May 29, 2010

Eight Celebrity Name Changes

Michael Keaton was born Michael Douglas (no relation).
Comedian Albert Brooks was born Albert Einstein (no relation)
Krishna Pandit Bhanji is now Ben Kinglsey
Demi Moore was Demetria Guynes
Miley Ray Cyrus was born Destiny Hope Cyrus
Bono was born Paul Hewson
Audrey Hepburn was Audrey Kathleen Ruston
Whoopi Goldberg was Caryn Johnson.

Floppy

Floppys are not always bad things. If you have some old floppy disks laying around and you happen to live in snow country, throw one in your glove box and use it for an excellent ice scraper. They also work well to prop up wobbly tables or book shelves.

Tito Beveridge

He is the guy behind Tito's hand made vodka that Texans have come to love. Tito's is corn vodka

His thoughts about vodka, potato vodkas are real lean, corn has more body, rye has tartness, and wheat is all over the map. His favorite drink - Tito’s and seltzer, soda, sparkling water or any other bubbly water with a lime and an orange.

When to Text

Here are the results from a survey from Mashable. Not sure I can add anything to this one, except SCARY!.

Speaking of Toilet Texting

A Japanese man found a new use for Twitter. While sitting on the toilet in a Tokyo store, he discovered there was no toilet paper, so he tweeted an urgent message and someone brought him some. Now that is practical use of technology.

May 25, 2010

Nix the Lowfat Dressing

Contrary to dieters inclinations, research shows that pairing a salad with full-fat or olive oil-based dressing helps your body absorb the nutrients in the salad.

Six Great Google Tricks

We all know Google is great for searches, but here are a few tips to make your online life simpler.
If you want to track a USPS, UPS, or FedEx package, no need to go to their site, just type in the tracking code to find out where your package is.
How about that flight? Just type in an airline flight number to get its arrival/departure status.
If you need a quick stock quote, just type in the stock symbol.
Are you looking for a movie? Type in movies followed by your city name.
Wondering if it will rain today? Type in weather followed by your zip code.
Last, don't forget to use the quote marks for names, like "chuck norris" or "liberty bell" to get the whole name.
If you want to buy my books, you don't need Google, just click Amazon

Bacon Flavored Popcorn

It is better than you might think. When we were growing up, our mother always had a jar of bacon grease on the stove. She used it to cook many things and also to pop popcorn (the old fashioned way, in a pan) and it gave the popcorn a hint of bacon flavor. 

Now you can buy microwave popcorn with the bacon flavor already in it. Wow, I know she would approve.

Sugru

This new polymer fixit stuff is something Billy Mays would have loved. It is a product from England that is just coming to market and sells for about $15. You can use it to repair many household items or use it to make flexible models.

It sticks to glass, metal, wood, plastic, etc. It air cures and remains semi soft and is diswasher safe.  SUGRU  

Nine Interesting Food Facts

1 Apple is made of 25% air, that is why they float.
2 Avocado has the highest protein and oil content of all fruits.
3 Carrots were originally purple in color, changing in the 17th Century to orange with newer varieties.
4 Cherries are a member of the rose family.
5 Corn always has an even number of ears. It only makes up about 8% of the weight in a box of corn flakes.
6 Honey is the only edible food for humans that will never go bad.
7 Lemons contain more sugar than strawberries.
8 Peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.
9 Pear is a fruit that ripens from the inside out.

Copies of Antique Manuscripts

A remarkable archive of antique manuscripts which opens a window on to the experiences, hopes, fears and interests of people who lived during the 15th to 18th centuries has been put online.

The University of Cambridge Scriptorium Project features thousands of pages taken from 20 different handwritten "miscellanies", some of which date back as far as the Wars of the Roses.

The books were used to record snippets of information that people had read, been told, or overheard, at a time when paper was a scarce and expensive commodity.

The collection includes a notebook in which Edward VI wrote down various Biblical passages and a miscellany kept by William Rawley, chaplain to Francis Bacon, in which he recorded Bacon's sayings and a number of his (rather bad) jokes.

Perhaps more significantly, however, it features copious amounts of material reflecting the day-to-day lives of other people. Recipes, accounts, sonnets, quotations, prayers, sermons, legal tips and medical instructions were all added to the compendia as they were passed down through the generations.

Over a period of decades, their owners recorded everything from poems by Shakespeare and Milton, to plague remedies, laundry lists, or, in one case, the contents of their fish pond. As a result, the books provide an insight into sections of the population of whom we would know far less without them, not least the women of the era.
The website also includes a complete and interactive online course in deciphering medieval and early modern handwriting as well as further resources for manuscript studies.

"The idea is to enable other researchers to decipher their own manuscripts even if they have not encountered early modern handwriting before," Dr. Beadle added. "Hopefully this project will help to open up the literature, history, theology and philosophy of this period to a new generation of students and scholars all over the world."

http://scriptorium.english.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/

May 21, 2010

Melting Icebergs

We read a lot about melting icebergs and rising ocean levels, but what is the real story. This has nothing to do with global warming or cooling. That is another argument for another day. This is about the facts regarding ice and water.

Archimedes' principal states that a floating object displaces its own weight of fluid and should not add more water when it melts. Also, the weight of the displaced fluid is directly proportional to the volume of the displaced fluid. Of course there is some land based ice that is also melting, and it would raise the level of water if it is not absorbed by the land on which it sits.

Melting icebergs cause sea levels spread evenly across the globe to rise by just 49 micrometers a year, about the width of a human hair. At that rate, it would take 200 years for the oceans to rise by a centimeter (an inch is 2.54 centimeters).

If all the floating ice was to melt, sea levels would rise by only 4cm (less than 2 inches), according to scientists published in the journal of Geophysical Research Letter, April 2010. So, if the climate folks are correct, it will take a bit less than 800 years to raise the sea levels by a bit less than two inches. Hmmm. . .

Speaking of Ice

When you are making your favorite summer drinks for the pool party, make it ahead of time and freeze some of it in trays or small containers. Put the drink-ice in just before taking that pitcher outside. That way, when the ice melts in the drink, it does not dilute it.

Better Marriage Blanket

I can't even make this stuff up. Here is a blanket that is billed to make your marriage better. LINK There go all those cheesy fart jokes.