Top Ten Books

From the New York Times 2015

41	George W. Bush
10% Happier	Dan Harris
13 Hours	Mitchell Zuckoff
America	Dinesh D'Souza
Blood Feud	Edward Klein
Capital in the Twenty-First Century	Thomas Piketty
David and Goliath	Malcolm Gladwell
Duty	Robert M. Gates
Flash Boys	Michael Lewis
Hard Choices	Hillary Rodham Clinton
Humans of New York	Brandon Stanton
Killing Patton	Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard
One Nation	Ben Carson with Candy Carson
The Future of the Mind	Michio Kaku
Things That Matter	Charles Krauthammer
Thrive	Arianna Huffington
Uganda Be Kidding Me	Chelsea Handler
Unbroken	Laura Hillenb
What If	Randall Munroe
Yes Please	Amy Poehler

Wordology, Jaywalking

 For those not familiar with this term, such as many people outside of the United States, jaywalking means a pedestrian crosses a street without regard to traffic regulations.

For instance, depending on where one lives, it may be against the law to cross a street where there is a crosswalk nearby, but the person chooses not to use it. Alternatively even at a crosswalk, it is often illegal to cross if there is a “Don’t Walk” signal flashing.

Contrary to popular belief, the term jaywalking does not derive from the shape of the letter J. It comes from the fact that “Jay” used to be a generic term for someone who was dull, rube, unsophisticated, poor, or a simpleton.

To Jaywalk was to be stupid by crossing the street in an unsafe place or way, or some person visiting the city who was not familiar with the rules of the road for pedestrians in an urban environment. As stated in the January 25, 1937 New York Times, “In many streets like Oxford Street, for instance, the jaywalker wanders complacently in the very middle of the roadway as if it was a country lane.”

What's in a Name

Have you ever wondered where is Old Zealand? New Zealand is actually named after Zeeland, a major seafaring province of the Netherlands, by Dutch navigator Abel Tasman in 1642. You might also notice the island of Tasmania is named after him. Captain James Cook misspelled it New Zealand and the name stuck ever since. (Tasmania is just below Australia and to the left of New Zealand.)

How about New Amsterdam? New York City was originally settled by the Dutch and named New Amsterdam in 1625. It was situated right outside of Fort Amsterdam. It became New York (after the Duke of York) in 1665. Then it became New Orange after the Dutch took it back in 1673, then finally back to New York in 1674. Wow, New Orange became the Big Apple.

Speaking of Cheese

I just saw a New York Times statistical map from the latest data in 2008 that shows Americans spend more (.3% of their income) on cheese than  (.2%) on computers. Cheese spending was up 12.5% for the year, while spending on computers went down 12% for the year. It comes from an interactive diagram of all spending.  LINK

Father of the Internet

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, born 1955, and inventor of the Web’s software standards in 1989, tends to be fast-paced and nonlinear. He is currently director of the World Wide Web Consortium and a professor at M.I.T.

When asked if he were do it over again today, would he do anything differently, he admitted he might make one change. He would get rid of the double slash “//” after the “http:” in Web addresses. He said the double slash, a programming convention at the time, turned out to not be really necessary. Amazing to think the web is only twenty years old and how much it has changed the world. In fact, the world wide web (WWW) was first mentioned in print in the New York Times in 1993.

Here's a tip, when typing in a site name, just type the name, such as 'shubsthoughts' then hold down the 'ctrl' key and hit 'enter'. Your web browser will fill in the rest for you and send you to the site.