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We made it to March! Yeaaaa!
Of course, it’s finally snowing.
This month we have a monopoly on information you didn’t know you wanted to know about. Like Absinthe, Bob Dylan and an Oxen railroad.
We’ve got a great Trane robbery (ouch) and a Murder Mystery Quiz which we are betting that NO ONE gets right! (Consider yourselves challenged)
Other than that we’d like to add one more thing – we do this newsletter for you. We hope you enjoy it and if you’d like to see different things please
let us know. Have a great Spring!
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A Monopoly of Information | |
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The original Monopoly board patented and self-published in 1904 by Elizabeth Magie (an absolutely amazing person) as ‘The Landlord’s Game’. She tried to sell it to Parker Brothers but was told it was too complex and too political.
Lizzie was an anti-monopolist and created a game which she hoped would explain the single-tax theory of Henry George. It was intended as an educational tool, to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land-in private monopolies.
Magie created two sets of rules: an anti-monopolist set in which all were rewarded when wealth was created, and a monopolist set in which the goal was to create monopolies and crush opponents.
In the early ‘30’s Charles Darrow found the game, managed to get rules to the game and began to distribute the game himself as Monopoly.
The Parker Brothers bought the game's copyrights from Darrow. When the company learned Darrow was not the sole inventor of the game, it bought the rights to Magie's original patent for only...$500.
A recent PBS American Experience episode tells the whole story of Lizzie, Darrow and Parker Brothers. Don't miss it. More about Lizzie here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzie_Magie and the game here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)
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March 5th is…
Absinthe Day - Often mistaken for a liqueur, it is truly a spirit because it isn’t sweetened. It belongs to the vodkas, gins, and whiskeys when categorizing absinthe.
Pierre Ordinaire, a French doctor, is credited with the creation of absinthe, and is made by infusing wormwood, fennel, anise, and other herbs into alcohol through distillation. It has a strong licorice flavor to it and has a high alcohol content.
The spirit is often served with ice, a sugar cube placed on a slotted spoon over the glass, and water poured over the sugar. Also known as the Green Fairy, the Green Goddess, or the Green Lady, the drink was popular with artists and writers. It was also once rumored to have hallucinogenic effects.
Many blamed the Green Lady for causing madness, seizures, and low morality, among other ills of society. One of the final blows was a scandal in 1905 involving a French laborer who had spent the day drinking absinthe. Later that day, he murdered his family. France banned the drink, and other countries soon followed. The ban has since been lifted.
Now what goes better with absinthe than…
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Cheese Doodles Day - The credit for inventing Cheese Doodles goes to a man named Morrie Yohai who made a variety of extruded snack foods in the 1940s for his family’s company called Old London Foods.
Other sources show patents for similar products in the 1930s and still other competing accounts in Wisconsin and New Orleans as well. Their crunchy, orange deliciousness is enjoyed around the world! They come in a variety of shapes, sizes and flavors and 15 million pounds are produced annually. Caution: eating them will stain everything.
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Yeah, you know him. Tell us here - and include at least two movies he’s been in and you may win a new Amazon gift card.
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This isn’t the exact photo. The only one we could find was copyrighted so…
According to Texas lore, John Higginson, owner of the Memphis, El Paso & Pacific Railroad had committed to serve the route between Marshall, Texas, and Shreveport, La., but the Civil War had reduced his stock to three boxcars.
How could he maintain regular service between two cities 40 miles apart with no engine?
He did it (the story goes) by loading a team of oxen into the first boxcar; freight and passengers into the second car; and the train’s crew and management into the third car.
At Marshall, Higginson would start the train coasting down a long descending grade, and at the bottom they’d unload the oxen, hitch them to the front of the train, and drive them until they reached the top of the next hill.
Then they’d load the oxen into the first car again and ride down the hill. At Shreveport they’d turn around and use the same method to get home. You couldn’t make this up, could you?
George U. Hubbard wrote: “With gravity for the downgrades and oxen for the level areas and the upgrades, the little railroad managed to operate in both directions on a timely and consistent schedule.” With no competition on the Marshall-Shreveport line, Higginson (supposedly) maintained a profitable railroad with no engine at all.
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How Are You Making My Electricity? | |
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Tally marks, also called hash marks, are a form of numeral used for counting. They can be thought of as a unary numeral system..
They are most useful in counting or tallying ongoing results, such as the score in a game or sport, (or calculating how many bananas have been counted) as no intermediate results need to be erased or discarded.
However, because of the length of large numbers, tallies are not commonly used for static text. Notched sticks, known as tally sticks, were used for this purpose.
Far more interesting stuff…here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_marks
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Let’s go someplace we’ve never been.
Where the waters are clear and…bright…colorful? Tell us here where we are – name the river and the country – and you may win a colorful Amazon gift card.
Delighted to tell you that the photo of the fancy dancers were not from Ed Sullivan – but actually from the Dean Martin show and featured the Golddiggers and our customer, Michelle!
Ed L. correctly guessed while winners Shirley P., Adam H., Mary-Jo M., and Ed W. (and 141 of you – huge turnout) correctly identified Meg Ryan and Jordan Knight and Patty C. must be a Shakespearean master as she correctly identified the quote as it referenced…Brutus- not Julius Caesar. Thank you alllllll – for playing.
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A new invention looks like it may completely change how hearing-impaired people communicate with the rest of the world. XRAI Glass has developed augmented reality glasses that allow people who have difficulty hearing to read real-time conversations in their glasses through closed-captioning.
It’s like watching a TV show with subtitles, but in real life.
The idea came from Dan Scarfe while he was spending time with his 97-year-old grandfather. His grandfather wasn’t participating with the rest of the family because he couldn’t hear their conversations. “It's just so difficult when there are so many people around you and you're trying to keep track of the different conversations which are going on,” Scarfe said.
“It’s got to the point now where he literally just sits in silence. And I thought, well, hang on a second. He watches TV all the time with subtitles. Why can't we subtitle the world?”
Now, just seven months later, his new company XRAI Glass is already testing its closed-captioning glasses on 100 people before they’re released to the public. To make the glasses a reality, Scarfe and his team used software based on Amazon's Alexa transcription service and combined it with glasses made by augmented reality manufacturer Nreal. The result is comfortable glasses that look natural while allowing the wearer to read the text of the person with whom they are speaking.
See it here: https://www.wired.com/story/xrai-glass-caption-ar-glasses-first-look/
or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWsaiMc28qk&feature=emb_imp_woyt
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Bernie Kaminski makes everyday objects out of paper mâché and posts the results to his Instagram account. At a glance, you wouldn’t be able to tell that some of these weren’t real and then after a moment you’re like, waaaait a minute…
At any rate, the design aesthetic here is off the charts.
More info here: https://www.instagram.com/berniekaminski/?hl=en
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Every month we are going to try to bring you five things you may not have known.
Here’s the March batch with links to further your edification.
1. Until the wire whisk was popularized in the 19th century, the vigorous mixing required to make meringue was often accomplished with birch branches, knives or bundles of straw. https://www.gamberorossointernational.com/news/meringue-history-origins-and-recipes-that-see-it-as-the-protagonist/
2. Most office building thermostats follow a model developed in the 1960s that takes into account, among other factors, the resting metabolic rate of a 40-year-old man weighing 154 pounds.
3. If stars in the night sky are sparkling, it’s a sign of atmospheric turbulence.
How to Spot Asteroids
4. The musician Bob Dylan wrote 17 known drafts of his cryptic 1983 song “Jokerman” before deciding on the final version. The $10 Million Bob Dylan Center Opens Up His Songwriting Secrets
5. Male honeybees, or drones, are equipped only to mate: Their tongues are too short to allow them to extract nectar, and they don’t have stingers that would enable them to protect the hive. Humans Know a Lot, This Author Concedes, and Most of It Is Useless
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Quiz 3:
Murder Mystery Mahem, aka:
“Who Killed The Librarian?”
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In Anthony Boucher’s short story, “QL 696.C9,” a librarian is found dead at her desk. She has been shot, and apparently spent her last moments typing the Library of Congress card catalog number that gives the story its title.
The killer evidently saw nothing incriminating in this and so left it alone. The investigators have narrowed the list of suspects to:
Junior librarian Stella Swift,
Children’s librarian Cora Jarvis,
Library patron James Stickney, and
High school teacher Norbert Utter.
Who did it? Sure. We know that you know. So, tell us here and you may win a $25 Amazon gift card which you could use to…ya know, buy a book!
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The Fuente del Ángel Caído
(Fountain of the Fallen Angel or Monument of the Fallen Angel) is a fountain located in the Buen Retiro Park in Madrid, Spain.
Ricardo Bellver realized it in plaster in 1877 while a 3rd year pensioner in Rome, was inspired by verses from Paradise Lost by John Milton (Canto I).
He submitted the design to the 1877 edition of the Exposiciones Nacionales de Bellas Artes where it received the first prize. The state acquired the work and presented it at the 1878 Exposition Universelle. Since only works in marble and bronze were accepted, the statue was cast in bronze at this occasion and the plaster original destroyed. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuente_del_Ángel_Ca%C3%ADdo
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So many of us will start planning summer holidays. We thought these venues might help spur a conversation or two. | |
When you lie on the application but still get the job | |
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danielsenergy.com
Daniels Energy: CT License S1-385517 HOD#19 /
Daniels Propane. LLC: #846 CT License S1-302857
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