Life Should Be Inspired Before It Has Expired

     

Tucson Weather Today

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While digitally paging through a myriad of blogs, I happened upon one that listed itself as filled with inspirational content. Not one of the declarations within was signed, so here is some of the inspirational wisdom I took away from it.

The only time it's too late to change yourself is when you're dead. Until then, you're simply making excuses or lying to yourself.

Determination today leads to success tomorrow.

Someone will always be prettier.
They will always be smarter.
Their house will be bigger.
They will drive a better car.
Their children will do better in school.
And their husband will fix more things around the house.
So let it go,
and love you and your circumstances.
Think about it.
The prettiest woman in the world can have hell in her heart.
And the most highly favored
Woman on your job may be unable to have children.
And the richest woman you know,
she's got the car, the house, the clothes....might be lonely.
And the word says if "I have not Love, I am nothing."
So, again, love you.
Love who you are.
Look in the mirror in the morning and smile and say
"I am too blessed to be stressed and too anointed to be disappointed!"
"Winners make things happen.
Losers let things happen."
"To the world you might be one person,
but to one person you just might be the world".

There were more, many more  -- but that's enough for now.

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TRIVIA

Napoleon III suffered from ailurophobia - which is a fear of cats.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day, July 31, 1975,Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa was reported missing in Detroit, Michigan. He was last seen alive in a parking lot outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant the previous afternoon. To this day, Hoffa's fate remains a mystery, although many believe that he was murdered by organized crime figures.

Authorities have never been able to confirm what really happened to Hoffa. He was declared legally dead in 1982.

The latest search for the remains of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa ended on Wednesday, July 24, 2013 in a field near Detroit, where federal agents had dug with heavy equipment and shovels for three days in the hope of answering the decades old question, "Whatever happened to Jimmy Hoffa?"

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WORD FOR TODAY

inspiration
noun
1. an inspiring or animating action or influence: I cannot write poetry without inspiration.
2. something inspired, as an idea.
3. a result of inspired activity.
4. a thing or person that inspires.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Dean George Cain

(born July 31, 1966)

Dean Cain is an American actor. He is most widely known for his role as Clark Kent/Superman in the popular American television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Zelda Rae Williams

(born July 31, 1989)

Zelda Williams is an American actress and the daughter of actor and comedian Robin Williams. Her father stated that she was named after Princess Zelda of The Legend of Zelda series of video games. Acting professionally, her first big role was that of Melissa Loggia, the main character's teenage love interest in the 2004 film House of D. In 2007, she was chosen as one of People Magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People

Wesley Trent Snipes

(born July 31, 1962)

Wesley Snipes is an American actor, film producer, and martial artist, who has starred in numerous films, including action thrillers and dramatic features. Snipes is known for playing the Marvel Comics character Blade in the Blade film trilogy, among various other high-profile roles.

In 2010, Snipes began serving a three-year prison sentence in McKean County, Pennsylvania for misdemeanor failure to file U.S. federal income tax returns. He was released from prison in 2013.

 Joanne "Jo" Rowling

(born July 31, 1965),

J. K. Rowling is a British novelist, best known as the author of the Harry Potter fantasy series. Since, Rowling has parted with her agency and resumed writing for adult readership, releasing the tragicomedy The Casual Vacancy (2012) and -- using the pseudonym Robert Galbraith --the crime fiction novel The Cuckoo's Calling (2013) which, according to Rowling, is the first of a series. 

Note: The Writer's Almanac has a nice write-up about J.K. Rowling today.  When I was reading it early this morning, I noticed the following sentence: "It took J.K. Rowling awhile to find a publisher for her novel..." and I thought, 'Is that correct English grammar, using the word 'awhile' instead of the two word form, 'a while?' I haven't looked it up yet. But I will.

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You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
--Jack London

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

   

Of Some Interest To Me

     

Tucson Weather Today

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Just after I stepped outside yesterday to begin my morning walk I beheld a hummingbird flitting from flower to flower about three feet in front of me, so I slipped my camera from my pocket and set the zoom to maximum and snapped two separate shots. I was shooting into the sun and the bird was zaggily zipping to and fro, and I am not a professional photographer, so the results were far from satisfactory.

But the pics came out just as my old eyes actually see things.

That's weird.

This Is How I See Things At My Age

And So Is This

I take a lot of pictures with my little camera. Sometimes the photo will turn out well. Other times it will not. Most of them are a bit out of focus. Sometimes they are a lot out of focus. That's how I have come to see (and remember) nearly all of the personal events in this life.

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The Oxford Dictionary says the marriage definition will change to include gay people. The world's most renowned dictionary of the English language has said they are looking into how same-sex couples marrying in England and Wales will affect the word marriage.

LINK

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I read a poem at The Writer's Almanac titled The Day I Die by Krista Lukas. And I thought it was a fine way to contemplate the inevitable.

Check it out.

LINK

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Using data from a NASA satellite, scientists have discovered a massive particle accelerator in the heart of one of the harshest regions of near-Earth space, a region of super-energetic, charged particles surrounding the globe and known as the Van Allen radiation belts. "These new results go a long way toward answering the questions of where and how particles are accelerated to high energy," said Mona Kessel, Van Allen Probes program scientist in Washington.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., built and operates the twin Van Allen Probes for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Van Allen Probes are the second mission in NASA's Living With a Star program, managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The program explores aspects of the connected sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society.

For more information about the Van Allen Probes, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/vanallenprobes

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TRIVIA

Birds have the right of way on all Utah highways.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

Seeking to form an independent and more efficient investigative arm, in 1908  U.S. Attorney General Charles Bonaparte, head of the Department of Justice, hired 10 former Secret Service employees to join an expanded Office of the Chief Examiner Stanley W. Finch. The date when these agents reported to duty, July 26, 1908, is celebrated as the genesis of the FBI.

By March 1909, the force included 34 agents, and Attorney General George Wickersham, Bonaparte's successor, renamed it the Bureau of Investigation. In 1935 it became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Interesting details about the FBI can be found HERE

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WORD FOR TODAY

conglomerate
noun
1. A corporation made up of a number of different companies that operate in diversified fields.
2. A collected heterogeneous mass; a cluster: a city-suburban conglomerate; a conglomerate of color, passion, and artistry.
3. (Geology) A rock consisting of pebbles and gravel embedded in cement.
adjective
1. Gathered into a mass; clustered.
2. (Geology) Made up of loosely cemented heterogeneous material.

A conglomerate is a combination of two or more corporations engaged in entirely different businesses that fall under one corporate group, usually involving a parent company and many subsidiaries. Often, a conglomerate is a multi-industry company. Conglomerates are often large and multinational.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Sandra Annette Bullock

(born July 26, 1964)

Sandra Bullock is an American actress and producer. Bullock rose to fame in the 1990s after roles in successful films such as Demolition Man (1993), Speed (1994), The Net (1995), While You Were Sleeping (1995), A Time to Kill (1996), and Hope Floats (1998). In the new millennium, she appeared in Miss Congeniality (2000), The Lake House (2006), and Crash (2004).

In 2007, she was ranked the 14th richest woman in the entertainment industry with an estimated fortune of $85 million, and one of the biggest movie stars in the world

Kevin Spacey

(born July 26, 1959)

Kevin Spacey is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and producer. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s, culminating in his first Academy Award for The Usual Suspects (Best Supporting Actor), followed by a Best Actor Academy Award win for American Beauty (1999). His other starring roles in Hollywood include Seven, L.A. Confidential, Pay It Forward, K-PAX, and Superman Returns. He currently stars in the Netflix series House of Cards.

Susan Melody George

(born 26 July 1950)

Susan George is an English film and television actress, film producer and Arabian horse breeder. Her most notable roles include those of "Amy Sumner" in Straw Dogs (1971) with Dustin Hoffman, and as "Mary Coombs" in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry (1974), with Peter Fonda. In the early 1970s. Her lighter side was apparent in some of her TV appearances, such as in an episode (The Gold Napoleon) of The Persuaders (1971) with Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. In 1988, George marked her film producing debut with Stealing Heaven.

Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger

(born 26 July 1943)

Mick Jagger is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones.

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A great company in the media business needs visionary leaders, not a conglomerate structure headquartered in Columbus Circle that second guesses.
--Carl Icahn

NASA TV
   

Education Here And There

Actual 4th Grade Science Quiz At A South Carolina School 

 Read more at Snopes

I first encountered the unbelievably stupid quiz pictured above HERE on one of my favorite science blogs, Bad Astronomy, written by By Phil Plait.

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope data and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. His two books are Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax" and Death from the Skies! These Are the Ways the Universe Will End. He has also written dozens of magazine articles and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.

Phil Plait

Bad Astronomy

Separation

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My maternal grandparents were both born during the late 19th century on farms in the low hills of Southern Indiana, near the Ohio River which is the Indiana/Kentucky border. The farm folks in that region had a peculiar dialect all their own. Regular nouns and proper nouns that ended in an "uh" sound, such as "Indiana" were pronounced instead with an "ee" sound: Indian-ee Therefore, my grandfather's name, Otha, became "Oth-ee" while his wife (my grandmother) whose name was Huldah, was called "Huld-ee" and Aunt Ada answered to "Aid-ee." You get the idea, right?

Well, anyway, these were deeply religious Christians and loved to read me Bible Stories when I was an innocent, trusting, naive little child, and my one of my favorite stories was titled Noah's Ark, which, of course, they pronounced, "Noh-ee's Ark" -- which to my tiny tot's untrained ear was rendered as "Noise-Ark" and that made perfect sense to me since I imagined a boat filled with bleating, squealing, trumpeting, and roaring animals would be deafeningly loud with NOISE indeed.

Believe it or not, for most of my youthful years, this Bible Story remained always, to me, Noise-Ark.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day, May 9 in 1924, J. Edgar Hoover was named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI). By the end of the year he was officially promoted to director. This began his 48-year tenure in power, during which time he personally shaped American criminal justice in the 20th century.

Hoover approved of illegally infiltrating and spying on the American Civil Liberties Union. His spies could be found throughout the government, even in the Supreme Court. He also collected damaging information on the personal lives of civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr.

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WORD FOR TODAY

parable [pehr-uh-buhl]
noun
-  a short allegorical story designed to illustrate or teach some truth, religious principle, or moral lesson.
-  a statement or comment that conveys a meaning indirectly by the use of comparison, analogy, or the like.

A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or (sometimes) a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human characters. It is a type of analogy.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Nancy Walker
(May 10, 1922 - March 25, 1992)

 Nancy Walker was an American actress and comedienne of stage, screen, and television. She was also a film and television director (most notably of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, on which she also made several acting guest appearances). During her five-decade long career, she may be best remembered for her long-running role of Ida Morgenstern, who first appeared on several episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and later became a prominent recurring character on the spinoff series Rhoda.

Gary Owens
(born May 10, 1936)

Gary Owens is an American disc jockey and voice actor. His polished baritone speaking voice generally offers deadpan recitations of total nonsense, which he frequently demonstrated as the announcer on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

Ellen Lauri Ochoa
(born May 10, 1958)

Ellen Ochoa is a former astronaut. Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman in the world to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the shuttle Discovery in 1993. She is the current Director of the Johnson Space Center. Ochoa became director of the center upon retirement of the current director, Michael Coats, on December 31, 2012

Fred Astaire
(May 10, 1899 - June 22, 1987)

Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz) was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer, musician and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.

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"In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."
--Jay Gould

Tucson Weather Today

4-6-13

     

Tucson Weather Today


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Since I missed Thursday night's opening of the new TV series, Hannibal, I used Hulu to play it on my computer. Where there's a will  there's a way.

Did I like it? Well, it's going to take a few more episodes before I can know that. The role of FBI criminal profiler Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy, fit my mental picture of the man to a T. The part of Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) seems to work... so far, anyway.

One strike against the show's casting, however, became apparent immediately; Laurence Fishburne as Dr. Jack Crawford, head of Behavioral Sciences at the FBI in the part is a monumental mistake. An overweight black man sporting one of those stupid little patches of hair below his lip is too far afield from the earlier depictions of Crawford. Especially the Jack Crawford that appeared in Silence of the Lambs. Suspension of disbelief only carries one so far.

So, did I like it? Will I continue to follow it each Thursday?  Who knows?

Time will tell.

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1917

On April 6, 1917, two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorsed the decision by a vote of 373 to 50, and the United States formally entered the First World War.

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WORD FOR TODAY

redundant
Adjective
-  No longer needed or useful; superfluous.
 -  (of words or data) Able to be omitted without loss of meaning or function.
Synonyms
unnecessary - needless - excessive

Redundancy, in linguistics means the construction of a phrase that presents some idea using more information, often via multiple means, than is necessary for one to be able to understand the idea.

In rhetoric, an unnecessary or unessential (sometimes unintentional) repetition of meaning, using different and dissimilar words that effectively say the same thing twice.

In Pleonasm, the use of more words or word-parts than is necessary for clear expression.

Note: Pleonasm examples are black darkness, or burning fire.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS


William December "Billy Dee" Williams, Jr.
(born April 6, 1937)

 American actor, artist, singer, and writer best known for playing the character of Lando Calrissian in the movies Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.

John Deszo Ratzenberger

(born April 6, 1947)

American actor, voice actor, and entrepreneur. He is best known for his role as Cliff Clavin in Cheers and his recurring supporting cast roles in Pixar films.

Mary Lucy Denise "Marilu" Henner
(born April 6, 1952)

 American actress, producer and author. She is best known for her role as Elaine O'Connor Nardo on the sitcom Taxi from 1978 to 1983.

Merle Ronald Haggard
(born April 6, 1937)

 American country music song writer, singer, guitarist, fiddler, and instrumentalist. He is perhaps most remembered for "Okie From Muskogee".

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Good FBI officers are not noticeable. You would never look at them.
--Ridley Scott

What Are Holidays For?

About Presidents' Day

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Internet Shutdown?

Will the FBI shut down the Internet on March 8

because of computer virus concerns? Is this real?

Could be. I suppose.

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BORN ON THIS DAY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Cindy Crawford

Entrepreneur

born February 20, 1966

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Tucson Weather Today

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Bobby Unser

three time winner
Indianapolis 500

born February 20, 1934

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A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.
George Bernard Shaw

Bric-A-Brac

Tucson Weather Today

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The Rensselaer Adventures blog contained the following revelation: "Today the Rensselaer paper reported in the Arrest Log of someone arrested by the Jasper County Sheriff's Office and charged with "wreckless driving."

Was that an accidental typo? Or was it done on purpose?

Naw . . . they're not that clever.

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY

George Stephanopoulos

Born February 10, 1961

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Curation is a word I don't remember ever having heard or known about before today. According to Wikipedia it can mean: Digital curation, the preservation and maintenance of digital assets.

Curation may also be:

- The work performed by a curator
- Archiving, historical record keeping
- Evidence management, indexing and cataloguing of evidence
- Cultural heritage management, conservation of cultural sites and resources
- Healing, medical curing of illness

Curation, huh? Well, live and learn.


By the way . . .

Did you know that George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both the Nobel Prize for Literature and an Oscar?

George Bernard Shaw

Born: 26-Jul-1856

Died: 2-Nov-1950

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Steve Jobs FBI File Reveals Bomb Threat, 'Tendency To Distort Reality' -- and More.

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Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.
--Robert A. Heinlein