Jul 29, 2016

Happy Friday

Happiness is an age eraser. Be happy and you will never grow old.

Stay Happy, stay young and enjoy a Happy Friday!

Why Donkeys and Elephants

Washington insiders considered Andrew Jackson as intemperate, vulgar, and stupid. Opponents called him a jackass. During the 1828 presidential campaign, he embraced the label and began including a jackass on his campaign posters. He became the first Democrat president.

Incidentally, donkeys are in the same family as horses. A male donkey is called a jackass.

During the 1870s, influential political cartoonist Thomas Nast helped popularize the donkey as a symbol for the entire Democrat Party. It first appeared in a cartoon in Harper's Weekly in 1870, and was supposed to represent an anti-Civil War faction. Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion's skin, scaring away all the animals at the zoo. By 1880 it had already become the unofficial symbol of the party.


Thomas Nast, in an 1874 Harper’s Weekly cartoon portrayed various interest groups as animals, including an elephant labeled “The Republican Vote,” which was shown standing at the edge of a pit. He employed the elephant to represent Republicans in additional cartoons during the 1870s, and by 1880 other cartoonists were using the creature to symbolize the party.

Democrats say the donkey is smart and brave and Republicans say the elephant is strong and dignified.

Wordology, Chorale, Choral and Corral

A chorale is a slow, dignified hymn that employs harmony. In the United States, a chorale is also a choir or chorus of people. Chorale comes from the German word Choral which means metrical hymn in Reformed church.

Choral is the adjective form of chorale, meaning written for or sung by a chorale or group of singers.

A corral is a fenced enclosure used to hold livestock, especially horses or cattle. Corral is also used as a transitive verb, which is a verb that takes an object, to mean 'to contain livestock in a fenced enclosure or to round up'. Related words are corrals, corralled, corralling. Corral is an American word, based on the Spanish word corro which means ring.

Google Energy Use

In 2011, Google's data centers reportedly used 0.01% of the world's electricity, even though it uses low-power servers and high-efficiency data centers. Its networks use 900,000 servers across the world to power the search engine and other services. It uses artificial intelligence to monitor and make best use of electricity.

Six More Peanut Butter Facts

Peanut butter may have long-term health benefits. One recent study showed that girls between the ages of 9 and 15 who regularly ate peanut butter were 39 percent less likely to develop benign breast disease by age 30.

Peanut butter is loaded with potassium, which is shown to help counteract the effects of a high-sodium diet by relaxing the blood vessels. This is especially helpful when pairing peanut butter with bacon.

Animal trainers for movies and TV achieved a 'talking horse' effect by feeding them sticky peanut butter and letting them flap their jaws.

Thomas Jefferson did peanut farming before becoming president.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are considered the all-American school lunch food, but Canadians and the Dutch consume more peanut butter per capita than Americans do.

The peanuts in your peanut butter today are a different variety than the ones used 50 years ago. In the 1960s, peanut butter was made with a combination of Spanish peanuts and Virginia peanuts. Now the less expensive runner peanuts are used.

TV Types

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is now entering the market, traditional light emitting diode (LED) TVs are benefiting from the extra performance. If you watch movies with the lights off HDR is fine, but the best HDR-equipped full back lit LED TVs can also look good in a bright room.

Among LED TVs, there are two backlight types: Direct LED (full-array) where a large back-light shines through the whole screen, and edge-lit where lights emit from the edges.

Organic light emitting diode (OLED) TVs tend to shine, especially when the lights are off. This is because every pixel emits its own light. OLED is still the best, but if you want a TV above 65 inches you likely will be choosing an LED TV, unless you have a spare $30,000, which is the current cost of large OLED TVs.

Cheddar Cheese

Cheddar cheese has been around since at least the 12th century and takes its name from the English village of Cheddar. The nearby Cheddar Gorge is full of caves that offer ideal conditions for aging cheese, so dairy farmers began using their surplus milk to make a new kind of cheese. Unlike other cheeses with geographically protected names, modern cheddar can come from anywhere, not just the area around Cheddar.

Cheddar cheese eventually became one of England’s most popular snacks. In 1170, King Henry II bought over five tons of the cheese for the bargain price of just a little over £10. By the time Charles I took over the throne in 1625, demand for the cheese had grown so high that the only place one could find it was at the king’s court.

Holey Swiss Cheese

The majority of holes in Swiss cheese, by USDA regulation, must measure between 11/16 and 13/16 of an inch in diameter.

Armies of microbes consume lactic acid excreted by other bacteria. They belch and otherwise exude carbon dioxide gas. This produces the familiar Swiss cheese holes. These big holes are tough on current cheese slicing machines, so the industry is asking that the regulations for Grade A Swiss be revised to make the average hole 6/16 of an inch in diameter. Many are upset that the government even bothers to regulate Swiss cheese hole size.

Jul 28, 2016

Happy Friday

A smile is brighter than a thousand light bulbs.


Smile, light up today and enjoy a Happy Friday!