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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Showing posts with label shortness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shortness. Show all posts
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Monday, May 25, 2009
Being Short in a Tall Century
Here we go again. North Korea has exploded another nuclear device underground, defying the World. It has been reported that the people of North Korea are starving to death, while a crazy "leader" fools around with "WMD's".. supposedly, he is also about to give up his "leadership" to a relative who probably is as mad as he is.
I read that he is upset that most world leaders are a lot taller than he is. (I'v heard that he wears 6" heels in public.) Maybe this is why he acts the way he does. A lot of the other tyrants were quite short: Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, and many others. Of course, the matter of shortness has changed quite a bit since I was a child.
When I was eleven years old, I was 5'7" tall and towered over most of the kids I played with. At that time, around the WWII era, average height of Army enlistees was 5'6" (the same height, it might be noted, of Hitler and Stalin). Everyone thought that I was going to grow to be quite tall. However, my body decided that this was the time to stop growing upwards, and stayed at that height for many more years, while all of my pals grew much taller. (Could my mother have been right to say that smoking would stunt my growth? Because, at my eleven year birthday, I started smoking those black, smelly Parodi cigars.)
Anyway, when I was getting ready for being drafted into the Korean War, the Army average height had jumped to 5'7". Now, instead of being above average, I was just "average".
By the time I got back from my "wartime duties" (haha).. the average was 5'8" and has been growing up steadily for years. I think that the last time I saw statistics on height, the average was now up to 5'10". And now... since I am an old dude, I have shrunk! I don't even want to think about how far below average height I am now. But it doesn't really matter. When you are old, people expect you to be short. A friend of mine would be 6'3" if he was able to stand upright. Instead, I can see the top of his head when he "stands" next to me. He is 80 years old, so what does it matter?
I've written somewhere in these blogs about the time I secretly got some of my co-workers at Social Security to attend a meeting. There was no agenda and the only requirement for attendance was they had to be 6'3" or taller. I never did find out if any of them realized by looking around the room that there were no short people there. (Think about that, Randy Newman!)
Take a look at old movies.. Leading men like Humphrey Bogart were short. In the movie Shane, Alan Ladd had to stand on a box during his scenes with other actors. (He was 5'7" supposedly, but probably that was an exageration.) However, there are still a few short famous people around today: I read that France's Nicolas Sarkozey stood on his tiptoes for his photograph with President Obama and Michelle.
Is it the food that is making people so tall? Can we blame this on fast food? I understand that the cattle in the US are raised on growth hormones. Are those chemicals passed on to the eating public? Are vegetarians who do not partake of meat shorter than those that do?
Has anyone done a study on the eating habits of basketball players?
Two of my childhood acquaintances were not growing very fast and were very short, even by the standards of 60 years ago. They were taken by their parents to some doctor (endocronologist?)
where they were given shots of some kind of growth chemical. (I never found out what.) But, whatever it was, it worked.. they grew taller... or was it just that they were late bloomers?
What about Japanese people who were quite short before WWII? Aren't they much taller now that American occupational forces introduced hamburgers and hotdogs into their diet?
And what about the Chinese.. always shown in American movies as very short people... now they probably have more 7-footers than any other country. (Of course, they also have more people than anywhere else.)
Where is all of this going? A scientific study that I read some years ago recognized this tallness phenomena and said that this could only end in disaster because mankind's optimal supportable population would have to be a lot shorter because of the dwindling of Earth's resources. A study I read about last week said that information flows to the brains of short people much quicker than to those of tall people, and this had to be an evolutionary advantage.
Bottom line: so what! Be happy with yourself, even if you are short. The world can't afford any more short dictators with inferiority complexes.
I read that he is upset that most world leaders are a lot taller than he is. (I'v heard that he wears 6" heels in public.) Maybe this is why he acts the way he does. A lot of the other tyrants were quite short: Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, and many others. Of course, the matter of shortness has changed quite a bit since I was a child.
When I was eleven years old, I was 5'7" tall and towered over most of the kids I played with. At that time, around the WWII era, average height of Army enlistees was 5'6" (the same height, it might be noted, of Hitler and Stalin). Everyone thought that I was going to grow to be quite tall. However, my body decided that this was the time to stop growing upwards, and stayed at that height for many more years, while all of my pals grew much taller. (Could my mother have been right to say that smoking would stunt my growth? Because, at my eleven year birthday, I started smoking those black, smelly Parodi cigars.)
Anyway, when I was getting ready for being drafted into the Korean War, the Army average height had jumped to 5'7". Now, instead of being above average, I was just "average".
By the time I got back from my "wartime duties" (haha).. the average was 5'8" and has been growing up steadily for years. I think that the last time I saw statistics on height, the average was now up to 5'10". And now... since I am an old dude, I have shrunk! I don't even want to think about how far below average height I am now. But it doesn't really matter. When you are old, people expect you to be short. A friend of mine would be 6'3" if he was able to stand upright. Instead, I can see the top of his head when he "stands" next to me. He is 80 years old, so what does it matter?
I've written somewhere in these blogs about the time I secretly got some of my co-workers at Social Security to attend a meeting. There was no agenda and the only requirement for attendance was they had to be 6'3" or taller. I never did find out if any of them realized by looking around the room that there were no short people there. (Think about that, Randy Newman!)
Take a look at old movies.. Leading men like Humphrey Bogart were short. In the movie Shane, Alan Ladd had to stand on a box during his scenes with other actors. (He was 5'7" supposedly, but probably that was an exageration.) However, there are still a few short famous people around today: I read that France's Nicolas Sarkozey stood on his tiptoes for his photograph with President Obama and Michelle.
Is it the food that is making people so tall? Can we blame this on fast food? I understand that the cattle in the US are raised on growth hormones. Are those chemicals passed on to the eating public? Are vegetarians who do not partake of meat shorter than those that do?
Has anyone done a study on the eating habits of basketball players?
Two of my childhood acquaintances were not growing very fast and were very short, even by the standards of 60 years ago. They were taken by their parents to some doctor (endocronologist?)
where they were given shots of some kind of growth chemical. (I never found out what.) But, whatever it was, it worked.. they grew taller... or was it just that they were late bloomers?
What about Japanese people who were quite short before WWII? Aren't they much taller now that American occupational forces introduced hamburgers and hotdogs into their diet?
And what about the Chinese.. always shown in American movies as very short people... now they probably have more 7-footers than any other country. (Of course, they also have more people than anywhere else.)
Where is all of this going? A scientific study that I read some years ago recognized this tallness phenomena and said that this could only end in disaster because mankind's optimal supportable population would have to be a lot shorter because of the dwindling of Earth's resources. A study I read about last week said that information flows to the brains of short people much quicker than to those of tall people, and this had to be an evolutionary advantage.
Bottom line: so what! Be happy with yourself, even if you are short. The world can't afford any more short dictators with inferiority complexes.
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