Facts and Factoids for the Start of Fall 2011

Today, I'm taking a break from my daily blog (http://joesquicknews.blogspot.com/) to bring vital information to the attention of those who have nothing better to do but read my blogs.  Believe it or not, there are a few of you out there who read these blurbs and some actually feel the need to needle me about stuff I publish.. and I love you for it.  And to those in China and Japan who send me comments.. thank you.. however, I am, as of yet, unable to read Chinese or Japanese, but I enjoy gazing at the written characters.

1.  Burning Question

Elaine and I were in the Elkton, Maryland area the other day, and we remembered that a few years ago, lots of "Northerners" took trips to Elkton to get a "quickie marriage."  The reason given was because Maryland did not require a blood test with a waiting period before getting a marriage license and Elkton was just over the Mason-Dixon line.. and a short hop for New Yorkers and other Yankees.

Question:  Why did some States require the results of a recent blood test before granting a marriage license?

My reading of information found on the Internet tells me this:

Blood tests were instituted to ensure that the parties did not have syphllis.  Only Mississippi and Montana still require blood tests.

In a Supreme Count case: Meister v. Moore (1877).. it was "ruled" (?) that it is illegal for any state to mandate any form of marriage license or ceremony, and (technically) all states must recognize "common law marriage."

Interesting.. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know if I'm interpreting this information correctly or not.

2.  It was a very good year..

Y'all know that I'm an old dude.  I was born in 1934.  Imagine that!

The famous movie star, Alan Ladd, graduated from Hollywood High School in 1934.

Mr. Ladd was 5'7" and when he played parts with tall leading ladies, he had to stand on an overturned box.  He was also blond. I related to Alan because I was also 5'7" and blond.  However, not being a movie star, I didn't have to stand on a box when kissing my tall girl friend.

One of my favorite Alan Ladd movies is: Shane!  If you haven't seen it.. see it!  It's great fun.

3.  More on 1934..

In a Public Auction Notice from 2009.. as part of a list of household items being auctioned off:

"1934 bedroom suit with chair, stool, night stand and dresser used about 50 times"

I'll bet there is an interesting story there.

4.  Don't forget hubby...

IKEA has announce a "Play Place for Men".. this is a location near the front of the store, where ladies can drop off their husbands or boyfriends, while they shop without distraction.  The ladies are outfitted with a buzzer system, which will go off if they try to exit the store without their male companions.

5.  The Great Satan!

Yesterday, Iran's (also short) President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his expected United Nations rant against the United States and it's allies.  Remember last year, he accused the U.S. of staging the 9/11 attacks to support Israel's survival in the Middle East.

I wonder if he mentioned Iran's latest wonderful accomplishment:  the banning of squirt guns.

6.  Dick Cheney's Book

I'm reading Dick Cheney's book In My Time.  I'll be giving my opinions about the book in a future blog entry.. but for now, just let me cite a 1970's quote by California Congresman Don Edwards, as reported in The Nation magazine:

"Congress...must be vigilant to the perils of the subversive notion that any public official, the president or a policeman, possesses a kind of inherent power to set the Constitution aside whenever he thinks the public interest or "national security" warrants it.  That notion is the essential postulate of tyranny."

7.  Not Torture?

The Week magazine reported in 2008 that a Utah salesman sued his former employer for waterboarding him during a team-building exercise.  The boss is alleged to have said to his salesmen:  "You saw how hard C... fought for air.  I want you to go back inside and fight that hard to make sales!"

8.  No more fat mice...

Georgetown University researcher Zofia Zukowska reported back in 2007 that by injecting an NPY-blocking agent into the fat bellies of mice, the mice started to become skinny again... she said:  "It just melts the fat!"  Apparently the stuff called NPY* increases fat deposits.. so anything that blocks NPY would be a good thing.

I've tried to read some of the voluminous current Internet entries for Zofia, but I'm still not sure yet how far she has gone with her work on fat mice, and how it applies to humans.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could just take our fat buns down to the Doctor's office, get our injections and not have to worry about diet anymore?

*(Internet sources say, kind of, that NPY  or Neuropeptide Y,  is a 36 amino acid peptide neurotransmitter found in the brain and the autonomic nervous system.  It causes increased food intake and  decreased physical activity, and it stores energy as fat.)

9.  Factoid #1.  Suicide

Over 300 people have jumped to death from the top of Notre Dame in Paris.  I guess these would be very religious people, otherwise they would be jumping off of the much higher Eiffel Tower.

10.  Factoid #2.  Make nice nice

That marvelous radio show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me reports that sharks can be taught to cuddle!

11.  Factoid #3.  Baby Blues.

Blue Whale babies get a ton of very rich milk every day which helps them grow at a rate of 90 pounds a  day.  The 3 tons of krill that they eat each day also helps in that growth.

BTW: the tongue of a full-grown blue whale weighs the same as an African elephant!

12.  GBS was right.

Just as speech purists deride the outrageous use of "like and "I mean"  and "you know" .. another unwanted phrase has entered into everyday American English. 

For years, when one said "Thank You!", the proper response was "You're Welcome!"

Now, you are just  as likely to hear "No Problem!"  What is this world coming to!  Call the speech police!   H.L. Mencken must be rolling over in his grave.

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Another Hot Week

Even though this was another hot and muggy week, with violent thunder storms, it was a "cool" week for the Social Security Alumni Association in Maryland.

A nice group met at Bullock's Rt 32 for the Carroll County Social Security Alumni Chapter on Monday.

A larger than usual group met at the Windsor Inn for the Baltimore Chapter on Tuesday.

On Thursday, I represented the Social Security Alumni Association as its President for the opening of the Social Security Museum and the festivities for the 75th Anniversary of the Social Security Act. I'll be writing about this in my SSAA Blog.

Meanwhile, let me mention a few "interesting" things that I heard or read about recently.

01. By the book: Efficient New York City traffic workers would not allow a King Tut's tomb artifact, namely, an ancient vehicle, to enter the city.. because.. it did not have a "vehicle identification number."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyid=128973450

02. A lot to learn: Researchers say that we have 250,000 known species and another 1,000,000 unknown species in the world's oceans. (Not counting the one billion unknown bacteria species.) The richest areas to look for these unknown non-bacteria species are thought to be around Australia and Japan, and many species probably live in mud or on reefs.

A recently found "unknown" is called a "Dragon Fish" which has teeth on it's tongue.

03. That little squirt! A 28 year old Maryland resident has finally been caught after squirting sperm on several persons in Gaithersburg grocery stores and malls. Maybe he thinks he's an unknown species of fish.

04. Methuselah? A global warming expert stated this week: "...a rate of (animal) extinction that we haven't seen for millions and millions of years." Does he have a Hubble-type telescope with very close resolution?

05. Another opportunity for short people. The French Gendarmerie (police) have started to hire people under 5'3". Was this a change because they wanted to hire more females.. although in the US, females seem to be usually taller than that these days. Or, maybe it is another boon to short people that has been pushed by Sarkozy?

I've mentioned before.. researchers have determined that Napoleon might have been 5'6"... the same height of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini.

By the way, new documents have been found in Scotland that indicate in 1919 a Scotsman saved a young Hitler from being stomped to death by a mob. !

06. Sarah quote: I hadn't heard about this one until I read it this week. "When are they going to ramp up drilling?" Did she really say that? Was it before the BP spill?

07. Mad man? The advertising guy who gave us "Don't squeeze the Charmin" is now pushing for "Meatless Mondays". He feels that it will be a healthful move for our obese society. I believe he has already gotten Johns Hopkins University interested in the concept, and some Baltimore schools are removing meat from their menus for Mondays.

http://www.meatlessmonday.com/

08. Brains. Someone showed me an article from 2008 that mentioned that two pygmy sperm whales got caught up in a low water pool in New Zealand and couldn't figure out how to get out of it... before they could become beached, a local bottlenose dolphin, named Moko, found a deep water part of the pool and guided the whales through it and out into deep water.

09. Scandinavian criminals? JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association has an article about common sense sunbathing that tries to show that blonds and people from northern countries with minimal sun may develop criminal tendencies when they move to high sun areas. Since I am not an MD, I may have misread the article.

10. Self-mutilation: Some of you may have seen a picture of Elaine Davidson who is reputed to be "the most pierced woman in Scotland"... and from the looks of it, probably the world. Check it out.

http://www.elainedavidson.co.uk/

11. Seinfeld? A piece of the Peterman Glacier broke off this week. It is four times the size of Manhattan. Doesn't that add any credence to the Global Warming theory? How many ice cubes would that make? Perhaps one of the Arab leaders could get it towed to their land.. wasn't that done once before? Or did I read that in a story by Mark Twain?

http://open.salon.com/blog/rick_spilman/2010/08/07/huge_ice_island_calves_from_greenlands_peterman_glacier

12. Not Here! The Museum of Tolerance has stated that they do not want the Ground Zero mosque to be built.

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Another dozen

01. Red Hat Club Ancest0r: In 1969, I established the Red Tie Club at the Social Security Administration. At our peak, we had 29 members who vowed that they would wear a red tie on Fridays. If not, they had to buy coffee and doughnuts for all of the other members. (Several guys would forget each week, but it wasn't very hard on the pocketbook because you could get a coffee and a sticky bun for 15 cents in those days.)

Remember.. this was 40 years ago and office workers had to wear neckties. This was a bad time for lungs because smoking was allowed everywhere. It always stunk to high heaven and one had to work in a haze of smog. However, we were used to it and didn't worry about it too much.

Once in the 1970's I decided that it was too stinky in my branch, so I shipped one of my smokiest sections into what I thought was a vacant storage room. That way, those guys could puff away to their heart's content without bothering anybody else. Or so I thought.

As soon as my guys were settled and began to light up, they noticed a rustling that seemed to be coming from what we thought were empty cartons piled up in the far corner of the room. It turned out to be the location of a programmer who hated smoking and who had made himself an office out of empty boxes. We had no idea he lived there. But, overwhelmed with the new smokiness, he soon moved out for parts unknown.

(Incidentally, this gentleman turned out to be the world's foremost expert on Esperanto, the international language. I've talked about this in other blogs.)

02. Big Bite! Scientists have found evidence of a giant Sperm Whale in the Australian desert. I have to check this out. The teeth are purported to be 4' long.. in a 50' body. Supposedly, this leviathan was not Mr. Niceguy. I believe that part of the discovery's name will honor Herman Melville (my hero.)

03. Watch out! The National Federation of the Blind and Virginia Tech are working on a project to allow blind people to drive. There already are some assistive devices related to that:

DriveGrip.. vibrating gloves that signal when and where to turn.

AirPix.. Paper with holes through which compressed air is sent to inform a driver as to what is around the vehicle.

04. Directions: One true thing about the village I live in, there is only one road out. Ordinarily this doesn't pose a problem, but the other day a jogger hailed me and asked if he were going in the right direction to get out of the village. I said "no" and explained the layout to him. He said "thanks" and went off in the wrong direction. I accosted him and told him he was going in the wrong direction. He said "OK" and continued in the same wrong direction. I gave up. Elaine says "that is just like a man."

05. Spies? I wonder if any of my neighbors are Russian spies. If they have operatives planted in the US.. we must have some as well. Spygate? I guess it is just another source of income for American citizens. I wonder what secret documents they xeroxed or photographed from their time in the PTA or the local Baptist Church.

06. Abdication: Larry King is retiring after 25 years in the media. Will Jeraldo take his place? Maybe now he can become a Russian spy like his neighbors.

07. Damn Alkie Wino: I am under my cardiologist's orders to have two alcoholic beverages per day. It's supposed to help my heart. So, in a week, if I drink only beer.. there will be 14 bottles in my recycling bin. If wine, maybe 3 or 4 bottles of wine. Anyway, last week the recycling pickup didn't show up for a few days.. so the booze evidence increased until it looked like all we drink is alcoholic beverages. So what.. who cares what the neighbors think. Besides Lutherans like to drink beer.

Once, on vacation in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, I was out blogging on recycling pickup day and I noticed that every bin was filled with empty wine bottles of a certain fairly expensive red wine type. At first I thought that the liquor store must have had a fantastic sale. Then I thought that this many people can't all drink the same kind of wine. Then I realized that this was probably all from the same wino. His bin was full, so he decided to fill up his neighbors' bins. .. ok.. like I said before.. who cares?

08. Great idea: Someone is marketing Bridal Diapers. Who needs them? I guess it depends on how strong a Bride's bladder is.

09. Style: An upbeat 69 year old Wonder Woman will now dress in stretch pants. About time.

10. Baltimorese: John Goodspeed of the Baltimore Sun published a dictionary of the dialect spoken in Baltimore, Maryland. Look at a few of the entries:

Clays: clothes
Everythink: everything
Flares: flowers
Koor: car
Nayo: no
Urshter: oyster
Zinc: sink

11. Job openings: Britain is advertising for Bikini mud wrestlers.

12. Hairy lip? A German study has found that female fish like male fish best if they have a kind of mustache. Clark Gablefish.

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Sweet Tweet?

Great news! Babies can now tweet using a new device called a "Twaddler", according to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Roy Blount says that mothers can now proudly tell their friends: "He did his first Tweet today!"

In other news, I learned that house licking by cows is not covered by some Home Owner's Insurance policies.

And the State of Wisconsin has named a State Microbe: Lactococcus Lactis. This is the microbe that helps make, of course, cheese.

Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me is a great show and one can increase one's knowledge about many subjects by listening to it. There was even some info about global warming:

Lobsters and crabs are growing larger because of it.

Whale voices are lowering because of it.

... And I'm not just "hanging noodles on your ears." (That's Russian for "pulling your leg.")

Those of you who accidently bump into some of my blogs know about the famous outlaw who changed his name to Joe Vaughan and moved to Arkansas to found a big family. Well, one of my policemen friends sent me an article about another Joe Vaughan, an ironmonger who founded the Deep Creek Furnace and the Nanticoke Forge in Delaware. As a Colonel during the Revolutionary War, he had his troops hold their ground and avoid defeat by the British, for which he was named the "Iron Man".

By the way, there are still some openings in the Joe Vaughan Fan Club. Let me know if you want to join. I haven't been actively recruiting for a few years now, but my original members are still involved. (For those who don't know about the Joe Vaughan Fan Club.. it is a club in which I, Joe Vaughan, am your fan, not necessarily the other way around.)

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