Never Let Zeal Outrun True Charity

    
NASA TV

Tucson Weather Today


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I've heard that John Lennon once said,  "I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people."

 You know what? I envy him for saying that, for believing that, and for living that way, for living as much as is possible according to his beliefs.

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Do you give to charities? Which ones?

I discovered an online listing of really, really bad charities that should more properly be called agents for legal thievery.

It's titled, America’s Worst Charities

The 50 worst, ranked charities by money blown on soliciting costs.

Totals are from the latest 10 years of available federal tax filings. Even a rapid reading of this list will probably blow your mind.

America’s Worst Charities is the result of a yearlong collaboration between the Tampa Bay Times and the California-based Center for Investigative Reporting, the nation’s largest and longest serving nonprofit newsroom dedicated to watchdog journalism. CNN joined the partnership in March 2013.
Last updated 06/15/2013

LINK

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TRIVIA

Winston Churchill was born in a ladies' room during a dance.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day, June 21 in 1964 Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney were killed by a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob near Meridian, Mississippi. The three young civil rights workers were working to register black voters in Mississippi, thus inspiring the ire of the local Klan. The deaths of Schwerner and Goodman, white Northerners and members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), caused a national outrage.

Ku Klux Klan

On the forty-first anniversary of the three murders, June 21, 2005, Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter. The 80 year old Killen, known as an outspoken white supremacist and part-time Baptist minister, was sentenced to 60 years in prison.


More details

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WORD FOR TODAY

pretty
adjective
-  pleasing or attractive to the eye, as by delicacy or gracefulness: a pretty face.
-  pleasing to the ear: a pretty tune.
-  pleasing to the mind or aesthetic taste: He writes pretty little stories.
adverb
-  fairly or moderately: Her work was pretty good.
-  quite; very: The wind blew pretty hard.

According to Grammarphobia --The word 'pretty' used as an adverb isn’t dialectal, regional, or confined to speech. It’s been standard English since the 1500s. It is common in informal speech and writing, but is neither rare nor wrong in serious discourse.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Prince William Arthur Philip Louis 

(born June 21, 1982)

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, is the elder son of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Charles, Prince of Wales, and third-eldest grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. He is second in the line of succession, behind his father, to the thrones of sixteen independent sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, The Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Prince William married his longtime girlfriend, Catherine Middleton, on 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey.

Mary Loretta "Mariette" Hartley
(born June 21, 1940)

Mariette Hartley is an American character actress. Hartley began her film career with Ride the High Country (1962), a western with actors Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea. In 1962, she appeared in an episode of CBS's Gunsmoke. She was cast in an episode of the Jack Lord adventure/drama series about the rodeo circuit, Stoney Burke, and had a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie in 1964.

In the 1963-64 television season, she appeared in an episode of ABC’s drama about college life, Channing and in two episodes of NBC's The Virginian. In 1963, she was cast as the character Hagar in "The Day of the Misfits" of the ABC western series, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, starring child actor Kurt Russell in the title role. and in 1966, she appeared as Polly Dockery in the series finale, "A Burying for Rosey", of ABC's The Legend of Jesse James. She also made three guest appearances on NBC's Bonanza, one in 1965 (“Right is the Fourth R”), another one in 1968 (“The Survivors”), and the last one in 1970 (“Is There any Man Here?”).

She appeared in way too many other films to list here.

Michael Gross
(born June 21, 1947)

Michael Gross is an American television, movie, and stage actor who plays both comedic and dramatic roles. His most notable roles are as the father Steven Keaton from Family Ties and the Graboid hunter Burt Gummer from the Tremors franchise.

Meredith Ann Baxter
(born June 21, 1947)

Meredith Baxter, also known for some years as Meredith Baxter-Birney, is an American actress and producer. She is best known for her acting roles including three television series: Family (1976 - 1980), an ABC television-network drama, Family Ties (1982–1989), an NBC television network situation comedy, and Dan Vs. (2011–present), a situation comedy on The Hub television-network.

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If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
--Lao Tzu

NASA TV

    

Figures Of Speech

    

Tucson Weather Today

 

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The daily news, whether brought to our eyes and ears by radio, television, newsprint, or by way of the Internet has become more than merely a transport of actual events from doer to recipient. The story being told must new be exaggerated all out of proportion. This is necessary because unless it is made to appear as an earthdhaking or vital happening it will no the given any  attention, by me, by you, or be anyone else in today's jaded world.

One local TV newscaster I have finally stopped watching seems unable to express anything of any quantity without using the hyperbolic term tons -- tons of phone calls, tons of people, tons of objections.

Even the everyday people I run into day after day use exaggeration in their speech more often than one would imagine.

Here are some examples:

 

I’ve told you a million times
I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.
I have a million things to do.
I had a ton of homework.
He's as skinny as a toothpick.
They ran like greased lightning.
You could have knocked me over with a feather.
He's older than the hills.

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WORD FOR TODAY

hyperbole [hy-PUHR-buhl-ee]
noun
-  obvious and intentional exaggeration.
-  an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”

Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally.

Hyperboles are exaggerations to create emphasis or effect. As a literary device, hyperbole is often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. An example of hyperbole is: "The bag weighed a ton." Hyperbole makes the point that the bag was very heavy, though it probably doesn't actually weigh a ton.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote: "Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

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HISTORICAL CLIP

On March 4, 1966, the John Lennon comment "We're more popular than Jesus." first appeared in the London Evening Standard. In England, no one took much notice, perhaps because of a fundamental difference in religious outlook between Britain and America. But whatever the reason, it was only after the American press got hold of his words some five months later that the John Lennon comment erupted into a scandal that brought a semi-official end to the giddy phenomenon known as Beatlemania.

In their original context, Lennon's remarks were clearly meant not as a boast, but as a sardonic commentary on the waning importance of religion. "Christianity will go," Lennon said. "It will vanish and shrink....We're more popular than Jesus now."

A handful of Bible Belt disc jockeys took over, declaring Lennon's remarks blasphemous and vowing an "eternal" ban on all Beatles music, past, present and future.

"When they started burning our records... that was a real shock," said John Lennon years later. "I couldn't go away knowing I'd created another little piece of hate in the world. So I apologized."

At a press conference in Chicago, John explained: "I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion. I was not saying we are greater or better. I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I'm sorry I said it, really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. From what I've read, or observed, Christianity just seems to be shrinking, to be losing contact."

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Mark Twain, in Roughing It wrote:

“The first glance at the pillow showed me a repulsive sentinel perched upon each end of it--cockroaches as large as peach leaves--fellows with long, quivering antennae and fiery, malignant eyes. They were grating their teeth like tobacco worms, and appeared to be dissatisfied about something. I had often heard that these reptiles were in the habit of eating off sleeping sailors' toe nails down to the quick, and I would not get in the bunk any more. I lay down on the floor. But a rat came and bothered me, and shortly afterward a procession of cockroaches arrived and camped in my hair. In a few moments the rooster was crowing with uncommon spirit and a party of fleas were throwing double somersaults about my person in the wildest disorder, and taking a bite every time they stuck. I was beginning to feel really annoyed. I got up and put my clothes on and went on deck.

The above is not overdrawn; it is a truthful sketch of inter-island schooner life.”

The above piece has nothing to do with anything else in today's entry. Not overtly, anyway. But I liked it when I read it and felt like including it. And this is my blog so I can do what I want to do with it.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

 

Patricia Heaton

 

Born Mar. 4, 1958
Age: 54 years old

Patricia Helen Heaton is an American actress and producer. She is best known for portraying Debra Barone on the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond from 1996 to 2005, for which she won two Emmy Awards. Since September 2009, she has starred as Frances "Frankie" Heck on the ABC sitcom The Middle.

Adrian Zmed

 

Born Mar. 4, 1954
Age:  58 years old

Adrian George Zmed is an American television personality and film actor noted for the roles of "Johnny Nogerelli" in Grease 2 and "Officer Vince Romano" in the T.J. Hooker television series.

Paula Prentiss

 

Born Mar. 4, 1938
Age:  74 years old

Paula Prentiss is an American actress well known for her film roles in Where the Boys Are, Man's Favorite Sport?, The Stepford Wives, What's New Pussycat?, The Black Marble, and The Parallax View and her starring role in the television situation comedy He and She.

Knute Rockne

 

Born  March 4, 1888
Died March 31, 1931

Knute Kenneth Rockne was an American football player and coach, both at the University of Notre Dame. He is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. His biography at the College Football Hall of Fame calls him "without question, American football's most-renowned coach." A Norwegian American, he was educated as a chemist at the University of Notre Dame. He popularized the forward pass and made Notre Dame a major factor in collegiate football.

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Exaggeration misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive.
--Eliza Cook
    

A Biennium Is A Two-Year Period

This is Saturday and The Ides Of March is (are?) fast approaching. A time to beware -- or so I've been led to believe(if your name's Julius).

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Today's New Word

fomite:An inanimate object or substance, such as clothing, furniture, or soap, that is capable of transmitting infectious organisms from one individual to another.

Somewhere (I can't remember where) I read:

This word reminded me of the years I taught health both at the high school level and more recently at the university level. When considering communicable diseases we always addressed the 3Fs of transmission: Food, Feces, and Fomites! Most students understood infectious transmission via spoiled or infected food and, of course, through feces via sewage contaminated/polluted water or improper sanitation and lack of personal hygiene, but I always had to explain Fomites as being door knobs, unwashed plates, glasses, and utensils, etc. that can carry viral/bacterial particles and transmit them to unsuspecting recipients.

--Don Williams
Professor of Biology, Kansas City, Missouri

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Self Help Books, Tapes, DVDs, etc.

I was reading a blog entry regarding the subject of Self Help and in the appended 'comments' section, I found the following:

Finally, someone came forward and spoke on a topic that has bothered me for years. The self-help genre is the biggest money-scam out there. Writers of self-help realize the way to a best-seller dollar making big-time pay day is to write a book that over-sells and under-delivers. Every generation alive today, from the aging baby-boomer to the 20-somethings want instant fixes to whatever their own problem is.

EVERY problem is fixed by the same common thread: behavioral change. I hear people ask me all the time, "Why can't I.....? and I tell them it's because they look at the problem from a position of someone who has already lost: "Why can't I lose 10, 15, 20, pounds?, when they should be asking themselves, "How can I lose this weight?" We do not need books, CD, or DVD, with the title, "How to." We need only look in the mirror, and ask How can I...." and this is true of any problem we come up against. This is true in my own life, and it can be for you as well!

Just send me $9.99 and I'll tell you my secret. But if you act now, call within the next ten minutes and I'll tell you my secret a SECOND time for $16.99. That's right! Free, unsolicited advice told to you TWICE for only 16.99. Act now! Call Now: 1-800-555-0000. What are you waiting for? Call NOW!

That comment was supposed to be both informative and witty at the same time. In my opinion, it was.

And further . . .

"How many of you have self-help books?
Okay, that's your first problem.
You can't help yourself, because yourself sucks!"
--Billy Bob Thornton
School for Scoundrels

Hm. I wonder if I could sit down and write a successful Self-Help book. Why not? After all:

Life Is . . . A throw of the

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Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
--John Lennon