Guess Who Else Wants Freedom From The British
The Scots, the Northern Irish, the Welsh, even the Cornish have all expressed a desire to have more autonomy from the United Kingdom in recent years. The announcement came this week that the Scottish referendum is now scheduled for the fall of 2014, but the Christian Science Monitor says that the latest group to be feeling its oats a bit is the English themselves. Public opinion in England proper is beginning to show a bit of resentment towards the other nations, particularly Scotland, for the amount of money the national government spends to support them, and a bit of old-fashioned John Bull-ism.
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Yeah, It’s Kinda Like That
Since last summer, I’ve been dividing my time between my personal business providing at-home tech support to a clientele that is primarily senior citizens and a part-time job doing much the same thing for a biotech company. It’s a little schizophrenic going back and forth between an office environment and the homes of my clients, but at least the basic tasks are largely the same. The biggest difference is the level of appreciation I get from my clients and my co-workers. Not that my co-workers don’t appreciate the things I do for them, but the response I get from my clients is more like this, without quite so much Jello salad.
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Slow News Day Digest
Good Evening, Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and All The Ships At Sea!
FLASH!
The New York Daily News recently reported that one Colin Hagendorf of Brooklyn, New York has completed his quest of eating a slice of pizza from every single pizza place in Manhattan. For his next quest, Mr. Hagendorf will make use of every public toilet in Manhattan.
FLASH!
The citizens of Dog Shit Village in Guizhou Province, China, were ecstatic to learn that the government has finally awarded their town with a new name. Until the presentation of the new town sign.
FLASH!
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told a group of Florida voters yesterday that if he is elected he will order NASA to build a colony on the moon. No, really, he did. No joke. Except for Gingrich himself, of course.
And now let’s go live to our correspondent for breaking news from a situation developing on the expressway…Steve, over to you…
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Just Another Day In Australia
Flerdle, is that you?
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Danger, Will Robinson!
If you are a contemporary of mine, you will immediately recognize the fellow on the right in the photo above. That is Robot B-9, the automated companion of the Space Family Robinson from the classic 1960s television show “Lost In Space”. But you may not recognize the humanoid to his left. That is Dick Tufeld, longtime announcer and voice-over specialist, and the man who voiced the Robot and made immortal the line “Danger, Will Robinson!”.
Dick Tufeld passed away over the weekend at the age of 85. My two favorite showbiz bloggers, Mark Evanier and Ken Levine, each had something nice to say about him and his career.
(The fellow who actually performed INSIDE the robot suit, actor Bob May, passed away in 2009.)
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Best. Election Coverage. EVAR
Meanwhile in Finland…
They held their presidential election over the weekend. The Scandinavian countries have largely been spared from the financial chaos that threatens their southern neighbors, and Finland consistently rates right up there as one of the best places to live in the world, but the leading candidate after the first round is former finance minister Sauli Niinsto, who favors closer ties to the European Union. However, Niisto did not receive the needed 50% of the vote for an outright win, so he faces Green Party candidate and second-place finisher Pekka Haavisto in a runoff.
But this is just the icing on the proverbial cake: check out the election results from the first round of voting as displayed by the Finnish national television network YLE on their website. When the page finishes loading, click the button near the bottom that says “Sivakoikaa!”, and spend the next five minutes wishing that FOX News would do this for the Republican primaries.
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And Here’s Skip With The Weather
It was pushing 60 around here yesterday, which might ordinarily qualify as our “January Thaw”, except we’ve seen enough 50-degree weather this winter that nothing’s all that frozen. We did get a few inches of snow last Friday and Saturday, and like an idiot I went out and shoveled it on Sunday, not knowing that if I waited another 36 hours it would all disappear on its own.
Aaaaanyway, things were VERY different this time last year. Check out this cool satellite photo of a massive bank of cumulus clouds just off the coast of New England exactly one year ago yesterday, as we were recoiling from one of the massive snowstorms that pummeled the Northeast. You almost can’t even SEE Nova Scotia. This effect is called “cloud streets” because of the lane-like appearance of the striations.
Meanwhile, over on the other side of the continent, our dear friend Karan is getting the treatment we were getting this time last year. Here’s yesterday’s “Photo of the Day” from the Earth Observatory, showing the extent of the snowfall in Washington and Oregon:
Somehow I don’t think that’s gonna melt itself away overnight.
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Another Fine Wine From New Zealand
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Another Episode Of “Lives Of The Presidents”
The last time I posted about President Grover Cleveland, it was the little-known story about his bout with cancer, but today I want to share with you the kerfuffle surrounding the origin of the name of the Baby Ruth candy bar. Suzy Evans, who writes the “History Chef” blog recently covered this: as she explains it, the candy bar was re-named from “Kandy Kake” to “Baby Ruth” in 1920, which, not coincidentally, was at the height of Babe Ruth’s career. In those days, there was no such thing as official licensing or merchandising of a public figure’s name and likeness, so there were a lot of products named after the Babe, who in turn fought back with lawyers. So the company that then made the candy bar came up with a more-or-less plausible counter-claim, namely, that the candy was not named after the baseball hero, but after the daughter of Grover Cleveland, Ruth, who died as a child.
Cleveland’s marriage to his wife, Frances, was somewhat scandalous because she was significantly younger than he was, but their first child, Ruth, was born in between his non-consecutive presidential administrations, and her death occurred in 1904, after the end of his presidency and even long before the creation of the candy bar itself in 1916. In other words, by 1920, nobody really gave a damn about Ruth Cleveland, but everybody DID love Babe Ruth. But the Curtiss Candy Company stuck with the story, and it still remains the official story today, even though the candy bar is now made by Nestle and Babe Ruth has been gone for decades.