News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Matthew Sullivan has written an article on Polygon.com in which he boasts about catching all 719 Pokemon.
We say congratulations Matthew.
As pastimes go, it certainly beats robbing convenience stores.
Matthew says he became hooked shortly before the turn of the Millennium when his mother gave him a Game Boy Pocket to keep him occupied on a trip from New York to Florida.
Again congratulations.
This Off The Internet is courtesy of Cathy Craddock
Where did “piss poor” come from?
If you’re young and hip, this is still interesting.
Where did the term “Piss Poor” come from?
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot.
And then once it was full it was taken and sold to the tannery…
If you had to do this to survive you were “Piss Poor”.
But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot…
They “didn’t have a pot to piss in” and were the lowest of the low.
Here are some more facts:
Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May,
And they still smelled pretty good by June..
However, since they were starting to smell,
Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water.
The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water,
Then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children.
Last of all the babies.
By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.
Hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!”
Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath.
It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals
(mice, bugs) lived in the roof.
When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof..
Hence the saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”
There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house.
This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings
Could mess up your nice clean bed.
Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection…
That’s how canopy beds came into existence.
The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt.
Hence the saying, “Dirt poor.”
The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing..
As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door,
It would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way.
Hence: a thresh hold.
(Getting quite an education, aren’t you?)
In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire.
Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while.
Hence the rhyme:
Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old..”
Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special.
When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off.
It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.”
They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
Those with money had plates made of pewter.
Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food,
causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes,
so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
Bread was divided according to status..
Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle,
And guests got the top, or the upper crust.
Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky.
The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days..
Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.
They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around
and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.
Hence the custom; holding a wake.”
England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people.
So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.
When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell” or was “considered a dead ringer.”
Now, whoever said history was boring!!!
The dead spruce tree on the township owned traffic island at the northern tip of Windsor Circle in Springfield, Pa. is down and ready to be hauled away by MG Tree Service as this is typed (8:36 a.m., Aug. 22).
Kudos Commissioner Bob Layden and Mike Puppio.
The dead oak trees on the nearby SEPTA property remain. While SEPTA is the agency responsible responsible for their removal, we expect the township is prompting them.
Some fisherman had a blacktip shark on the line off the coast of Bonita Springs, Fla. earlier this month and were recording the fight when a goliath grouper thought it deserved the catch more and took it in one bite.
The video below was put on YouTube on Aug. 19 and as of noon, today, Aug. 21 had 3.6 million views. Expect a SciFy channel movie to be based on it.
For what it’s worth, blacktip sharks rarely reach 5 feet in length and are not known to be aggressive.
Tom Coniglia submitted this link concerning a press conference in which President Obama tries to dance his way around questions concerning the Mideast meltdown.
WesternJournalism.com notes that during his 2012 campaign he drew applause every time he announced “I promised to end the war in Iraq, and I did.”
Well, now he’s saying he had nothing to do with it as per this:
Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, the two Christian Missionaries who contracted ebola after treating patients in Liberia have been released from Emory University Hospital it has been announced.
“We are tremendously pleased with Dr. Brantly and Mrs. Writebol’s recovery,” said Dr. Bruce Ribner, director of Emory’s Infectious Disease Unit. He noted that the hospital is confident their discharges pose no public health threat.
Nearly half the patients receiving medical care in the current outbreak in West Africa are surviving, CNN reported.
For Dr. Brantly’s comments visit here.
For all the pain endured during the Civil Rights movement by people of all colors, the racial chaos that has descended on Ferguson, Mo., makes one wonder how disenchanted those equality pioneers must be.
In the 1960s, barriers were knocked down by heroes who fought courageously and peacefully, not just to be equal, but to live in a color-blind society. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best, stating that people should not be judged by the color of their skin. Those ideals won the day back then, yet it is with tragic irony that today, race relations have been hijacked and taken on a race to the bottom.
It is no exaggeration to say that, in many respects, race relations are worse today than they were half a century ago. And that is a tragedy of our own making. As Ferguson shows, the racial gulf continues to widen, a trend that will only accelerate until we take a hard look in the mirror and remember what the Civil Rights movement fought for in the first place.
In Ferguson, an 18-year-old was shot and killed by a police officer after the two struggled in and around the officer’s patrol car. An autopsy is being performed, and an investigation is ongoing.
That should have been the story line from the beginning. Period. Nothing about race should have entered into the equation until, and only until, it was determined to be warranted.
Instead, protests ensued. Confrontations between citizens and a heavily armed police force were displayed before a national TV audience. The unrest in Ferguson spurred the FBI to launch a civil rights investigation, and the U.S. Justice Department is conducting what will be a third autopsy. Calls for the officer to be charged as a way of bringing “justice” for the deceased, Michael Brown, further enflamed tensions. Curfews were imposed and the National Guard mobilized.
Disregarding the spin and not-so-hidden agendas of some shameless self-promoters, let’s take a sober look at the situation:
1. Brown, who is black, was killed by white police Officer Darren Wilson. Does that mean Wilson, a decorated police veteran, is racist, and that his shooting was racially motivated? Absolutely not, especially because, up to this point, no racist elements have surfaced regarding Wilson. He deserves the benefit of the doubt that his encounter with Brown had nothing to do with color and everything to do with performing his job.
Obviously, if it is determined that race was involved, there should be consequences. That’s why God invented investigations. Common sense tells us that only after the investigation is concluded should anyone be protesting. To do so now is flying blind, since virtually no facts are known, and at least one eyewitness statement — that Brown was shot in the back — seems to have been contradicted by the medical examiner hired by the Brown family. Let’s not forget the innocent until proven guilty principle.
2. Inflammatory rhetoric only ignites the powder keg. Calling Brown’s killing an “execution” (as the Brown family attorney did) is not just ludicrous, but dangerous to everyone. Where are the leaders denouncing such statements?
3. There are conflicting stories as to how far away Brown was when he was shot. Police state that the first shot was fired while the two tussled in the police car, yet we don’t by whom (some reports have Brown shoving Wilson into the car). Regarding the ensuing shots, let’s assume that Brown died 35 feet away from the car, as some reports state. First, that doesn’t mean he was shot 35 feet away, as people can stagger quite a distance after being shot. Ballistics tests and autopsy results should provide the answer.
The medical examiner hired by the family stated the bullet that struck Brown’s in the front of his head could have hit when Brown was giving up or charging the officer. He stated that he found no gunpowder residue near the entry wounds, preliminarily indicating the shot was not from extremely close range, but also said he hadn’t examined Brown’s clothes, which could contain that residue. Again, we must wait for the full picture before casting judgments.
If Wilson shot Brown while the two struggled, that would seem justified, especially if Brown, as reports say, was grabbing for Wilson’s weapon. If, however, Brown was shot at a considerable distance (and not charging the officer), then Wilson is at fault. A shooting can never be justified (if the assailant is unarmed) from a considerable distance, no matter how much adrenaline may be pumping through an officer. Part of the job is to make correct split-second decisions, especially when firing a gun. Noble as being a police officer is, wrong actions in the line of duty have consequences.
4. There was a video released allegedly showing Brown, reported to be 6-foot-4 and 292 pounds, stealing cigars from a liquor store 15 minutes prior to the shooting. The Justice Department and the Missouri governor both criticized the video’s release, but why? Irrelevant is whether Officer Wilson knew of that situation (we don’t know yet). What matters is that Brown had allegedly been engaged in a criminal act, pushing and threatening a much smaller clerk on his way out the door. Therefore, whether or not the shooting was justified, he should not be made out to be a hero.
5. The Ferguson police have been criticized for their strong showing. OK, help me out on this. Given the unrest, including burning and looting, and Molotov cocktails and gunfire being directed at police, what exactly should they have done?
Sadly, race relations will never improve until we stop viewing everything through a racial prism. As long as race is our go-to answer for everything, Dr. King’s dream of a color-blind society will remain just that — a dream.
A University of Michigan study led by J Alex Halderman has revealed that the nation’s traffic control system is laughably easy to take over.
The study said all that was needed was a laptop computer with a wireless card that could communicate at the same frequency used by the traffic lights, and the systems passwords. It was noted that the passwords and usernames in use were often the default ones.
A report by SFGate, has revealed that teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District skip are absent about 11 times a school year which is about five days more than a typical student.
SFGate says that the San Francisco teacher absentee rate is “even a smidge below average” compared to other large urban districts
It said that in non-teaching jobs — which should be noted go for 12 months and not just nine — the absentee rate is about four days per year.
If there is no penalty for failing to do one’s job well those having said jobs are far less less likely to do their jobs well.
Parents need the power to fire teachers and even entire schools. Vouchers will give them the power. The biggest opponents of vouchers are bad teachers and those they pay to represent them to legislators.
Bulgaria Disses Russia Comic StyleOn the eve of the Bulgarian Socialist Party’s celebration of its 123rd Anniversary, some crazy kids decided to dress up the figures in an old Soviet war memorial in Sofia like American comic book characters.
And Santa Claus, and, it looks like, Ronald McDonald, too.
It certainly has peeved the Russians. They issued a demand to the Bulgarian government that it identify and punish those responsible and take “exhaustive measures” to prevent similar attacks in the future.
What those vandals better be afraid of is McDonald’s. The corporation is a ravenous grizzly bear when it comes to defending its trademark.
For those concerned about mocking the sacrifice of of the Soviet solider during World War II, please remember that the Soviet Union was Nazi Germany’s first shooting ally in the war and that the war never would have happened with the Soviet Union’s full and enthusiastic cooperation.
And those Soviet soldiers did not liberate Bulgaria but kept it enslaved for almost a half century until Ronald Reagan (well George H.W. Bush actually) ripped asunder the Iron Curtain.