB etiquette and a warning not to be writing motherly-advice on my wall. Then my grandma joined.
One by one my family found Facebook—my Grandma, my ultra-conservative aunt, cousins who I only talk to at family reunions, and finally co-workers. And it’s the last group that makes life a little more complicated.
At first I accepted co-workers, who I thought of as real friends, as “friends” on Facebook. Then people who I never hung out with outside of work began asking me to be FB friends, which I accepted them too. Then supervisors started asking. I begrudgingly accepted them as well, but I knew I need to watch what I said about work.
I have a built in censor since my mom and Grandma are friends with me, but that doesn’t mean other people do. People say things on Facebook that if their employers read it, they would get fired, and this is what almost happened to my friend. She had made an off-handed comment, someone didn’t like it and reported her. She had to stand in front of the Director and Assistant Director and explain herself. She didn’t get fired, but she did erase her account the same day.
It took me about two days to follow suit. I put out a status update that said, “Don’t think I should be mixing business and pleasure,” and the next day wacked 35 co-workers from my list.
I did make sure to go around and tell almost everyone why I deleted them from my list and I also made sure my real friends had my phone number. No longer would my quips and quibbles be a spectacle for the workplace. I’m not saying you have to do what I did, but if you do decide to keep your work-friends as your friends on Facebook, remember you could be the one standing on the red carpet in front of your boss and explaining what you meant by, “My boss sucks cow balls.”
Mosque Being Built Two Blocks From Ground Zero
A new holy-war is ragging in New York City. The issue pertains to a proposed mosque and community center that is being built two blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood. A conservative advocacy group, lead by Pat Robertson, filed suit Wednesday to challenge a city panel’s decision to let developers tear down an old building and allow the new mosque to be erected in an area that was literally covered in dust from the September 11th attacks.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed in the early 1940’s, no one could have imagined a Shinto temple being erected two blocks away from where the USS Arizona rested in the bottom of Pearl Harbor. But then again, no one could have imagined that 60 years later the Japanese would be one of our closest allies. They also couldn’t have imagined that Japan would be the worlds largest seller of cars and electronics in the 1940’s either, and mainly selling them to us. This isn’t a bad thing. Americans want what Japanese companies sell and Japanese companies employ thousands of American workers and even produce a lot of their products here in the States.
The main difference between Pearl Harbor and the New York scenarios is that one attack was from a group of people with their country’s support during wartime. The other attack was from a group of people who were radicals in a certain faith, who were not directly supported from their government.
One of the great things about this country is that we have freedom of speech. So you more than welcome to disagree with me and move on. But we get to say what we want without fear of prosecution, for the most part. You’re not allowed to yell, “Fire!” in a crowded theater unless there really is one and you can’t say you’re going to kill the President and really mean it and expect not to go to jail.
Another great thing about this country is that we have freedom of commerce. Do you know how many businesses are located within a two block radius of where the World Trade Center once stood? More than are in most small-to-medium sized towns all across the U.S. and Manhattan is such as busy place that once the hoopla dies down, people could easily walk right by the mosque and not even realize it’s there. How often have you driven by your local mosque and not seen it? If you said, “I’ve never seen a mosque in my town,” let me assure you that if you live in a city with over 10,000 people in it, you have a mosque in your town, you just don’t know it.
Freedom of religion, for many, is the greatest thing about living in America. But for an atheist, watching a Right-wing Christian group and a Jewish organization come together to stop a Muslim group’s right to build, is like watching three children fight over who gets to play with their imaginary friend.
We as American’s you don’t get to pick when and where religious groups chose to practice their faith and that’s probably a good thing for tens millions of believers, because if it were up to me, none of these groups would be around to fight over where to build because none of these groups would even exist.
RIP Remix Manifesto
Ever been in a club and hear the war-cry Reeeeeeemix?!!!!!
Most of us know what a remix is. For those of you who don’t, I’m going to assume that you’re over 70 and I’ll explain it for you. A remix is where someone takes an original version of something, usually a song, but it can also be a commercial, art, or even a poem, and then rearranges it to make a new version of the original product.
Remixing has been around for a long time. William Burroughs, the famous beat writer and author of Junky and Naked Lunch, at first credited Brion Gysin with the first example of remixing a poem Minutes to Go and then he thought about it some more and credited T.S Eliot’s The Wasteland as the first “cut-up.” Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso were also both remixers.
Most people who are in their 30’s and early 40’s can remember when rap first came out. The song Rocket by Herbie Hancock brought scratching from the clubs of New York into America’s mainstream and helped start the remix craze. A whole new billion-dollar industry was started from that one song.
From rap, DJ’s began venturing into other genres. They remixed “old-but-goodies,” they remixed tunes from orchestras, they remixed nursery rhymes, and that started other genres which morphed into techno, house, and drum-and-bass. This progression is how culture evolves. Ideas are taken from previous works, given a spin, then spun some more and as the years go by, new styles and genres emerge.
There is a modern-day war on culture. It’s an intellectual war. People are fighting corporations over who owns the rights and the use of these ideas that make up our culture. A kid who wants to take a song and remix it, by law, has to ask for permission and will have to pay a corporation to use the original song. Almost always that kid is not going to ask for permission. Most times he will just “take” the song, remix it, and put it on Youtube or send it to his friends. It’s usually when the remix gets big, or goes viral when the corporations who own the rights to the song cares and will come after that person, although that’s not always the case.
The movie RIP! A Remix Manifesto talks about these issues and others. The movie presents a scary look into the future where corporations not only own our right to free speech and our ability to use our present culture in our work, but they have also begun patenting life. If this is allowed to continue corporations will eventually own all of our food supplies as well as possibly being able to control how and when we chose to have a child. (For the record the movie doesn’t talk about the child part, but if you think about how they are patenting life, and you think one step further, it’s not farfetched.)
Corporations are very powerful. They have lobbyist, they have teams of attorneys. But worse than that, they have a major impact on how you think and what you buy. If you don’t think so let me ask you, do you watch the news? It’s owned by a corporation and they tell us what is going on in the world, whether we know it’s the truth or not is another matter. Ever look at ads? Corporations tell us what to buy and why we should want it and why we should feel good about buying it. They’ve got a hold of our minds and now they’ve got a hold of our culture too.
Corporations are literally considered a legal person. By law they have as much rights as humans, if not more, but yet they don’t have to follow the same rules as us. Because of this corporations are becoming the new super-race and whether we want to admit it or not, and we are becoming their slaves. And before I get off on a tangent and start ranting like an old guy on how we’re losing our freedom and how we need a revolution against corporations, let me have a person who’s much smarter and more organized than me explain how were are losing those freedoms, especially in the realms of art and music.
Here’s the link to the site.
Here’s a link to the entire film
INFP vs INFJ
I was looking around at different Meetup groups and I found this group called Gateway INFP. (Meetup.com, for those of you who’ve been living in your own social vacuum, is a place where like minded people can get together to meet-up off-line.) I had no idea what INFP meant so I Googled the term. The term is an acronym for people who are Introverted, iNtuitive (spelled that way on purpose), Feeling and Perceiving.
Only 1% of the population falls under the category of INFP. I read further and started to think that I was one of these INFP people. Some of the INFP characteristics are: finding out the purpose of their life, they are focused on making the world a better place, they are on a continuous mission to find the truth, they are thoughtful and considerate and they put people at ease. The list goes on and on, click here if you want to see more.
After reading all this I decided to take a free online personality test. It was only 41 questions and I chose this particular test because it was short and free. The results were almost as I predicted. I’m an INF-almost-P personality. The indicator is one click left of the middle between Judging and Perceiving. INFJ’s are also in the 1% tile of people who have these personality traits, but when I looked it up, the INFJ didn’t seem to resonate as strong with me as the INFP. Either way I’m either an Idealist or a Protector. And since personality test are purely subjective to what you think of yourself as, I’m not ashamed to say that I think I’m a little of both.
Want to try it yourself? Here’s the link.
Here are my results:
My personality type: “Harmony-seeking Idealist”
Quietly forceful, original and sensitive. Tend to stick to things until they are done. Extremely intuitive about people and concerned for their feelings. Well-developed value systems which they strictly adhere to. Well-respected for their perserverence in doing the right thing. Likely to be individualistic, rather than leading or following.
Careers that could fit you include:(Or jobs I should have done.)
Counselors, clergy, missionaries, teachers, medical doctors, dentists, chiropractors, psychologists, psychiatrists, writers, musicians, artists, psychics, photographers, child care workers, education consultants, librarians, marketeers, scientists, social workers.