Today Is Earth Day

      

Tucson Weather Today

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175 pounds

Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.  
--Cree Indian Proverb

TODAY IS EARTH DAY

I really have nothing relevant to say about Earth Day.

Except that I approve.

And that:

Earth Day was the brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin,

a staunch environmentalist who hoped to provide unity to the grassroots

environmental movement and increase ecological awareness.

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Recently I finished writing another 100 word short story:

"Oh Damn!"

I was 17, an innocent, strictly sheltered, physically strong but ignorant and gullible farm boy. She was 18, a former cheerleader and daughter of the town mayor.

We came together beneath a harvest moon.

It was magic.

We fell naked onto a haystack. She reached down and grasped my penis. No girl had ever done that to me before. I was a virgin. I don't think she was, though.

I couldn't help myself.  It just happened.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"No problem," she said.

She raised her hand and in it appeared a long, black, rigid wand.

"Abracadabra!" she said.


The comments I received about the story surprised me. I had not expected to get such a varying lot of interpretations of the ending, and of its meaning. One person thought that the 'long, black, rigid wand' was a vibrator. Another thought the guy's penis had been transformed into the wand.

Etc.

Actually the wand was merely intended as a symbol signifying that the earlier statement, "It was magic" was literally true. And that after his premature ejaculation she used the wand to to make him sexually viable again. That's all.

Oh well, it's hard to be precise as to my intended meaning with a 100 word limitation.

That will probably be the last of my attempts at writing 100-word stories. For a while, anyway. I still have three other conventional short stories in the works that I occasionally return to and of course, my novel, which I have been writing for about thirty or forty years.

The little 100 word blurbs were fun, though. That's more than I can say about any of my other writing endeavors.

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Did You Know . . .?

The United States is the only developed nation to permit humans to drink milk from cows given artificial growth hormone.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On April 22, 1970 Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world's environmental problems, was celebrated in the United States for the first time. Millions of Americans, including students from thousands of colleges and universities, participated in rallies, marches, and educational programs.

On April 22, 1990, the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, more than 200 million people in 141 countries participated in Earth Day celebrations.

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WORD FOR TODAY

environment
noun
1.  the aggregate of surrounding things, conditions, or influences; surroundings; milieu.
2.  the social and cultural forces that shape the life of a person or a population.
3.  Ecology: the air, water, minerals, organisms, and all other external factors surrounding and affecting a given organism at any time.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson

(born April 22, 1937)

Jack Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer, and writer. Throughout his career, Jack Nicholson has portrayed unique and challenging roles, many of which include dark portrayals of neurotic and psychopathic characters. He has twice won the Academy Award for Best Actor, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and for As Good as It Gets. He also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 film Terms of Endearment. Nicholson is well known for playing villainous roles, such as Frank Costello in The Departed, Jack Torrance in The Shining and the Joker in 1989's Batman.

Cassidy Freeman

(born April 22, 1982)

Cassidy Freeman is an American actress and musician. She is known for her role as Tess Mercer in The CW's superhero drama Smallville.

Ryan Lee Stiles

(born April 22, 1959)

Ryan Stiles is an American actor and comedian whose work is often associated with improvisational comedy. He is best known for his career and co-production work on the American and British versions of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and the role of Lewis Kiniski on The Drew Carey Show. He plays Herb Melnick on the CBS comedy Two and a Half Men and was a performer on the show Drew Carey's Improv-A-Ganza.

Marilyn Chambers

(April 22, 1952 – April 12, 2009)

Marilyn Chambers was an American pornographic film actress, exotic dancer, model, actress and vice-presidential candidate. She was best known for her 1972 hardcore film debut Behind the Green Door and her 1980 pornographic film Insatiable. 

Note: I don't know if Marilyn was a relative... probably not.

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The Earth has a skin and that skin has diseases, one of its diseases is called man.
--Friedrich Nietzsche

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

   

EARTH DAY

     

Tucson Weather Today


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April 22 is Earth Day

Earth Day is an annual day on which events are held worldwide to demonstrate support for environmental protection. Earth Day is observed on April 22 each year. The April 22 date was designated as International Mother Earth Day by a consensus resolution adopted by the United Nations in 2009. Earth Day is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network, and is celebrated in more than 192 countries every year.

Lyrics for the Earth Day Anthem set to "Ode to Joy" by Ludwig van Beethoven are provided below:

Joyful joyful we adore our Earth in all its wonderment
Simple gifts of nature that all join into a paradise
Now we must resolve to protect her
Show her our love throughout all time
With our gentle hand and touch
We make our home a newborn world
Now we must resolve to protect her
Show her our love throughout all time
With our gentle hand and touch
We make our home a newborn world

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Recently I read a quite interesting article in Boston Review regarding  extreme cases of moral virtue

It is titled Lives of the Moral Saints and is an interview with Larissa MacFarquhar, staff writer at The New Yorker, by former philosophy professor David V. Johnson.

Larissa MacFarquhar

 

excerpt:
For instance, I’m writing about  a couple in Philadelphia who’ve adopted 20 special needs kids. There aren’t many people like that floating around. When I mention this couple to people, often the response I’ll get is either, “Who do they think they are, that they think they can bring up 20 kids?” (in fact it’s 22 children because they had 2 biological children), or, “Surely that must be damaging to those children to have so many siblings. How can they possibly make it work as a family?” I’ve come to realize that this is one of the dividing lines between the people I’m writing about and regular people. For a regular person, caring more for your own child than for other children is not only morally permissible, it is required, and not doing so is kind of monstrous; but the people I’m writing about don’t feel that way. An ordinary couple considering whether or not to adopt a new kid would ask themselves how this would affect the children they already have. The couple I’m talking about do ask themselves that question, but they also ask themselves how the potential adoptees will be affected. The answer might be, well, it might reduce the quality of life of the children I already have somewhat. But will it increase the quality of life of the children I adopt? Enormously. And that thought is going to win. Most people don’t think that way.

The reason why this  interview interested me is because some of the information it reveals can help provide some verisimilitude (some motivation)) for a character in a story I am outlining at this time. And, of greater importance, I learned a great deal from reading the piece.

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WORD FOR TODAY

Utilitarianism
noun
-  The doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of a majority.
-  The ethical doctrine that virtue is based on utility, and that conduct should be directed toward promoting the greatest happiness of the greatest number of persons.

Utilitarianism is a theory in normative ethics holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes utility, specifically defined as maximizing happiness and reducing suffering. Utilitarianism has often been considered the natural ethic of a democracy operating by simple majority without protection of individual rights.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS


John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson
(born April 22, 1937)

 

Jack Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer, and writer. Nicholson has twice won the Academy Award for Best Actor, for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and for As Good as It Gets. He also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the 1983 film Terms of Endearment. Nicholson is well known for playing villainous roles, such as Frank Costello in The Departed, Jack Torrance in The Shining and the Joker in 1989's Batman. Notable films in which he has starred include Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Detail, Chinatown, The Passenger, The Shining, Reds, Wolf, A Few Good Men, The Pledge, About Schmidt and The Departed.

Glen Travis Campbell
(born April 22, 1936)

 

Glen Campbell is an American country music singer, guitarist, television host and occasional actor. During his 50 years in show business, Campbell has released more than 70 albums. He has sold 45 million records and accumulated 12 RIAA Gold albums, 4 Platinum albums and 1 Double-Platinum album. Of the 74 trips up the country charts, 27 landed in the Top 10. Campbell's hits include John Hartford's "Gentle on My Mind", Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix", "Wichita Lineman" and "Galveston", Larry Weiss's "Rhinestone Cowboy" and Allen Toussaint's "Southern Nights".

His movies include Baby the Rain Must Fall,The Cool Ones, True Grit, Norwood, Any Which Way You Can, Uphill All the Way, and Rock-A-Doodle

Edward Albert Heimberger
(April 22, 1906 – May 26, 2005)

Eddie Albert, was an American actor and activist. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1954 for his performance in Roman Holiday, and in 1973 for The Heartbreak Kid. Other well-known screen roles of his include Bing Edwards in the Brother Rat films, traveling salesman Ali Hakim in the musical Oklahoma!, and the corrupt prison warden in 1974's The Longest Yard. He starred as Oliver Wendell Douglas in the 1960s television situation comedy Green Acres and as Frank MacBride in the 1970s crime drama Switch.

Marilyn Chambers
(April 22, 1952 – April 12, 2009)

 

Marilyn Chambers was an American pornographic actress, exotic dancer, model, actress and vice-presidential candidate. She was best known for her 1972 hardcore film debut Behind the Green Door and her 1980 pornographic film Insatiable. She was voted #6 on the list of Top 50 Porn Stars of All Time by AVN, and ranked as one of Playboy's Top 100 Sex Stars of the Century in 1999. Although she was primarily known for her adult film work, she made a successful transition to mainstream projects. She has been called "porn's most famous crossover."

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Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.
--Francis of Assisi
    

Anal Grammar Nazi Foolishness

Tucson Weather Today

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Earth Day is now a day each year on which events are held worldwide to increase awareness and appreciation of the Earth's natural environment. Earth Day is now coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network and is celebrated in more than 175 countries every year.

The first Earth Day was held in April 1970, which was coincidentally the 100th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Lenin.

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For the last couple of days I have participated in an online discussion regarding the meaning of the term "Grammar Nazi." Some believe it to be pejorative and therefore an insult. Others accept it as being a badge of honor and indicative of one who valiantly wars against the improper usage of English words.

A few years back when I lived in North Palm Beach, Florida I answered a classified Help Wanted ad from a local book publisher that wished to hire a detail oriented proofreader. After a brief interview I was given a single page of typewritten text, a red pencil, and was told to proofread the page to the best of my ability. The time limit was thirty minutes.

Although I easily found and corrected most of the more flagrant punctuation violations, I failed miserably at identifying the many misuses of words. Such as:

1. " . . . the data shows . . ." [should be show, since data is plural not singular]

When I questioned the "data" thing, saying that due to popular usage, data has come to mean "the totality of data" which is singular -- well, I released a thunderstorm in that the job interviewer hotly told me that: "We expect our proofreaders to go by the book and correct ALL mistakes in grammar, and never to bow down to popular usage."

As you may have guessed, I did not get the job.

Ever since that time I have seen myself as having become a sort of domesticated grammar nazi.

There have been some who sneer at my tendency to correct their grammar mistakes, saying that English is a "living language" and is strengthened by changing the meanings of words by popular usage.

To which I say "CRAP!"

For example:

The word "unique" has always been defined as "one of a kind" -- not unusual, not strange, not exceptional -- and it therefore cannot be modified by degree. A unique object cannot be said to be "most unique" or "highly unique" just as it cannot be said to be "most one-of-a-kind" or "highly one-of-a-kind." But I hear it used that way often, especially by politicians, newscasters, and celebrities. Popular usage has denigrated it to the extent that the word's true meaning has almost disappeared. And that's sad. There is no other word to use in its place when one wishes to denote an object as being one of a kind.

And, if I am labeled a grammar nazi or an anal grammarian, all I can say is that I really don't care.

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WORD FOR TODAY

pejorative
adj.
Disparaging, belittling or derogatory.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Jack Nicholson

Born April 22, 1937

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Keep the church and state forever separate.
--Ulysses S. Grant

Hey Kids... What Day Is It?

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Tucson Weather Today

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Is today Good Friday?

Or is today Earth Day?

According to the Christian religion, the Friday before Easter Sunday is celebrated because on this day Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, was crucified to death.

According to the Earth Day Network Earth Day is celebrated by a billion people, making it the world's largest secular holiday.

The Word for This Day is gullible.

gullible
adjective
naive and easily deceived or tricked

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A while back I wrote about a Hormel pre-prepared, non-refrigerated meal sold in the grocery stores for a couple dollars that I really liked. Well, I still like it.

Heat in Microwave Oven or in Boiling Water

A delicious 200-calorie meal

I have no idea if this little tidbit is nutritionally sound or not... and I don't care. It tastes good. The flavor reminds me, believe it or not, of the chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy that my Grandma Morris used to fix for the family. And no, I am not joking. Try it, if you don't believe me, and I'll bet you'll like it too.

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"I try to be candid and level with people, and not purvey a bunch of horseshit."
--Richard Ford