Some new stuff.. at least to me.

I learned a lot of fantastic information this week. Some of which I will outline here.

01. What's in a name? I apologize to this beautiful person for picking on her name, but somehow it makes me giggle, I don't know why, but I believe that there once was a stripper on the Baltimore infamous "Block" with the same name.

The AARP Sex and Relationship Expert is named Pepper Schwartz.


http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?id=52956


02. It had to happen: A heavy-set woman was charged extra in one of those fingernail salons for being too fat and endangering their chairs that are tested for only 200 pounds.


Many years ago, fellow Mensan, Marvin Grosswirth established an organization called Fat Pride. based on a book he wrote with the same name. Other such organizations were established over the years, but I think his was the first. Marvin wrote lots of interesting books and unfortunately, died of cancer at the age of 53. A man of great intellect, as well as great girth... which rhymes with his last name.. which means a "great innkeeper".. at least in the German dialect I know.

Anyway, Marvin felt that one should not be ashamed of being overeweight. Why on earth would one want to be a skinny-bones? (However, personally, I would like to be a little bit thinner.)

(Marvin also was in favor of beards.. at least on men. He felt that if one wore a beard, one should wear a real man's beard, not one of those "sissy beards" worn by some rock stars.)

http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL1346088A/Marvin_Grosswirth



03. Caution! Kevin Dayhoff, former mayor of Westminster, Maryland, in one of his interesting newspaper articles, mentions that in the 1960's, some traffic lights did not flash yellow, only red and green. I was around then, but I don't remember such lights in the places I lived. This probably confused children who thought that the traffic lights were Christmas decorations.


Among lots of other things, Kevin Dayhoff writes a journal called the New Bedford Herald. (It's not about New Bedford, Massachusetts, where I was born and brought up.)


http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/



04. Deep fat! Vendors at the upcoming Maryland State Fair will be selling lots of deep fat fried items, including Oreo cookies, Snicker Bars, Twinkies, Buckeyes (peanut butter and chocolate mixed), and even ice cream bars... but they will have to go a lot further in their plans to clog up Marylanders' arteries to top the Canadians. At an exhibition in Toronto, vendors are selling deep fat fried butter!



http://www.deepfatfryerspro.com/

05. It's a digital world all right. A street musician now has a card reader by his side. If you like his guitar music, you can give him a tip (donation) by swiping your credit card and keying in the amount you want to give him. (I wonder if he takes American Express.)

06. Mis-attribution. One of the few poems I ever learned was the one about a pelican:

A curious bird is the pelican,

His beak holds more than his belly can.

He can store in his beak,

Enough food for a week,

And I don't know how the devil he does it.

I have always attributed it to Ogden Nash.. it's the kind of stuff he wrote.

Well, I learned this week that I was wrong. The poem was written by newspaper humorist, Dixon Lanier Merritt, and goes like this:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His bill can hold more than his bellican.

He can hold in his beak,

Food enough for a week,

But I'm damned if I see how the hellican.

(Which one do you like?)

http://search.intelius.com/dixon-lanier-merritt

07. Ugh! A nutritionist who was interviewed on NPR said that shrimp imported from Thailand is "grown in dirty ponds." Think about that the next time you order scampi at your favorite restaurant.

08. Banana Bread: I love to bake banana bread! Sometimes I make it plain.. just bananas.. sometimes I add blueberries; sometimes I add walnuts; sometimes I add chocolate chips; sometimes I add butterscotch chips; sometimes I mix them all together.

A well-known local Carroll County humorist, with another interesting name, Cathy Drinkwater Better, writes a funny column in the Carroll Eagle. This week, she mentioned what goes on in her house when her husband finds real old bananas in the fridge. Of course, as anyone knows, you have to have real old bananas to make good banana bread. I'm probably one of the few men in the world who knows that the secret to delicious banana bread is old, black, mushy, gnat-infested bananas.

Elaine and I always laugh long and hard when we read her Sunday articles. She is a gifted story teller, and as I also learned this week, a well-known author, with a lot of books to her credit.

http://www.cathydrinkwaterbetter.com/

09. New word. The big-name dictionaries are adding a new word in their latest editions: bromance .. friendship between two men. I have a brother Joe, that I sometimes call BRO and a friend from early childhood named Bob, and we both often refer to each other as BRO. But of course, there is no "romance" there. There are lots of BRO- words, such as bromide, brocade, Bromo Seltzer, .... Broken = what Barbie's brother now calls Ken.. NBC's Tom Brokaw... etc etc

10. A Dog's Best Friend: I've mentioned this before, but some one of you may still never have heard of this great invention. It was dreamed up by the brother of Tony Shalhoub (you know... Mr. Monk!)

Yes, I'm talking a bout the Shapoopy.. better than a pooper-scooper.. it catches your dog's poop before it even hits the ground! Wow!

http://theshapoopie.com/

Have you heard the jingle?

www.televisiontunes.com/Family_Guy_-_Shapoopy.html

11. What would Johnie Cash do? I learned today that those automatic faucets that are now ubiquitous, will not work if you are wearing black. Imagine that.

12. An amazing author! Over the years, Tom Robbins has written a lot of thoughtful (weird) books. His latest is a children's book called B is for Beer.

Tom says that he ate so much mayonaise as a kid that his parents threatened to send him to the Mayo Clinic. ! He is the inventor of the Gin-Greasy.. which is a combination of gin and mayonaise. I don't think I'm going to try it.

Quote from Tom: "I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred." Whatever that means... I think I will put it into my email messages.

http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=25708

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Conversation

One of my favorite movies: The Wrong Box has an elderly character who likes to share facts with anyone who is nearby. At one point in the movie, he gets a chance to ride on a horse-drawn wagon for an hour, seated next to the driver.

As they enter the town, he breaks off his monologue and tells the driver that he would now be able to disembark. The driver, clearly battered and worn from his rider's incessant chatter, says: "Oh, would you?" (with an implied PLEASE!)

So it is with blogs. The good thing though, is that one can avoid visiting the site or one can block the writer's entries, at least on Facebook.

With that bit of off-hand advice, I will continue with my blog entry.

01. Death of another Icon: Dan Shorr passed away at 93 on Friday. I didn't always agree with his actions, but usually I agreed with his commentary. Besides, anyone on Nixon's Enemies List has to be someone I admire.

02. Hate Groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says that they are now tracking 23 organized extremist groups in Maryland. They also state that there are 1,753 active extremist groups in the U.S. Anti-immigrant groups have grown astronomically recently.

Let me ask one question related to immigration: If suddenly all illegal aliens were kicked out, who would pick our fruit and vegetables, clean the toilets in our fast food joints, or watch the children of our elected officials?

03. Gun control: Comic, Chris Rock says he has the solution to the "bearing arms" issue. "Bullets should cost $3,000 each." That way, only serious hunters would have them..and children and crooks might be deterred. What do you think?

04. Bliss. Jeremy Quinn, Mensan, says: "The beautiful thing about marriage is that you can wear your old, discolored shirt in front of her when it would embarass you no end should anyone else witness it."

05. Harvard grads? Massachusetts put out a list of the top 1,000 State tourist attractions.. but the list only showed 996 places, and some of them don't exist. (I'll have to look for New Bedford entries. A few years ago, I compiled my own list of about 100 places to go and things to do in the geater NB area. I would be glad to share it.)

06. Nature's Bounty. Last year, we discovered the Earthbox and grew lots of vegetables on our back deck. This year, we bought three more and are enjoying lots of delicious home-grown veggies, such as giant zuchini, giant cucumbers, tomatoes of all kinds, patti-pan squash, .. and even corn!
(Google Earthbox)

07. Toastmasters take note: Shakespeare wrote 31,959 speeches! (Could Bacon have done that?)

08. Mushrooms: The Crystal Falls, Michigan Humungus Fungus Fest will be held in August. I believe that they make a 10' x 10' mushroom pizza. (Is it true that there is a mushroom growing on 37 acres underground..that is 1,500 years old?)
http://www.humungusfungusfest.com/

09. Sarah sez: New word.. refudiate. Is this related to Elmer Fudd's dislike of Bugs?

10. The Bard: Sarah said that Shakespeare made up new words all the time..when he wasn't writing thousands of speeches. Mensa has a Special Interest Group (SIG) for Shakespeare lovers.. it's called Bardolatry and can be found on Facebook.

11. Jobs: Maybe we should move to Bell, California. Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me reports that the Bell City Manager is paid $787,000 and it's Police Chief is paid $457,000. I wonder what the salaries are for L.A., which probably has a rather larger population?

12. Burning Question: Is this the year twenty ten, two thousand ten, or two thousand and ten? (Answer, from Mensan Richard Lederer.. "twenty ten ... saves five letters, one syllable, and one word." I know, you are wondering why us guys with genius IQ's are spending time on this subject. I wonder too.)

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Ponder on this!

Yesterday, at the Doctor's office, I reaquainted myself with Harper's Magazine. I had forgotten what a great communications document it is. One of the features of the magazine is Harper's Index. Two items in that index "grabbed" me:

01. The estimated number of cars that it takes to produce as much co2 as a single cargo ship = 10,000! This estimate was attributed to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration in Juneau, Alaska.

Some time ago, I heard on National Public Radio that if all of the containers on just one cargo ship were placed on multi-wheeled trucks, and the trucks were lined up from the unloading dock in a line.. that line would extend (in Baltimore, Maryland's case) all the way to the start of the New Jersey turnpike!

I tried to calculate this myself.. I figured that the average container is 50 feet long and the front of the truck is 10 feet long. That means a length of 60 feet for each unit and if there were 1,000 units on the container ship... the total length would be 60,000 feet or only about 11 miles. The turnpike is a lot farther away than that. (40 miles?)

Maybe the length of the front of a truck is longer? Maybe the size of containers is greater than 50 feet? Maybe the number of containers on a ship is greater than 1,000? Maybe NPR made a
mistake? Maybe Joe Vaughan mis-heard? Could someone set me straight on this?

02. The Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, Scotland has estimated that there are 37,964 planets in the galaxy that are hospitable enough to support life as intelligent as human beings.

Who said that human beings are intelligent? (And don't put too much stock in IQ tests and LSAT scores. As a Mensa member for 30 years, I feel qualified to say that.)

I read that Catholic Bishops have been meeting lately to figure out what to do if life is found on other planets. I'm sure that they are reasoning that if God is all-powerful, He (or She) could place intelligent creatures anywhere he wants to in the universe.

(Did you hear the one about the Priest, the Minister and the Rabbi who set out in a space ship?)

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More Wait Wait Info from Nov 7, 2009

One learns so much from NPR's great show: Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! For instance, today I was amazed to learn this information:

01. The 7-11 stores will be selling their own brand of wine shortly. (As this was mentioned, the music in the background had what sounded like these lyrics: "I've got cheap wine, and free time...")

02. The hard hat was invented by Franz Kafka. (I find this utterly fantastic, but one should not be too surprised by anything that Mr. Kafka created.)

03. Someone somewhere has combined an MP3 player with a tazer.

04. Coco Krispies boxes boasted that the cereal could boost children's immunity. (But probably not to diabetes, someone said.) According to a television report last night, the company may have agreed to take the boast off the box.

05. According to a study, 22% of male texters are ending their messages with "hugs and kisses" symbols. (Cute!)

06. It was reported that a judge somewhere visited x-rated adult book stores hundreds of times recently. The judge said that he went to the store because they had such delicious chicken soup in their vending machine.

07. A Canadian study found that pregnant women who have a lot of morning sickness end up with babies with high IQ's. (Ok, fellow Mensa members, what do you think of that?)

08. Another study found that bad drivers are not to blame for their problems.. they inherited the traits from genes passed on from their parents.

09. In Germany, some inventive advertising person placed banners on flies legs and they displayed his messages as they flew about the audience.

10. South Korean cab drivers are now allowed to watch TV while they drive.

11. A woman called 911 to report that she was driving drunk. (or maybe to report all those cars that were driving on the wrong side of the freeway.)
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Tough Friday Crossword

Friday's (July 31, 2009) crossword puzzle in the Baltimore Sun (actually a syndicated L.A. Times puzzle) was a tough one. I had a lot of fun solving it. And I learned a lot of things in looking up (yes, I had to google some answers) things I had no idea about before.

Along the way, I came across a recipe for frittata (one of the answers). Frittata is an Italian omelet. So, for breakfast I used the recipe and Elaine and I "feasted", if I do say so myself.
The only thing missing was garlic. Elaine doesn't like it, but I love it.

The puzzle had a strange type of theme. X's replaced SK's in some of the answers and made for nice wordplay. This reminded me of my Concordance of X, my weird "work" that I tried to palm off on a con man. But, he was smarter than I was, and my opus remains unpublished. (I talked about this in an earlier blog.)

I also was reminded of a speech by Mercutio about "Queen Mab." (Shakespearean scholars take note.).

I found out that "Laugh-in" was campy instead of corny.

A place to unwind is a tub? I guess so.

There is a river in the Carolinas named PeeDee.

A hockey team lineup makes a hexad.

A Borneo swinger is an orang.

A Beatle wig was popular in the '60's. I don't remember that.

King Xerxes was a tough son of a gun.

Fellow Mensan Jean Auel wrote The Clan of the Cave Bear. I didn't remember that the heroine's name was Ayla.

I forgot that "a sitcom set in a garage" had to be Taxi. (One of my favorite TV shows, probably because I drove a cab for a couple of years in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The least paying of any of the many jobs I have had in my lifetime, but one of the most interesting.)

I was reminded of a folk singer named Nanci Griffith.

After I solved the puzzle, I went out to one of the sites that write about each day's puzzles and their solutions. Very interesting. If you ask me to, I will supply the website addresses. There is a whole Crossword Puzzle sub-culture out there. I love it and my brain does to.
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Brain Fitness

Massachusetts General Hospital is in the forefront of research in Mental Fitness. In their latest newsletter: Mind, Mood and Memory they discuss ways to keep your mind sharp as you grow older.

Until recently, scientists thought that the adult mind was unchangeable... now, it is known that the brain can make new cells through a process called neurogenesis.. growing additional branches and connections.. in a process called synaptic placisticity. It's those darned synapses again! The more synapses you grow, the more your brain stays young.

In addition:

Aerobic exercise can reverse symptoms of age-related brain decline. (Get off your dead butt and start moving!)

Regular intellectual stimulation may even reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
(I would strongly recommend cryptic crossword puzzles.)

Social activity promotes the formation and survival of brain cells. (Make some new friends!)

Constant stress can cause atrophy of brain connections.. so, reducing stress is very important.
(Meditation might be one way.. omm ni paa ti suuum.) (Massage is also good.)

Diet is important. Excessive caffeine and alcohol should be avoided. (How much is too much? How much is too little? What about chocolate?)

Folic acid is an important supplement. (Take a trip to a health food store and look around. Lots of good stuff there.)

Sleep is important... They suggest 6 to 8 hours a night. This gives time for your "sleepy-time" brain to sort and categorize what you have experienced during the day and get ready for tomorrow.

(Ben Franklin may have said: 6 hours of sleep a night for a man; 7 hours of sleep a night for a woman; 8 hours of sleep a night for an idiot.)

He also said: Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

He also said: The early bird catches the worm.... but look what happened to the worm when it got up so early!

Watch out for the effects of diabetes. And smoking. And excessive drinking. (You know what you are supposed to do and not do.. and shame on you for being bad.)

Speaking of brains, I received a weird brain honor last week... I received a certificate honoring me for being a member of Mensa for 40 years!.. This required little effort on my part.. just opening the yearly membership letter, writing a check, sealing the envelope and mailing it off so that I could be a member for yet another year.

I must admit that my Mensa membership has opened lots of intellectual vistas for me. I hope that I can make it to 50 years and another certificate.

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IQ

I keep getting bugged by Facebook to take their IQ test. As a member of Mensa and other high IQ groups, I am always interested in IQ tests. If you are too, I would suggest a book I just finished. The Big Book of IQ Tests by Norman Sullivan and Philip J. Carter. Its a great book, but I must warn you... these guys are "puzzle fiends".. and you will get a massive workout taking their tests.

Based on their scoring system.. with average being 100: I scored (variously) at 118, 132 150, 169, and 182. Now, according to research about the Stanford-Binet scoring system, which used to be the normal test that all school kids in Massachusetts took in the 4th grade: the average medical doctor has an IQ of 120. Under that system, 132 is considered "genius level" and 2% of the population should have that score. (According to that, there must be 20 million geniuses in China and 6 million in the U. S.)

A 2% level or above in any recognized IQ test will get you a membership in Mensa. A 1% level will get you a membership in Intertel (not an International Police or Spy organization.) High scores on College Entrance Examinations might get you in also. Especially the LSAT.. except, for some reason, there aren't that many lawyers in Mensa. (I wonder why.) ;0)

I have always been good at taking tests and have always scored high. (Except for my first IQ test in the 4th grade, where Miss Savage reduced all my scores until they met her expectations for students in her jurisdiction. This is another story that I love to tell, and if I haven't already covered it in a blog yet.. I will.) Armed with these scores, I joined Mensa and Intertel and a couple of other groups of lesser renown.

Good test takers run in my family. Once, I took an Australian IQ test, supposed to be the toughest one around. There were only 10 essay questions. I was given credit for getting all questions right. And guess what.. my "long lost Brother" (another blog subject) took the same test and got 9 of the questions right. We had not conferred with each other about the test. I think that the Australian author wasn't prepared for two Americans to get such a high score, and went back to the "drawing board"... and hasn't been heard of since. (He never did learn that we were brothers. I have another brother.. and I bet he would do as well.. and my sister as well.)

We owe it all to the fact that we had the same super-intelligent mother. Thanks, Ma!

I know, this all sounds like bragging. Maybe so, but I haven't even told you about other people who have recorded astronomical IQ's, like Elaine's daughter and my three kids. 80)