Yet another fact from Jan 24th, 1931

Use of Corn Sugar in Food adds Calories to Diet

Ruth graces us with another fact pulled out of 1930’s science literature sources:

Jan 24, 1931

A weather station on wheels is proving valuable in fighting forest fires in the west.

Ruth provides us with another fact from the 1930’s

Jan 24, 1931

Talking moving pictures are being made by the U.S. Army for use in training soldiers.

Ever notice that pretty much every juice on earth is a “good source of vitamin C” Even Kool Aid.

Now, what would you guess is considered a “good source.”

Kool Aid has 10%. Ten percent is considered good? huh?

Although I’m sure very few people drink Kool Aid for the vitamins. I think most people drink it because it’s absolutely delicious.

Friday

If at this point you aren’t stuck in a tryptophan induced coma, congratulations. Also if you were able to get up at 2am for the latest Target Blockbuster, Early Bird, First Come First Serve, limited engagement, Freeze your butt-off-a-thon, shopfest, then congratulations. It takes a person with an Iron Will to go out and combat all those rabid Soccer moms who are battling for the latest Tickle me Elmo, or pokemon. Shouldering them out of the way to get the greatest deal is amazing. I give my brother’s girlfriend mad props for being out there, and I tip my hat to you if you were part of the raving lunatics who were able to take advantage of the great deals. I on the other hand waited around like a vulture to pick at the scraps left by the birds of prey. I was able to find some good deals (which I won’t mention here since people may be getting them for their birthday’s that come after Christmas). But the main reason I go out is for my number one favorite past time. People Watching.
5′4″ 90 lb moms, pushing a double stroller laden with kids and gifts, spilling her Hot cocoa, or other delicious beverage on the floor makes me giggle. Call me a bad person, I don’t care. Thats classic comedy. All sorts of folk come out of the wood work to take advantage of Black Friday in their own way. Mine is to make fun of and take perverse pleasure in the misfortune of others. The holiday season really brings out my good qualities.

I’m not going to dive into the saturday or sunday following the holiday, well, because they are just a regular weekend to me. If you feel like I should have talked about it, well too bad. You should have asked me two months ago when I wrote all this stuff. Stay tuned for another senseless ramblin later in the month. Happy January!

Thursday

Thanksgiving Day. The day that all the traveling the day before was about. People travel hundreds upon hundreds of miles (360 for me this year) just to eat was essentially is a big dinner. But not just any dinner. One of the biggest feasts you will have all year. Besides a wedding and sometimes Christmas (or other December Holiday for our Multi Religious Friends reading this) you aren’t going to be eating this much food in a while. Lets start off with the big bird. No..not Big Bird, THE big bird. A turkey kicking in somewhere in the welter weight division. Sometimes stuffed to the brim full of onions, carrots, celery and other delicious things. You might have had him (or her) brined, broiled, baked, smoked, Fried, or some combination of those, or maybe some totally new awesome way to cook a turkey that didn’t show up on my culinary radar that you need to tell us about.
Oh man…there isn’t a site in this world more glorious than watching someone carve that turkey and all the juices roll right on out. Oh man, excuse me while I go see if we have any turkey in the fridge.
Where was I? Oh yeah…Food. Turkey is just the beginning i’m afraid. Your stomach is definately going to earn that big paycheck you’ve been paying him today. Mashed potatoes, Cranberries (from a can or from the real deal), squash, Green Bean Casserole (My Fav!), sweet potatoes, gravy, stuffing, dressing, fresh baked bread and so much more. Man alive. You know you can’t just walk on by and not take a piece of everything. The structural integrity of your plate is going to be put to the test. In my family, if you don’t try everything at least once you get made fun of relentlessly. AND if you don’t go up for seconds you are called “Mrs. Nancy Pants” until you do go up.
And where would I be not talking about the Desserts. Pies, cakes, cookies, canoli’s, brownies, candy and ice cream. Your yearly festivities may differ slightly but if you don’t walk away going into both Turkey Coma and Sugar Shock you surely didn’t do something right….or you’re a commie.

Wednesday.

Now don’t tell me, “Kurt, Thats not Thanksgiving yet!”, cause if you do I’ll smack you and call you stupid. If you haven’t checked out of work, either mentally or physically at 1pm on Wednesday, you are either a Commie or, well I gues thats it. Your a commie. I mean I know I was sitting around counting the seconds tick on by the moment I got in (I’m a special kind of lazy). You just can’t help thinking about all the food you are gonna eat, and all the fun your gonna have with family and friends you probably haven’t seen in a long time. Now say you are a communist and you did work right up to 5pm on Wednesday, then you get out go home and do whatever you do at home.
Some people might think about getting a headstart on the next days cooking, but then again that ain’t me either. I think Thanksgiving Eve Is one of the biggest going out nights there are. Especially for us the young crowd. All your friends from High School are back from college, or wherever they decided to settle down and they are out reminiscing about the “good ol’ days”. Hanging out at bars talking to good friends is probably as good as it gets. At least thats what you think right up untill you wake up the next day and have to eat. We’ll get into to Thursday in the next hours issue.

You know what I like. Thanksgiving. I’m not talking about the day where we get together with our family members, and all the food, don’t get me wrong thats part of it, but the whole stinking weekend. When else do you get 4 days off from work, not often enough thats when!

Lets look at this from a day by day standpoint.

Web 2.0 sucks
The ‘Net’s old stuff was better
I’m into Lynx now

by ben and ryan

Adjacent Four!

If there was a board game equivalent to the cheap cereals… these would be them…

ACROSS FIRE!

People would rather get rich than get righteous.

Jim Stodder

So, redshift is pretty sweet.

Redshift is basically the doppler effect for color.

who what now?

Firstly, the Doppler Effect occurs because the speed of sound is still a finite speed. When a car zoops past you with its horns a blarin’ the sound will noticeably shift down as the car passes you. That’s because as the car approaches, the wavelength of the sound is, for lack of a better word, scrunched. When the car passes you the wavelengths of the sound are stretched… check it:

The same thing happens with light, though because light is so fast it’s hardly noticeable except in grand situations. For example, you won’t see it on the hot red car that just drove by you… but you can see it when you look at distant galaxies through telescopes.

Anyway, Redshift is pretty cool. I hope you think so too.

Ruth found a handful of sweet facts of science from the 1930’s. Check it out!

Jan 17, 1931

A law in Germany requires industrial concerns to employ a certain percentage of disable persons, including the blind, but there is now agitation to repeal it.

In the early 1600 Spain rocked the heck out of everybody. It was a powerhouse country.

By the 1700’s Spain was a second rate power.

One of the reasons for this was that Spain operated under a mercantile system. That means that they tried hard to bring as much gold into the system and prevent gold from leaving. This provides an initial expectation that the wealth of the country will go up. BUT! the real result is that if you give everyone in a country tons of cash… prices go up. It just results in huge inflation. This is the same reason why we can’t just print more money. If everyone’s a millionaire, the local bakery is going to charge a LOT more for their bread. Anyway, Spain got itself into such a bind that the only thing it could export was gold. Everything else was too expensive for other countries to buy.

In fact, Spain had so much gold they started using it in the huge wealth of churches that populated the streets. Gold structures were everywhere. The running joke at the end of the 1600’s was that Spain
had developed reverse alchemy: They figured out how to turn gold into stone.

The job of the Federal Reserve is “to take away the punch bowl just
when the party gets going,” William McChesney Martin Jr

Welcome to Free Swim!

Free Swim is a day of nonsequitors. There may be small themes that run for a few hours, but nothing will continue on for an entire day.

The MSPaint feature image for this particular FreeSwim session is a shark wearing a top hat and suit.

Prune

Turkey Sandwich