Dec 10, 2010

Bacon Cheddar Fries

Had to add this one sent by a friend, Jim Sheppard. The site taster says they are not all that good, but I must admit I liked the name. Of course, they are from Tom's.

Street Signs

Am sure at least one of you remembers my November 12 thoughts about street signs in New York being replaced. Here is a follow-up.

The Federal Highway Administration is ordering all local governments, from the tiniest towns to the largest cities, to go out and buy new street signs that federal bureaucrats say are easier to read. The rules are part of a tangle of regulations included in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

The 800-plus page book tells local governments they:

-- Should increase the size of the letters on street signs from the current 4 inches to 6 inches on all roads with speed limits over 25 miles per hour. The target date for this to be completed is January 2012.

-- Install signs with new reflective letters more visible at night by January 2018.

-- Whenever street name signs are changed for any reason, they can no longer be in ALL CAPS.

In Milwaukee this will cost the city nearly $2 million, or double the city's entire annual for traffic control.

"If you can't read it, you can't see it, or you can't comprehend it, it could be a distraction to you,"  said Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez. "You could be in an accident, negative consequences could occur." Hmmm, now about those illegal aliens that can't read English. . .

Popup Meat Timer

 Here is a silly thing that might be practical. A meat timer with legs. The legs pop up when the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.


Now you don't have to open the oven door to check, just wait for the legs to pop up.

Dec 7, 2010

Awesome Stuff

People can accomplish some very awesome stunts. Here is a collection of them on YouTube. LINK

Hiccups

The first air-breathing fish and amphibians extracted oxygen using gills when in the water and primitive lungs when on land. To do so, they had to be able to close the glottis, or entryway to the lungs, when underwater. The entryway, or glottis, to the lungs could be closed. When underwater, the animals pushed water past their gills while simultaneously pushing the glottis down. We descendants of these animals were left with vestiges of their history, including the hiccup. In hiccuping, we use ancient muscles to quickly close the glottis while sucking in air. Hiccups no longer serve a function. One of the reasons it is so difficult to stop hiccuping is that the entire process is controlled by a part of our brain that evolved long before consciousness.

Decembers Past

In 1942, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered liquidation of the Works Progress Administration, created during the Great Depression to provide work for the unemployed. Seems to me that worked better than unemployment checks.

In 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

In 1768, Encyclopedia Britannica was first published.

In 1954, the first Burger King fast-food restaurant opened in Miami.

In 1975, the US Senate authorized a $2.3 billion emergency loan to save New York City from bankruptcy.

In 2009, the US unemployment rate fell to 10 percent in November, down from its peak of 10.2 percent in October. Analysts called the jobs report the strongest since the recession began two years earlier.

In 2010, the US unemployment rate went up to 9.8% in November, from 9.6% in October.

In 1929, the Ford Motor Co. raised the pay of its employees from $5 to $7 a day despite the collapse of the US stock market.

In 1967, Dr. Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful heart transplant at Cape Town, South Africa.

Michael Jackson Earnings

He made $275 million last year, beating all living and dead entertainers as top earner. Too bad he couldn't keep that up while he was alive. Incidentally, Einstein's estate took in $10 million.

Executive Pay Check

Washington Mutual CEO Alan Fishman did well. When WaMu failed and was seized by government regulators, Fishman had been on the job for just 17 days. However, he was contractually guaranteed $11.6 million in cash severance on top of the $7.5 million signing bonus he got for taking the job. He netted just under $20 million for 17 days of work. Not bad for the head of a collapsing corporation.

Dec 3, 2010

Happy Friday

Health is the greatest gift,
contentment the greatest wealth,
faithfulness the best relationship.

I am content with my health because I am faithful to having a Happy Friday!

Download YouTube Videos

Did you know there are a number of web sites that allow you to download YouTube Videos? Here is one that I have used. LINK  You just paste in the web address and download. It also allows you to convert to other formats as you download. You can convert to mp3, mp4, avi, and a number of other formats. You can even convert to use on your phone. It converts and sends you an email of the file.

Happy People

Sorry, I could not resist this one from the happiest people ever website. It just made me laugh and I had to share.

7 Up

Like most soft drinks, 7 Up started with other ingredients than we have now. It originally contained lithium, which was widely marketed as one of a number of patent medicine products popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Charles Leiper Grigg invented a formula for a lemon-lime soft drink in 1929. The product was originally named "Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda", and was launched two weeks before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

It contained the mood stabilizer lithium citrate and was marketed as a hangover cure. Its name was soon changed to 7 Up. The name is derived from the atomic mass of lithium (approximately seven daltons). Lithium citrate was removed from 7 Up's formula in 1950. It was also used in early formulations of Coke.

Lithium citrate is a chemical compound of lithium and citrate that is used as a mood stabilizer in psychiatric treatment of manic states and bipolar disorder. Now lithium citrate is sold as Litarex and Demalit.

Fizzy Bacon

Effervescent bacon tablets in water explode in a shower of fizz and delicious bacon flavor. It is like bacon Alka-Seltzer. It's a tiny, bubbly miracle. Oooh, drop some in vodka. How about dropping some in hot chocolate for the ultimate chocolate bacon.

Expensive Effective Placebos

The more expensive your pain medications are, the better the relief you get from taking them, even if they are fake. That's according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which suggests that sugar pills labeled as expensive drugs relieve pain better than sugar pills labeled as discounted drugs.

According to the authors, marketing actions, such as pricing, can alter the actual efficacy of products to which they are applied. In three experiments, the authors show that consumers who pay a discounted price for a product may derive less actual benefit from consuming this product than consumers who purchase and consume the exact same product, but pay its regular price.