Jots & Tittles: 11/22/14

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I was recently conned by Amazon.com to purchase (for a minuscule price) a kindle novel by a new author. I managed to read the whole thing even though it turned out to be one of those ridiculous zombie stories as told by a longtime dedicated methamphetamine addict. It was terrible, and I don't even remember the author's name so I will be unable to recognize him if another of his offerings is touted by Amazon in the future. I suppose I could go back to my Kindle and find out his name, but I don't really care enough to expend that much energy for such a minimal purpose.

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Did You Know . . .?

Women can see more shades of red than men. The gene that allows us to see the color red is on the X chromosome, of which men only have 1. Because women have 2, they can see crimson, maroon, cardinal, ruby, and scarlet, but men may only see light red and dark red.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed as his motorcade drives through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was believed to have used a mail-order rifle in order to shoot the president from the sixth story window of the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald was shot and killed by Dallas restaurant owner Jack Ruby as he was being transferred from the police station to the county jail two days later.
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WORD FOR TODAY

zombie
noun
In Haitian folklore, a zombie is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft. The concept has been popularly associated with the Voodoo religion, but it plays no part in that faith's formal practices.

The figure of the zombie has appeared several times in fantasy themed fiction and entertainment, as early as the 1929 novel The Magic Island by William Seabrook. A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian religion, has also emerged in popular culture in recent decades. This "zombie" is taken largely from George A. Romero's seminal film Night of the Living Dead, which was in turn partly inspired by Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend. The word zombie is not used in Night of the Living Dead, but was applied later by fans. The monsters in the film and its sequels, such as Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, as well as its many inspired works, such as Return of the Living Dead and Zombie 2, are usually hungry for human flesh although Return of the Living Dead introduced the popular concept of zombies eating brains.

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BIRTHDAY

Jamie Lee Curtis

(born November 22, 1958)

American actress and author