National CP Awareness Day

When my grandsons told me last night that they needed to wear something green today, I knew it wasn’t St. Patrick’s Day because that had already passed. So of course I asked and I was told there was a student there that everyone was wearing green for named Jacob. He walks with crutches. So I did a little looking up and found a green ribbon and some info on National Cerebral Palsy Awareness Day. The boys just said Jacob would get a kick out of it if he saw a bunch of people wearing green for him today and I know he did because I saw a sea of green garbed middle schoolers at dismissal. I could go on to give a bunch of information about CP here but instead I’ll just end with a link to a You Tube video of Jacob and Haley posted by one of the teachers at my grandsons’ school. They do a great job explaining and putting a face on CP. I love their courage and determination. Check them out at… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v4BsJAtckI

Another Controversy for Sept.11 Museum

The National September 11 Memorial & Museum was honored with the Themed Entertainment Association’s “Extraordinary Cultural Achievement” award at a black-tie affair, sponsored by global consultancy firm AECOM, was held in the Grand Ballroom at the Disneyland Hotel. The tickets to the affair started at $520 for nonmembers. Some of the families of the people lost on 9/11 are angry and feel that this “honor” does not bring dignity and respect to the World Trade Center museum but rather lumps the solemn memorial in with amusement parks and for profit, money making places of entertainment. The 9/11 Museum was given the award along with Universal Studios Florida, Harry Potter exhibit. This isn't the first of the controversies, over what is considered respectful and appropriate in regards to this national landmark, that have arisen since the museum’s opening in May and it probably won’t be the last. No monetary benefit accompanied the award itself but I side with the families that are outraged over the idea of honoring the heroes of 9/11 by including their solemn memorial in an award ceremony with a bunch of amusement oriented theme parks. The museum did send a representative to accept the award.

My Next Car Will Be…

AeroMobil, a flying car! I saw the video and I am really impressed. In my family I am the one that likes to keep a car till it’s almost an antique, in other words, long after it’s been paid for. That way I think I am getting my money’s worth. That’s the way it has always been until today when I saw the video on line for the AeroMobil, the flying car that manufacturers claim will be available in 2017. It will go 99 miles per hour on land and then the can wings fold out for the ultimate off road experience. It can fly 425 miles on a tank of gas at 124 miles per hour. This info and more can be found at the Aeromobil website. No price list yet but they will be taking orders next year.

There are only two problems with my plan to get one that I can see at this point. First I have to keep my current car running for two more years and secondly, I didn’t see them land the flying car in the video. But I have known all along that my next car would be a hybrid. Guess I’ll need to get a new kind of driver’s license too!

Joint Project between GE and the VA to Make Bedsores a Thing of the Past

The VA’s reputation for poorly serving those who have served our nation has slowly been fading from the limelight like so many other issues brought to the public’s eye by the media. Here is some good news about an innovation created in a joint effort by GE and the VA. A team of scientists have combined an array of sensing and analytical tools, including motion analysis, thermal profiling, image classification/segmentation, 3-D object reconstruction and vapor detection into a single medical sensing handheld probe. This probe is then used to assess and monitor bedsores. Bedsores (or pressure ulcers, the official name for bedsores) are pretty common and very painful. As many as 2.5 million patients get them every year. The device the VA and GE are working together to develop can help detect the earliest signs of bedsore formation. Researchers are hopeful that the info the device provides may help hospitals reduce and one day eliminate these painful pressure ulcers from developing all together. It’s nice to have some positive things to share about an innovation that will not only benefit our veterans but many others that visit hospitals and care centers in the civilian sector too.

Spring Break is NOT a Break for Everyone

It is spring break season and I am hearing a lot about towns trying to tame the spring break crowds and how the kids have migrated around in the south each season. Some of the latest destinations are in the panhandle these days’ vs the Atlantic coastal areas. I have always loved the gulf beaches, personally, but for some people spring break is not a break and one of those people is me. Spring break for me means spring cleaning and yard work and neither are all that much fun especially when you've “let things go” around the house and yard, so to speak. Yes, I am guilty and now I have to pay the price just when the weather is getting decent. I had to pull the extra trash can out this week and take it completely full to the curb with the city trash can and my recycling bin. Yep, spring cleaning means culling clutter, (I almost wrote crap the honest albeit less appropriate word) and I started putting things on the curb the day before trash day so some of the items could be someone else’s treasure. Surprisingly enough some things were gone by morning (and not just blown into the ditch) so I guess the old adage one woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure is actually true. I did take some pleasure in painting fish in a barrel on my rain barrel after dumping out a bunch of slimy pine needles and cleaning out well for the lack of a better descriptor, a lot of green, smelly, slime. There is that at least. Spring Break, which only lasts a week, will probably be over in a blink of an eye as I continue to toil with spring cleaning and yard work until summer begins.

Women on 20s

Here is an idea long overdue, putting a woman on the twenty dollar bill. Women on 20s is a nonprofit group that is fighting to do just that by 2020, the 100^th year anniversary of the amendment giving women the right to vote. Members of this group and others feel that having a woman on the $20 bill would send the message that women are not just strong and powerful, but also deserve equality under the law, and I agree. They have a list of possible candidates for the $20 that includes Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller, Rosa Parks, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Harriet Tubman, Patsy Mink, and Eleanor Roosevelt. The men pictured on paper currency, mostly presidents, haven’t changed since 1929. Women on 20s has a website for voting for the woman the group wants the Treasury secretary to put on the $20 in 2020, five short years from now. I, for one, hope they succeed. 

Ultrasound to Fight Dementia

The ultrasound scientists are using to clear tangles of plaques linked to Alzheimer’s in mice is more focused than the ultrasound used to see the shadows of babies in utero. After using the ultrasound to clear the plaques mice memories improve. One test used to measure this has to do with navigating through a maze (something I am not very good at). Ultrasound was originally used to help get drugs past the blood barrier that protects the brain but now scientist are hoping to use ultrasound without drugs to fight dementia without the use of drugs.

After several weeks of treating mice that had been genetically altered to produce amyloid plaques, the scientists found the ultrasound almost completely cleared the plaques in 75 percent of the animals, without apparent damage to brain tissue. I am officially impressed. The ultrasound stimulates microglial cells, which form part of the brain's immune system, and then the cells engulf and absorb the plaques which most agree are associated with dementia. This research is still years away from human trials (sheep are next after mice) but it is my hope that the approach using ultrasound will work on humans as I am rapidly approaching the age for dementia to begin. Who knows, maybe I’ll figure out how to get out of a corn maze in my old age too!

Pi=3.141592653 = March 14, 2015 at 9:26:53=Today!

Pi was special today, all the more reason to celebrate with some of Pi’s homophone, pie! If you are not into math or pie (think custard, pizza, quiche, Eskimo, etc.) you could have celebrated today’s beautiful spring weather and blooming azaleas by spending time outdoors like I did. 

Hope you found a way to enjoying the day with or without pie! 

Happy Pi Day!

Internet Connected Barbie, Hello!

When I was a kid I played with Barbies (and complained when my twin brother cut their hair after tangling it to rat nest standards) but the big talking doll was Chatty Cathy. She had a string you pulled and a few different phrases that randomly repeated. That was the entire level of interaction involved. Now toy makers have come out with an internet (the cloud) connected Barbie that not only talks to you but stores and uses the things you have spoken with her about in conversation. Yes, the doll uses a speech-recognition platform called Pullstring, developed by San Francisco startup ToyTalk, which allows writers to create evolving dialogue based on what your child says. Your child presses a button on Hello Barbie's belt to chat and Barbie “listens” to their speech. An audio recording is then sent over a WiFi connection to ToyTalk’s cloud-based servers, where your child's speech is recognized and processed so Barbie can then make an intelligent response. There are groups with privacy concerns stirred up over this newest Barbie clamoring for her removal from the market. I think it may be too late for that since the cat is probably already out of the bag and I wonder what my grandson, who talks to Siri on my iPhone, making Siri call herself a doo-doo-head, would have to say to Barbie! 

The Carnival Returns

That time of year again and as the rides and booths arrive and fill the parking lot across from the middle school the excitement builds (and my dread level rises as my wallet level looks at a big decrease). My grandkids have made comments about it the past two mornings in a row so I figured I’d mention this in my blog today.

The younger one just wants to go. The older one would easily fit in with the unsupervised teen mob that roams on weekend nights, the time I always avoid. Interestingly enough he doesn't want to go then because all his friends will want to ride rides he is too afraid to ride. Maybe that is putting it too bluntly. Perhaps the wilder rides (and stomach churners) are just not what he considers fun, but basically he doesn't want to chicken out in front of his friends. I used to love roller coasters but I am content with the Ferris wheel now and even that requires coaxing with these guys.

The other predominant comment was the one about the guy that was killed at the carnival last year. Didn't someone get killed by a ride last year? That was the question I decided to research. From personal experience I know a past student of mine actually broke a bone tripping on the way up the ramp to get on the Himalaya. This happened a few years back and could not be misconstrued and called a death. Apparently a worker was too close to a moving ride and did get knocked unconscious by one last year. According to all reports he was tended to by the local EMS peeps and survived. The only deaths I found in my extensive research were the mysterious deaths of goldfish won on the midway. The carnival does have a website you can go to (for a coupon-$5 off wrist bands, family packs and $2 off a ten dollar food purchase-they only take printed paper coupons no phone coupons) and the dates and times for this year’s appearance. Here is the web address, http://www.dreamlandamusements.com/. You can find the safety standard section too but no mention of the goldfish there either even though that’s the one thing other than an empty wallet and a tummy ache that my younger grandson will want to bring home.    

Don’t Forget DST Tonight!

Got this lovely email from my better half explaining tonight’s spring ahead! (He does a much better job with this than I did last year!)

Don't forget to set your clocks ahead one hour at 2 a.m. Sunday morning as we enter Daylight Savings.

American inventor and politician Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay called "An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light" to the editor of The Journal of Paris in 1784. In the essay, he suggested, although jokingly, that Parisians could economize candle usage by getting people out of bed earlier in the morning, making use of the natural morning light instead.

A major contributor to the invention of DST was New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson. In 1895, Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society, proposing a two-hour shift forward in October and a two-hour shift back in March.

Germany was the first country to implement DST. Clocks there were first turned forward at 11:00 p.m. (23:00) on April 30, 1916. In the U.S., Daylight Saving Time - or "fast time", as it was called then was first introduced in 1918 when President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law to support the war effort during World War I. The initiative was sparked by Robert Garland, a Pittsburgh industrialist who had encountered the idea in the United Kingdom. A passionate campaigner for the use of DST in the United States, he is often called the "father of Daylight Saving". In the United States, DST caused widespread confusion from 1945 to 1966 for trains, buses and the broadcasting industry because states and localities were free to choose when and if they would observe DST. Congress decided to end the confusion and establish the Uniform Time Act of 1966 that stated DST would begin on the last Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday of October. However, states still had the ability to be exempt from DST by passing a local ordinance. The U.S. Congress extended DST to a period of ten months in 1974 and eight months in 1975, in hopes to save energy following the 1973 oil embargo. The trial period showed that DST saved the energy equivalent of 10,000 barrels of oil each day, but DST still proved to be controversial. Many complained that the dark winter mornings endangered the lives of children going to school. After the energy crisis was over in 1976, the U.S. changed their DST schedule again to begin on the last Sunday in April. DST was amended again to begin on the first Sunday in April in 1987. Further changes were made after the introduction of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Daylight Saving Time (sometimes called Daylight Savings Time) is now in use in over 70 countries worldwide and affects over a billion people every year.

And now you know the rest of the story..... 

Linguistic Fingerprints

My husband has a saying about if you don’t have it in writing you don’t have squat. This is even more true now than ever before because textual sleuths find clues these days, not in fingerprints or handwriting, but in word choice, spelling, punctuation, character sequences and in subtle (and usually subconscious) patterns of sentence structure. Forensic linguistics has a controversial subspecialty, author identification, and authors are identified through these clues found in the treasure trove of written communication we create everyday…in email, in texts and in tweets. Private companies want to find out which disgruntled employee has been posting bad stuff about the boss online. Police and prosecutors seek help figuring out who wrote a threatening e-mail or whether a suicide note was a forgery and forensic linguistics seek to provide answers. There are debates about the acceptability of this new science in courts of law now but as error rates drop and techniques become more refined forensic linguistics will become more important. The new whodunit will become a who wrote it, something to think about the next time you consider posting a rant on Face Book!

Fight Blight? There’s an App for that!

In Jacksonville there’s a new app for fighting blight. You can put this app on your smartphone and then when you see blight you can just snap a photo, send, and the city gets the photo and location, no muss, no fuss, and no long wait on hold. The actual fight is then up to the city but at least by using the app you can get the ball rolling. The other, somewhat obvious, alternative would be to get down and dirty, and fight it yourself. In other words, go one on one with the blight. If it is litter you could pick it up and properly dispose of it or (here’s a novel idea) consider not littering in the first place. Maybe St. Marys needs an app like this…or just a few less litterbugs!

Rabbits with Reefer Madness!

Yep, wildlife living the wild life is just another possible side effect of the legalization of marijuana. Rabbits in particular are apparently attracted to and especially fond of weed. A DEA agent, Matt Fairbanks told a Utah state senate hearing about how in the course of his marijuana eradication work, he had encountered animals, including rabbits, that had developed a taste for the drug and how when under the influence these same rabbits lose their natural instincts to run away. This was presented as one of the most recent arguments against the legalization of medical marijuana there but it seems pretty moot since medical marijuana is supposed to be grown and produced indoors where a wild hare dare not usually travel. All I know is whenever I see a bunny nibbling away on the tender grass along the roadside you can bet I’ll be wondering whether or not it plans to take off as I near it and just what kind of grass it’s been nibbling on. And as for the Easter Bunny and what’s in your basket…..that’s a topic for another day!

Political Conservatives Going Green

Sundogs in St. Marys

Green renewable energy, like solar power is a movement that actually unites grassroots political activists from the left and the right, even though the issues involving the green energy movement in this country are more often associated with liberals. Getting both parties (Dems and Republicans) behind these renewable energy issues is a good thing because solar energy companies still need protection from the better funded (big business) fossil fuel people (the ones more often associated with Republicans). Even though the right and left have different motivations for seeing solar power succeed the simple idea that both political opposites actually support the same issue and find some common ground is a really good place to be. Hope it can be a jumping off point for bipartisanship in other issues too.

Blogger Hacked to Death with Machetes

I really wish this was just a funny title for a blog post but it isn't. Since 2004 four bloggers in Bangladesh have been attacked and most recently two writers murdered by those representing opposing religious extremes. I’ll be blunt. Avijit Roy received numerous death threats from Islamic militant groups prior to his murder by machetes last Thursday. Roy was the founder of the Mukto-Mona (Free-mind) blog, and he was killed inside Dhaka University, a bastion of secularism and free speech in the Muslim-majority nation of Bangladesh. The attack also left Roy’s wife seriously injured and is being condemned by the U.S. as a shocking act of violence. Rest in Peace Avijit Roy and may your killers know that though they succeeded in murdering you, your words live on and cannot be unwritten.